I sat next to someone the other day wearing a t-shirt that said:
Of course, I had to sit and do the full analysis of that one for a while. I thought, “What does this T shirt really say?”
What it really says:
And this is the report linking aggression with reward: aggressive behavior gives a thrill, gives pleasure, like sex or food. Why? Same thing as sex and eating: dopamine.
Neuroscientifically Challenged has a great post explaining dopamine and aggression, as an evolutionary adaptation:
This experiment [reported in the abstract] is the first to demonstrate a distinct similarity between violence and other reward seeking behavior. Why would our brains put violence in the same category as sex? The consensus opinion on rewarding behavior of any kind is there must have been an evolutionary advantage in pursuing that type of behavior in order for it to become part of our reward system. The evolutionary advantage of eating, for example, is obvious (it’s necessary for survival), so it makes sense we should have evolved so eating is enjoyable for us. The same is true for sex. Without it we can’t achieve our evolutionary goal of procreation, so it should be something we want to pursue. Aggression had its own evolutionary advantage. It was necessary to our ancestors in order to protect offspring, mates, territory, and food. . . .
Okay, I read the study. What nobody seems to be talking about is that this is not aggression for the sake of aggression, but aggression in response to an intruder by a creature whose life depends on responding aggressively to intruders.
Thank you for the comment Laura. I think the study was trying to parse out aggression in response to a threat as well as any reinforcing effects — and this is where the dopamine came in. Mice were preconditioned to be aggressive upon sight of an intruder. In other words, there was no “intruder fatigue” — they didn’t ignore the sight of the intruder. When they gave the preconditioned mice dopamine antagonists, the aggressive behavior was reduced.