ABSTRACT
Aggressive behaviour causes harm and suffering to individuals and groups on a large scale, and incurs enormous social and material costs for societies. Therefore the search for theories that may explain why people engage in aggressive behaviour has been a prime task for researchers for a long time, not least because understanding the factors that instigate aggressive behaviour is a ¿ rst step towards prevention. In this chapter, the most important lines of theorising will be presented and discussed in terms of their contribution to understanding the origins and causes of aggressive behaviour. The purpose of this discussion is twofold – ¿ rst, to highlight the diversity of approaches from different disciplines that have been offered to explain aggressive behaviour, and secondly, to build up a stock of theoretical constructs pertaining to different aspects of aggressive behaviour that can be applied later to the understanding of speci¿ c forms of aggression in different areas of life.
