Social Interaction Theory - Essay Example

Psychology and Criminology Psychology and Criminology Theories of aggression and violence include Social Interaction Theory, Excitation Transfer Theory, Script Theory, Cognitive Neoassociation Theory and Harris’ Group Socialisation Theory (Little et al 2003, p. 122). Aggression in humans is any behaviour aimed at other people often with an immediate intention to inflict harm and is either without provocation or in retaliation. Aggression is also a means to gain relative dominance in society and occurs in forms such as verbal communication or non verbal physical behaviour. Perpetrators have a common belief that their behaviour will inflict harm onto their targets, and the targets are always motivated to avoid such behaviour. On the other hand, violence is a form of aggression whose ultimate goal is to cause extreme harm, such as death. Although all forms of violence are aggression, many aggression instances are not necessarily violent (Lindsay & Anderson 2000, p. 538). Aversive events, according to the Cognitive Neoassociation Theory, produce negative affect that stimulates physiological responses, communicative motor reactions, memories and thoughts often associated with tendencies of fight and flight. Such negative events may range anywhere between provocations, frustrations, unpleasant smells, uncomfortable temperatures and loud noises. While flight tendencies are associated with fear, the fight associations will lead to basic feelings of fury. An examination of the Cognitive Neoassociation Theory shows that behavioral tendencies, emotions and aggressive thoughts are all linked together in a person’s memory. It also shows a basic assumption in which cues believed to be present when an aversive event takes place will be associated with the event, emotional and cognitive responses that the event triggers. The Social learning Theory provides that aggressive responses are acquired the same way as people acquire any other forms of complex social behaviour, which is either through the process of observational learning or direct experience (Tremblay 2000, p. 137). Observational learning could be from a peer group, although only up to a certain degree and from what parents do in front of children. Direct experience may include persons abused as children, which could further be compounded by their ending up in adoptive homes without stable peer groups. If a child underwent abuse at various developmental stages, brain damage is often a consequence of the direct experience. 2 It is true that violent gangs have presented real and complex dangers in urban centers ranging from London to Cape Town and Rio to Chicago. This has resulted in high degrees of public anger and fear, and instabilities in young adults and children. However, myths and stereotypes relating to violent crime have also been developed and circulated mostly through the global television and film media, which have fed the escalated global consciousness with information that gangs are an elementary evil in the society (Jerin & Fields 2005, p. 79). At the same time, a range of stakeholders that include local and global actors such as the police, policymakers, journalists, academics, youth workers and the perpetrators themselves, respond to and define violent crime differently and often contradictorily. According to a study by the Glasgow University, the police acknowledge that prison sentences may be ineffective, especially for the younger violent criminals, but they also believe it is the best solution for persistent offenders. However, the same study found that the community disagrees with the aspect of long prison sentences as a stereotyped perception and instead opt to focus on alternative ways of curbing violent crime, particularly among young members of violent gangs. Although the community feels that the members should be given exit avenues with fewer restrictions, critically examining that option reveals that not all violent criminals will be accessible for social assistance. The criminal justice system supports this alleged police stereotyping by asserting violent criminals chose that trend as a way of life since it appealed to them and they cannot identify sufficient negative consequences that can convince them to quit. Typologies that relate to violent crime can be first be categorised as either internally motivated or externally motivated, and in the two typologies, individuals respond to stimuli to act violently (Tremblay 2000, p. 138). Then, they can also be categorised in terms of lack, failure or absence of externally or internally grounded constraints that can prohibit or inhibit persons from responding to the stimuli, and the constraints are represented as social or self control. However, critical examination of the theories associated with these topologies, such as the exchange theory, patriarchal theory, inequality theory and ecological theory tend to reduce the perception of violent crime to one set of variables or one primary variable (Sampson & Wilson 2000, p. 152). Taking a multi-cellular model to explain violent crime, external motivations may be taken to be ecological and inequality while the constraints are general systems and ecological the general systems as well. On the other hand, internal motivations are inequality and pathological conflicts while constraints are also pathological conflicts. 