Michael Potegal
Biographic Data
| ID | 6109100 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Potegal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Potegal |
| SIGNATURE | POTEGAL M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Minnesota Medical Center |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7465-2843 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 21 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
What Dyadic Internet Street Fight Videos Can and Cannot Tell Us About the Ethological, Game Theoretic, and Sex‐Differentiated Phenomenology of Human Physical Aggression
Street fight videos on the internet may provide information about little known aspects of human physical aggression, but their reliability is unclear. Analyses of 100 dyadic fight videos addressing ethological, game theoretic and sex‐differentiated questions derived from research on other animals found that prefight verbalizations or gestural signals of nonaggressive or aggressive intent loosely predicted who would strike first and who would win.…
Levels of Aggression Escalation in Adult/Geriatric Occupational Therapy Workplaces
Workplace aggression can escalate from verbal to physical, adding risk of physical injury to negative psychological impact. Understanding escalation is necessary to develop effective violence intervention/prevention programs, but its occurrence is not well documented. An online survey determined if and how aggression escalates in occupational therapy (OT) workplaces. Because local culture can influence workplace events we compared surveys from no…
Editor’s Preface
What We Know About Aggression
Research on aggressive behavior has woven a complex tapestry representing a range of phenomena within typologies of aggression. This issue of Peace Review presents essays on some currently concerning aspects of aggression. Here we sketch the historical origins of some of the threads of this tapestry in ourselves and other animals as background for the essays that follow
Editor’s Afterword
The essays published here underscore the scope and impact of human anger and aggression and the compelling need to find ways to prevent victimization. In decrying the awful effects of violence, a n
The Dynamics of Aggression
Contents: Preface. Part I: Differing Perspectives on Aggression Dynamics: Introduction to Game Theoretical Analyses and Arousal Hypotheses. J. Archer, F. Huntingford, Game Theory Models and Escalation of Animal Fights. L. Berkowitz, On the Escalation of Aggression. Part II: Aggressive State and Trait: Behavioral and Physiological Processes Within Individuals. D. Zillmann, Cognition-Excitation Interdependencies in the Escalation of Anger and Angry…
Dynamics of Aggression
Screaming, yelling, whining, and crying
Young children's temper tantrums offer a unique window into the expression and regulation of strong emotions. Previous work, largely based on parental report, suggests that two emotions, anger and sadness, have different behavioral manifestations and different time courses within tantrums. Individual motor and vocal behaviors, reported by parents, have been interpreted as representing different levels of intensity within each emotion category. Th…
Rages or Temper Tantrums? The Behavioral Organization, Temporal Characteristics, and Clinical Significance of Angry-Agitated Outbursts in Child Psychiatry Inpatients
Sequence and priming in 15 month‐olds' reactions to brief arm restraint
Brief, gentle arm restraint is widely used in experimental studies of children's anger, but the pattern of responses generated by such restraint has been incompletely described. We now describe a hierarchy of responses within trials as well as an escalation across trials that have both methodological and theoretical significance. Mothers of 87 15‐month olds prevented them from playing with a toy by restraining their arms on two consecutive 30 sec…
Aggression and its causes
Aggression and its causes
Young children's post tantrum affiliation with their parents
In our database of 331 parental narratives of tantrums had by children 18–60 months old, 29% of the tantrums were followed by child-initiated affiliation with parents. Four variables increased the probability of children's post tantrum affiliation (PTA): age, prolonged screaming, physiological stress, and parent-initiated separation from the child during the tantrum. The age effect may be due to increasing post tantrum persistence of negative aff…
Appeasement and reconciliation
Living in social groups has well-known benefits, including improved defense against predators, more proficient food gathering, and highly structured contexts for successful mating and the raising of offspring [Krebs and Davies, 1972]. Every benefit of social living presents the opportunity for conflicts over food, mates, social attention, territory, and status, however. The potential and actual conflicts that punctuate social living, we believe, …
Aggression and Aggressiveness in Female Golden Hamsters
Attack priming and satiation in female golden hamsters
“Priming” a female hamster by allowing it a single attack on an intruder placed into its home cage transiently decreases the latency and increases the probability of attack on a second trial. Although we have previously argued that this priming effect reflects an increase in aggressive arousal, an alternative interpretation is that the fear elicited by placing a foreign object into the subject's home cage is reduced when it happens again on the s…
Enhanced defense in adult rats deprived of playfighting experience as juveniles
In an earlier study we found that shock-elicited defensive aggression was intensified in rats that had been deprived of playfighting as juveniles. The three experiments reported here extend this phenomenon to the more naturalistic intruder/resident paradigm for eliciting defense. Rats were reared from 20 to 50 days in one of three conditions: in pairs or in isolation with or without 1 hour of daily playfighting experience. They were rehoused in s…
