Research Paper on Psychological and Social Theories on Violence

Main Psychological Theories on Violence

The main psychological theories on violence are used to provide a model for understanding human thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. A psychological theory has two key components: It must describe a behavior. It must make predictions about future behaviors. According to the textbook the psychology theories originally grew out of biological studies of human behavior, including brain studies and studies of instincts. One of the first comprehensive psychological theories of human nature was Fraud's psychoanalytic theory. The psychoanalytic theory has three structures that make up a person's personality. The first one is "id", which is the unconscious part of our personality. It is what drives a person to satisfy their own needs rather than anyone else's. The second one is ego, which is responsible for controlling the demands of the id and of the instincts, becoming aware of stimuli, and serving as a link between the id and the external world. In addition, the ego responds to stimulation by either adaptation or flight, regulates activity, and strives to achieve pleasure. Finally, the superego, whose demands are managed by the id, is responsible for the limitation of satisfaction and represents the influence of others, such as parents, teachers, and role models, as well as the impact of racial, societal, and cultural traditions.

Refusing to accept the "depth psychology" of Freudianism the early psychologists suggested observing the human behavior. Behaviorism is a learning theory that only focuses on objectively observable behaviors and discounts any independent activities of the mind. Behavior theorists define learning as nothing more than the acquisition of new behavior based on environmental conditions.

Among the key names in behaviorism is Ivan Pavlov. Ivan Pavlov, a Russian behaviorist, is known for his "conditioned response" experiments. His curiosity aspired when he noticed salivation ran on the tangent of putting food in a dog's mouth. He began noticing that the dog not only salivated to the food in its mouth but with the environment associated with food such as location, the sight of the person feeding him, the food dish, even the sound of footsteps.

Thorndike observed cats who had been placed in a puzzle box from which they tried to escape. When Thorndike placed his cats in a puzzle box, he found that they learned to engage in the important escape behavior faster after each trial. Thorndike described the learning that follows reinforcement in terms of the law of effect.

The influential behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner expanded on Thorndike's ideas to develop a complete set of principles to explain operant conditioning. He saw all behaviors as learning by means of reward and punishment.

A hypothesis that in ways mixed the insights of psychoanalysis and behaviorism was the frustration-aggression hypothesis theory of John Dollard and further developed by Neal Miller. The social learning theory says that aggression is the result of blocking, or frustrating, a person's efforts to attain a goal. There are many examples of this. If a man is disrespected and humiliated at his work, but cannot respond to this for fear of losing his job, he may go home and take his anger and frustration out on his family. This theory is also used to explain riots and revolutions, which both are believed to be caused by poorer and more deprived sections of society who may express their bottled-up frustration and anger through violence.

Finally, Albert Ellis was known as the founder of the rational choice theory, violence would be considered as a rational choice to his or her given conditions. According to the textbook, the individuals make choices under the influence of their preference. It treats social exchange as similar to an economic exchange where all parties try to maximize their advantage or gain and to minimize their disadvantage or loss.

Main Social Theories on Violence

One of the major theories in sociology and anthropology is Functionalism. According to the textbook, there are couple general approaches that inform both sociology and anthropology. The both share a set of conceptual tools, such a group, norm, institution, and culture. The textbook explains that the society is held together by the functions performed by different institutions of the society. Each economic has its systems of family, clan, politics, economy, etc.

Functionalism came from the sociologist Emile Durkheim, who identifies two principle modes of social solidarity, referred to as "mechanical" and "organic." According to the textbook the mechanical solidarity normally operates in traditional and small-scale societies and based on family ties, shared work, and similar lifestyle. Organic solidarity is maintained in big societies through the interdependence of its component parts. For example, farmers produce the food to feed the factory workers who produce the tractors that allow the farmer to produce the food. As advanced societies grow large and diverse, they remain integrated due to member's interdependence. He also states that crime in a society is considered to be normal due to the fact that crime is found in all societies. He believes that humans realize the punishments for the crimes committed. The non-criminal population punishes the criminals and realizes not cause any crimes because they too will be punished. Therefore, the non-criminal population learns from the criminals' mistake. This sort of action causes a society to have a boundary of human behavior which separates the deviant individuals (criminals) who break norms from those and the non-criminals who follow a social order.

