Contingent Theories of Conflict: Is Aggression a Product of Society?

For centuries, thinkers have debated a fundamental question about human nature: Are we born violent, or does society make us so? Contingent theories of conflict take a clear stance on this issue. Unlike biological theories that view aggression as innate, contingent theories argue that conflict arises from external circumstances rather than from any inherent flaw in human nature. These theories shift the blame from the individual to society itself, suggesting that with better social structures, violence could largely be prevented.

Rousseau and the social fall from grace
Marx and class conflict as economic contingency
Keynes on economic deprivation and social stability
The frustration-aggression hypothesis
Bandura’s social learning theory of aggression
Core tenets of contingency theories

Jean-Jacques Rousseau challenged the prevailing view that humans are naturally aggressive. In his Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau presented a radical idea: humans are born free and naturally good, but society corrupts them. He imagined humans in their original state as solitary, peaceful beings whose few needs were easily met by nature. In this natural state, there was no competition, no reason for conflict, and no fear of others.

According to Rousseau, trouble began when humans formed societies. The development of private property and social inequality created new desires and comparisons among people. What Rousseau termed amour propre (self-love or pride) emerged, driving people to seek recognition and status from others. This need for social validation, combined with economic inequality between property owners and those without land, trapped people in destructive social relationships. The poor needed the rich for survival, while the rich needed the poor for labor and recognition. This created a society built on deception, exploitation, and alienation.

Rousseau’s key insight was that flawed social structures, not human nature, generate conflict. The social contract that emerged to regulate these unequal relationships merely reinforced existing inequalities rather than creating genuine freedom and equality.

Marx and class conflict as economic contingency

Karl Marx took the argument further by identifying specific economic structures as the root of social conflict. In his theory of class struggle, Marx argued that capitalism systematically pits workers against owners, creating inevitable conflict. The source of this conflict is not human nature but the economic organization of society itself.

Marx’s concept of alienation explains how capitalism corrupts human relationships. Under capitalism, workers become separated from the products they create, from the labor process itself, from their fellow workers, and ultimately from their own humanity. Workers cannot control their own productive activities, nor can they use or own the value of what they produce. Instead of finding fulfillment in work, labor becomes merely a means to survive.

The capitalist economy creates a competitive labor market that pits worker against worker in competition for wages, alienating them from their mutual economic interests. This generates what Marx called false consciousness, where workers fail to recognize their shared situation. Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie (owners of production) extract surplus value from workers’ labor, creating growing inequality and resentment.

For Marx, conflict’s existence depends entirely on societal structures. Change the economic system from capitalism to one where workers control the means of production, and you eliminate the fundamental source of class conflict.

John Maynard Keynes approached conflict from an economic policy perspective. He understood that factors like economic deprivation, deflation, and inequality lead to social instability and even dictators. Writing during the Great Depression and witnessing the rise of fascism in Europe, Keynes saw economic misery as a preventable cause of social breakdown.

Keynes argued that inadequate overall demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment and social misery. Unlike classical economists who believed markets would automatically correct themselves, Keynes insisted that government intervention was essential. When business activity falls and unemployment rises, the state must step in through public spending and economic stimulus.

His theory viewed the state as essential for preventing social decay and violence. By stimulating faltering economies with public investment, governments could create economic and social stability. Even small increases in government spending could produce substantial results, providing work for the unemployed and preventing the desperation that breeds conflict.

For Keynes, unemployment, poverty, and economic instability were not inevitable features of market economies but preventable conditions that government policy could address. Social conflict stemming from economic deprivation was therefore contingent on policy choices rather than human nature.

The frustration-aggression hypothesis

In 1939, psychologist John Dollard and colleagues at Yale University proposed a groundbreaking theory linking aggression directly to external frustration. The frustration-aggression hypothesis states that aggression results from blocking or frustrating a person’s efforts to attain a goal.

The theory’s original formulation held that frustration always leads to some form of aggression, and all aggression stems from frustration. When people cannot achieve their goals due to external obstacles, aggressive impulses arise. Critically, this aggression can be displaced onto convenient targets, often scapegoats who had nothing to do with the original frustration.

This displacement mechanism helps explain phenomena like racial prejudice and hate crimes. As sources of frustration accumulate during economic crises, frustrated groups may unleash their aggression on convenient social targets, often minority groups. The person who loses their job may not be able to confront their employer, so they redirect anger toward vulnerable others.

Later researchers, particularly Leonard Berkowitz, refined the theory. Berkowitz proposed that frustrations generate aggressive inclinations to the degree that they arouse negative affect. The key point remained: aggression is not an innate drive but a response to external, contingent conditions that block goal attainment.

Albert Bandura revolutionized our understanding of aggressive behavior through his social learning theory. In his famous Bobo doll experiments conducted in the 1960s, Bandura demonstrated that children learn aggressive behaviors simply by observing others.

In these experiments, children who watched an adult behaving aggressively toward an inflatable doll were significantly more likely to imitate that aggression when given the chance. The children replicated both physical and verbal aggression, even though they received no direct reinforcement for doing so. This challenged existing psychological theories that emphasized direct rewards and punishments as necessary for learning.

Bandura identified three primary sources of learned aggression: the familial setting, the subcultural context, and symbolic modeling through media like television. Children exposed to adults’ aggression tend to behave aggressively themselves, suggesting that violent behavior spreads through observation and imitation within one’s social environment.

The implications are profound. If aggression is learned through observation rather than innate, then exposure to different models would produce different outcomes. Children raised in non-violent environments, surrounded by prosocial models, would develop differently than those exposed to aggression. The theory places responsibility for violent behavior squarely on the social environment rather than on human nature.

Core tenets of contingency theories

Despite their differences, all contingency theories share several fundamental assumptions. First, they hold that individuals are basically pacific. Humans do not possess an inherent drive toward violence or destruction. Instead, we are neutral or even positively inclined toward cooperation and peace in our natural state.

Second, violence and conflict erupt due to special external conditions. These might include resource scarcity, economic injustice, blocked goals, social learning from violent models, or flawed social structures that create inequality and competition. Remove these external triggers, and conflict should diminish or disappear.

Third, contingency theories shift the theoretical problem. Rather than asking “Why are humans violent?” they ask “Why is violence so frequent despite humans being naturally peaceful?” This reframing suggests that the prevalence of conflict tells us more about our social arrangements than about human nature itself.

The policy implications are significant. If conflict stems from contingent social conditions rather than innate drives, then social reform can reduce violence. Better economic systems, fairer resource distribution, just institutions, positive role models, and government intervention to prevent deprivation can all contribute to a more peaceful society. The pessimistic view that violence is inevitable gives way to optimism that better social organization could dramatically reduce human conflict.

What do you think? If aggression truly results from social conditions rather than human nature, why does conflict remain so persistent across different societies and time periods? Can we design social institutions that eliminate the contingent factors that lead to violence, or will there always be circumstances that frustrate human goals and trigger conflict?

References

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Contingent Theories of Conflict: Is Aggression a Product of Society?

Table of Contents

Rousseau and the social fall from grace 🔗

Marx and class conflict as economic contingency 🔗

Keynes on economic deprivation and social stability 🔗

The frustration-aggression hypothesis 🔗

Bandura’s social learning theory of aggression 🔗

Core tenets of contingency theories 🔗

References

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Conflict Management, Transformation and Peace Building

Rousseau and the social fall from grace

Marx and class conflict as economic contingency

Keynes on economic deprivation and social stability

The frustration-aggression hypothesis

Bandura’s social learning theory of aggression

Core tenets of contingency theories