In Response to Aggression. Methods of Control and Prosocial Alternatives

560 Pages·1981·6.62 MB·English

by  Arnold P. Goldstein

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IN RESPONSE TO
Methods of Control and Prosocial Alternatives
Arnold P. Goldstein
Syracuse University
Edward G. Carr
State University of New York at Stony Brook
William S. Davidson, II
Michigan State University
Paul Wehr
University of Colorado at Boulder
and their collaborators
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
In response to aggression.
(Pergamon general psychology series ; v. 98)
1. Aggressiveness (Psychology) 2. Violence.
3. Control (Psychology) 4. Social control.
I. Goldstein, Arnold P. II. Series. [DNLM: I.Ag-
gression. 2. Behavior therapy-Methods. BF 575.A3 135]
RC569.5.V55I5 1981 303.6 81-2385
ISBN 0-08-025580-9 AACR2
ISBN 0-08-025579-5 (pbk.)
All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means:
electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Printed in the United States of America
To those who work to eliminate
violence in all its forms
Preface
Aggression and America have long been intimate companions. Born in
revolutionary conflict, America has seen 200 years of high levels of
collective violence in its Indian, Civil, and international wars, its urban
and agricultural riots, its vigilante movements, its racial lynchings, its
industrial strikes, its antiwar movement and the reaction thereto, and its
long and unremitting insistence on the widespread and generally un-
regulated private ownership of what now amounts to over 100 million
guns. Since 1933, the year in which systematic collection of individual
crime statistics began, the resultant FBI Uniform Crime Report has
revealed a substantial, if irregular, increase in both crimes against
persons and crimes against property. And, even in most recent times
(1975-1980) in which there seems to be something of a stabilization in
overall crime rates, two of the most violent types of crime—rape and
aggravated assault—have still continued to increase rapidly. It is now
recognized that domestic violence—both child and spouse abuse—
occurs with dismaying frequency in the American home. Thus, both
collective and individual aggression in the United States has long been
and continues to be high.
This book seeks to describe and evaluate comprehensively what has
been done in response to aggression. Its dual focus is aggression
controls and aggression alternatives. Controls concern the reduction of
aggression, events and techniques that reduce its intensity or frequency,
decrease its probability of occurrence, manage or regulate its level, or
inhibit its appearance altogether. Alternatives are what to do instead, the
substituting of the prosocial for the antisocial, the constructive for the
destructive, the progressive for the aggressive.
Our examination of aggression controls and alternatives fully reflects
the panorama of psychological and sociological theory and research
which has emerged in recent decades bearing on these domains. As will
be obvious, the management of and alternatives to aggression, as well as
aggression itself, have been the target of particularly widespread and
diverse theoretical and investigative attention.
An especially noteworthy feature of this book, central to its purpose,
is the multilevel, multidisciplinary nature of its authorship. We are four
behavioral scientists, each vitally interested in aggression, yet each with
a markedly different perspective on human behavior and its alteration.
ix
χ Preface
Our collaboration in seeking to identify, describe, and elaborate opti-
mally constructive responses to aggression grows directly from our
shared belief that the causes of aggression, its acquisition, its instigation,
its maintenance are each multiply determined events—events often
optimally responded to in a similarly multilevel manner. Concretely, our
respective interests and expertise lie in the realms of individual behavior
(Edward G. Carr), the small group (Arnold P. Goldstein), at the community
level (William S. Davidson), and at the level of the larger society or nation
(Paul Wehr). It is our strong conviction that, typically, aggression may be
best understood, its control best facilitated, and its alternatives best
promoted if approached simultaneously from the individual, small group,
community, and societal perspectives. Let us illustrate this viewpoint.
