The Latin word aggressĭo came to Spanish as aggression. The notion refers to an attack that takes place against someone or something, which can be physical or symbolic.
For example: “When observing the aggression, the referee expelled the Italian player”, “Why are you insulting me? You always react with some aggression ”, “ Fostering dialogue in all spheres of life is essential to reduce the level of aggressiveness ”.
On Digopaul, it is often understood that aggression is a behavior that arises from the habits or way of being of someone who is aggressive. Therefore, it is not a response or a reaction to a previous attack. It is the materialization of a hostile tendency that aims to harm the other.
If a football team fanatic, upset by a judge’s ruling, throws a glass bottle at him, such an irrational act will be considered assault. In this case, the assault in question can also be classified as a crime and be punished according to the provisions of the law.
In the field of law, there is talk of sexual assault when a subject violates the freedom of another person on the sexual level through threats or the use of violence. An individual who throws himself on a stranger on the street and gropes him commits a sexual assault.
The word right appears as one of the axes of the meaning of aggression, since the rights of the individual receiving the aggression are inevitably violated. As explained above, aggression does not arise as a response to another act but seems to come from different corners of the person, where feelings such as frustration and anger nest.
Some specialists in the matter affirm that the main objective of the aggression is to cause real and perceptible harm to another person, and that in order to commit an act of this type, it is necessary for the emotional state to be altered. In other words, aggression pursues some sign that proves its effectiveness to be considered successful.
In the military sphere, verbal aggression is widely used to coerce or intimidate soldiers in the context of their physical training, in order to bend them in order to control them more effectively. On the other hand, there is talk of choleric aggression, to refer to a reaction characterized by a state of cholera, which originates in a previous provocation and seeks to annul the other through damage.
For international law, on the other hand, when a country uses its weapons against another without a prior declaration, it carries out an aggression. This occurs if a nation, to force a change of regime in a neighboring country, drops bombs on various targets in that territory.
But aggression doesn’t seem to be unique to our species, and that’s what ethology, a branch of experimental psychology and biology that looks at the behavior of animals in the wild, takes care of. Ethologists try to understand aggression between individuals of other species, which usually manifests itself in different ways, in the same way that occurs between human beings.
Animals not only hit, charge and bite their opponents, but also intimidate and threaten them, so their aggression does not always end in physical harm. One of the most observed intimidation tactics is to display the size of the opponent’s own body, as well as the teeth, claws or antlers, depending on the species; on the other hand, facial expressions, changes in coloration and the release of substances are also common.