AGRESSION AND BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS: THE HISTORY OF "PAIN-AGGRESSION" MODEL

Abstract

The main handbooks and conceptual works in Behavior Analysis (BA) provide little information on the determinants of aggressive behavior. Even though BA has produced extensively on basic research about the subject, it is rare the inclusion of those studies in didactic and/or systematization works. The absence of such findings in the basic training of behavior analysts may lead to a dangerous gap for those who should be able to deal with socially relevant behavioral phenomena, such as violence. The objectives of the present work were to present the main results produced by the behavior-analytic literature about aggression and indicate some theoretical and methodological repercussions in the scientific production on the subject matter. The BA experiments focused on the investigation of this phenomenon by examining many features of the relation between pain/aversive stimulation and aggressive behavior. These investigations, mainly developed in the 1960s by researchers in the area of aversive control of behavior, culminated in a pioneer animal model in the experimental study of aggression: the “pain-aggression”. Researchers with a more naturalistic view of the aggressive behavior questioned the “pain- aggression” status as a central model for the comprehension of the aggression. The debate between the different views did not resulted in conciliation. Currently, the model still reverberates, especially in the psychopharmacological research. Key words: pain-aggression, aggressive behavior, aversive control, history, behavior analysis.