An adolescent in an urban secondary school repeatedly behaves in
aggressive and disruptive ways; he physically fights with peers, threatens
teachers, vandalizes school property. An optimal response to such
behaviors might well focus on the youngster himself at first, and consist
of efforts at the individual level to extinguish his belligerence and
assaultiveness by use of withdrawal of attention, time out, increased
response cost, and related contingency management techniques (see
Chapter 1) combined with explicit efforts, still at the individual level, to
develop his capacity for self-control (see Chapter 3). But if we move
beyond this level of intervention to efforts at the small group level, the
youngster's aggression may also diminish and suitable alternative
behaviors may also emerge to the degree that his peer models can be
induced to behave less aggressively (see Chapter 4), if he and his peers
are collectively taught and subsequently rewarded for performing an
array of prosocial skill behaviors (see Chapter 4), and if moral educa-
tion, values clarification, or other instruction in ethics and morality are
systematically introduced into classroom activities (see Chapter 6). This
combination of individually oriented and small group interventions, at
times sufficient themselves, are more likely to succeed in both a remedial
and a preventive sense if we go further, to the macroorganizational
levels of community and societal intervention. Is the youngster's school
organized and run in ways that enhance the prosocial and diminish the
antisocial (see Chapter 8)? Do his immediate neighborhood and his
community at large provide a social support network that facilitates
cooperation, caring, and other prosocial behaviors, or is the environment
oriented toward enhanced aggression, destructiveness, and fragmen-
tation (see Chapter 9)? Can the youngster's aggressiveness be traced at
all to what certain sociological and sociopolitical perspectives hold often
lies at the roots of such behavior, namely inadequate housing, high
unemployment, insufficient social services, ineffective general economic
policy, and other social ills originated at state and federal levels of
Preface xi
intervention (see Chapters 10 and 12)? We are, in short, proposing that
Johnny vandalized his school last week for individual, small group,
community, and societal reasons. If we wish to deter him from further
such behavior, and to evoke instead prosocial alternative behaviors, it is
crucial that our interventions be similarly multilevel.
Our stance is the same for other forms of individual or collective
aggression. The adult criminal may be less likely to engage in recidivistic
aggressive behavior if we apply certain aversive techniques (individual
level), teach him an array of interpersonal problem-solving skills (small
group level), minimize social labeling effects by decisions made in his
jurisdiction's criminal justice system (community level), and if the
prevailing penological philosophy of his state or country is reintegrative,
rather than singularly punitive or retributional (societal level). The gang,
the mob, the organized group, the collective engaged in an urban riot are
similarly optimally viewed in multilevel interventionist perspective. Can
the leader, or individual members construe nonviolent alternatives; can
they control their own overt aggression (individual level)? As a group,
what is the consensus level of moral development, the group's
cohesiveness, its collective capacity for constructive problem solving
(small group level)? What neighborhood or local organizations are in
place to facilitate nonaggressive solutions to emerging problems, what is
their power, their effectiveness, their availability (community level)?
What are the traditions and mechanisms available at the larger societal
level for the understanding, management, and resolution of collective
conflict?
To reflect fully this guiding, multilevel philosophy, we have organized
this book into four major parts. Part I is concerned with the individual
level of intervention. Its chapters deal with the behavior modification
techniques that constitute contingency management, especially in the
context of parent-child interactions (Chapter 1); effective use of nego-
tiation and contracting methods, as these might be used in particular to
resolve marital conflict (Chapter 2); and an array of procedures, of use
in many contexts, for improving one's level of self-control (Chapter 3).
Aggression-relevant interventions at the level of the small group are the
focus of Part II, particularly a broad array of methods and materials for
teaching children and adults interpersonal conflict management and
conflict alternative skills (Chapter 4); problem-solving skills (Chapter 5);
and enhanced moral and ethical beliefs and behaviors (Chapter 6). Part
III turns to the community level of intervention. What can occur at this
level to prevent the occurrence of criminal or other aggression (Chapter
7)? How may a community's criminal justice system be structured and
operated to facilitate prosocial outcomes (Chapter 8), and what con-
tribution to such outcomes follows from the efforts of a variety of
xii Preface
community social support systems (Chapter 9)? Part IV, turning to yet a
broader societal level, describes in detail a number of conflict inter-
vention and conflict resolution strategies and operations (Chapter 10);
techniques of what has been termed "aggressive nonviolence" (Chapter
11); and the current status in the United States of peace and conflict
resolution education and research (Chapter 12).
