Chapter 3. The Roles of Innate Impulses and Learned Moral Beliefs in Individual and Group Violence

3.1 Introduction

Chapter 2 describes conditions of commitment to defensive non-violence under which war might initially end, and related conditions of abhorrence of war under which, once ended, war could be permanently abolished. This chapter and those that follow attempt to make a convincing case that war is susceptible to being permanently abolished. The evidence and arguments adduced address three of the four obstacles to the abolition of war raised in Chapter 1: the view that human beings have innate aggressive instincts that trigger or foster war; the view that moral beliefs which warrant and motivate war persist; and the view that even if peace were initially achieved, pressures would arise sooner or later that would lead to war. The first two of these obstacles pertain to the feasibility of the initial abolition of war, as well as the feasibility of the long-term maintenance of peace; the third concerns only the long-term maintenance of peace. I defer to later study further elaboration of other aspects of the conditions under which peace might initially be achieved, including a response to the fourth obstacle to peace cited in Chapter 1, the view that insuperable obstacles block the establishment of effective international institutions for peacekeeping and peace enforcement.

The material in Chapters 3–6 supports the hypotheses about the achievement and maintenance of peace with the argument that war is one among many forms of socially-sanctioned group violence, and is subject to rules of individual motivation and social organization that apply to all forms of socially-sanctioned group violence:92

• The role of innate aggressiveness in causing violence: Some individual acts of violence (‘crimes of passion’) and some group acts of violence (mob rioting) are motivated by aggressive impulses (feelings of hostility and desire to hurt); but even such acts include an important component of rational choice. To the extent that acts of violence are motivated by innate impulses rather than rational choice, they represent a loss of control. In sane adults, aggressive impulses do not represent a spontaneous instinct or drive; they are always reactions to a source of provocation and they subside when the provocation is removed. There is no form of innate aggressive energy in human beings which arises spontaneously and accumulates until it is expressed in one form or another. From the viewpoint of the society or nation, institutionalized, socially-sanctioned forms of group violence are always the product of deliberate choice based on calculations of risk, cost, and benefit. From the viewpoint of the individual, active participation in (and to some degree, even passive non-interference with) socially-sanctioned group violence represents not the loss of control indicated when the motive for an act is an aggressive impulse, but rather the exercise of deliberate, highly organized choice and compliance.
• The role of moral beliefs in preventing non-sanctioned violence and permitting sanctioned violence: In every culture, learning to control the expression of feelings and impulses is a central part of childhood development. Among other things, learning to ‘sublimate’ aggressive and sexual impulses, that is, to redirect or rechannel the former away from acts of violence and the latter away from sexual acts, is central to ego formation and to the development of a healthy, mature adult. The developmental process creates a baseline inhibition (a habit or predisposition) against violent behavior and an ability to choose whether or not to commit acts of violence—both of which are control functions whose operation involves specific areas of the brain. I hypothesize that the universal childhood process of learning to sublimate aggressive impulses creates an internalized moral presumption in adults that all forms of violence are wrong; and that society superimposes on this underlying presumption a set of exceptions to the general rule, along with reasons and contexts for the exceptions. The exceptions are morally-explained, socially-sanctioned forms of individual and group violence. The main role of learned moral beliefs in socially-sanctioned group violence is to lower the barrier to violence which all individuals internalize as a fundamental moral premise.
• Changes in moral beliefs about and practices of socially-sanctioned forms of group violence: From time to time in various cultures, new forms of socially-sanctioned group violence appear or existing forms of socially-sanctioned group violence disappear. Changes in practice are associated with corresponding changes in socially-taught moral beliefs about acceptable and unacceptable forms of violence. In some cases, the rationale for a given form of sanctioned violence seems to fade, giving way to the presumption that it is not an acceptable form of behavior: in such cases, spontaneous changes in moral belief appear to be the main cause of the demise of a previously sanctioned practice. In other cases, changes in political, social, or economic organization and related changes in world view seem to lead to the rise or demise of a given practice of socially-sanctioned violence and to the condoning moral beliefs associated with it.
• The role of moral beliefs in preventing a recurrence of previously sanctioned forms of group violence: Forms of violence which were once socially sanctioned but then abolished never recur in the societies that previously practiced them. The reasons for this stem from changes in consciousness, world view, and moral belief, not from the absence of conditions similar to those in which the violence was previously sanctioned. I hypothesize that there is a loss-of-innocence or consciousness-raising process which occurs when the moral rationale for a practice to which there is an underlying aversion is stripped away: once a given practice is perceived as an absolute evil (not a necessary or justifiable evil, nor, potentially, the lesser among evils), this perception cannot be erased; future efforts to restore the practice on the grounds that it is an acceptable or necessary evil fall on deaf ears.

When applied to war, these general rules regarding the roles of innate impulses and learned moral beliefs in the conduct and prevention of socially-sanctioned forms of group violence suggest the following specific conclusions: War is not the product of an innate aggressive ‘drive,’ nor of innate aggressive impulses, nor is it a inevitable part of the human condition. It is a product of culturally-shaped moral beliefs about this form of violence, introduced at a certain juncture in human history. Generally speaking, such beliefs tend to change, both by fading and by being eroded when changing political and economic circumstances reduce the perceived utility of a given form of violence. There is reason to believe that both fading and erosion are weakening the moral beliefs that make war socially acceptable and motivate individual participation in war. Moreover, the history of other forms of socially-sanctioned violence suggests that if war is initially abolished, a more profound abhorrence of the practice is likely to develop, which will prevent its future recurrence.