Intraspecific aggression in male hamsters is inhibited by intrahypothalamic vasopressin‐receptor antagonist
The present study examines the effect of the arginine vasopressin (AVP) receptor antagonist, d(CH 2 ) 5 Tyr(Me)AVP, on intraspecific aggression between pairs of male Golden hamsters in a neutral territory. Subjects drawn from a group of 24 animals were paired once each with novel partners from the group under each of three experimental conditions: 1) both members of a pair were microinjected into the anterior hypothalamus with saline (S/S), 2) on…
The persistence of attack satiation in female golden hamsters
Female hamsters were allowed to attack a series of target hamsters until they reached a criterion of attack satiation. Following delays of 0, 24, or 48 hr they were then presented with a novel “probe” target. Attacks on the probe target were reduced to 26% of baseline at 0 delay and had returned to 71% of baseline by 48 hr. The number of attacks necessary to achieve satiation criterion increased then decreased over the three test occasions, sugge…
The reinforcing value of several types of aggressive behavior
Field observations of “surplus killing” and laboratory studies of operant performance rewarded by prey-killing opportunities suggest that predatory behavior is positively reinforcing. Similarly, both repeated encounter and operant performance studies suggest that intraspecific aggression can be positively reinforcing for successful aggressors. While a few studies suggest that defensive aggression under aversive conditions may also be positively r…
Factors in the waning of muricide in the rat. II. Digging behavior
If each mouse killed by a rat is removed from the rat's home cage and replaced immediately by another, the decline in the rate of killing within the one-hour sessions is accompanied by an increase in digging in the woodchip bedding material. Deprivation of the opportunity to dig by removal of the bedding material results in a statistically significant increase in kill rate. Since no other behaviors monitored showed a similar increase with this ma…
Factors in the waning of muricide in the rat
If each mouse killed by a rat is removed from the rat's home cage and replaced immediately by another live mouse, the rate of killing declines within 1- and 3-hr sessions. Muricide could not then be dishabituated by either a “nonspecific” stimulus (a loud noise) or a specific change in target characteristics (a frog substituted for the mouse). By systematically varying intersession intervals, we found that 1 hr of ad lib killing produced a monoto…
Intraspecific aggression in male hamsters is inhibited by intrahypothalamic vasopressin‐receptor antagonist
The present study examines the effect of the arginine vasopressin (AVP) receptor antagonist, d(CH 2 ) 5 Tyr(Me)AVP, on intraspecific aggression between pairs of male Golden hamsters in a neutral territory. Subjects drawn from a group of 24 animals were paired once each with novel partners from the group under each of three experimental conditions: 1) both members of a pair were microinjected into the anterior hypothalamus with saline (S/S), 2) on…
Factors in the waning of muricide in the rat
If each mouse killed by a rat is removed from the rat's home cage and replaced immediately by another live mouse, the rate of killing declines within 1- and 3-hr sessions. Muricide could not then be dishabituated by either a “nonspecific” stimulus (a loud noise) or a specific change in target characteristics (a frog substituted for the mouse). By systematically varying intersession intervals, we found that 1 hr of ad lib killing produced a monoto…
The reinforcing value of several types of aggressive behavior
Field observations of “surplus killing” and laboratory studies of operant performance rewarded by prey-killing opportunities suggest that predatory behavior is positively reinforcing. Similarly, both repeated encounter and operant performance studies suggest that intraspecific aggression can be positively reinforcing for successful aggressors. While a few studies suggest that defensive aggression under aversive conditions may also be positively r…
Factors in the waning of muricide in the rat. II. Digging behavior
If each mouse killed by a rat is removed from the rat's home cage and replaced immediately by another, the decline in the rate of killing within the one-hour sessions is accompanied by an increase in digging in the woodchip bedding material. Deprivation of the opportunity to dig by removal of the bedding material results in a statistically significant increase in kill rate. Since no other behaviors monitored showed a similar increase with this ma…
The persistence of attack satiation in female golden hamsters
Female hamsters were allowed to attack a series of target hamsters until they reached a criterion of attack satiation. Following delays of 0, 24, or 48 hr they were then presented with a novel “probe” target. Attacks on the probe target were reduced to 26% of baseline at 0 delay and had returned to 71% of baseline by 48 hr. The number of attacks necessary to achieve satiation criterion increased then decreased over the three test occasions, sugge…
Intraspecific aggression in male hamsters is inhibited by intrahypothalamic vasopressin‐receptor antagonist
The present study examines the effect of the arginine vasopressin (AVP) receptor antagonist, d(CH 2 ) 5 Tyr(Me)AVP, on intraspecific aggression between pairs of male Golden hamsters in a neutral territory. Subjects drawn from a group of 24 animals were paired once each with novel partners from the group under each of three experimental conditions: 1) both members of a pair were microinjected into the anterior hypothalamus with saline (S/S), 2) on…
