Book Reviews 75

REFERENCES

Crawford CB (1989): The theory of evolution: Of what value to psychology? Journal of Compara- tive Psychology 103:4-22.

Scott JP (1985): Investigative behavior: Toward a sci- ence of sociality. In Dewsbury DA fed): “Leaders in the Study of Animal Behavior.” London: Buck- nell University Press, pp 389-430.

I. Q . W hishaw Department of Psychology University of Lethbridge Lethbridge, Alberta Canada

HUMAN AGGRESSION, by Russell G. Geen. Pacific Grove, California, Brooks/Cole, 1990, xiii + 241 pp.

In the preface Russell Geen declares his purpose as merely “. . . a book intended for classroom use . . . [which] does not aspire to make any innovative contributions to theory [xi].” He goes on to warn that the volume will “. . . not recommend strategies for control or elimination of aggression [xiii] .” Potential readers who would be daunted by these disclaimers owe it to themselves to persist because the rewards for doing so are considerably greater than advertised.

A straight-forward process model provides a framework for considering characteris- tics predisposing persons to aggression (four chapters), aggression-eliciting conditions (one chapter), and mediating factors (two chapters). While the book relies primarily on the British and North American social psychological literature on aggression in humans (hence the “human” in the title), integrations are achieved throughout with material drawn broadly from personality and from psychophysiology.

In a preliminary chapter, “Approaches to Aggression, ” Geen endorses Moyer’s argu- ment that biochemical factors such as high testosterone, low blood sugar, and low metab- olism of brain serotonin may be associated with more aggressive behavior because they make the individual more sensitive to external stimuli that elicit the aggressive reac- tion. Geen uses this and other openings to make it clear that his process model is not necessarily incompatible with more molecular formulations of agonistic behavior. In the category of minor quibble is the fact that he somewhat arbitrarily restricts treatment under the heading “Methods of Study” to laboratory methods in aggression research, while in the remainder of the volume his analyses also incorporate the results of etho- logical, longitudinal, survey, and epidemiological studies, approaches which in his final chapter he notes will take on increasing importance in aggression research with humans.

After acknowledging his debt to Lazarus’s stress formulation in the chapter on inter- personal antecedents to aggression, Geen creatively and to extremely good advantage employs notions of primary and secondary appraisal in analyzing the effect of situa- tional stressors on aggression. One might find treatment of the family’s role in aggres- sion somewhat thin-restricted as it is to family as context of imitative learning and of

76 Book Reviews

stress-especially so in contrast to the illuminating examination in the same chapter of frustration, an analysis extended to a consideration of relative deprivation and political violence.

In the ‘‘Environmental Antecedents” chapter Geen offers a comprehensive treat- ment not only of those for which research findings are relatively mature (heat, noise, pain), but also for several in which popular interest is high but data rather tentative (odor, pollution, negative ions). Particularly valuable is the assessment of archival and laboratory studies dealing with heat and aggression, as well as a masterful resolution of a persistent controversy in the literature about the linearity of the relationship between the two.

The overall organization of the volume might have been better served had material in the chapter “Individual Differences” been dispersed throughout the rest of the vol- ume because the topics covered, such as cognitive development and alcohol, would seem to support the overall process model, each in different ways however. In the final chapter Geen notes the paucity of research in individual differences in aggression, a lacking which might account for the difficulty in integrating some of the results in this area into his larger framework.

Geen saves the best for last. In the chapter “Health, Hostility, and Adjustment,” he provides a unique integration of the laboratory work on arousal in aggression with the behavioral medicine literature on hostility and heart disease. Like a good mystery writer who at the end weaves together diverse strands into a satisfying resolution, Geen in this chapter discloses the utility of the coping approach to anger developed early in the book and referred to in different contexts throughout. Finally, in the Postscript, Geen makes extremely important observations about the status of aggression research with humans and likely directions it will take.

In his Foreword, Tony Manstead, the Series Editor, notes that in reading the volume it is evident that the author “. . . is completely in command of his subject-matter, and . . . is therefore able to communicate it to his readers in a lucid way.” Human Aggression is a reliable and illuminating resource for someone wishing to be brought up to date quickly about the status of aggression research with humans.

Edgar C. O’Neal ”kavis Langley Department of Psychology ’Mane University New Orleans, Louisiana

TRANSIENT CRIMINALITY: A MODEL OF STRESS- INDUCED CRIME, by Anthony R. Mawson. New York, Praeger, 1987,335 pp.

On occasion a monograph will appear that aspires literally to change the way we think about a phenomenon. Anthony Mawson’s Transient Criminality is such an effort. In this ambitious treatise, Mawson argues that much serious crime, including assault