Aggresion and violence

In the conclusion of chapter 11 in the course book, “Life Span Development: A Topical Approach” written by Robert S Feldman, the author was talking about the act how violence can become active in one’s life even in the juvenile ages of a toddler. Feldman apprised the audience about a story about two sets of kids (one group was boys, the other set were females), both getting into fights because one group saw the opposing group acting pugnacious against one another. The set of boys (Duane & Eshu) began to portray aggression toward each other when one (Eshu) started to tease the Duane about splitting his pants. Duane struck Eshu, and surprised by the exploit, began to cry. After witnessing the violence, the two girls (Lynn and Ilya), began arguing with each other which commenced into them teasing one another. Lynn (who have never shown traces of aggressive behavior before), suddenly tried to hit Ilya; Feldman believes that Lynn acted in this manner, only because she seen another group of individuals fighting against each other. According to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, he suggests that we all are motivated by sexual and aggressive instincts (Freud,1920). Now days, sociobiologists’ argue that showing act of violence precedes to more opportunities to mate with the opposite sex, which continue to pass down aggression in the gene pool, while extracting out the type 2 behavior gene. They believe humans got this instinct from our ancestral primitive urges too weed out weaker animals, maintain a steady stream of food supply, and too control territory (Lorenz,1966,1974). Feldman then began to explain his reasoning of why he believes these particular theories our true by supporting it with another case study involving juveniles. Group A watched a film where adults were striking a bobo doll, while Group B was watching a film with no acts of aggression, after watching these films, the kids in Group A was shown to act violently towards one another while Group B was more peaceful and interactive towards each other. To support Feldman’s analysis, according to Psychology Today, boys that played a violent game was acting a lot more aggressive toward each other than the other group of boys who was simply watching them play the video game (Harding,2009). Another case study which may support Feldman’s belief comes from CNN.com where they state, “Kids in both the U.S. and Japan who reported playing lots of violent video games had more aggressive behavior months later than their peers who did not, according to the study, which appears in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics” (Bushman,2012). Even though it’s confirmed that males usually act through instrumental aggression (aggression motivated by the desire to obtain a concrete goal), and females usually channel their aggression relationally, (nonphysical aggression intended to hurt another person’s feelings”, it is a fact that both sexes will show both types of aggression especially if their exposed to it on a daily basis. Toddlers watch and mimic adults, who usually have the juveniles, act in the same manner. These findings ultimately have consequences, especially in urban communities where violence and crime is rampant. This creates a cycle for kids in the poverish communities and supplying new criminals to jail because that’s all they see and knows on a daily basis. Another case study (which was done in a rural community) has juveniles learning emotional coping mechanisms so one can learn to control their anger when they are upset. The ending result showed that the kids started utilizing the techniques and showed no traces of aggressive behavior. To conclude Feldman’s observations of the kids, he stated that juveniles don’t just learn how to be aggressive by watching others, but can also learn how to avoid confrontations also.