Childhood Acts of Animal Cruelty and Consequences - Research Paper Example

? “Childhood acts of animal cruelty as possible predictors of subsequent criminal and antisocial behaviours towards humans” Any action that influences the presentation or performance of an entity is designated as behaviour. Conduct, or mannerism, involves diverse cognitive operations, vital in shaping the personality of the individual. Psychology encompasses a thorough perception of psychological and conducts processes, it provides an insight and consideration towards brain functioning, communication, interpersonal predispositions, motivation and social conduct by involving various aspects of human nature such as developmental process by which an individual is nurtured. Childhood experiences play enormous role in defining the personality. Aggression or antisocial behaviour towards animals or humans place a deep psychological impact on the young and budding psychology of the child. The present article deals with the co-happening between animal abuse and violence or anti-social predisposition towards humans. The article draws attention towards the impact of animal abuse, an act of antisocial behaviour on the psychology of the child. Introduction As an individual matures, perception and understanding about the circumstances and situations augment as well. Some may have the intellect to understand others, learn about the nature and circumstances, and react to an event in more pleasing manner, while others tend to be short tempered and reactionary towards a situation and display rage and anguish. Antisocial behaviour encompasses a kind of behaviour that is deficient in contemplations or thoughtfulness for others, which may bring devastating consequences in the society. Such behaviour could be due to mal-intentions, gross negligence, work failure, resulting in serious legal offence. Government has set rules and laws to deal with such anti-social behaviour and to keep a check on such actions. Observations reveal that aggression displayed by a child or injustice being witnessed by the kid right in the formative years may influence the psychology of the child. Persistence of such characteristics may lead to an altered psychological development right from the childhood leading to anxiety, irascible and hot-tempered attitude (Berger, 2003). Antisocial behaviour is different from the socialization as it involves non-adherence to the rules and regulations set by the society for a peaceful co-existence. Anti-social behaviour may result in the criminal temperament. According to The Crime and Disorder Act (1998), half of the crimes committed is because of anti-social behaviour disorder persisting in the individuals and, thus, antisocial behaviour could be defined as behavior that caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household as the perpetrator (“Anti-Social Behaviour”, n. d.). The characteristics may onset in the childhood due to some abuse or injustice faced by the individual, inculcating the seeds of hatred, anguish and rebellious nature. These childhood experiences have lasting implications and alter the personality of the individual. It may be the resultant of adolescent rage or rebellious temperament of adulthood. Depending upon the age, antisocial behaviour is termed as conduct disorder when observed in childhood, antisocial personality disorder, when observed in adults. Studies highlight that conduct disorders if seed in early stages of life, earlier to puberty are likely to prolong till the adulthood which is displayed in the form of aggression, in contrast to the anti-social temperament that develops after puberty where rehabilitation chances are high and a child may not continue with the antisocial behaviour in the adulthood. In the present scenario, antisocial behaviour in the form of untruthfulness, robbery, ruining property, breaking and entering, sexual stabbing etc are augmenting because of the prevailing stress, lack of jobs, media influence, for amusement, inability to meet the cut-throat competition and wager to be ahead in the competition, could be observed. To justify self-worth, individuals are crossing any boundaries leaving room for frustration, anguish as well as dissatisfaction (Hartup, 2005). Environmental influences inculcate the seeds of anti-social temperament. Antisocial behaviour is genetic or not could not be established but it is influenced by the environment is evident. Literature Review: Implications Of Childhood Animal Cruelty On The Development Leading To The Criminal Temperament In Adulthood According to Anderson and Huesmann (2003), aggressive behaviour above the acceptable range bears intention to harm and becomes the motive of the person. This is of paramount significance in understanding the impact of animal or sexual abuse on the developing psychology of the child as it links human aggression and damage committed against animals highlighting the fact that aggression displayed against animals may incite cruelty in the individual. As psychology is the science that provides an insight towards logical thinking with high consideration, it enables one to understand the behaviour of the individual and, therefore, it finds application in recognizing mind process and correlate behaviour of the individuals with the circumstances imposed upon them. In view of behaviour, Ascione (1999) defined animal abuse as ‘socially unacceptable behaviour that intentionally causes unnecessary pain, suffering, or distress to and/or the death of an animal’. The abuse caused to the animal is intentional and resulting in anguish, pain as well as distress to the animal, this deliberate action is usually performed to motivate animal. Further, such motivational act may also results in inculcating