Punishment of Elicited Aggression

Abstract

Aversive shocks are known to produce aggression when the shocks are not dependent on behavior and to suppress behavior when the shocks are arranged as a dependent punisher. These two processes were studied by presenting non-dependent shock to monkeys at regular intervals, thereby producing biting attacks on a pneumatic tube. Immediate shock punishment was simultaneously delivered for each biting attack. The attacks were found to decrease as a function of increasing punishment intensity. These results show that aggression is eliminated by direct punishment of the aggression even when the stimulus that is used as a punisher otherwise causes the aggression.Aversive shock changes behavior in a direction that is determined by the temporal relation of the shock to the behavior. If the response terminates shock, the rate of that response increases and the process is called escape (see recent review by Dinsmoor, 1968). If the response produces the shock, the rate of that response decreases and the process is called punishment (see review by Church, 1963;Solomon, 1964;Azrin and Holz, 1966).In addition to these operant effects, shock also has eliciting effects. Shocks that are received by an animal independently of behavior will produce attack against other animals or objects (Ulrich and Azrin, 1962; Azrin, Hutchinson, and Azrin, Hutchinson, and Sallery, 1964(a); Azrin, Ulrich, Hutchinson, and Norman, 1964b; and see recent review by Azrin, 1967). The existence of this "painelicited" attack raises important theoretical and applied questions as to whether the usual operant effects of shock will occur if the response being punished is an attack response rather than a response that is not directly elicited by shock. Since shock elicits attack, the use of shock as a punisher might well increase the attacks rather than decrease them, a possibility that has been further considered

The Organization of Aggression and Fear In Vertebrates

“…Both Azrin (1970) and Roberts and Blase (1971) also used shock to punish shock-induced attack, in monkeys and rats, respectively, and found that attacks decreased as a function of the intensity of contingent shock. Other studies have involved artificially induced defeat following aggressive encounters (e.g., in mice: Hudgens and MacNeil, 1970;Kahn, 1951;Lagerspetz, 1964), with the result that attack became markedly reduced or absent on subsequent occasions.…”

Punishment of irritable aggression

“…Although recent studies have suggested that suppression of irritable aggression could be accomplished using punishment procedures (Azrin, 1970;Baenninger and Grossman, 1969;Roberts and Blase, 1971;Ulrich et al, 1969;Wetzel, 1972), these data do not unequivocally challenge the Ulrich et al (1965) position. Ulrich, Dulaney, Arnett, and Mueller (1973) citing those punishment studies, concluded that punishment of irritable aggression could result in decreased frequencies of the punished aggressive response but concomitantly could result in increased aggression directed towards other targets, increased duration and vigor of aggression when it occurs, or other deleterious side effects.…”

Delay of punishment in shock-elicited aggression

“…As with other studies (Azrin, 1970;Ulrich et al, 1969), shock stimuli differi ng only in their temporal relation to the biting were used to both elicit and suppress the behavior.…”

“…An interesting outcome of this line of investigation has been the more recent finding that a shock used to elicit aggressive behavior can also be used to suppress that same behavior. Using restrained squirrel monkeys, both Ulrich, Wolfe, & Dulaney (1969) and Azrin (1970) elicited a high le~el of biting on a rubber-hose target with noncontingent (NC) fixed-interval tail shocks. In later sessions, the addition of a second shock presented immediately contingent on the elicited bites served to suppress the biting to a low level.…”