Socialization and Aggression

247 Pages·1992·17.27 MB·English

by  Robert A. Hinde (auth.)

Recent Research in Psychology
Adam Frqczek Horst Zumkley (Eds.)
Socialization
and Aggression
n
~ Springer-Verlag
, Berlin Heidelberg New York London Paris
- ~ Tokyo Hong Kong Barcelona Budapest
Editors
Adam FrC}czek
Wyzsza Szkola Pedagogiki Specjalnej
ul. Szczesliwicka 40, 02-353 Warsaw, Poland
Horst Zumkley
Universitat des Saarlandes, Erziehungswissenschaft
Bau 11, W-6600 Saarbriicken, FRG
ISBN-13 :978-3-540-54799-0 e-ISBN-13 :978-3-642-84653-3
DOl: 10.1007/978-3-642-84653-3
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© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1992
Reprint of the original edition 1992
Typesetting: Camera ready by author/editor
26/3140-543210 - Printed on acid-free paper
This book is dedicated to Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Kornadt
on the occasion of his 65th birthday.
Editorial Preface
The aim of this book is to review central issues in recent psychological research
and theoretical concepts dealing with determinants of aggression and hostility in
ontogenesis. There are several reasons for our interest in contemporary
psychological studies on socialization conditions and processes underlying the
formation of aggressive tendencies and behavior. Firstly, this research area
pertains more or less directly to questions of human nature, to the roots of its
"bad" side. If we learn about the socialization phenomena and the processes
which co-determine interpersonal aggression we can move towards a more
rational understanding of individuals and of social phenomena. Secondly, studies
on prerequisites and processes involved in the development of aggression give us
a better understanding of the general laws of human social development and per
sonality formation. Aggression and hostility are enmeshed with interpersonal
relationships and their intrapsychic regulation does not take place in isolation from
the formation of the entire personality. Thirdly, the foundations for prevention
and correction are laid in psychological knowledge of socialization determinants
of aggression, both with regard to the impact of "direct socializing factors" (i.e.
family, peer groups, early developmental experiences from other socialization
sources), and to socio-cultural factors and processes which shape the context for
such impact. If we are able to limit the destructive consequences of aggression,
hostility and violence in interpersonal relationships and social life, we may be
able to improve the well-being of individuals and society.
Recent psychological research on socialization and aggression focuses on
differing issues and is founded on various theoretical traditions. The contributions
in this book analyze the relationships between early childhood socialization
experiences within the family and the peer group on the one hand, and the
development of aggressive behavior patterns and their intrapsychic regulation on
the other hand. It is stressed that the formation of intrapsychic regulatory
mechanisms of aggression must be considered as part of the development of
personality; and the influence of the family and the peer group must be studied
within the wider constellation of socio-cultural factors. This perspective may be
described as a socio-psychological approach to the study of socialization
determinants of aggression and hostility in ontogenesis.
The first part of this book consists of three general, theoretical articles and an
empirical review which open up broadly differing perspectives of the observation
and investigation of the relationship between socialization and aggression. In the
opening essay, Robert A. Hinde draws attention to "Some complexities of
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aggressive behaviour" and stresses that interpersonal aggression is usually em
bedded in a constellation of other interpersonal behaviors and attitudes (i.e.
assertiveness, behavior aimed at achieving a certain object), and that the sources
of specific acts of aggression cannot be reduced to one unitary factor. In order to
understand human aggression and hostility as portrayed by Hinde in his
conceptual scheme, we must analyze the reciprocal relationships between
individual properties, interpersonal relationships, and, finally, socio-cultural
phenomena and institutions. Cordula Zumkley-Miinkel, in her article on "The
different functions of compliance and noncompliance" , analyzes socialization and
aggression from the child's point of view and less from that of the socializer.
From her process-oriented viewpoint, she tries to determine the mediating, inter
vening processes that are aroused in the child by childrearing behavior and then
reflected in hislher behavior. The author develops a motivation theoretical model
to analyze the developmental determinants and types of motivation underlying
compliant and noncompliant behavior, a model that has as its central focus special
forms of the mother-child relationship. The problem of the relationship between
"Socialization and intrapsychic regulation of interpersonal aggression" is discussed
in the next chapter by Adam Fntczek. He first analyzes the place of the concepts
"socialization" and "aggression" in scientific psychological literature and then the
developmental pathways for the formation of different intrapsychic mechanisms
of aggression and hostility. Socialization experiences lead to the formation of the
primary emotion of anger and/or generate specific scripts and life orientations,
and it is by these two routes that the intrapsychic sources of aggression and
hostility are determined. The first part of this book is completed by a contribution
from Horst Zumkley on "Stability of individual differences in aggression". He
examines the question of the extent to which habitual aggression, as a result of a
socialization process, is maintained over time or is subject to change. The result
of the review supports the assumption that the stability of aggressive behavior
over time is quite substantial and determined by essentially consistent reaction
tendencies or motive systems within the individual. It seems to be the manner of
processing the situational conditions against a background of such enduring
reaction tendencies, i.e. their interaction, that accounts for the individual
differences in aggressive behavior and its stability.
