What do all these pictures have in common?

GCSE Psychology

Topic C Do TV and violent video games affect people’s behaviour?

Starter activity• Complete the

questionnaire to discover if you are an angry person or not?

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv0onXhyLlE

Biology of aggression

objectives By the end of the lesson you will be

able to…

• Describe which parts of the brain might affect aggression levels.

• Explain how the brain controls aggression.

Key words

• Amygdala• Limbic system

Aggression

“An act carried out with the intention to harm another person”

• Instrumental aggression –An act against another person in which the aggression is used as a means of securing some reward or to achieve an external goal such as a victory

e.g Yelling at a child to make her stop drawing on the walls is instrumental aggression.

• Hostile aggression –aggression that intends harm as its primary goal

e.g Yelling at a child to make her feel bad is hostile aggression ...

www.

psyc

hlot

ron.

org.

uk

• What do you think when you see someone being aggressive?

• Do you think that it is because of the way they were brought up?

• Some psychologists believe that some people are aggressive because they were born that way or that parts of the brain are linked to aggression.

Task• On your diagram of a

cross section of the brain, annotate the:

• Limbic system• Amygdala

(Pg 94 in your textbook)

The role of the brain and aggression

• Read page 94 ‘the biological reasons for aggression’.

• What have psychologists concluded?

Task

• Read ‘Looking at the brain’

(pg 94 in your text book)

• Describe what the limbic system does by completing the gap fill exercise

The Limbic system• The ……….system is a set of brain…………….that lies in

the …………..of the brain. It looks a bit like a …………. It is called the ‘…………..area’ of the brain because it is responsible for ……………needed for survival, like ……….and ……………

• People with ……………disorders have been shown to have had ………….to the limbic system, the system jointly responsible for recognising, controlling and ………..aggression, but some research has focused on the ………………..

The amygdala• The amygdale is a ………………..in the brain that recognises

………. If someone ………..we know they are happy, and if they ………….we know they are sad. The …………………also creates emotional responses. You have probably seen a ………………….cat; it bares its……………….and …………………its back. This is the …………………..producing the ………..response.

• The amygdala is also responsible for producing…………….. In animal studies, if the amygdala is…………….the animal becomes very ………….and does not respond to ……………..situations with aggression. Damage to this area of the brain may cause increased levels of ……………….

QuestionsRead page 95 and answer the following

questions on your sheet:1. What did King (1961) find?2. Charles Whitman’s brain showed that…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman3) What are the difficulties of researching human brain

biology? 4) List two strengths and 4 weaknesses in evaluating the

link between biology and aggression.5) Make sure you can define amygdale and limbic

system.

Homework

• Find answers to the following questions:• What is a hormone?• What do they do in the body?