Potential and limitations of the offense-defense dichotomy in aggression research, considering the complex and evolving interactions of biological, psychological and social determinants of aggression.
The offense-defense dichotomy undeniably proved to be of heuristic interest in that it allowed relevant distinctions between specific behaviour patterns, to establish correlations between situations in which either "offensive" or "defensive" patterns are likely to be displayed, and to uncover differential drug effects on those distinct behavior patterns. But for a number of reasons, the author is led to conclude that even though the offense-defense dichotomy indeed helps in many instances to describe and to distinguish, it has rather limited potential really to explain in depth what it distinguishes at a phenomenological level of investigation.
D000374:Aggression / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D006801:Humans; D012931:Social Environment