Agressão e contra-agressão - para uma leitura etológica dos caminhos da violência

The authors proceed to the review of the concept of aggressiveness and over aggression from an ethological point of view and present some of the models commonly used in the approach of this issue. The problem of function and causation of aggressive behavior is analyzed. Those behaviors are considered by the authors as part of a general agonistic control system, whose functional disruption may produce innadaptive violence. The authors describe some typical ethological phenomena as examples of the adaptative role of aggressive behavior and briefly review the neuro-endocrinal bases of agonistic behaviors. In the last part of the paper, the influence of the hominization processus on human aggressiveness and the interaction of biological and cultural variables, on the expression of human hostile behavior, is discussed.