Lifting Hatred from Media: Key Concepts in Learned Apathy - Essay Example

Behaviorists like Skinner and Pavlov have positively reinforced our mindset with ideals that no longer serve us. They offer a simplistic view of the human condition that seeks to uphold a firm hand on controlling behavior. In their experiments, each used different terminology to describe treating a stimulus as a tool to justify a desired outcome or response. Pavlov’s dogs learned to salivate in the presence of a conditioned stimulus (i.e., a bell) which was initially paired with an unconditioned stimulus (i.e., meat powder) in order to generate a conditioned response. Like Pavlov, Skinner adds stimuli to natural animal behavior and asks that it teach a new trick to an old habit. This view has permeated our social fabric since the onset of public media as a tool to train our minds to accept and interpret films, books, magazines, and music according to corporate objectives. Such conditioning works for dogmatic politics which seeks to shape social norms through pressure and conformity. Should we then ask ourselves to find an alternative to stereotypical corporate agendas as a means to reduce violence and hate on a global level? Society’s future rests, therefore, in taming the shrew of indecision that tolerates the media’s inept regard for its audience. How will we conquer this giant that has many arms to hold our attention with a reality that has little connection with human suffering? Let’s prepare a ship to battle this monumental task of teaching a new conditioned response that upholds empathy in the face of adverse marketing campaigns which reduce sensitivity to violence and explicit sex.

According to Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General :
Perhaps we can use this instance as the ‘hold’ of our ship’s message: Conditioned responses to violent or aggressive media can be avoided through the deletion of the conditioned stimuli. Perhaps positive reinforcers, such as integrity and empathy, can be offered in the media’s multi-dimensional hold on our reality. Interactive games which offer tools that communicate brave acts through challenge and expertise, instead of “Dungeons and Dragons” which harm our need for self-protection through the use of evil as a means that justifies the gain, can invite innocence to build cooperative genius instead of terror-inspired hate.

Regardless of our insistence on blaming the media for much of this learned apathy toward human suffering, we need to consider individual biases and environmental agents which reflect our social norms. This, in turn, asks Pavlovian classical conditioning to recognize the power all factors have in molding both ourselves and our social ideals. However, if Skinner’s teachings on operant conditioning can offer us sails for allowing desired traits “air time”, then prized responses that meet our needs for intelligent and decent behavior will emerge as dominant patterns of being.