the feeling of aggression in human nature and, hence, generating the tendency that in order to make others do as per the wish, cruelty could be practiced, what is similar to the case with the animal abuse in order to make the animal obey orders or commands. It is also observed that more severe animal abuse is practised to perform torture on human, involving acts like kill, rape, bullying, mockery, hitting, forceful physical relationships, punishing if one is not obeying the commands as done with the animals. The augmenting prevalence of such actions has enhanced the rate of crime. It is desired that the rules set by the authorities and legislative bodies to reduce animal abuse should be enforced and to be followed strictly to reduce the crime rate. In order to understand the behavior pattern observed in animal motivation, Kellert and Felthous (1985) have proposed nine categories of motivation encompassing: 1. Efforts to control an animal, especially in the case when whipping a dog to stop barking. 2. Strike back action to retaliate, punishing the animal for apparent disobedience e.g. throwing away the animal out of the room, hitting against the wall for doing vomiting on the carpet. 3. Biased attitude towards one breed of animal may inculcate the partial attitude towards a particular entity while hatred towards the other, such prejudice behaviour should not be appreciated. 4. Making the animal express aggression by performing acts like dog-fighting/bull fighting. 5. Exploiting animal aggression to make an impression on others especially of opposite sex. 6. Shocking individuals for fun, especially to those who are scared of animals. 7. Training animals to take revenge and asking the animal to kill other animal(s). 8. Dislocation of anguish from an individual to an animal. 9. Training animals to satisfy self anguish against the neighbor. These actions not only inculcate the feeling of anguish and aggression, but also sow the seeds of anti-social temperament in individuals which later on enable them to perform deeds and actions of cruelty. If such actions are observed early in the childhood and become a constant observation or a routine practice, the child grows with an attitude to consider the actions of cruelty as a normal phenomenon. These routine acts, which may be considered normal by majority of the population who practice animal abuse in their day-to-day activities, make the individual and children in particular unable to think logically and delineate between good or bad deeds. It carries a deep psychological implications and child growing with such an outlook will never hesitate to perform antisocial procedures. The actions if not controlled in the childhood pave the way for molding similar adolescence as well as adulthood which is deleterious not only for the individual but also for the society. Various developmental pathways are established to understand antisocial behaviour encompassing: A. Learning Pathways that lead to antisocial behaviour could be explained through Bandura’s (1973) social learning theory of aggression. Antisocial behaviour runs in family with aggressive children, where children are not disciplined and there is no regulation as well as monitoring or check on their deeds. On the contrary, parents themselves display non-judgmental attitude for aggressive behaviour or in certain cases parents give punishment to their child and control/ forceful corrective approaches (Gullone, 2011). B. Co-happening of Animal Abuse and Conduct Disorder. According to DSM-IV definition (American Psychiatric Association, 2000), Conduct Disorder (CD) could be defined as ‘a repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of others or major age-appropriate societal norms or rules are violated’. CD is displayed by the child around 5-6 years old as an early onset, or may be reported at an early adolescence which may be abrupt and not displaying any symptoms at an early childhood stage (Gullone, 2011). C. Exposure to Aggressive Atmosphere. There is an enhanced likelihood that if an individual, especially the child, is exposed to violence, sexual assault, illegal practice, asked to rear the animals, making the child work in a manner to draw maximum benefit from the animal power either by means of abuse or hitting, this victimization experiences may inculcate the seeds of prejudice. If the violence persists between the family members or violence is displayed towards animals, such a negative atmosphere is sufficient to generate violent and antisocial aptitude (Gullone, 2011). One of the remarkable findings that relate human violence and animal abuse elucidate that domestic violence and animal abuse occur jointly. Almost half of the abused women keep animals as their companions and half of these animals are abused by the executors of domestic violence in order to hurt the women or children, as concern is exhibited by the women and children for the animal. They are not able to leave their abusers as well as they have a fear that their companion animal is most likely to be killed by the abuser (Gullone, 2011). Data procured through studies highlight the fact that children who observe the abuse of animals are involved in abusing animals. Around 20-75% of children belonging to violence practicing families show 10-57% of the children are involved in animal abuse (Gullone, 2011). These statistical findings visualize that children who are being exposed to the violent atmosphere and those who witness animal abuse in their day-to-day lives are more likely to consider acts of violence as a normal behaviour and, therefore, they practise such actions in their routine habits which later on become devastating when they start practicing it with humans. Further observation revels that 100% sexual