Part II of the book brings together a series of reports concerning empirical
research into the problem of early childhood determinants and correlates of
aggression in children. These papers focus on the effects of emotional interactions
within the family on behavioral and emotional development of small children, and
also on the relevance of interactions with peers in early school-age children for
their social behavior and, especially, for their interpersonal aggression. In their
chapter "Emotions and the socialization of aggression: Adult's angry behavior and
children's arousal and aggression" , E. Mark Cummings and Carolyn
Zahn-Waxler review a series of studies which reveal that conflicts and anger bet
ween parents usually lead to increased arousal in young children and,
consequently, to aggressive reactions. Whether, and to what extent, parental
anger leads to aggression in their offspring will depend, among other things, on
the form of expression of conflict and tension, the gender and temperament of the
child, and its early childhood socialization experience. According to these
Editorial Preface IX
authors, studies of the early developmental determinants of aggression provide
sufficient ground for developing adequate programmes of early psycho-corrective
intervention. The relations between emotional properties in children and their
social behavior are the principle topic of the chapter on "Young children's
emotional arousal and anger/aggressive behavior" by Richard A. Fabes and
Nancy Eisenberg. These authors point out that the relation between emotional
arousal and childhood aggression and hostility is complex and moderated by a
number of factors. On the basis of their own research they have shown that easily
aroused children are more aggressive, have more difficulty in controlling their
emotions, and are also perceived to function poorly in social situations (i.e. they
are less competent and less popular). They conclude that, in order to understand
the social functioning of children, we have to take into account the interactive
effects of different personal and social factors on the regulation of social
behavior. Gian Vittorio Caprara and Concetta Pastorelli, in their contribution
"Early determinants and correlates of aggressive behavior", discuss firstly the
meaning and impact of the personality variables "irritability", "emotional
susceptibility" and "rumination" as mechanisms of aggression and, secondly, the
developmental roots of maladaptation with aggressive components in childhood.
In a series of studies these authors have found that so-called "children at risk"
have relatively poor emotional stability and are less prosocial, show a
considerable degree of aggression, demonstrate specific emotional responses to
emotional cues, and are less accepted within the school environment than normal
children. Due to this specific constellation of quite marginal deficiencies, these
children have experiences conducive to the development of aggressive tendencies.
The chapter by Tamara Ferguson and Antonius Cillessen on "Individual and peer
group factors in the stability of social status, antisocial and prosocial behavior" is
based on their own extensive research into factors which stabilize or destabilize
the social behavior of children (especially aggressive and prosocial behaviors).
These studies confirmed the hypothesis that rejected children, in comparison with
children who are popular in their peer group, manifest more aggression. It was
also shown that by restructuring the child's social situation one can evoke
dramatic changes in its social behavior. The authors argue for a peer-directed
approach in the study and analysis of children's social development. This
approach stresses the important role played by context variables in the emergence
and maintenance of the specific social position and social behaviors of children.
Part III of the book is devoted to papers which present studies on the normative
regulation of aggression and of family and subcultural predictors of childhood and
adolescent aggression. These papers not only have scientific significance but also
respond to the needs of educational practice. Rowell Huesmann et aI., in their
chapter "The role of social norms in the development of aggressive behavior",
present the results of a research report the main aim of which was the
development of a scale measuring children's approval of aggression. In addition,
preliminary results are reported on the question of whether attitudes towards
aggression in primary school children are related to their aggressive behavior.
The technique devised by Huesmann et al. has adequate psychometric properties
and hence can be used in further research. However, in the age groups studied,
no clear-cut relationships were determined between the normative approval of
x
aggression by children and their aggressive behavior towards peers or self-report
rated aggression. In their paper on "Family life and child aggression: Studies on
some socialization conditions for the development of aggression", Adam Fl'Ilczek
and Lucyna Kirwil present the results of several studies on the relationships
between parental life orientations, including their system of values and moral ap
proval of violence in social life on the one hand, and the formation of the
intrapsychic regulation of interpersonal aggression in children, on the other hand.
It was found that greater approval of violence was revealed by those parents
whose children manifested more intense interpersonal aggression. In addition, the
life orientations of fathers and mothers affect both subsystems of aggression
motivation (i.e. the aggression motive and the aggression inhibition motive)
differently and in varying degrees. The chapter on "Antecedents of the
development of adolescent antisocial and criminal behavior" by Vappu Viemero
discusses the findings of a longitudinal study of predictors of maladjustment and
aggression in adolescents. The study confirms the considerable stability of
aggressive behavior from childhood to adolescence, i.e. a clear-cut relationship
between the intensity of aggression in childhood and criminal behavior in
adolescence; and the effects of socialization and patterns within the family on an
tisocial or criminal behavior in adolescence. In her contribution, "The function
of aggression in the life process of adolescents", Maijaliisa Rauste-von Wright
reflects on the diversity of sources of aggression and discusses the presentation of
research on attitudes of adolescents towards aggression. One important source of
aggression is the normative expectations of the social system, manifested, for
example, in the traditional stereotype of masculine behavior. The differences in
boy/girl ratings of the significance of aggression in life are, therefore, mainly de
termined by sex-role stereotypes and experiences.