The remainder of this introduction expands on the obstacles to the abolition of war which are addressed in Part II; it introduces the types of evidence supporting the views outlined above; and it outlines the organization of the evidence in this and the succeeding chapters.

Skepticism about the Abolition of War

Skepticism about the feasibility of the permanent abolition of war is usually based on ideas about innate human aggressiveness, stress-induced violence, or the weakness of peace enforcement institutions. Some argue that since human beings have innate aggressive tendencies, it is foolish to expect human societies to stop committing acts of aggression, permanently and completely. Even if some nations ceased to make war for one reason or another, innate aggressiveness would generate ‘rogue’ states, with aggressive political leaders who will try to use armed force to advance their national interests, and easily-aroused followers willing to implement such decisions.

Another widespread view is that, unlike the actions of individuals, the actions of nation-states are not constrained (or only very loosely constrained) by moral considerations. Nations, the argument goes, are likely to take any action which their leaders perceive to be in the national interest; and if war is likely to promote national interests, nations will make war. This argument may seem a bit overdrawn, but a more modest version of the claim is quite compelling: nations which experience severe stress (economic, environmental, political, etc.) may resort to war in an effort to avoid losses, make compensating gains, or strengthen national cohesion. In other words, regardless of potential future changes in institutions and norms, in times of great stress, nations may tum to war as a remedy of last resort.

Finally, many political analysts argue that in theory, war might be abolished if there were a global counterpart to national governments—that is, a world government with a monopoly on armed force—but in practice, such a government would pose an unacceptable risk of world dictatorship, and for this reason its creation is both undesirable and unlikely. This means that even in the best case, international peacekeeping institutions are likely to be too weak to prevent war or quickly end up backsliding (that is, the re-introduction of war after it had stopped) by rogue states, aggressive leaders, or nations under stress.

Each of these doubts about the feasibility of the abolition of war has considerable prima facie plausibility; and the combination of the three might seem to seal the fate of abolition. The hypotheses presented in Chapter 2 about the role of moral beliefs in perpetuating and preventing war were developed, however, with the goal of putting these doubts to rest. Thus, in this and the succeeding chapters, as I elaborate on the role of moral beliefs in matters of war and peace, the material is organized and focused so as to provide a direct, full response to each concern.

Evidence for the Key Role of Moral Beliefs in Institutionalized Forms of Group Violence

Diverse kinds of evidence support the view that despite innate human aggressiveness, powerful moral opposition to war, once achieved, would prevail even in situations of extreme stress and in the absence of an all-powerful world government. History and anthropology offer precedents for the permanent demise of socially-sanctioned forms of group violence and violation that were once widely practiced and, at the time, considered vital to the well-being of society—practices whose abolition was comparable to that of war in character, magnitude, and scope. In those earlier cases, the initial ending of each practice seems to have been due to changes in circumstances and in world view and moral beliefs, while the later global reach and permanence of each ban appears to have been the product of an increasingly deeply-rooted, universal, self-perpetuating moral belief that the practice could not be justified under any circumstances. The historical and anthropological evidence for the role of moral beliefs in the practice and subsequent abolition of previously sanctioned forms of institutionalized violence is discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 surveys a number of forms of violence that were once widely practiced and socially sanctioned but later abolished; and it discusses the role of moral beliefs in the rise and demise of those practices. Chapter 5 presents a detailed case study of the practice of socially-sanctioned group violence which is most remote from modern experience—and therefore most powerful in illustrating the importance of learned moral beliefs in accounting for sanctioned violence—that is, ritual cannibalism.

A separate but related body of evidence concerning the relationship between moral beliefs and violent behavior, reviewed in this chapter, lies in an area that cuts across psychology, psychoanalytic theory, social psychology, neurobiology, and criminology. Experimental, clinical, survey, and statistical research and theoretical studies in these fields suggest a model of how biological features of aggression, early childhood development, and culturally-shaped, normatively-loaded ideas about violence interact to permit or prevent violent behavior by groups and by individuals. The remainder of this introductory section presents the main conclusions drawn from these studies, which are discussed in more detail in subsequent sections.

Recent psychobiological and neurological research has revealed a great deal about the innate, physiologically-based tendency of human beings, when provoked, to exhibit physical signs of angry arousal and to experience hostile affect, and, sometimes, aggressive impulses (that is, impulses toward violence or other harmful behavior) toward the source of the provocation. Every recent study underscores, however, that there is no evidence that aggressive impulses necessarily lead to violence, and no evidence for the existence of a physiologically-based form of aggressive ‘energy’ that can build up inside people until it is released, like an electrical charge or water behind a dam. On the contrary, recent research indicates that violent actions by mentally- and physically-healthy, mature human adults—whether conducted alone, in small groups, in large groups, or on behalf of society as a whole—are always the product of voluntary choice and of culturally-shaped cost-risk-benefit assessment by the perpetrator(s).

Under special circumstances, pathological states of human physiology may cause the subject to manifest forms of verbal or physical violence which are virtually involuntary: these states include brain lesions (created, for example, by accidents or tumors); abnormal brain conditions associated with severe retardation; and abnormal chemical or hormonal balances associated with psychosis and other severe mental illness. These conditions tend to dampen or eliminate the operation of areas of the brain and neural pathways which control the expression of affect, modulate or regulate behavior, and inhibit or ‘control’ (prevent, or determine the direction, form, and intensity of) acts of violence. Intoxication by alcohol and other drugs, and withdrawal from intoxication, can have similar effects, particularly those associated with irritation and uncontrolled or ill-controlled movement. In healthy, sober adults, learned ideas about acceptable forms of behavior, learned habits or patterns of behavior, and learned expectations about social rewards and punishments determine the form in which individuals express spontaneous impulses, including but not limited to anger and aggressive impulses.

