Tuesday, May 28, 2013

An Appetite for Aggression: The peculiar psychology of war likely holds answers for avoiding future atrocities


Summarized Reading




 

Scientific American Mind

May/June 2013
p. 46
 
 
Fear is a pure form of stress.
 
We all try as best as we can to avoid fear, but the emotion is the key to survival.
When humans recognize they are in acute danger, the brain triggers a cascade of physical alarms.
 
   Senses sharpen to take in information about prospective threats.
 
   Blood rushes to the muscles.
 
   The body releases chemicals to suppress pain.
 
Then the individual is ready either to run for cover or to stand and fight.
An aggressive move often is enough to make a foe back down.
 
Lashing out in self-defense is a common response.
 
Researchers call this facilitative aggression or reactive aggression.
 
There is another form of violence--an evil form--called appetitive aggression.
Appetitive aggression arises from the thrill of the hunt.
 
The act of planning an attack can arouse intense excitement.

Appetitive aggression is a common phenomenon--which makes it truly frightening.
 
The more that young men perceive violence as giving them feelings of superiority and pleasure that otherwise are lacking in their lives--the more frequently they engage in aggressive acts and the more the young men seek out the stimulation that hunting and killing provides.
 
Inflicting pain on others is part of a human's basic stock of behaviors--every bit as much as caring for the sick and the injured.
 
The question is why it is part of the basic stock of behaviors.

A few million years ago, our ancestors began to hunt and to eat meat.

This provided a concentrated source of energy lacking in an earlier all-vegetarian diet.
 
According to one theory, eating meat allowed humans' energy-intensive brains to grow bigger and more complex.
 
This evolutionary development provided a cognitive advantage that allowed humans to dominate the planet.
 
The more successful hunters could feed more offspring, attract more sexual partners, and attain higher status in a group.

Humans not only hunt other animals, but when conflict arises, humans hunt members of our own species.
 
Culture is what constrains individuals and society from wanton violence (malicious and unrestrained violence) by outlining who is friend and who is foe.
Humans are socialized into a code of conduct that disapproves of antagonizing those belonging to our own group.

Attention has not been devoted to understanding what the consequences are when the civil code of conduct is violated on a grand scale.
 
Insights into the psychology of war are all-important to help societies rebuild after periods of conflict.
 
Trauma research documents that the greater an individual's exposure to life-threatening events, the greater the likelihood the person will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
 
This connection has been observed in soldiers and civilians.
 
In the evolutionary past of humans, the question becomes whether the killing of our own kind evolved as an innate strategy for securing greater reproductive success.
 
Perhaps violence might not always lead to trauma.

An opportunity to examine the idea arose with 269 Rwandan prisoners who were accused or convicted of crimes related to the genocide that occurred in 1994.
 
The prisoners were asked about the types of trauma they encountered and were asked about the crimes they committed.
 
The severity of their PTSD symptoms were assessed and the prisoners were probed to determine whether they had acquired a taste for violence.

Two questions asked of the prisoners were:
 
   Once fighting has started, do you get carried away by the violence?
 
   Once you get used to being cruel, do you want to be crueler and crueler?
 
One-third of the men answered they did; few women said that it was true for them.
 
In two other questions, more than one-half of the men agreed that they tended to get carried away by the violence of a fight, and that defeating an opponent was more fun when they saw blood.
 
30% of the women agreed they get carried away, and 40% admitted that blood made defeating an opponent more fun.
 
Although women were not as likely to develop a zeal for aggression, they were not immune to it.

Data collected from Rwanda, Ugandan child soldiers, and South African criminal offenders showed a trend.
 
The more violent the events were that these people witnesses or committed--the higher their rating on the questionnaire concerning appetitive aggression.
 
These higher scores also predicted fewer symptoms of PTSD; the correlation is that relishing violence benefited their mental health.

Observing atrocities and engaging in them predicts the enjoyment of cruelty.
Despite these findings conflicting with society's deeply held sense that violence is morally repulsive, the findings help the public comprehend how conflicts perpetuate and how so many people can die so quickly in genocidal sweeps.

In 2011, military historian Sönke Neitzel and social psychologist Harald Welzer published excerpts from the transcripts of World War II Allies who had eavesdropped on captured soldiers from the German Wehrmacht (German armed forces; combined German military branches).
 
The conversations revealed that among some of the fighters, there was a fascination with violence and the hunting down of humans.
 
The revelations upset the former war participants who feared being labeled as monsters.
 
But the transcripts were consistent with studies.

Then there is the question as to what happens when combatants return to society.
 
The hypothesis was that their lust for violence would subside.
 
Evidence showed that those who spent more time in society after the events of atrocity, the lower their scores on aggression but the higher their symptoms of trauma.
 
This is because violence is perceived as more acceptable when operating in perpetrator mode, but it becomes less acceptable when the person is returned to the tempering influence of social culture.

All the data suggests that the thrill of the kill is not a sign of mental illness and is it is not uncommon.
 
Human ancestors on the hunt were not so different from contemporary combatants.

Both groups experience great hardships; sometimes they must track their prey for days; and they must suppress their fear of being injured or killed entirely.
To endure these conditions, behaving brutally must become rewarding and potentially pleasurable.

This is not to say that humans enjoy murder.
 
Only child soldiers--who have been recruited by force before reaching puberty--sometimes describe their first kill in glowing terms.
 
Most everyone experiences extreme stress.
 
But relentless battle can break down moral inhibitions and can alter perceptions of actions.
 
War changes people.

Former soldiers talk of how their previous life provided them the opportunity to fight, rape, and kill.
 
They discuss their overwhelming sense of isolation now that they no longer are involved in heroic deeds that other fighters understand, but that civilians reject summarily.
 
Many express how they miss the power and how the sight of blood gets them going.

Because the public struggles to comprehend what happens in war, soldiers often lack finding and receiving adequate social support when they return to civilian life.
 
They may struggle with emotions that conflict with the values of their surrounding culture.
 
They may fail to adjust to new opportunities and new ways of life.
 
In order to begin counseling combatants, it is important to understand their experiences in the heat of battle so as to integrate them back into society and to help curb the calamity brought on by violence.
 
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