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From: dyer@tau.DEC
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Violence and Studies of Violence
Message-ID: <336@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Sep-85 10:08:28 EDT
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Posted: Thu Sep  5 10:08:28 1985
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Re: Violence and Studies of Violence____________________________________________

> The fuzziness is not in the experiment; it's in the extension of experimental
> results to social situations in the everyday world of a given culture.

	Yes, I said that.  The laboratory controls a number of variables, and
the effects of culture are minimized as much as possible.  My point is that if
you take a group of small children (the least constrained by socialization) and
have them observe overt aggressive behavior, that group's net overt aggressive
behavior will increase.  This experiment has never yielded different results.
	The reason is that the children are learning via modeling.  (For more on
the specifics of modeling, study Bandura.)  The overt aggressive behavior is,
of course, noticable - it is overt and it elicits emotional response.  These
characteristics make it very attention-getting and attention-holding, thus (un-
fortunately) making overt aggressive behavior extremely learnable.
	Adults are less likely to model the behavior because of cultural con-
straints.  As the example of Japan demonstrates, some cultures have stronger
constraints than others.
		<_Jym_>
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:: Jym Dyer :: {allegra|decvax|ihnp4}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-vaxuum!dyer ::
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