Advances in the study of the brain, developmental psychology, and psychoanalytic theory all indicate that learning to control or ‘sublimate’ the expression of all kinds of feelings and impulses, including aggressive impulses, is a central aspect of the normal childhood sequence of growth and development. Sublimation permits planned, organized behavior by allowing the individual not to childishly ‘act out’ intense emotions, urges, or impulses, but instead to channel feelings into socially acceptable and socially productive action. As indicated above, for an adult to lose or fail to develop the ability to control the violent expression of hostile feelings is a sign of serious mental illness, retardation, brain damage, or severe chemical imbalance. The forms of behavior in which adults do express emotions and impulses are influenced by internalized cultural norms, some of which are learned in early childhood, others acquired later in life. Social norms tend to set particularly strong, clear limits in the realms of violence and sex, where the inability of individuals to control behavior could immediately affect the prospects for group survival by increasing the birth rate or the death rate.

Institutionalized, socially-sanctioned forms of group violence (including war), even more than individual acts of violence, are determined not by biologically-based aggressive impulses but by cognitively-controlled decisionmaking processes. The need for community and the importance of the community in the life of the individual motivate the perpetrators of institutionalized violence. Individuals carry out prescribed acts of violence because they need a social context for identity, they need social acceptance and approval, and they want to avoid opprobrium and punishment; and because they have internalized normatively-loaded, culturally-shaped beliefs about the violent practice as an acceptable means for the community to secure a valued goal.

The claim that learned, culturally-determined beliefs play a more important role than innate aggressive impulses in perpetuating war as a social institution, and that different beliefs could end war, is a special case of a more general claim: culturally-determined moral beliefs about acceptable and unacceptable forms of violence play a far more important role than innate aggressive impulses in the rise, conduct, and demise of all forms of institutionalized, socially-sanctioned group violence.

The next section of this chapter discusses in more detail the relationship between innate aggressive impulses and violent behavior in the individual. The third section addresses the shared and differing features of individual and group violence, socially-sanctioned and socially-banned forms of violence, and impulsive and institutionalized violence.

3.2 Sources and Features of Violence by Individuals

Is there an innate aggressive drive or instinct in human beings? If so, does it play an important role in the causes of war? And does it preclude the abolition of war? These questions can be answered today with far more authority and clarity than they could three decades ago, when two popular books—Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression (1967) and Robert Ardrey’s The Territorial Imperative (1967)—claimed that war is the product of an innate tendency to aggression embedded in the limbic system that humans inherited from pre-human species. The publication of these books and pressing public policy issues concerning war and crime led many psychologists and sociologists to undertake experimental, survey, statistical, and epidemiological studies in an effort to identify the innate (biological) and learned (social) sources of violent behavior. Over the same period, burgeoning research on neurology, biochemistry, mental illness, and brain damage provided far more fine-tuned means than had previously been available for investigating the biological etiology and somatic features of violent behavior in humans and other animals.

Despite their disparate vocabularies and contexts, studies across a wide range of disciplines93 show a substantial degree of consensus on the nature of the innate propensity to violence in human beings, and the impact of social learning factors on the tendency to perform violent acts. The over-arching conclusion is that acts of violence by mature, mentally- and physically-healthy, sober adults do not reflect an innate aggressive drive or instinct in the human species, which imposes an involuntary or semi-voluntary compulsion on individuals (acting singly or in groups) to conduct violent acts. Instead, violence on the part of healthy adults is the product of a deliberate, fully voluntary, cognitively-controlled decisionmaking process in which individuals weigh (even if poorly and briefly) the potential outcomes of the action, including harm to the victim, social approval or disapproval, legality, punishment, and other potential costs, risks, and benefits. In other words, to the extent that acts of violence by individuals are biologically driven, they are caused by abnormal, pathological conditions; normal biological conditions and development in humans create adults who are routinely able to inhibit violent action even when they experience intense stress or intense aggressive affect.

The following sections develop this perspective and its ramifications for the conduct and abolition of war. First, I look at the biological, social, and developmental psychological factors which in the overwhelming majority of individuals developmentally elicit a tendency to inhibit violence which prevails throughout the lifespan. In a small minority of individuals, on the order of five percent, the interaction of these factors leave violence-inhibiting neurological structures, patterns of behavior, and personality preferences undeveloped. In those individuals, biological, psychological, and conceptual factors will tend to facilitate or encourage violence throughout the lifespan. This section shows that rather than an innate aggressive drive, the innate features of aggression in individuals are: (1) a capacity for violent behavior, particularly in response to provocation; (2) innate somatic reactions to (or components of) the arousal of feelings of hostility or anger; and (3) physiological structures that in most individuals inhibit the expression of hostility or anger in violent behavior.

In the second section, I look at the later social influences which contribute to voluntary choices to commit violence among both the minority who are predisposed to violence and the majority who predisposed to non-violence.

