The life of a chronically violent person can best be understood by examining the dynamic interaction of the individual's social context, psychological characteristics, biology, and environment. When the accumulation of negative factors along these dimensions without counterbalancing positive factors reaches a threshold, violent behavior is more likely to occur.
The life of a chronically violent person can best be understood by examining the dynamic interaction of the individual's social context, psychological characteristics, biology, and environment. When the accumulation of negative factors along these dimensions without counterbalancing positive factors reaches a threshold, violent behavior is more likely to occur.
Social Dimension: Family, Attachment, Bonding and Relationships
When caregivers neglect or abuse their infants or expose them to domestic violence, problems with attachment can occur. This deficient early interaction can become the template for all future relationships. Empathy for others does not develop, while rage or apathy may be prominent, and social skills are often poor. Significantly greater rates of general offending (49%) and violent offending (18%) were found among a group of abused and severely neglected children than among those who had not had such histories (Widom, 1996).
A sequence of early childhood social learning events leads to and sustains delinquency (Patterson, DeBaryshi, and Ramsey, 1989). The pre-delinquent uses aversive behavior to attain goals while the parents attempt to coerce the child into submission. Coercive strategies escalate on both sides, but the youth ultimately prevails, rewarding the youth's negative behavior.
During middle childhood, prosocial peer group rejection and school failure alienate and separate these youths from conventional activities, socialization processes, and attachment to the larger community outside their home, leading either to social withdrawal or joining a deviant peer group.
In adolescence, this deviant peer group, which may include immersion in a nihilistic subculture or ideology gives the youth structure and identity, a sense of belonging, and a sense of being successful. Violence is often reinforced by the antisocial subculture.
Psychological Characteristics: Temperament, Development, and Mental Illness
Infants with a flexible, easygoing temperament seem to cope better with stress. They are easier for parents to manage. Children with an irritable temperament may be more difficult to manage and may cope less well with environmental or social stressors.
Violence, abuse, trauma, neglect, and severe losses can interrupt and interfere with a child's normal developmental processes and the ability to learn and practice important skills including managing emotions. Violent children often have limited ability to distinguish and communicate emotions verbally or appropriately and frequently experience little positive affect. Unable to self-soothe or self-calm, when they experience and express emotion, it is often as an explosive over reaction.
Violent children are also often fixated in a very early stage of moral development (Kohlberg, 1969). They believe that what is right is what meets the needs of the self and have not yet acknowledged that relationships, reciprocity, and membership in groups are important. Lack of empathy may be seen in behavior such as bullying smaller children and cruelty to animals, indicating a disregard for the welfare of other living beings. (Levy & Orlans, 1999).
Fifteen to 25% of all violent youth have symptoms of a mental illness, which can include hyperactivity, impulsivity, depression, anxiety, Bipolar symptoms, and psychosis. "Children with both ADHD and verbal learning disabilities and/or social skill deficits present a more serious risk for sustaining their anti-social behavior through adolescence and into adulthood." (Fago, 1999). Violent people also do not seem to learn from their mistakes, a deficiency that may have both biological and psychological components and be related to arousal and fear responses (Hare, xxx).
Biological Substrate
Early trauma and neglect can decrease dendrite proliferation and brain size (Perry and Pollard,1997), which may explain the faulty perceiving and processing and deficient problem solving seen in children with these histories. Autonomic arousal patterns can also be affected by early abuse and neglect (Pollack, xxx) with maltreated children reacting to anger more strongly than non-abused children due to chronic elevation of stress and alarm neurotransmitters. Low intelligence, which is sometimes associated with early brain injury can be another risk factor for violence, with the sedentary nature of our schools putting boys who are naturally active at a disadvantage (Murray, 1999).
Community and Culture
If there is easy availability of firearms or community standards favor the use of drugs and violence, the children of that neighborhood may be more likely to use violent means to accomplish their goals. Violent individuals are often substance abusers and frequently come from substance abusing families where such behavior is considered a rite of passage and/or a necessity for socializing.
If the community values insist that males be stoic and macho, the only emotion they will be encouraged to express is anger. The "softer" emotions are frequently taboo for males who are encouraged not to be a "sissy." Aggressive/violent behavior is rewarded with increased respect.
Many experts agree that media violence negatively affects children. In addition, television commercials encourage the pursuit of tangible signs of prosperity. When extreme economic deprivation and other factors cause the path to "success" to be blocked or unavailable, teens may seek out other, often antisocial, means to attain consumer goods and power.
Protective Factors & Resiliency
As described by Hirsch (xxx), non-delinquents are attached to parents, peers, and their community; committed to conventional lines of action (i.e., deferred gratification, work ethic, the value of education); involved in conventional activities (school, sports, family activities, work); and believe in the moral order (traditional ideas of right and wrong.) These positive factors form the basis of resiliency and are rooted in the basic attachment process that begins in infancy.
Children, who are curious, enthusiastic, and alert, set goals for themselves, have high self-esteem and internal locus of control will be more resilient. A child who has good social and problem solving skills, moral maturity, and an ability to manage emotions (particularly anger) effectively, will have less likelihood of exhibiting violent behavior.
In evaluating people for the probability of violent behavior, the absence of resiliency factors can be an important predictor of violent potential. People with many of the risk factors for violence can compensate for these vulnerabilities if sufficient resiliency factors are present. Thus, the various factors that influence children are seen as interactive. There appears to be a threshold of high numbers of negative factors and low levels of positive factors beyond which there is a greater risk for violent behavior.
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(References upon request)
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