3 & 5 Peter Sutcliffe, a British serial killer also referred to as the Yorkshire Ripper by the press, murdered 13 women and attempted to murder another seven, for which he is serving 20 concurrent life sentences (Bilton 2003, p. 14). The sentence was given after the judge turned down please of diminished responsibility after four psychiatrists classified him to be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. He regularly targeted prostitutes in Bradford and Leeds. His initial obsession with killing prostitutes may have originated from payment arguments but later, he alleged that God’s voice had sent him on the prostitute-killing mission. He even told his family that he had been cleaning the streets of prostitutes that he referred to as filth and bastards. Having been born within a normal environment, he is said to have been much of a loner but generally attached to his mother and a poor school performer. After quitting school aged 15, he was fascinated with visiting the wax museum to see specimens showing the effects of venereal diseases and soon worked as a gravedigger for the municipal, where he stole from the bodies he buried. In terms of psychological theories, Sutcliffe is seen to be a visionary killer who is not in touch with reality, is schizophrenic and feels driven by voices from God in his head to kill prostitutes. According to him, his quick and focused acts of killing seem to be a job he must complete (Bilton 2003, p. 19). From the missionary perspective of a serial killer, he is also seen to feel he has a duty to kill the prostitutes whom he sees as litter after judging them to be undesirable or unworthy. Aileen Carol Wuornos, on the other hand, was a female serial killer who targeted men in Florida, claiming they had raped or attempted raping her while she worked as a prostitute (Reynolds 2003, p. 74). She claims the murders were in self-defense efforts. However, she was convicted for six of the murders and handed the death sentence via lethal injection. She was born two months after her parents divorced and her father incarcerated, which led to her never meeting him. He was diagnosed as a schizophrenic who sexually assaulted children, and he committed suicide in prison. She was abandoned at age four, by her mother, and this led to her and her brother’s adoption by their maternal grandparents. She was only nine when she became sexually active at school in exchange for food, drugs and cigarettes. She had a troubled childhood, where she even had sex with her brother and her alcoholic grandfather would also assault her sexually, often beating her while she was naked. At 13 years old, she was impregnated by her grandfather’s friend after being raped (Russell 2002, p. 19). Wuornos’ case shows that genetics can have an influence and multiple genes may have additive impacts on criminal behaviour, since her father also assaulted children sexually. Then, when analysed as a missionary killer, Wuornos may also be seen to murder men only because she has judged them to be unworthy after the undesirable encounters she has had with them since childhood, including his own brother and grandfather. 4 The cases of Sutcliffe and Wuornos show that for one to become a serial killer, a long and tedious process takes effect as it is not a discrete event. Serial killers have congenital tendencies to think and behave in ways leading to the killings, when combined with appropriate environmental stressors. Such combinations may lead to the development of sexual dysfunction, self control and self esteem problems, which have a cyclic effect of feeding on each other developing maladaptive social skills. While the two serial killers can fit into certain stereo types, certain stereotypes can be dispelled from their two cases. For instance, it has been stereotyped that sex is the only motivation for the serial killer. To an extent, it usually is part of the motivation, but the stereotype is not entirely true, because for Sutcliffe and Wuornos, sex was only a lure to get hold of their victims. Another stereotype is that of serial killers only being white males, but the case of Wuornos proved otherwise, since serial killers can be found in diverse races. For example, there has been Charles Ng from Hong Kong; Derrick Todd Lee from Louisiana, who was an African American; Rory Conde from Colombia; and Rafael Ramirez, a Mexican native. Although Wuornos case does not specifically mention her having any problems with the penis envy concept, the fact that she was already sexually active at nine years may mean she already knew what males had that she did not (Reynolds 2003, p. 69). At that age, she might have developed sexual desires for her brother probably because of her father’s absence, but her ego might have grown out of control, hence desiring to have control over men who she claimed raped her. This exemplifies the concept of out of controlled Id. References Bilton, M 2003, Wicked beyond belief: the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, HarperCollins, New York. Jerin, R, & Fields, C 2005, Murder and mayhem in the media, Prentice Hall, New Jersey. Lindsay, JJ & Anderson, CA 2000, ‘From antecedent conditions to violent actions: a general affective aggression model’, Personal Social Psychology, vol. no. 2, pp. 26:533-547. Little, T, Jones, S, Henrich, C & Hawley, P 2003, ‘Disentangling the “whys” from the “whats” of aggressive behavior’, International Journal of Behavioral Development, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 122-133. Reynolds, M 2003, Dead ends: the pursuit, conviction and execution of female serial killer Aileen Wuornos, the damsel of death, St. Martins True Crime Library, New York. Russell, S 2002, Lethal intent: the shocking true story of one of Americas most notorious female serial killers, Pinnacle, South Carolina. Sampson, R & Wilson, WJ 2000, Toward a theory of race, crime, and urban inequality, Coursewise, Wisconsin. Tremblay, R 2000, ‘The development of aggressive behaviour during childhood: what we have learned in the past century’, International Journal of Behavioral Development, vol. 23, no. 4 129-141. Read More