Question

Imagine that you are a reader of a newspaper that has a section that allows ‘letters to the editor.’ (This is where readers are able to write and submit a short article arguing for some point of view). Three such hypothetical letters are below. Imagine that you are writing a response to these letters. Write a response in which you use your social psychology knowledge to argue against the letter writer.

(3) Last week, Dr. Ellen Cortez mentioned in an article in this paper that the world is becoming less and less violent. Hogwash! Every day you turn on the news you see examples of violence – everybody knows that violence is increasing (except the doctor, apparently)! In fact, just last week I heard about an incident in which a man was stabbed on the street and he just laid there for 30 minutes and no one did anything! We as a society are becoming less and less caring all the time. In my day, people weren’t violent – that’s because I’m from a different generation where we were spanked if we did anything wrong – we learned quickly not to be violent! People are born with a propensity for violence – we need to be able to identify violent people and then keep an eye on them. Obviously, this doctor’s studies are flawed. These professors are always trying to pull the wool over the public’s eyes – they are obviously promoting their own personal agenda! -Anthony Marlowe

Answer 1

Dear Anthony,

I understand your point of view. It is tough to think of our society as peaceful when all we hear violent acts so frequently from the media.

However, it is true that the levels of violence across the world have gone down over the years. According to the recent UN document, Battle deaths are largely concentrated in the middle east, Interpersonal violence has increased in certain geographies but decreased overall. Gender violence remains all-time high.

Psychologically speaking, a study by Milgram shows that under particular conditions, ordinary people would readily obey authority figures. In this study, it meant delivering what the participants believed to be painful and deadly shocks to a victim. Obedience enables violence by allowing perpetrators to attribute their actions to the authority figure who issued the orders and to avoid moral pangs by saying “I was only following orders.” Solomon Asch and colleagues demonstrated how individuals in a group tended to agree with the prevailing judgments of group members and resist breaking rank even when it was obvious that the group's judgment was inaccurate. Phillip Zimbardo's mock “prison study” had college students engage in a simulation in which some students were prisoners whereas others were guards. It showed that power leads to abusive behaviour. Bandura's theory of moral disengagement emphasizes that people tend to justify their behaviour using various techniques using rationalization, diffusion of responsibility, euphemistic labelling, comparison - why their choice was better than the alternative, dehumanizing, and disregarding the consequences.

I am sure you will agree to the fact that we tend to glorify the past. The present looks sinister, the past less innocent. The mind always focuses on current threats, and takes for granted the violent events that don’t happen but could easily have happened a few decades ago.

Overall, the statistics of violence in the society have gone down. However, we have a long way to go in curbing our aggressive, violent side.

Hope this answers your query.

Yours sincerely,