Human aggressive responses maintained by avoidance or escape from point loss.
Aggression can be an avoidance or escape habit, even in typical adults, when point loss looms.
01Research in Context
What this study did
King et al. (1990) asked adults to press an "aggressive" button in a computer game.
Each press either stopped points from draining or gave back lost points.
The team ran 30 short sessions to see if avoidance or escape kept the button pressing alive.
What they found
Both setups worked.
Adults kept hitting the button hard whether they were dodging the loss or clawing points back.
The rate of pressing followed the exact point-loss schedule, just like a lever under food.
How this fits with other research
WEINER (1964) showed that bigger point losses flip people from escape to avoidance.
King et al. (1990) went further: once either pattern starts, aggressive responding can ride on it.
Kelly et al. (1970) saw aggression spike when reinforcement simply stopped.
Together the picture is clear: aversive contingencies, not just extinction, can feed aggressive behavior.
Why it matters
If a client hits, kicks, or yells to dodge demands or to "get back" what was taken, check the contingency.
You might be looking at avoidance or escape maintenance, not attention or tangible pay-offs.
Try brief reversals: remove the aversive loss for a session and watch the aggression drop.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
During 50-min sessions, 6 male human subjects could press either Button A or Button B available as nonreversible options. Button A presses were nonaggressive responses and earned points according to a fixed-ratio 100 schedule. Prior to the experiment subjects were instructed that every 10 (fixed-ratio 10) Button B presses (aggressive responses) subtracted a point from a fictitious 2nd subject. A random-time schedule of point loss was used to engender aggressive responding. The instructions attributed these point losses to the Button B presses of the subject's fictitious partner. Aggressive responding either escaped or avoided point loss by initiating an interval free of point loss. The duration of the interval was varied systematically across sessions. Avoidance contingencies maintained a high rate of aggressive responding over 30 sessions in the absence of point loss. Escape contingencies also maintained aggressive responding across sessions, with rates of aggressive responding corresponding to rates of point loss.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1990 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1990.53-293