title: Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis (The Prentice-Hall Series in Social Learning Theory)
author:  Albert Bandura 
description: This book is concerned with why people engage in aggressive behavior. Theories of human behavior have changed over the years, as interest in approaches that depict behavior as instinctively determined or impelled by drive forces have declined as deficiencies became apparent. Perspectives based on social learning have emerged that increase our understanding of human behavior. <br><br> In this book, the author has attempted to formulate a social learning theory of aggression, whether individual or collective, personal or institutional sanctioned. The goal is to improve the basis on which we explain, predict, and modify aggression. <br><br>A sizable portion of this book is devoted to demonstrating how social learning principles can be applied individually and at the social systems level to reduce deleterious forms of aggression. The use of social power as an instrument of change is also addressed. There is a discussion of social labeling and ethics of aggressive action.
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  # Social Learning Analysis of Aggression
  
  
  
  
  
  Albert Bandura  
  
  
  Stanford University
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Psychological explanations of aggression have been largely concerned
  
  
  with individual injurious acts that are aversively motivated. In most of these
  
  
  accounts aggression is not only attributed to a narrow set of instigators but
  
  
  the purposes it presumably serves are limited. Inflicting injury and
  
  
  destruction is considered to be satisfying in its own right and therefore the
  
  
  major aim of aggressive behavior. Because aggression has many determinants and
  
  
  serves diverse purposes, theoretical formulations couched in terms of
  
  
  frustrating instigators and injurious aims have limited explanatory power
  
  
  (Bandura, 1973). Social learning provides a general theory intended to be
  
  
  sufficiently broad in scope to encompass conditions governing all facets of
  aggression,
  
  
  whether individual or collective, personally or institutionally sanctioned.
  
  
  
  
  
  For purposes of the present discussio