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Scientific Study of Non-Violence
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glory in conflict. This does not mean that it is very probable. It does mean that aggression will easily appear whenever it is rewarded (reinforcement and social facilitation). It does mean that young males will feel joy in conflict whenever the social system provides opportunity for and approval of conflict.
From the above statement it becomes clear that if we want to control aggressiveness and violence, we must achieve a culture which teaches and educates against it.
hood we find that a less aggressive tolerant child is more likely to come from a home where he feels welcome, accepted and loved; where punishment is not harsh or capricious, and the child does not have to guard every moment against impulses that might bring down parental wrath upon his head. His attitude towards parents is well differentiated, that is to say, while the child accepts them on the whole, he may, without fear, be critical. Unlike the prejudiced child, he does not love them consciously and hate them unconsciously. His attitude is patterned and public, affectionate but not hypocritical. He accepts them for what they are, and does not live dreading their superior power. There is, in consequence, no sharp cleavage between conscious and unconscious layers of his mental emotional life. His frustration tolerance seem to be relatively high. Feeling secure within his own ego, there is less of a tendency to externalise (project) conflict. When things go wrong, it is not necessary to blame others: he can blame himself without falling into a state of alarm.
Such seems to be the general ground work for tolerant social attitudes. Undoubtedly, this ground work is in large part the product to home training, of the modes of reward and punishment used by the parents, of the subtle atmosphere of family living.
Children who lack these environments and consequently become aggressive pose a problem for parents and society.
It has been shown that extreme permissiveness constitutes a kind of reinforcement because the child realizes that aggression is entirely acceptable to the parent. Low permissiveness and high punishment, as also high permissiveness and low punishment,
Hamburg, D.A. (1963) Expression of the Emotions in Man, p. 300-317.
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