Physiologically-based Aspects of Aggressive Impulses and Violent Behavior by Individuals

Over the past 30 years, there has been an explosion of research on aggression by biologists, psychologists, and anthropologists on aggression, following the ‘ethological’ accounts put forward by Lorenz and Ardrey. Pointing to examples of aggressiveness and territorial defense in the animal kingdom, Lorenz and Ardrey argued that the human species inherited both tendencies. Subsequent research showed that the activities among animals called ‘territorial defense’ actually involve two other forms of behavior: inter-male aggression, and differences in aggressive behavior on familiar and unfamiliar ground [Moyer (1976); see further below]. This clarification did not, however, put to rest the idea that human beings have an innate tendency toward aggression. On the contrary, studies of the ‘psychobiology’ of aggression have identified various physiological systems in humans which are regularly associated with anger (or irritation) and violence. These include neural brain localities, endocrine and hormonal levels, and manifestations of arousal or excitability. Research on mentally ill and brain-damaged patients and on populations of violent criminals indicates that certain brain lesions and excesses or deficits of certain chemicals are associated with unprovoked acts of violence.94

As Lorenz suggested, human physiology does include systems derived from those in pre-human animals—specifically, neurological structures and states of blood chemistry—which are associated with the onset or the cessation or inhibition of hostile, aggressive affect and (when it occurs) related violent behavior. Lorenz and Ardrey were wrong, however, in reading into animal behavior an innate tendency to pro-active aggression against others of the same species, except for male contests for sexual predominance in some species. The contexts and forms of violent attacks and aggressive posturing among non-human mammals are limited to four specific kinds:

Table. Types of Aggressive Behavior

Source: Moyer (1976, 1987)95

Of the four, only predatory aggression—that is, hunting other animals for food—involves unprovoked ‘offensive’ attacks, designed to kill or disable a living creature. This form of aggression has a direct counterpart in human behavior, which is hunting or fishing for food.

The other three forms of violence, particularly as exhibited among non-human primates, are specifically reactive and defensive in nature. Fear-induced violence is generally the result of being at the receiving end of predatory aggression, or being fearful of this. Exposure to a potentially dangerous foe produces a ‘fight or flight’ reaction, in which flight is always attempted first (except among mothers protecting their young), and fighting for survival is a last resort. Irritable aggression is a violent reaction to a source of irritation, which is most often pain, but can also be the frustration associated with a failure of an expected response or the withdrawal of an expected pleasure.

At first glance, inter-male aggression seems to be closest to the standard image of aggressive behavior in human beings: among primates, inter-male aggression involves hostility and aggressive displays by two males of the same species, who are competing for sexual access to female partners. But primate inter-male aggression differs from human war in all key respects:

• With rare exceptions, primate inter-male aggression is limited to aggressive posturing and causes no physical harm to either party.
• In situations where the two males are part of the same group (or becoming part of the same group), the function of the aggressive posturing is to establish the dominance order in the group without deadly violence. A surprising recent finding is that the dominance rank does not provide tangible benefits, such as access to more, better, or earlier food or sexual activity (unless the group is facing extinction). Instead, the function of the dominance order, along with that of the aggressive posturing, is to prevent uncertainty and resulting potentially deadly violence within the group.
• In situations where the two males are not part of the same group, the male which is on familiar territory will dominate the interaction, because his entire energy is dedicated to the confrontation, while the male which is on unfamiliar territory will be preoccupied with an ‘incompatible’ behavior, which is the caution, exploration, and readiness to flee that always predominates on unfamiliar territory.

Among non-human animals and, as far as can be detected physiologically, among humans, the aggressive reaction to a provocation (a predatory threat, an irritant, a competing male) ceases as soon as the provocation is removed: there is no residual aggressive energy to be discharged. Similarly, there is no accumulation or build-up of aggressive energy prior to the provocation (or, in the case of hunting for food, prior to the observation of a suitable prey).

Each of the four main types of aggressiveness in non-human animals is associated with specific somatic changes and intense activity in specific areas of the brain and neural network; and no two clusters of somatic effects can occur simultaneously. Because of the mutually exclusive character of aggressive reactions with each other and with certain other clusters of somatic effects (for example, those associated with humor, sexual arousal, or hunger), each cluster is called an ‘incompatible response’ to each of the others. If an incompatible response is induced, the prior somatic state will simply disappear.

The study of patients with brain damage has shown that the physiological sites and effects associated with various types of aggressiveness in humans resembles that in animals; but the similarity between humans and other animals in the somatic features of some forms of aggressive affect does not show that violent behavior is instinctive in human beings. On the contrary, one of the most important recent findings is that certain areas of the brain serve as ‘on-set’ and ‘off-set’ switches for aggressive behavior: the on-set switches turn on the somatic reactions and aggressive feelings associated with hostile responses to provocations; the off-set switches control the behavior that follows the arousal of hostility, inhibiting violence and other socially unacceptable actions. Experiments with animal (mainly mouse) brains, studies of human brain damage, and psychopharmacological studies all show that the on-set and off-set switches can be turned off or dampened by brain lesions and by drugs. Patients who suffer an accidental injury that creates a lesion in the off-set area exhibit abrupt outbursts of verbal abuse and physical violence (called ‘explosive violence’), which represent a dramatic change in behavior compared with their pre-injury pattern. Alcohol and illegal narcotics generally decrease or block the function of the violence-inhibitors, and withdrawal from the effects of alcohol and other illegal and prescribed drugs can have a similar impact. Earlier in this century, many mentally ill patients who exhibited extreme violence had the aggression ‘on-set’ area surgically removed, which made them exceptionally passive as well as non-violent. Today, medications are prescribed for this purpose.

