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Religion, Practice and Science of Non-Violence
inhibition of the attacking response, to allow for the learning of responses incompatible with aggression. Once the aggression occurs, its habit strength depends upon the consequences (positive or negative), but the impulsive person tends to make more frequent aggressive responses because of the lack of inhibition. The over-deliberate person should, other things being equal, be at the other extreme--low aggressiveness. His latency of aggression is sufficiently long for responses incompatible with aggression to be well learned. He tends to delay responding to an anger stimulus, and sometimes the delay is so long that an aggressive response is unnecessary. Thus extreme deliberation before responding may tend to prevent the occurrence of an aggressive response when the individual is presented with an anger stimulus.
Activity level refers to the amount of energy expended in every day activities, and it is determined in part by hormones. Individuals may be ranged on a continuum from sluggishness to hypomania, and their place on this continuum is one determinant of aggressiveness. High activity means involvement in a greater variety of situations and often leads to social intrusiveness. In his busy activity, the energetic person inevitably involves himself in more interactions with others, especially competitive, conflicting interactions. By serving as an irritant to others in the everyday interactions, the active person produces anger in others, which is fed back to him. Thus the more active person is likely to be presented with more anger stimuli than the less active person. Since the frequency of anger stimuli is one determinant of aggressiveness, the greater the activity level, the higher the probability of a strong aggressive habit.
Intensity of reaction to a situation differs in different people. Some individuals tend to react with intensity to a situation which elicits mild responses from most people. The greater the intensity of rage, the higher the probability and the greater the intensity of aggression. Since frequency and intensity of aggressive responses are indicants of habit strength, the highly reactive individual should be more aggressive than less reactive individuals.
Independence refers to a tendency towards self-sufficiency and resistance to group pressures. It may be seen in the child who
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