Aggression and Violence

The Nature of Aggression and Violence… or is it Nurture?

A division of the Nature vs. Nurture debate is whether violence and aggression is caused by nature or nurture. Aggression has been characterized as, “deliberately unfriendly behaviour” and violence has been defined as, “the exertion of force so as to injure or abuse”. However, all of you reading probably know what aggression and violence is and have experienced it or used it. The real question is not if you have seen it but what causes aggression and violence? Nature or Nurture?

There have been studies conducted that illustrate levels of serotonin, testosterone, and the frontal lobe brain chemistry may play a key factor in how aggressive and violent someone is. Such a study is where Terrie Moffitt and colleagues measured blood serotonin levels of 781 21-year-old men and women. After the study they concluded that, "in this study, elevated whole blood serotonin was a characteristic of violent men.” This study was also supported by (Meloy, 1988; Raine, 1993) who both found a link between serotonin levels and aggression. There have also been cases where people have had biological or psychical damage to their Hypothalamus, Limbic System or Frontal Lobe. Consequently they exhibited high levels of aggression and could become randomly violent.

However, there are just as many studies and theories that illustrate that violence and aggression is caused by nurture. (Lykken, 1995) found that some environmental factors can lead to aggression and violence. Family discord, abuse, sexualised environments and peers are some of the environmental factors that could contribute to a person becoming aggressive or violent. Other theories such as the Social Learning Theory can support and explain how people become aggressive and violent. People may see their role models exhibiting aggressive or violent behaviour and if the role model is rewarded for the behaviour than the original person will copy the behaviour. If the aggressive or violent behaviour then works for the original person then they will use it again and again. They may then become a role model for somebody and that person may copy the aggressive or violent behaviour. So aggression and violence could just be a behaviour that is pasted on from generation to generation as they see it works for other people.

Questions:
· So is aggression and violence caused by nature or nurture?
· Do you think that aggression and violence can ever totally be stopped? Why or why not?

Sources:

http://www.deviantcrimes.com/nature_nurture.htm
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/foundations_psychology/92824
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/web2/Mccawley.html
http://youthvoices.net/node/6648
http://rhr.sph.sc.edu/report/SCRHRC_TeenViolence.pdf

Iain and Connor

Drug Addiction

Drug Addiction: Nature OR Nurture?

Is drug abuse the result of how we are brought up and raised, or is it the result of our genes? Are we born with it? This blog will explain the relationship between drug addiction and the nature – nurture debate.

It is believed that the use of drugs is a combination of both nature and nurture. This means that drug use is caused by someone’s upbringing and childhood AND is also the result of our genes and has therefore been with us since birth. There are various forms of evidence to support both sides.

Kranzler said “It is now widely accepted that genetic variation predisposes to alcohol and drug dependence, but it's also very clear that without environmental factors—including access to alcohol and drugs—addictions don't occur,”

There is evidence that heredity plays a significant role in increasing the chance of an individual developing an addiction to illicit drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. Researchers have contrasted alcoholism rates of adoptees born to alcoholic parents with those born to non-alcoholic parents. One study found higher alcoholism rates in sons whose natural parents were alcoholics than in sons whose natural parents were non-alcoholics.

The following case study showed the symptoms of babies born with drug addictions.

The number of babies born to drug addicted mothers has almost doubled in the last five years, it has been revealed. Last year there were 1,970 women who were addicted to drugs at the time of the birth, compared to 1,057 back in 2003.Of those 1,970 women with a drug dependency, 1,211 babies were born with their mother's addiction as the habit was passed on whilst the baby was still in the womb. It means that every day, five drug addict mums give birth to a baby and of those births three babies will suffer the withdrawal symptoms of their mother's addiction.The symptoms associated with babies who are addicted to drugs are a loud, high-pitched crying, sweating and stomach upsets. (http://yr10psychology.blogspot.com/2008/11/topic-10-drug-addiction.html )

Questions:

With the evidence gathered here, what is your opinion on the topic? Is drug addiction related to Nature or Nurture?

If someone were to do more experiments on this topic, do you think it is possible to find a better method of helping addicts if drug addiction was caused by Nature?

Sophie and Lucy

Topic # 4: Artificial Selection

Darwin argues that those characteristics we might think to be specifically human—physical strength and health, morality, and intelligence—were actually achieved by natural selection. From this, he infers two related eugenic conclusions.