Physiologically-induced episodic (repeated) violence which lies entirely beyond the voluntary control of the individual occurs only in the presence of certain pathological conditions: brain lesions in parts of the brain that regulate behavior; and abnormalities in body chemistry associated with some severe mental illnesses or with the use of intoxicants and other drugs which interfere with the operation of those parts of the brain (simulating brain lesion). In other words, the propensity of the overwhelming majority of individuals, who do not suffer from pathological neurological or neurochemical conditions and have not consumed alcohol or other drugs, is not to express aggressive impulses in violent behavior.

The normal condition of non-violence is a product not only of brain structures that regulate or inhibit violence, but also of the interactive development of the brain, behavior, perception, and personality in early childhood. Generally speaking, pathological physiological conditions impede and degrade developmental learning of the kind that helps prevent violent behavior. This learning includes the acquisition of language, the development of motor skills, and the development of a sense of mastery over the external environment. In other words, there are interactive social-biological feedback loops which tend to reinforce and strengthen the operation of the brain areas that inhibit violence in the course of the early childhood development of normally-endowed individuals, or to weaken the operation of those areas in individuals with abnormalities in regulatory systems or chemistry or with severe mental retardation. The opposite can also occur, however: appropriate nurturing and training can assist those with abnormalities to develop more normally, while neglect, violence, verbal abuse, and lack of physical activity can weaken autonomic regulation. Given these findings, it is not surprising that among lifetime career criminals with repeated violent offenses, the rates of brain malformation, psychosis, other severe mental illness, and mental retardation are several fold greater than they are in the population at large.

Finally, there is a well-documented correlation between the level of serum testosterone (and steroid hormones more generally) in the blood and violent behavior. In some way, hormones are believed to contribute to the extraordinarily skewed incidence of crime in general and violent crime in particular among males, who account for 90 percent of violent crime, and especially males between the ages of 14 and 18, who account for about half of all violent crime by males. (These statistics hold across many cultures, in which the absolute rates of violent crime differ widely.) The statistics of violent crime suggest that there are two main populations who engage in serious violence, with different motives and propensities. The first is a very small fraction of the population who participate in violent acts throughout their lives, from early childhood to past 50 and who are responsible for the bulk of ‘stranger violence’ (assault and homicide) associated with armed robbery and thrill-seeking violence. The second is a proportionately much larger group of teenage youths, who due to high testosterone levels or other features of adolescence, have aggressive impulses that are more easily aroused and more readily translated into violent action than is the case for the population at large. The same youths tend to drink or do drugs, further lowering their self-awareness and their neural inhibitors against violence; they participate in gangs and in other competitive small-group behavior, in which violence is admired, instigated, and encouraged; and they are responsible for the bulk of ‘friend and acquaintance’ violence, typically committed when the perpetrator (and, often, the victim) is intoxicated and engaged in rough-housing or other forms of competitive and often illegal activity.96

As suggested by the existence of behavior-regulating neurological structures and functions, which serve to inhibit the expression of aggressive affect in violent action, there is no innate human aggressive ‘drive,’ which, on its own, generates violent behavior. No physiological evidence at all has been found for the existence of an aggressive form of energy, which is capable of building up inside of individuals (or groups) and which must then be released in one form of action or another. Study after study explicitly rejects the ‘hydraulic’ theory of aggression suggested by Freud, when he postulated the existence of an aggressive drive.97 The physiologically-based tendency to aggression in (normally developed) humans is entirely reactive and basically defensive in nature. (This comment applies to acts of violence toward other humans: hunting and fishing for food are obviously pro-active forms of aggression.) For this reason, the use of the term ‘aggression’ (for the deed) or ‘aggressiveness’ (for the capability, intent, or propensity to harm), with its connotation of unprovoked attack or intrusion, is misleading. What human beings have inherited from pre-human species is not a tendency to launch unprovoked attacks on others of their own species, but a tendency to use violence as a last resort to defend against attacks by others and to end protracted pain or frustration caused by external factors.

The Impact of Social Learning on Predispositions to and Choices of Violent Behavior by Individuals

Increasingly, studies of the sources of tendencies to violent or non-violent behavior on the part of individual humans have identified a process involving the interactions of three main factors: (1) biology, specifically, neurological and neurochemical structures and states which tend to permit or inhibit violence; (2) social learning, in which parents, teachers, peers, other members of the community, television, and other media directly or indirectly teach or induce the child to conduct or not conduct violent acts in general and in specific situations; and (3) the psychological blending of biological predispositions and social influences in personality, habits of behavior, motivation, affect, and ideas about acceptable and unacceptable forms of behavior in the realm of violence and aggression. This view, sometimes called the “bio-psycho-social” model of the sources of aggression, was increasingly common during the 1970s and 1980s; and it predominates in the major scholarly studies published since 1990.98 The following discussion focuses on two types of social learning with substantially different effects on the tendency to violent behavior: first, the interaction between the child and its parents during the first five years of life, which tends to finalize the development of physiological and psychological aspects of the disposition of individuals to perform or not to perform violent acts in certain situations; and second, the impact of other, later social influences—such as teachers, peers, and television—on voluntary choices to perform or not to perform violent acts in various situations, made both by those who are disposed to violence behavior and by those who are not so disposed.

Parenting and early childhood development of the internalized ability to inhibit violent behavior

As noted earlier, lifelong tendencies toward violent or non-violent behavior tend to be set during the first five years of life, by an interaction between the physiological endowment of the individual and social learning.99 Children with a normal biological endowment and adequate parenting learn not to conduct violent acts and develop the ability to maintain control under enormous stress. In contrast, children with either problematic biological features or inadequate parenting fail to develop the ability to control violence and translate aggressive affect into non-violent (mainly verbal) forms of behavior. “By the time even very young children present in clinics, a self-perpetuating cycle of acting-out, punishment, and rejection resulting in more acting out has been firmly established” (Landy and Peters 1992, p 17). (The remainder of this part gives extensive excerpts from Landy and Peters 1992.)

