by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright November 2017
Read the article and watch the video about a brawl that takes place at an NBL basketball game and then write two paragraphs each for the following questions:
1. How could the frustration-aggression hypothesis explain why Ben Wallace attacked Ron Artest? (two players on opposite teams)
2. What situational factors are involved in why the brawl escalated to such an extent? (players and audience all get involved and stay involved for many minutes)
Aggression can show itself in many ways. This particular incident is an example of aggression being the "snapping point" at the end of a series of frustrating activities. I will now speculate: this particular incident happened after the game had been going poorly for a long time. Things were not going as planned by either team and the refereeing was not being handled well either. This sloppiness was building lots of frustration in the players, coaches and audience.
This particular snapping moment happened when yet another case of things not going well happened and once again the refereeing didn't measure up either. The player snapped, took justice into his own hands, and took a swing at the player who had just fouled him. That player swung back.
It is often the case that when two people are having a heated argument with some threats of physicalness involved, and a single third person tries to intervene and cool the two down, the two arguing will join forces and beat up the third person -- their instinctive aggressive thinking is that they didn't want anyone interfering with their arguing.
This phenomenon is what transpired at this incident. A third party in the audience shouted and threw something at the two players having the argument and one of the players discontinued fighting with the other player and went to take on the intervener instead.
At this particular game the frustration levels were high all around -- team players, coaches and audience members were all having a bad time. As a result this "third party gets involved and then gets attacked by a first party member" phenomenon then went totally nuts and dozens of people became involved in what became a full-size brawl.
In sum, this is an example of frustration and aggression mixing in a big time way. It doesn't happen often, but the results are spectacular when it does.
--The End--