First, if the desirable results of strength, health, morality, and intelligence are caused by natural selection, then we can improve them by artificial selection. We can breed better human beings, even rise above the human to the superhuman. Since human beings have been raised above the other animals by the struggle to survive, they may be raised even higher, transcending human nature to something—who knows?—as much above men as men are now above the apes.

Second, if good breeding gives us better results, pushing us up the evolutionary slope, then bad or indiscriminate breeding drags us back down. "If…various checks…do not prevent the reckless, the vicious and otherwise inferior members of society from increasing at a quicker rate than the better class of men," Darwin groaned, "the nation will retrograde, as has occurred too often in the history of the world. We must remember that progress is no invariable rule."

What about the link to Hitler? The first, most important thing to understand is that the link between Darwin and Hitler was not immediate. Darwin's eugenic ideas were spread all over Europe and America, until they were common intellectual coin by Hitler's time. Secondly, we misunderstand Hitler's evil if we reduce it to anti-Semitism. Hitler's anti-Semitism had, of course, multiple causes, including his own warped character. That having been said, Nazism was at heart a racial, that is, a biological political program based up evolutionary theory. It was "applied biology," in the words of deputy party leader of the Nazis, Rudolph Hess, and done for the sake of a perceived greater good, racial purity, that is, for the sake of a race purified of physical and mental defects, imperfections, and racial inferiority.

The proposed ruthlessness of his solution was in direct imitation of nature conceived according to Darwinism. "Just as Nature concentrates its greatest attention, not to the maintenance of what already exists but on the selective breeding of offspring in order to carry on the species, so in human life also it is less a matter of artificially improving the existing generation—which, owing to human characteristics, is impossible in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred—and more a matter of securing from the very start a better road for future development."

How do we secure a better road for future development? By ensuring that only the best of the best race, the Aryan race, breed, and pruning away all the unfit and racially inferior. That isn't just a theory; it's eugenic Darwinism as a political program. As Hitler made clear, "the State is looked upon only as a means to an end and this end is the conservation of the racial characteristics of mankind." Jews have to be pruned away, but also Gypsies, Slavs, the retarded, handicapped, and anyone else that is biologically unfit.

Information gathered from:
Wiker, B. Dr (2008) Darwin’s Dystopia, Retrieved 7th October 2008 from http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2020937/posts

Question:
· If you could have tried to prevent Hitler from going through with his enforced selective breeding what arguments would you have put forward?

Answer the above question by responding to this post.

When you post a comment, tick the anonymous box and then finish your response with your first name and class only.

Please remember all comments are moderated.

Topic #3: Nurturing

While studies of children who have suffered severe deprivation are generally unpleasant, they provide valuable insight into the impact that environmental experiences have on the development of the individual. There is much evidence to suggest that early learning environments literally shape the developing brain (Nelson, 1999).

Some studies have involved mistreated children who, tragically, have spent their first years in cupboards, attics and other restricted environments. When first discovered, these children are usually mute, retarded and emotionally damaged.

Some suffer from deprivation dwarfism, a condition characterised by stunted physical growth associated with stress, isolation or general deprivation. Efforts to teach such severely deprived children to speak and behave normally rarely succeed.

Case Study: ‘Closet child’ now with loving parents:
Becky’s story began to unfold when the Sheriff’s Department responded to a tip like hundreds of others. They found Becky in urine-soaked clothes, asleep on a hard cot in her parents’ bedroom.
‘She was almost like an animal,’ one of the deputies reported. Her world then was the bedroom and its closet, in which she was kept for untold hours. Now Becky lives in a spacious foster home.
Since Becky’s rescue, she has gained 12 pounds and grown 6 inches. But she is still a mite, for she weighed only 24 pounds and stood only 32 inches tall last April.

When she was found, Becky couldn’t even crawl; now she walks. Then, she knew only a few words – now she speaks in sentences. She is, except for the hurt in her eyes, almost like any toddler.

But Rebecca is no toddler. She is nine years old and her paediatrician says she may never catch up.

Information gathered from:
Van Lersel et al. (2005) Nelson Psychology, Thomson Nelson, pg. 114

Questions:
· If most of our development is due to nature, why didn’t Becky go through the normal stages of development?
· What possible explanations could there be for why Becky’s development hasn’t caught up?

Answer the above question by responding to this post – you may wish to do some additional research regarding the critical and sensitive period.

When you post a comment, tick the anonymous box and then finish your response with your first name and class only.

Please remember all comments are moderated.