Both parents and children bring innate endowments to their interaction. For parents, these include “their own experiences of being parented...and sense of control of circumstances” (p 17). In addition “the degree of social support and life stressors will impact significantly on the amount of energy and the emotional availability of the caregivers and may have an enormous impact” (p 17).

The infant brings a number of individual characteristics into the early relationship, such as the degree of predictability, responsiveness, irritability, hypersensitivity, and the like. “For the child who develops an aggressive conduct disorder, it is likely that a ‘goodness of fit’ with the principal caregivers does not exist and the infant begins to experience traumatic dyssynchronies at a very early age that start to produce significant aberrant social, biochemical, neurological, and emotional development. To protect himself or herself from the pain of these early interactions the infant may ‘close himself to stimuli, thereby inhibiting the generation of information necessary for continued growth’” (pp 17–18).

Early experience with the primary caregiver affects the development of affect regulation, that is, the child’s ability to “redirect, control, modulate, modify and bring about adaptive functioning in emotionally arousing situations” (p 3). In the first 3 months of life, the developmental goal in the sphere of affect regulation is “obtaining physiological homeostatis or self-regulation” (p 4) which allows the infant to “maintain a state of equilibrium in the face of internal and external stimulation” (p 4). Between 3 and 12 months, “the infant develops cognitive capacities that allow for an understanding of the relationship between actions and consequences and the formation of mental representations or memories of people and events” (p 6). Between 9 and 12 months, the key change is the development of a relationship with the primary caregiver which serves to organize affect, cognition, and behavior. As patterns of interaction with the primary caregiver “are internalized their emotional quality and synchrony will have a significant impact on the child’s style of affect regulation and ultimately on their [sic] capacity to reduce the expression of aggressive behavior under stress” (p 6). At first, the capacity for “object constancy” is fragile: it takes the infant many months to remember and utilize the memory of attachment figures in times of stress and frustration.

Between 12 and 24 months, “children become capable of displaying and labeling a full range of human emotions, including sympathy, jealousy, and other more subtle affective experiences. They develop an increasing awareness of self as an autonomous agent and, most important, change from a style of affect regulation that is primarily sensorimotor to one that relies on representational capacities. These growing symbolic capacities, which include language and pretend play, are vital in the further development of the ability to monitor, modify, and modulate behavior and emotional expression. Play and language...are used increasingly to modulate tension and anxiety throughout the second and third years of life. Similarly, representations of pleasant experiences, objects, and attachment figures become stable and begin to sustain the child during times of stress and separation from primary caregivers. Children become able to use negotiation and to inhibit behavior in response to limits.... Finally, prosocial behavior and empathetic response to distress of others [may occur] as early as 18 months” (p 7).

Between 24 and 36 months, “affect becomes much more integrated with thoughts and cognition. As language and play become more elaborate..., children become increasingly able to describe and control...anger” through language and play. “Well modulated children can talk about internal states and feelings, which facilitates control over non-verbal emotional expression and enhances regulation of the emotions themselves” (p 8).

Between 36 months and 60 months, children “begin to internalize standards and rules and to identify with the caregivers who have provided them with external limits for aggressive behavior and have modeled and encouraged capacities to modulate it. The development of conscience enables children to delay immediate impulses...and frees them from primary reliance on external controls and standards....” The capacity for empathetic response and an understanding of the viewpoint of others increases. “As part of this capacity, children are able to understand their own part in bringing about consequences. A sense of personal responsibility, a ‘wish to please’ as well as the desire to succeed become important in social adjustment and academic achievement....” (p 9).

Young children acquire the capacities discussed above “through a combination of biological maturation” and “sensitively attuned, appropriately timed interactions with caregivers” (p 9).

Socialization to permit or inhibit violent behavior in older children, teenagers, and young adults

Normally-developed children who do not exhibit exceptionally aggressive behavior by the age of 5 can develop a tendency to commit violence at a later age as a result of various social influences.100 During the still-formative late childhood and teenage years, substantial influence can be exerted by parents and other adults at school and in the community; by peers; and by television and other mass media. In each of these environments, the tendency to violent behavior can be increased by several mechanisms:

• Observing violent behavior on the part of others;
• Being subjected to violence, particularly in the form of punishment by parents;
• Being explicitly told or implicitly informed that violent behavior is admirable or desirable in itself (for example, because it demonstrates toughness or machismo), or acceptable as a means to other ends (such as obtaining money or objects through robbery, or exhibiting power or status); and
• Experiencing pressure, inducement, instigation, or encouragement to violent behavior from third parties.

The first two of these influences, observing violent behavior and being subjected to violence, particularly violent punishments, may also occur in early childhood; but their impact in later years, like that of the latter two influences, lies mainly in prompting the formation of ideas and “behavioral scripts” about what is just, fair, morally right, or socially acceptable or desirable, and about how to enhance feelings of power, control, dominance, or status. This contrasts with the effect of observed and experienced violence and violent punishment in very small children, who directly associate such trauma with lack of protection and support from, and the interpretation of rejection and abandonment by, the primary caregiver—and, thus, people in general. Where the older child and teenager emulate violence by others, the very young child responds to his or her fear and sense of failure with disruptive behavior, which elicits reactions from adults that confirm the child’s negative expectations, in a self-reinforcing vicious cycle.

