Abnormal Outcome Link: Origins of Violence
The recent assignment consisted of interviewing a participant on their opinions of violence, their views on the origins, and short and long term effects. After that, all the students shared their results and I consolidated them, categorizing all the participants' statements into themes.
After reviewing the results, I found that although the participants had no prior knowledge of psychological theories and studies, their answers were extraordinarily similar to that of established theories. For example, Bandura (1977) suggested that children behave violently if that was what they saw in their upbringing. In Bandura’s bobo doll experiment, children only behaved violently after having been shown violence by an adult actor for a short period of time. This suggests that violence can be learnt by children through their parents’ violence, or the violence in their overall environment. This is consistent with the results from the participants, where they suggested that people behave violent due to upbringing and also the culture around them.
Furthermore, Totten (2003), explored how adolescent girlfriend abusers used violence to “construct their masculinity”. This is often reflected upon the male’s father, who similarly had pro-abusive beliefs and masculine ideals. Further complementing Bandura’s social learning theory of behavioural violence transmitted through upbringing, Totten also explained the culture of honour and dignity surrounding masculinity. As suggested by one of the interviewees, this is when males act violently when their masculinity is threatened.
The “culture of honour” is also investigated by Cohen (1996), who showed in an experiment that violence is often a result of a male’s masculinity being threatened. Although the experiment suggest southern White males are often aggressors if their dignity is compromised, some participants suggested that this may not be exclusive to only one culture.
Charlton (2002) conducted an investigation wherein children in an isolated community were introduced to the television, with aggression levels equivalent to that of what children in the UK were exposed to. Over the course of five years, a relatively short term of violent exposure compared to Totten and Cohen’s studies, the researchers found no behavioural changes in the children This suggests that even though children have no doubt learnt aggressive behaviour, the lack of motivation to imitate behaviour, due to the high degree of prosocial behaviour in the community, does not allow children to exhibit such behaviours. In parallel to the interview responses, the lack of reward provides no motivation for violent behaviour.
These results beg the question: is it necessary for psychological research to be conducted if people's intuition and perception of the world are so in line with the results anyway?
I believe so. Although I myself find that results from psychological studies are often obvious to predict, it is only through scientific methods that theories should be supported. In this way, psychological research will not be deemed "pseudo science", but a human science, where the high percentage of an outcome would suggest the reality of the theory.
The recent assignment consisted of interviewing a participant on their opinions of violence, their views on the origins, and short and long term effects. After that, all the students shared their results and I consolidated them, categorizing all the participants' statements into themes.
After reviewing the results, I found that although the participants had no prior knowledge of psychological theories and studies, their answers were extraordinarily similar to that of established theories. For example, Bandura (1977) suggested that children behave violently if that was what they saw in their upbringing. In Bandura’s bobo doll experiment, children only behaved violently after having been shown violence by an adult actor for a short period of time. This suggests that violence can be learnt by children through their parents’ violence, or the violence in their overall environment. This is consistent with the results from the participants, where they suggested that people behave violent due to upbringing and also the culture around them.
Furthermore, Totten (2003), explored how adolescent girlfriend abusers used violence to “construct their masculinity”. This is often reflected upon the male’s father, who similarly had pro-abusive beliefs and masculine ideals. Further complementing Bandura’s social learning theory of behavioural violence transmitted through upbringing, Totten also explained the culture of honour and dignity surrounding masculinity. As suggested by one of the interviewees, this is when males act violently when their masculinity is threatened.
The “culture of honour” is also investigated by Cohen (1996), who showed in an experiment that violence is often a result of a male’s masculinity being threatened. Although the experiment suggest southern White males are often aggressors if their dignity is compromised, some participants suggested that this may not be exclusive to only one culture.
Charlton (2002) conducted an investigation wherein children in an isolated community were introduced to the television, with aggression levels equivalent to that of what children in the UK were exposed to. Over the course of five years, a relatively short term of violent exposure compared to Totten and Cohen’s studies, the researchers found no behavioural changes in the children This suggests that even though children have no doubt learnt aggressive behaviour, the lack of motivation to imitate behaviour, due to the high degree of prosocial behaviour in the community, does not allow children to exhibit such behaviours. In parallel to the interview responses, the lack of reward provides no motivation for violent behaviour.
These results beg the question: is it necessary for psychological research to be conducted if people's intuition and perception of the world are so in line with the results anyway?
I believe so. Although I myself find that results from psychological studies are often obvious to predict, it is only through scientific methods that theories should be supported. In this way, psychological research will not be deemed "pseudo science", but a human science, where the high percentage of an outcome would suggest the reality of the theory.