Provocation (1996)
In this article, we meta-analytically examine experimental studies to assess the moderating effect of provocation on gender differences in aggression. Convergent evidence shows that, whereas unprovoked men are more aggressive than women, provocation markedly attenuates this gender difference. Gender differences in appraisals of provocation intensity and fear of danger from retaliation (but not negative affect) partially mediate the attenuating effect of provocation. However, they do not entirely account for its manipulated effect. Type of provocation and other contextual variables also affect the magnitude of gender differences in aggression. The results support a social role analysis of gender differences in aggression and counter A. H. Eagly and V. Steffen's (1986) meta-analytic inability to confirm an attenuating effect of provocation on gender differences in aggression.
Provocation (1996)
Background: Previous studies have used symptom provocation and positron emission tomography to delineate the brain systems that mediate various anxiety states. Using an analogous approach, the goal of this study was to measure regional cerebral blood flow changes associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.
Methods: Eight patients with PTSD, screened as physiologically responsive to a script-driven imagery symptom provocation paradigm, were exposed sequentially to audiotaped traumatic and neutral scripts in conjunction with positron emission tomography. Heart rate and subjective measures of emotional state were obtained for each condition. Statistical mapping techniques were used to determine locations of significant brain activation.
Several provocation maneuvers are described in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy to Doppler echocardiographically distinguish the obstructive from the non obstructive type. No data are available about the value of orthostasis testing in comparison with nitrate application in this disease. In this study, 16 consecutive patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy were examined. 11 patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy were classified as obstructive, 5 patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy as non obstructive. Normal left ventricular outflow tract velocities as detected by the Doppler method were defined as
The Security Council this evening deplored the provocation carried out at Al-Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem on 28 September, and subsequent violence there and throughout the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, which had resulted in more than 80 Palestinian deaths.
1. Deplores the provocation carried out at Al-Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem on 28 September 2000, and the subsequent violence there and at other Holy Places, as well as in other areas throughout the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, resulting in over 80 Palestinian deaths and many other casualties;
Where on a charge of murder there is evidence on which the jury can find that the person charged was provoked (whether by things done or by things said or by both together) to lose his self-control, the question whether the provocation was enough to make a reasonable man do as he did shall be left to be determined by the jury; and in determining that question the jury shall take into account everything both done and said according to the effect which, in their opinion, it would have on a reasonable man.
The initial burden was on the defence to raise sufficient evidence of provocation. As a matter of law, the judge would then decide whether to leave the defence to the jury. This did not change the burden of proof which, as in all criminal cases, was on the prosecution to prove the actus reus and mens rea of the offence charged, i.e. murder. The Act changed the common law, which had established some non-exhaustive categories or examples which constituted provocation, including:
The Act provided that provocation could be by anything done or said without it having to be an illegal act and the provoker and the deceased could be third parties.[5] If the accused was provoked, who provoked him was irrelevant.
Under normal circumstances, the response to the provocation had to be almost immediate retaliation. If there was a "cooling-off" period, the court would find that the accused should have regained control, making all subsequent actions intentional and therefore murder. In R v Ibrams & Gregory[9] the defendants had been terrorised and bullied by the deceased over a period of time so devised a plan to attack him. There was no evidence of a sudden and temporary loss of self-control as required by Duffy. Even the period of time to fetch a weapon could be sufficient to cool off. In R v Thornton,[10] a woman suffering from "battered woman syndrome" went to the kitchen, took and sharpened a carving knife, and returned to stab her husband. The appeal referred to s3 which required the jury to have regard to "everything both said and done according to the effect which in their opinion it would have on a reasonable man". The appellant argued that instead of considering the final provocation, the jury should have considered the events over the years leading up to the killing. Beldam LJ rejected this, saying:
It was held in Camplin[14] that the accused's age and sex could be attributed to the reasonable man when the jury considered the defendant's power of self-control. Further, that any characteristic of the accused could be included which the jury considered may affect the gravity of the provocation.
Therefore, the reasonable person had to be endowed with the particular characteristics of the accused. In a number of leading cases, Morhall[15] and Luc Thiet Thuan v R,[16] it was held that the judge should direct the jury to consider whether an ordinary person with ordinary powers of self-control would have reacted to the provocation as the defendant did and that no allowance should be given for any characteristics that might have made him or her more volatile than the ordinary person. These decisions acknowledged, however, that, in addition to age and sex, characteristics which affected the gravity of the provocation to the defendant should be taken into account. In R v Smith[17] the defendant was charged with murder and relied on the defence of provocation, alleging that he had been suffering from serious clinical depression and had been so provoked by the deceased as to lose his self-control. Lord Hoffman held that the test was whether the jury thought that the circumstances were such as to make the loss of self-control sufficiently excusable to reduce the gravity of the offence from murder to manslaughter.
Furthermore, the House held, by a majority, that no distinction should be drawn, when attributing characteristics for the purposes of the objective part of the test imposed by s3 Homicide Act, between their relevance to the gravity of the provocation to a reasonable man and his reaction to it. Account could be taken of a relevant characteristic in relation to the accused's power of self-control, whether or not the characteristic was the object of the provocation. But in HM's AG for Jersey v Holley[18] the Privy Council regarded Smith as wrongly decided, interpreting the Act as setting a purely objective standard. Thus, although the accused's characteristics were to be taken into account when assessing the gravity of the provocation, the standard of self-control to be expected was invariable except for the accused's age and sex. The defendant and the deceased both suffered from chronic alcoholism and had a violent and abusive relationship. The evidence was that the deceased was drunk and taunted him by telling him that she had had sex with another man. The defendant then struck the deceased with an axe which was an accident of availability. Psychiatric evidence was that his consumption of alcohol was involuntary and that he suffered from a number of other psychiatric conditions which, independently of the effects of the alcohol, might have caused the loss of self-control and induced him to kill. Lord Nicholls said:
Properly directed, the jury should therefore have applied a narrow and strict test of a man with ordinary powers of self-control rather than the wider test of excusability that was put to them by the judge. The jury having convicted on the basis of the wider test, we cannot see any unsafety in the conviction. The same result would have been inevitable if the provocation direction had been on the basis of Holley.
In 1973 the Privy Council held in Edwards v R[22] that a blackmailer could not rely on the predictable results of his demands for money when his victim attacked him (a policy decision to prevent a criminal from relying on his own wrongdoing as the cause of the subsequent death). In R v Johnson,[23] the defendant had become involved in an escalating argument with the deceased and his female companion. When the victim threatened the defendant with a beer glass, the defendant fatally stabbed him with a knife. The judge instructed the jury that they were open to find the threatening situation had been self-induced, in which case provocation would not be open as a defence. The Court of Appeal held that section 3 of the Homicide Act 1957 provided that anything could amount to provocation, including responsive actions provoked by the defendant. It applied the defence (duly substituting the conviction for that of manslaughter).
The new defence of "loss of control" introduced by the Coroners and Justices Act 2009, specifically excluded self-induced provocation in section 55, subsection 6, a) in terms of "fear of serious violence" and b) in terms of "a sense of being seriously wronged by a thing done or said " when the "qualifying trigger" was incited "for the purpose of providing an excuse to use violence."[24]
In-vivo observations of neural processes during human aggressive behavior are difficult to obtain, limiting the number of studies in this area. To address this gap, the present study implemented a social reactive aggression paradigm in 29 healthy men, employing non-violent provocation in a two-player game to elicit aggressive behavior in fMRI settings. 041b061a72