For older children and teenagers, the social influences which may teach that violence is appropriate, acceptable, or desirable in certain situations can take a myriad of forms. Family, school, films, videos, music lyrics, and television can each contribute, for example, to the view that men are more violent than women, or that male violence is good when the caz crowds who applaud and urge on disruptive behavior by soccer “hooligans.”

In some cases, “subcultures of violence”101—such as the communities centered on organized crime families, inner city gangs, or drug-distribution networks—may socialize more generally for, rather than against, violence. They may fzzoster general readiness to use serious or lethal violence in a wide variety of situations. In such cases, the mitigating impact on individual violence of the larger society’s norms about unacceptable forms of violence may be largely or entirely eliminated.

3.3 Sources and Features of Violence by Groups

As attested by the numerous and diverse book-length surveys of aggression published in the last decade, the biological, psychological, and social origins of violent acts by individuals are so diverse, complex, and subtly interwoven that it is extremely difficult to integrate them in a coherent theoretical view. In fact, serious integrative efforts are just beginning to appear.

Recognizing this, we must expect the sources of violent practices by organized groups to be even more elusive. Aggressive behavior undertaken jointly and simultaneously by disorganized or fully decentralized groups—clusters, crowds, and mobs—resembles aggressive behavior by individuals, but with features exaggerated by the tendency of groups to polarize behavior. In contrast, the origins and features of violent practices undertaken by, or on behalf of, organized groups may, but need not, resemble violent acts by individuals. The following discussion begins with an attempt to provide a map of the universe of human-against-human violence, in which individual and group behavior can be situated and compared.

The Domain of Human-on-Human Violence

When considering what perpetuates and might help end war, it is helpful to situate war in the larger field of human violence. Different branches of social science typically focus on different parts of this domain: for example, many anthropologists treat war as a scaled-up version of individual aggression (a human ‘bad’ which reflects irrationality or a loss of control), while many political scientists treat war as rational, deliberately chosen means to well-defined ends—in Clausewitz’s famous dictum, ‘an extension of politics by other means.’ In this study, I attempt to reconcile and integrate these and other views of war within the framework of a larger map of the universe of human-on-human violence.

Since the universe has a number of important dimensions, it cannot be fully represented graphically on a two- or three-dimensional chart; but it is, nonetheless, useful to imagine the domain of violent behavior as analogous to a topographical map of a multidimensional surface, in which different features predominate in different areas. All positions within the domain represent points along more or less continuous measures of particular dimensions of violent behavior. For the purposes of this essay, the important dimensions are as follows:

• The deliberateness of the action, which ranges from unintended through impulsive to hasty to carefully planned.
• The independence of the action, which ranges from pro-active (unprovoked) to reactive (provoked).
• The angry, hostile affect associated with it, which ranges from high to low.
• The legality of the action, which ranges from illegal (criminal violence) through legally permitted (parents’ spanking of children) to legally required (all individuals in a society paying taxes that support the implementation of the death penalty or the prosecution of a war).
• The scale of the action, which ranges from individual through small group (tens or hundreds) to large group (thousands or more) to actions conducted by or on behalf of a society as a whole.
• The moral quality of the action in the society in question, which ranges from condemned (as wrong or evil) through tolerated or permitted to highly prized. This quality must be assessed separately for the following major subsets of the actor’s social universe: (1) the violent actor, (2) the actor’s family or community, or other important reference group(s), (3) the society at large (encompassing the nation or state), and, finally, (4) the international community. The moral assessments of an action by different subsets of the actor’s social universe—such as the family and the peer group, or the nation and the international community—may differ radically. The actor must then construct a moral framework in which the conflicting views are reconciled.

Various aspects of violent action tend to be correlated with one another, sometimes to an extent that makes them indistinguishable from one another. For example, any act of violence that is legal in a given society is necessarily morally sanctioned by that society. Acts of violence that are deliberately planned (rather than hasty or impulsive) are usually pro-active, but they may be reactive. Similarly, impulsive reactive violence is nearly always associated with anger; but anger (specifically, an angry sense of injustice or an angry desire for retribution) is also likely to be involved in cases of planned reactive violence. (Palestinian acts of terrorism provide an example of the latter.) Anger is less likely to be involved (or, likely to be involved in a much more subtle, indirect fashion) in carefully planned criminal violence, such as murder as a means of acquiring wealth.

Three tables help clarify, formalize, and inter-relate these distinctions. Table 3-1 distinguishes between pro-active and reactive violence, and between forms of violence committed exclusively by humans and those committed by other animals as well. Table 3-2 gives an illustrative list of various forms of violence that distinguishes between large- and small-scale violence, and between legal and illegal forms of violence. Table 3-3 adds more fine-tuned distinctions regarding scale of the action and the degree of social approval for both legal and illegal forms.

Table 3-1. Shared and differing propensities to and contexts for violence among humans and other animals

Table 3-2. List of forms of assault and killing illustrating differences in scale and legality

Table 3-3. Mapping the doman of human-on-human violence: Illustrative list of forms of violence showing differences in scale, legality, and social approval

While many permutations and combinations of the various dimensions of violent action are possible in theory and have real-life manifestations, three contrastive combinations are particularly important for the study of socially-sanctioned group violence:

First, there is virtually the opposite of socially-sanctioned group violence: this is impulsive, angry individual violence which is illegal and morally condemned by the society at large, by the actor’s reference groups, and usually by the actor. Violence caused by serious mental illness (schizophrenia) and by brain damage is frequently (if not always) placed in this cluster, although in some cases it is so impulsive as to be genuinely involuntary. In the normal range of behavior (absent serious mental illness and brain damage), much family and community violence (domestic abuse and bar-room brawls) tends to be hasty and ill-considered. Alcohol and other drugs contribute to impulsive or ill-considered, illegal violence because such drugs lower the individual’s normal, learned inhibitions against socially-unacceptable behavior.