Other sociologists carried the functional analysis of conflict further are Georg Simmel and Lewis Coser. Coser intentionally draws the majority of his theoretical ideas from Georg Simmel and presents "a number of basic propositions which have been distilled from theories of social conflict, in particular from the theories of Georg Simmel." Simmel was the first to acknowledge that conflict is a natural and necessary part of society. According to his point of view, the conflict can create new norms and rules and establish group identity.

One of the theoretical approach an alternative to functionalism is conflicting theory. The dean of all conflict theories is Karl Marx. The conflict theory looks at how certain social interactions occur through conflict. People engage in conflict every day to gain more power than others in society. All of these things produce tensions and conflicts. According to the Karl Marx, the dominant groups will naturally try to influence society and will have more success than their rivals. However, conflict theorists tend to see violence as a necessary application of the power of the dominant group against the lower groups.

Another influential advocate of social violence is George Sorel. According to the textbook he rejected and despised those of the "parliamentary socialist," who wanted to work within the system to make incremental change. In his book Reflections on Violence, he addresses the factors underlying revolutionary movements and examines the roles of violence (the revolutionary denial of the existing social order) and force (the state's power of coercion). Sorel enthusiastically supported revolutionary syndicalism, a movement with anarchistic leanings that stressed the spontaneity of the class struggle.

Another way to look at violence as a cultural problem is the sociological concept of the anomie. The term was introduced by Durkheim in his study of suicide. He believed that one type of suicide (anomic) resulted from the breakdown of the social standards necessary for regulating behavior. When a social system is in a state of anomie, common values and common meanings are no longer understood or accepted, and new values and meanings have not developed. According to Durkheim, such a society produces, in many of its members, psychological states characterized by a sense of futility, lack of purpose, and emotional emptiness and despair. Later, Robert Merton elaborated this notion. He believed that the greater emphasis on ends rather than means creates a stress that leads to a breakdown in the regulatory structure. For example, Individuals may feel that community leaders are indifferent to their needs, that society is basically unpredictable and lacking order and that goals are not being realized. They may have a sense of futility and a conviction that associates are not dependable sources of support.

Socialist like Frank Tannenbaum, Edwin Lemert, and Howard Becker advanced the theory of social labeling. They defined labeling theory is the view of deviance according to which being labeled as a "deviant" leads a person to engage in deviant behavior. According to the textbook, the two experiments have highlighted the power of the labeling theory for violent behavior. One of them is the famous "Stanford prison" where participants were randomly assigned to either the role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison environment. The experiment very quickly got out of hand. A riot broke out on day two. One prisoner developed a psychosomatic rash all over his body upon finding out that his "parole" had been turned down. After only 6 days (of a planned two weeks), the experiment was shut down, for fear that one of the prisoners would be seriously hurt. The second experiment was the blue eyes and the brown eyes. On the first day of the experiment, the children were told that brown-eyed people are better than blued -eyed people. After that, the brown-eyed children become more confident and dominant. They even began to interact with each other. These experiments show the violent side of the labeling theory.

Macro-Social, Micro-Social and Psycho-Cultural Perspectives and How Do They Relate to Violence?

According to the textbook, macro-social refer to the kinship structure, economic system, political institutions, overarching terms which people construct their social actions. The micro-social are individual families, neighborhoods, local versions or products of macro-social rules and institutions. The psycho-cultural are culture, beliefs, right vs wrong, internalize, ideas, beliefs, values. The economic system, on the grounds of violence, refers to the financial inequality. Violence arises when another person controls a victim's access to equity in regards to finances. This may also involve denial of healthcare systems and employment opportunities. In the same context, political and cultural domains are entailed, and these shape the ways by which societies interact in a social system. Some of the components in the structures include slavery, colonialism, poverty, and discrimination by race. These structures can be termed a violent since they result in the death of a people, injury or illness. These domains also relate to violence in that they marginalize the people and the communities in general, as they constrain their capabilities and assault their dignity. Individual families and neighborhoods can be placed in the social domains since humans are social beings. Family violence may take the form of an intimate-partner violence, child or elder abuse. Aggression is one of the domains leading to family violence, besides risking the individuals to becoming victims of sibling violence. In the psycho-cultural system, the culture of a people, their beliefs, and values affect the options for women operating at a diverse cultural framework and being affected by domestic violence.