Aggression as successful self-control

Abstract

A dominant narrative is that aggression starts when self-control stops – unchecked aggressive impulses manifest in violence as self-control fails to inhibit them. Yet this ‘low self-control syndrome’ approach to aggression fails to accommodate numerous findings in which aggression arises from successful self-control. I summarize these key findings while identifying how current theories of aggression can be molded to accommodate them. This balanced perspective, which allows aggression to arise from successful and unsuccessful self-control, suggests exciting new hypotheses alongside confounding questions for aggression and self-regulation scholars. It also supports ongoing and broader paradigm shifts away from treating self-control as a purely adaptive and desirable psychological capacity and toward approaching self-control interventions with greater care, as they may amplify aggression instead of reducing it, with costly consequences.