postgrad and beyond @ Macquarie

Getting to the bottom of aggression

Thanks to Macquarie University’s Jubilee Scheme, PhD student Wayne Warburton has embarked on a new career as a researcher, psychologist and counsellor after 17 years as a plumber.

PhD student Wayne Warburton

In the mid-1990s, Warburton was involved in a car accident that left him seriously injured and unable to return to his former trade. Even though he had not finished high school, Warburton was accepted as an undergraduate student.

“I came to Macquarie through the Jubilee Scheme and felt very privileged, as I thought I didn’t have the background to receive a university education,” he says.

For someone who did not finish school, Warburton has been a dedicated and much celebrated university student. He has received countless awards and medals including the Macquarie University Foundation Science Prize, the University Medal for Psychology and a Vice Chancellor’s Commendation.

Warburton completed a BA in Psychology with honours before starting his PhD. He is looking at the theme of control and aggression in his PhD, which is entitled ‘Determinants of aggressive schemas’.

“A number of research findings have suggested that there are significant links between aggressive behaviour and a sense of loss of control over one’s world,” explains Warburton. “For instance, control may be an issue in many cases of domestic violence. However, up until now, no one has really looked at the mechanisms underlying control-related aggression. Is it something people think? Is it something people feel? Or is it whether or not people are physically aroused?”

Warburton has found that it is the things we think and believe that primarily drive control-related aggression. In addition, research conducted on a large sample of first-year Psychology students suggests that exposure to violent media may play a significant role in acquiring those beliefs. Results so far also seem to indicate that patterns of unpleasant early childhood experiences may cause people to take on unhelpful beliefs about control and aggression.

“Our data is producing a fairly consistent picture at the moment,” Warburton says. “We are continuing our studies to confirm these findings and gain a more detailed insight.”

Measuring aggression with hot sauce. How much hot sauce would you allocate to someone knowing that (a) the sauce was very hot (b) that person would have to eat everything you allocated, and (c) that the person did not like hot foods? This cup shows the mean response (27 gms) of a more aggressive group who had experienced a control loss.

A quite novel method of measuring aggression has been utilised by Warburton. Participants believe that they are taking part in a taste preference experiment. Aggression is then measured by how much extra-hot chilli sauce they would make someone else eat, knowing that the sauce is very hot, that the other person does not like hot foods, and that they will have to eat everything given to them.

“It is very hot!” says Warburton. “I think that this is a very good measure of aggression – the immediate intent to harm another person – because you know that eating a lot of this sauce would definitely have a painful effect.”

Results showed that while most people would typically put about a teaspoon’s worth (6-10 grams) into a cup, others allocated up to three-quarters of a cup (150 grams) of the chilli sauce (see photograph). This has differentiated aggressive from non-aggressive responses. Of course, no person has to actually eat the sauce, and participants are all thoroughly debriefed at the end of the experiment, which follows strict ethical guidelines.

Warburton hopes to complete his PhD by March 2007.