An Essay on the Emergence of Non-pathological Aggressive-like Behaviors in the Context of Social Interactions

Abstract

Aggressivity is a type of widespread behavior in our society, yet its outcomes are everything but desirable. If evolutionary, being aggressive might have given some clear advantages to one to prevail (e.g., seizing resources, better mating options); nowadays, aggressive behavior held none of those advan- tages, being a form of prevarication where the ultimate goal is to harm another individual, either physically, emotionally, morally or materially. Why, then, is aggressive behavior still persistent despite the rise of cooperative societies? In this doctoral Thesis, with the aid of three controlled experiments and the expertise of Behavioral Economics and Neuroscience, I aim to shed more light on non-pathological aggressiveness, its genetic underpinnings, and cognitive mechanisms. Specif- ically, we found that some genetic variants of dopamine and serotonin are highly connected with actions and beliefs re- garding cooperation and punishment, where having a par- ticular variant makes one more prone to act and think pes- simistically toward the behaviors of others or to free-ride more. In another experiment, we demonstrate that extreme exertion of self-control makes it more probable to behave aggressively in a subsequent social situation. Frontal areas dedicated to impulse control regulation are, in fact, extremely vulnerable to functional fatigue, showing signs of local sleep. In this neu- ronal phenomenon, groups of neurons fire at frequencies typ- ical of sleep states instead of the ones of wake. Our exper- iment associated the prolonged exertion of self-control with the emergence of delta waves in frontal areas dedicated to impulse and emotion regulation and subsequent aggressive choices in a series of proxied social situations