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Pain and aggression: Some findings and implications

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Abstract

Consistent with the cognitive-neoassociationistic conception of anger and emotional aggression, a wide variety of studies with animal as well as human subjects demonstrate that pain often gives rise to an inclination to hurt an available target, and also, at the human level, that people in pain are apt to be angry. However, and also in accord with the present formulation, these “primitive” angry/aggressive reactions can be suppressed, intensified, or modified by cognitive processes.

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Berkowitz, L. Pain and aggression: Some findings and implications. Motiv Emot 17, 277–293 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992223

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