Attack priming and satiation in female golden hamsters
“Priming” a female hamster by allowing it a single attack on an intruder placed into its home cage transiently decreases the latency and increases the probability of attack on a second trial. Although we have previously argued that this priming effect reflects an increase in aggressive arousal, an alternative interpretation is that the fear elicited by placing a foreign object into the subject's home cage is reduced when it happens again on the s…
Enhanced defense in adult rats deprived of playfighting experience as juveniles
In an earlier study we found that shock-elicited defensive aggression was intensified in rats that had been deprived of playfighting as juveniles. The three experiments reported here extend this phenomenon to the more naturalistic intruder/resident paradigm for eliciting defense. Rats were reared from 20 to 50 days in one of three conditions: in pairs or in isolation with or without 1 hour of daily playfighting experience. They were rehoused in s…
Aggression and Aggressiveness in Female Golden Hamsters
Young children's post tantrum affiliation with their parents
In our database of 331 parental narratives of tantrums had by children 18–60 months old, 29% of the tantrums were followed by child-initiated affiliation with parents. Four variables increased the probability of children's post tantrum affiliation (PTA): age, prolonged screaming, physiological stress, and parent-initiated separation from the child during the tantrum. The age effect may be due to increasing post tantrum persistence of negative aff…
Appeasement and reconciliation
Living in social groups has well-known benefits, including improved defense against predators, more proficient food gathering, and highly structured contexts for successful mating and the raising of offspring [Krebs and Davies, 1972]. Every benefit of social living presents the opportunity for conflicts over food, mates, social attention, territory, and status, however. The potential and actual conflicts that punctuate social living, we believe, …
Aggression and its causes
Aggression and its causes
Sequence and priming in 15 month‐olds' reactions to brief arm restraint
Brief, gentle arm restraint is widely used in experimental studies of children's anger, but the pattern of responses generated by such restraint has been incompletely described. We now describe a hierarchy of responses within trials as well as an escalation across trials that have both methodological and theoretical significance. Mothers of 87 15‐month olds prevented them from playing with a toy by restraining their arms on two consecutive 30 sec…
Rages or Temper Tantrums? The Behavioral Organization, Temporal Characteristics, and Clinical Significance of Angry-Agitated Outbursts in Child Psychiatry Inpatients
Screaming, yelling, whining, and crying
Young children's temper tantrums offer a unique window into the expression and regulation of strong emotions. Previous work, largely based on parental report, suggests that two emotions, anger and sadness, have different behavioral manifestations and different time courses within tantrums. Individual motor and vocal behaviors, reported by parents, have been interpreted as representing different levels of intensity within each emotion category. Th…
The Dynamics of Aggression
Contents: Preface. Part I: Differing Perspectives on Aggression Dynamics: Introduction to Game Theoretical Analyses and Arousal Hypotheses. J. Archer, F. Huntingford, Game Theory Models and Escalation of Animal Fights. L. Berkowitz, On the Escalation of Aggression. Part II: Aggressive State and Trait: Behavioral and Physiological Processes Within Individuals. D. Zillmann, Cognition-Excitation Interdependencies in the Escalation of Anger and Angry…
Dynamics of Aggression
Editor’s Preface
What We Know About Aggression
Research on aggressive behavior has woven a complex tapestry representing a range of phenomena within typologies of aggression. This issue of Peace Review presents essays on some currently concerning aspects of aggression. Here we sketch the historical origins of some of the threads of this tapestry in ourselves and other animals as background for the essays that follow
Editor’s Afterword
The essays published here underscore the scope and impact of human anger and aggression and the compelling need to find ways to prevent victimization. In decrying the awful effects of violence, a n
Levels of Aggression Escalation in Adult/Geriatric Occupational Therapy Workplaces
Workplace aggression can escalate from verbal to physical, adding risk of physical injury to negative psychological impact. Understanding escalation is necessary to develop effective violence intervention/prevention programs, but its occurrence is not well documented. An online survey determined if and how aggression escalates in occupational therapy (OT) workplaces. Because local culture can influence workplace events we compared surveys from no…
What Dyadic Internet Street Fight Videos Can and Cannot Tell Us About the Ethological, Game Theoretic, and Sex‐Differentiated Phenomenology of Human Physical Aggression
Street fight videos on the internet may provide information about little known aspects of human physical aggression, but their reliability is unclear. Analyses of 100 dyadic fight videos addressing ethological, game theoretic and sex‐differentiated questions derived from research on other animals found that prefight verbalizations or gestural signals of nonaggressive or aggressive intent loosely predicted who would strike first and who would win.…
Psychology (19 works) · Medicine (14 works) · Aggression (13 works) · Developmental psychology (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior (9 works) · Biology (6 works) · Poison control (6 works) · Audiology (5 works) · Clinical Psychology (5 works)