Psychology of Violence Essays - Philosophy, Ethics, Crime, Religion

Psychology of Violence By Student Id# CPSY-2009-0884: Yinka L. Humes MGC5311: Psychology of Violence Lecturer: Dr. Pan sy Brown 15 th November 2010 Violence is the exertion of physical force so as to injure or abuse. The word describes forceful human destruction of property or injury to persons, usually intentional, and forceful verbal and emotional abuse that harms others . The causes of violent behavior in humans are often research topics in psychology and sociology . Neurobiologist Jan Volavka emphasizes that for those purposes, "violent behavior is defined as overt and intentional physically aggressive behavior against another person." Scientists disagree on whether violence is inherent in humans. Among prehistoric humans, there is archaeological evidence for both contentions of violence and peacefulness as primary characteristics. Riane Eisler , who describes early matriarchal societies, and Walter Wink , who coined the phrase "the myth of redemptive violence," suggest s that human violence, especially as organized in groups, is a phenomenon of the last five to ten thousand years . The "violent male ape" image is often brought up in discussions of human violence. Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham in "Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence" write that violence is inherent in humans. However, William L. Ury, editor of a book called "Must We Fight? From the Battlefield to the Schoolyard A New Perspective on Violent Conflict and Its Prevention" debunks the "killer ape" myth in his book which brings together discussions from two Harvard Law School symposiums. The conclusion is that "we also have lots of natural mechanisms for cooperation, to keep conflict in check, to channel aggression, and to overcome conflict. These are just as natural to us as the aggressive tendencies. " J ames Gilligan writes violence is often pursued as an antidote to shame or humiliation. The use of violence often is a source of pride and a defense of honor, especially among males who often believe violence defines manhood. Stephen Pinker in a New Republic article "The History of Violence" offers evidence that on the average the amount and cruelty of violence to humans and animals has decreased over the last few centuries . This view of a situationist , which has both influenced and been informed by a body of social-psychological research and theory, contrasts with the traditional perspective that explains evil behavior in dispositional terms: Internal determinants of antisocial behavior locate evil within individual predispositionsgenetic "bad seeds," personality traits, psychopathological risk factors, and other organismic variables. The situationist approach is to the dispositional as public health models of disease are to medical models. Following basic principles of Lewinian theory, the situationist perspective propels external determinants of behavior to the foreground, well beyond the status as merely extenuating background circumstances. Unique to this situationist approach is the use of experimental laboratory and field research to demonstrate vital phenomena that other approaches only analyze verbally or rely on archival or c orrelational data for answers. The basic pa radigm presented illustrates the relative ease with which ordinary, "good" men and women can be induced into behaving in "evil" ways by turning on or off one or another social situational variable. In religion , ethics , and philosophy , the phrase, good and evil refers to the location of objects, desires, and behaviors on a two-way spectrum , with one direction being morally positive ("good"), and the other morally negative ("evil"). "Good" is a broad concept but it typically deals with an association with life , continuity , happiness , and prosperity . Evil is more simply defined: the opposite of good. The nature of goodness has been given many treatments; one is that the good is based on the natural love , bonding, and affection that begins at the earliest stages of personal development; another is that goodness is a product of knowing truth . Evil can be defined as intentionally behaving, or causing others to act, in ways that demean, dehumanize, harm, destroy, or kill innocent people. This behaviorally focused definition makes the individual or group responsible for purposeful, motivated act ions that have a range of negative consequences for other people. The definition excludes accidental or unintended harmful outcomes, as well as the broader, generic forms of