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Scientific Study of Non-Violence
105
refuses to sit on an adult's lap, who will not sit still and accept adult affection; in contrast, a more dependent child thrives on being held and kissed and later is more susceptible to group pressures. For the independent individual, there are more irritants in his everyday interactions because of strong pressures for conformity and submission to the demands of others. Thus in his interactions with others, the independent individual chafes and becomes angry. On the response side, the tendency to rebel is an important component in independence, and rebellionness is part of aggressiveness. The need to assert one's own individuality not only produces more irritants for onself and for others, but by the very content of the rebellious response the individual is engaging in aggression. Thus the independent person, almost by definition, has a stronger aggressive habit than the dependent, conforming person.
Another sub-topic that we need to discuss here is the quantitatively increased fighting response after application of a noxious stimulus elicited in males, as compared with the females. It has been observed in the laboratory that among mice of the ordinary domestic strains, the females rarely if ever fight, but combats between males are frequent and can easily be induced during early maturity. 25-days after casteration, by which time the effect of male sex hormones has been eliminated, none of these animals ever fight. Implanting testosterone propionate pellets (male sex hormones) in each animal to replace the male hormone, again leads to fights. When these pellets are removed, most of the animals stop fighting; a few however keep fighting on. This shows that the male sex hormone controls fighting.
Allowing the animals to become accustomed to fighting and then casterating them does not lead to a cessation of fighting, which shows that the male hormone must be present in order to get the animal to start fighting, but it is no more necessary once a strong habit has been established. Although small amounts of male hormones continue to be secreted by the adrenal glands of even castrated males, habit formation obviously has a strong effect. The male sex hormone seems to act by lowering the threshold of responsiveness to the painful stimulation which normally causes fighting.
Nervous control of aggression has not been studied in men for various reasons, but it has been done extensively in lower
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