Second, criminal violence, which is illegal and morally condemned by the society at large, tends to be condoned by the actor(s) and by the actor(s)’ important reference groups. Such action is likely to be planned and deliberate, not impulsive, particularly if conducted by a group, such as an organized crime family or a gang. Deliberate, planned murder and assault belong in this category, whether conducted by an individual or by a group.

Finally, socially-sanctioned, institutionalized violence is legal and morally condoned by the society at large and generally (though not always) by the actor(s) and the actor(s)’ reference groups.

As suggested by these descriptions, the relative weights of innate affect and learned moral belief in motivating violent action differ greatly in different forms of violence. The uncontrolled expression of innate aggressiveness is probably the dominant factor in unprovoked, highly impulsive individual violence, as well as in the escalation of affect and action during mob violence. At the other end of the spectrum, learned moral beliefs about just uses of violence play a dominant role in motivating forms of socially-sanctioned violence which are legally permitted (like parents’ spanking of their children) or legally required (the individual’s direct or indirect participation in society’s exercise of war or infliction of the death penalty).

3.4 Motives for Participation in Institutionalized Group Violence

In all societies, deliberate acts of life-threatening violence by a single individual toward another are considered morally wrong and illegal, unless they occur under well-defined conditions for which exceptions have been specified. Sometimes fatal acts of violence are unpremeditated. Similarly, people in small groups or mobs may engage in ill-controlled violence, such as trampling others to death in a panic, or in impulsive violence, such as throwing stones, breaking glass or structures, or starting fires in a riot. Crimes of passion and other acts of impulsive or ill-controlled individual violence and small group or mob violence are the forms of violence for which the perpetrator’s motivation draws most heavily on innate aggressive impulses and least on rational cost-benefit calculations, or culturally-shaped ideas about just, appropriate, or necessary uses of violence.

In contrast, socially-sanctioned forms of violence, and, in particular, institutionalized forms of large-group violence, are rooted entirely in learned ideas about just, appropriate, or necessary uses of violence and cognitively-based cost-benefit calculations, that is, by the same kinds of factors that influence and motivate other forms of social and political behavior. In all societies, people come to believe that violence is wrong except in culturally-condoned circumstances as a result of essentially the same processes.

Human beings are born with a capacity for violence and other forms of intentionally hurtful behavior, which is part of the repertoire of means of self-protection. The small child’s tendency to express or ‘act out’ aggressive impulses in violent behavior is, however, tamed during the developmental process of learning to sublimate (control the form of expression of) feelings and impulses. This aspect of the normal process of childhood socialization, which occurs in every culture, is central to the development of the ego, the perception of being in control of oneself and one’s life, the ability to plan and organize behavior, and the ability to have emotion-laden interactions and relationships with other human beings.

The universal childhood process of learning to sublimate hostile affect and aggressive impulses (among other feelings and impulses) creates a baseline degree of routine inhibition against violence, along with a deeply internalized belief that inflicting physical harm or pain on others is wrong. In other words, this aspect of socialization leaves the child at 5–10 years of age with the ability to choose to commit violent acts that hurt others, but with the belief that doing so is morally wrong and with the ability to choose not to commit violent acts even when under stress or experiencing intense hostility.102

Overlapping with the early process of learning to control the expression of affect and impulses, and continuing into the later childhood and the teenage years, virtually every culture teaches that there are certain exceptions to the general rule that violence is not an acceptable form of behavior. Normatively-loaded beliefs about situations in which it is tolerable, admirable, or even socially required for individuals to use violence as a means to a greater good or as the lesser among evils are superimposed on the baseline inhibition against violence and belief that violence is wrong. Generally speaking, institutionalized forms of group violence are legitimated and perpetuated by powerful incentives for individuals to participate in (or passively tolerate) the practice, and powerful disincentives for active resistance to it. The incentives and disincentives—various social rewards and punishments—are powerful largely because the practice is associated with a world view and system of moral beliefs which are routinely used to explain or justify the organization of society and the main goals of society. In a sense, institutionalized forms of violence constitute a symbolic representation of society: to reject, condemn, and refuse to participate in those forms of violence is to reject the society, or at a minimum to demand a wholesale rethinking of society’s values and of the rationale for its forms of organization and activity.103

Following the early and later aspects of socialization, some individuals may commit impulsive acts of lethal violence, but such acts tend to be relatively rare (say, one per thousand of population), and even then, predominantly by individuals whose failed or poor process of childhood socialization led to the development of a psychopathic personality. The overwhelming majority of individuals who participate in organized, socially-sanctioned group violence would never, on their own, commit an act of premeditated, planned lethal violence; their violent actions as members of a group are induced entirely by their culturally-shaped moral beliefs and their need for community. For this reason, the forms and the frequency or intensity of socially-sanctioned group violence vary with culture and within given cultures, over time.

This model does not account for the origin of institutionalized, socially-sanctioned forms of violence, only for the participation of individuals in such practices and, in that sense, the perpetuation of the practices. Chapter 4 gives a speculative view of the social origins of institutionalized forms of violence.