LIMITATIONS OF LABORATORY PARADIGMS FOR STUDYING AGGRESSION

The construct validity of four laboratory paradigms used in studying a ggression (the teacher/learner essay evaluation, competitive reaction time game, and Bobo modeling paradigms) is examined. It is argued that the first three paradigms under-represent the construct of aggression because they deal only with situations of retaliation which have been sanctioned by a third party legitimate authority (the experimenter) a nd because research participants are given no choice other than physic al forms of harm-doing as a means of responding to attacks. Additional ly, the teacher/learner and essay evaluation paradigms employ cover st ories which make the research participants' intentions and motivations unclear or even counter to the proposed theory. The Bobo modeling par adigm may not examine aggression at all, rather; imitative behavior of ''rough and tumble play'' in which there is no intent to harm It is p roposed that the focus of research on aggression should be the intenti ons and motivations of the actor rather than simple attack-retaliation situations. Future research needs to examine the motivations of subje cts in the traditional paradigms to determine if they are situations i n which participants intend to cause harm. Additionally, in order to e xamine the full range of phenomena which aggression theorists wish to explain, a multimethod approach combining both laboratory and non-labo ratory studies must be utilized.