"vicious behavior" is a perfectly correct and usable phrase in written English.
It is typically used to describe a cruel or aggressive act, or a pattern of acting in such a way. For example: "The bully's vicious behavior towards his classmates was unacceptable."
She said that "some have sought to justify this vicious behaviour as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet.
There is, it is true, some vicious behaviour, generally agreed to be such, that we haven't yet come to tolerate, and are still trying, with increasing desperation, to control or eliminate, such as the carrying of knives, and the senseless slaughter of gang warfare.
A year later, to win a lighter sentence, Mr Perez confessed to other crimes and alleged that they were part of a wider pattern of corrupt and vicious behaviour by CRASH officers.Members of the unit, he claimed, regularly planted evidence on gangsters they arrested, made up stories about them, and otherwise mistreated them.
The mischief here extends to what at first glance looks like a single-minded assault on her own sex, until it becomes clear that what she is actually attacking is a range of stupid or vicious behaviours; the charge of misogyny is something of a red herring.
Asperger syndrome and criminal behaviour.
Another tackles the security forces' behaviour in a vicious counter-insurgency campaign in Baluchistan.
Worse, if the plague isn't stifled at birth, it can kick off a vicious circle in which asshole behaviour becomes institutionalised, generating expectations that reinforce it.
Moreover, nothing stops private American citizens from paying ransoms (as long as they are not seen to be funding terrorist organisations).America believes ransom payments create a vicious cycle by rewarding bad behaviour.
In fact, patient and clinician enter a vicious cycle of ineffective chronic illness behaviour (patient) and ineffective chronic professional behaviour (clinician) [Koekkoek B, Hutschemaekers G, van Meijel B, Schene A: How do patients become to be seen as 'difficult'?: a mixed-methods study in community mental health care, revision submitted].
Indeed, self-interested behaviour was usually described as "vicious".
But he also found Monis didn't have a psychiatric illness, rather a complex personality disorder which led to vicious, deceitful, manipulative and antisocial attitudes and behaviour.