The last part of the book contains discussions about the relationships between
socio-cultural factors and socialization of aggression viewed from the psycho
logical vantage point. This problem is as fascinating as it is complex. The authors
in this section attempt to show how human characteristics and orientations co
determine social processes, and how general social orientations determine the
socializing interactions within the family. In his article on "Human aggressivity
and war" Seymour Feshbach addresses two topics. He first presents a contem
porary biological and psychological critique of the psychoanalytical concept of an
"aggression instinct". Then he discusses the findings of contemporary
socio-pyschologically oriented research on human aggression which throws some
light on the problem of why people engage themselves in drastic acts of ag
gression, violence and war - bringing themselves and others into severe danger.
One of the factors involved is conformity to authority; another - as shown by the
author's own research - is the nationalist tendency tied to value systems in which
the lives of one's own national group are immeasurably more valuable than the
lives of members of another nation. According to Feshbach, it would be
worthwhile to answer the question of how one could persuade people that, while
remaining loyal towards their own group, they should show the same respect for
the lives of others. William Lambert, in an essay on "The cultural background
to aggression: Correlates and consequences of benevolent and malevolent gods
and spirits", analyzes, on the basis of cross-cultural studies, the relationships
Editorial Preface XI
between characteristics attributed by people to supernatural beings (gods, spirits)
and their own social behavior as manifested in their child-rearing techniques. In
a rather simplified summary of these extensive studies, we can conclude that in
those cultures where gods are perceived to be mainly malevolent we find more
aggressive interactions than in those cultures where people regard their gods to be
more benevolent. These regularities are also reflected in parental socialization
practices: consequently, when parents treat their children with more kindness and
show more friendliness this leads, reciprocally, to reinforcement of their belief in
relatively benevolent gods. In tum, restrictive and rigorous upbringing reinforces
the belief that the gods have rather malevolent characteristics.
When considered as a whole, we believe that this volume imparts new insights
into some of the multi-faceted relationships and interdependencies between early
childhood experiences and interpersonal aggression. This belief is founded on the
fact that the latter are not considered in isolation but within the broad context of
the whole social development and personality formation. The theoretical dis
cussions and new research findings presented in this book derive from different
starting points within a unifying socio-psychological approach to the study of the
development of aggressive behavior and its intrapsychic regulation. It is for this
reason that we hope that the results and discussions presented here will be both
interesting and thought provoking for the reader, and that they will also contribute
to a better understanding of the complex relationships between socialization and
aggression.
Finally, we would like to make a few comments about the genesis of this book.
The idea was conceived by Adam Flllczek, Professor for Psychology at the Polish
Academy of Sciences in Warsaw (Poland), who in 1988 accepted Professor
Kornadt's offer of a visiting professorship in the Department of Educational
Psychology, University of Saarland in Saarbriicken (FRG). The trigger was a
joint faculty colloquium, "Socialization and development of aggression in
cross-cultural perspective", held by H.-J. Komadt and A. Flllczek. The proposal
to publish a book containing research findings relating to H.-J. Kornadt's own
special study area, and to found an international research cooperative, was gladly
taken up and thenjointly developed by Horst Zumkley, a long-standing colleague
of H.-J. Kornadt. Our idea received warm support from the international scien
tific community in the field of socialization and aggression. To a certain extent,
therefore, this book represents a continuation of the scientific cooperation begun
in 1988 and so we are pleased to dedicate this publication to H.-J. Kornadt in
honour of his research achievements. The outcome of our joint endeavours is this
volume which contains texts specially prepared for it by psychologists from East
and West European countries and the USA. Hence the research and discussions
presented here are embedded in different philosophical traditions and different
socio-cultural backgrounds. It is also worth noting that the authors of the various
articles, including the editors, represent different generations. They each have
their own, often extremely different, experiences with socialization, aggression,
violence and hostility as social phenomena on a global scale. These diverse
experiences have not, apparently, hindered cooperation (although when we began
working together, the Berlin Wall was still standing!) in the search for an answer
to the question of socialization determinants of aggression and hostility in
XII
interpersonal behavior. Let this book on the problems of socialization and the
formation of aggression and hostility, initiated and accomplished by a Polish
(older generation) and a German (younger generation) social psychologist working
together, also be a symbol of new, and we hope stable, tendencies in the develop
ment of a new Europe.
First and foremost we would like to thank our colleagues for their contributions
and for their never-failing cooperation in producing this volume. The German
Research Association (DFG) provided financial support for a year's fellowship for
A. Ffllczek in Saarbriicken, and for a brief visit for editorial work (grant Sa
77/57-1; 436 POL - 17/11/90). Our thanks also go to Dr. Thomas Thiekotter and
Heike Berger of the publishers Springer-Verlag who were always available with
advice and help during the development of this project; also to Christine Kirsch
and Axel Werner who were responsible for producing the fmal manuscript.
Finally, special thanks go to Christoph Paulus who, with ready and constructive
suggestions, always provided reliable and judicious support of the varied work
involved in this book.
Warsaw/Saarbriicken, September 1991 Adam Frllczek
Horst Zumkley