What can animal aggression research tell us about human aggression?

Research on endocrinological correlates of aggression in laboratory animals is implicitly motivated by an expectation that the results of such studies may be applicable to human aggression as well. Research with a focus on the stimulus antecedents of aggression, its response characteristics, and its outcomes suggests a number of detailed correspondences between offensive aggression in laboratory rodents and human angry aggression. These include resource (including status and territory) competition as motives that are particularly elicited by conspecific challenge situations and, when the aggression is successful, outcomes of reduction of challenge and enhancement of resource control and status. Although the response characteristics of human aggression have been dramatically altered by human verbal, technological, and social advancements, there is some evidence for targeting of blows, similar to a well-established pattern for offensive aggression in many nonhuman mammals. Finally, for people as well as for nonhuman mammals, fear of defeat or punishment is a major factor inhibiting the expression of offensive aggression. While defensive aggression has been very little researched in people, it may represent a different phenomenon than angry aggression, again providing a parallel to the offense-defense distinction of laboratory rodent studies.