Frustration and Social Behavior

Throughout life, events play out in unexpected ways: sometimes they are better than expected and sometimes they are worse. The neurosciences, including psychology, widely study these mechanisms and their effects. From a theoretical point of view, frustration is defined as the body response that is triggered when a subject experiences a surprising omission or devaluation in the quality or quantity of an appetitive reinforcer in the presence of signals previously associated with a
reinforcer of greater magnitude (Amsel, 1992). In this article, I will present only the main theories of frustration and examples of the relationship between it and social responses in animal and human models.

Keywords: Frustration, agonistic responses, social exclusion, animal and human models.