ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that psychological laboratory researchers confuse one of the forms of aggression with the other, that they treat conformity as deviance. In the late 1930s, the frustration-aggression hypothesis emerged as an important theoretical construct in psychology and sociology. The psychological aggression model is inconsistent with the versatility of offenders: the frustration-aggression version predicts behavior consistent with the frustration encountered; the learning version predicts behavior consistent with the role model imitated. The chapter aims to apply the principles of convergent and discriminant validity to measures of cognate concepts, aggression, and social control, to determine whether they are separable. To examine the discriminant validity of aggression, a large set of “nonaggressive” criminal and delinquent acts, acts that connote stealth, passivity, or retreatism. One group of items within this set measures theft without the use of force or violence; the other measures drug use.