homicide offenders display the history of animal abuse. Moreover, 70% of all animal abusers have committed not less than one criminal offense and as many as 40% of the cases have committed crimes against humans. Lastly, 48% of rapists and 30% of child molesters are animal abusers (Hodges, 2011). Act of violence, either in terms of bullying or animal abuse, is unacceptable and such individuals require a complete psychoanalysis to come out of such predicament. Early psychological interventions and cognitive behaviour therapy could bring changes, but these interventions should be practised by the entire group for individual treatment could not be of much help. Cognitive psychology deals with generation of awareness, remembrance and trouble resolving expertise. The ability or the proficiency to react to a given situation defines the cognitive temperament or the cognitive psychology of the individual. Thoughtful approach is desired to alter the perception and outlook of the individual and at times deep seated violence in the subconscious mind may at times make a person to react with the situation in a different manner. Utilizing mind processes are essentially imperative to grasp the situation and thinking aptitude of others. Mind processes help an individual to take hold of or grapple industrial organization, move of the competitor, getting ahead in the augmenting competition, designing curriculum, learning temperament, memory skill enhancement to survive in the mounting competition. Various physiological (biological) processes are regulated by means of genetic and cellular processes responsible for attitude, memory skills and learning temperament (Pinel, 2010). Research carried out across the world and literature accumulated highlights the fact that childhood exposure to criminal attitude towards animals inculcates ruthlessness towards the animals in childhood which gradually develops in criminal attitude towards the humans as well. Thus, various psychological theories could be applied to understand the psychological implications of the childhood experiences of animal cruelty. These psychological theories are applied as psychology generates logical thinking, keeping humane in concise, to understand the behaviour of a person, and devise methods to enhance the personality to impose congenial influence on the society or social ambience of the individual. Tremendous research has been conducted towards mental and behavioural issues besause theories are required to accommodate mentally and physically challenged individuals. Theories concern diverse behavioural issue. Psychology is an amalgamation of many scientific and social disciplines encompassing biology, clinical aspects, cognitive aspects; it helps an individual to enhance personality together with social predisposition, empowering to deal with autism, training cases to recognize emotional and facial expressions over the years (Cavella). Behavioural theories involve alteration in behaviour through habituation and training. Affection and attention by every member in child's vicinity aids emotional development and a gradual social interaction builds up. On the other hand if the child witness cruelty toward the living beings the psychological implications are high and this conveys the message that the act is worth praising and should be appreciated as well as implemented towards humans also (Cavella). Cognitive psychological theory involves a deep insight for internal state of mind, ability to deal with issues related with animal cruelty encountered in day-to-day pursuits. Theory could be utilized for understanding response of criminal attitude under a given condition, a positive directs further formulation of measures to enhance the development, a methodological way to study cruelty towards animals while gradual improvement could be monitored and recorded. Cognitive psychological perspectives involves solution to problem by logical and rationale thinking, enabling thoughts in constructive and innovative manner to support positive modifications (Cavella, n. d.). Conclusion Psychology is the science that creates an understanding towards a logical thinking, an ability in keeping humane in concise, a way where an understanding is built up about the behaviour of a person, and methods could be devised to enhance what is lacking in the personality and how well an individual be groomed to have a sound and congenial influence on the society or influence social ambience of the individual. The Behavioural Model emphasizes the fact how the environment shapes the personality of the individual and certain motivational factors that provide an impact on the individual’s behaviour. It came into picture when introspection and psychoanalysis were prevalent and laid prominence on observed stimuli and behaviour responses. The present article highlights the fact that psychology of the individual is the amalgamation of various aspects – cognitive and social perspectives – responsible to shape the personality and behaviour that pave the way for the individual being social or anti-social. Promoting a healthy environment of care, affection, feelings towards each other and towards every living creature builds congenial atmosphere and is required to minimize the anti-social behaviour and, hence, to eradicate crime prevailing in the society. References American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. American Psychiatric Association: Washington, DC, USA. Anderson, C. A., & Huesmann, L. R. (2003). Human aggression: A social-cognitive view. The Sage Handbook of Social Psychology. Hogg, M. A., & Cooper, J., Eds. Sage Publications Inc.: Thousand Oaks, CA, USA, p. 296-323. Anti-social Behaviour. (n.d.) 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