It is our earnest wish that our multilevel, comprehensive presentation
and evaluation of the state of the art and the state of research on
aggression controls and alternatives will, in practice, lead to enhanced
utilization of what we have described, and thus to more widespread
prosocial and constructive behaviors in response to aggression.
Chapter 1
Contingency Management
Edward G. Carr
He that spareth the rod, hateth his son; but he that loveth him, chasteneth him
betimes.
—Proverbs, 13:24
I grant that good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational
creature; these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work and
guided, and therefore they are to be made use of to children too. For I advise their
parents and governors always to carry this in their minds, that children are to be
treated as rational creatures.
—John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education.
Throughout history, adults have had strong opinions on how best to
raise happy, productive children and how to discipline children on those
occasions when they have misbehaved. From the Old Testament to Dr.
Spöck, from Freud to Skinner, sages and experts have put forth their
opinions on this important topic. Why has so much concern been
expressed over this issue? The answer is clear. No society could survive
very long if its younger members were given free rein to take what they
would, to comply only when it was convenient for them, to aggress
whenever there was benefit in doing so, and, in short, to avoid learning
those rules of behavior which produce a balance between the rights of
the individual and the rights of others. In what follows, we shall first
attempt to outline briefly some of the philosophical, religious, psy-
chological, and popular antecedents to current empirical approaches to
child discipline.
PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS ANTECEDENTS
The Bible prescribed harsh measures for bringing the misbehavior of
children under control. This is apparent in the quotation at the beginning
of this chapter and in passages such as these:
Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it
far from him. Proverbs, 22:15.
1
2 In Response to Aggression
Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell. Proverbs,
23:14.
To the extent that a child's misbehavior is seen as the path to eternal
damnation, it is perhaps easier for the modern mind to grasp why such
severe discipline was condoned and why children's noncompliance was
viewed in such an extreme manner:
The eye that mocketh his father, and despiseth the instruction of his mother, let the
ravens of the valley pluck it out, and the young eagles eat it. Luke, 15:10.
The ancient Greeks, with the exception of the Spartans, tended to
deemphasize the role of harsh punishment in bringing children under
control. Instead, more emphasis was given to those forms of discipline
and restraint that would ensure healthy social development and the
production of good citizens who were governed by high moral values.
The emphasis was much more on the prevention of undesirable behavior
than on its remediation. Thus, in The Republic, Plato outlined in con-
siderable detail the curriculum to be used for educating the future rulers
of his ideal state. By training both the mind and the body, by exposing
the individual to exemplary models, and by preventing intemperance,
Plato sought to produce a person who was free of selfish motivation and
the lust for destruction. Indeed, Plato argued that without such a
well-rounded upbringing, the individual might easily become "like a wild
beast, all violence and fierceness" {The Republic, p. 120). On the other
hand, in a particularly eloquent passage, Plato pointed out the value of
exposing youth to moderation and virtue:
then will our youth dwell in a land of health... and beauty, the effluence of fair
works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze... and insensibly
draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of
reason. Plato, The Republic, p. 105.
Likewise, in Politics, Aristotle echoed Plato's sentiments with regard to
shielding children from exposure to bad examples in order to prevent
later misbehavior.
During the Middle Ages, as the doctrine of original sin gained ascen-
dancy, theologians came to regard the child as inherently evil and
depraved. This evil—which could be manifested in many ways including
disobedience and aggression—was the target of harsh disciplinary prac-
tices that were justified as necessary to save the child's soul.
By the 18th century, philosophers had begun to reject the notion of
the "inherently depraved child." Locke, in particular, argued for the
view that the infant was a tabula rasa, born neither innately good nor