Mirror Sites:
CSUDH Habermas UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: May 13, 2001
Latest update: May 13, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org

This essay is based on an instrument available from Bandura A., Aggression: a social learning analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973. The instrument is on the Juvenile Justice Evaluation Center Online, under Juvenile Justice Related Instruments, Measures Related to Violence and Conflict, link on Bandura. The instrument is online in a pdf file.

Bandura's research on social learning theory was widely studied in the 70s and follows the line of thinking used by Lonnie Athens in discovering his violentization process. Compare the questions in Bandura's instrument to the stages Athens describes in the violentization process:

1. It makes you feel big and strong when you push someone around.
2. If you back down from a fight, everyone will think you are a coward.
3. Sometimes you only have two choices---get punched or punch the other kid first.
4. It's OK to hit someone if you just go crazy with anger.
5. A guy who doesn't fight back when other kids push him around will lose respect.
6. A guy shows he really loves his girlfriend if he gets in fights with other guys about her.

Discussion Questions

1. How are these questions different from those that Athens asked?
   jeanne's notes on one plausible answer:

   Well, for one thing Bandura here is asking "What do you believe?" Athens was asking "What did it feel like when . . . " One difference is that Athens is concerned not with counting scores on an aggression test, but with understanding the social context of the situations these violent criminals actually experienced. He is looking for antecedents of behavior that is well documented: the alleged perpetrators are incarcerated. Whereas Bandura's score may be give an aggregate figure, there is no indicator of how we are to know what that score means, other than by our own interpretation of the statement. Athens is allowing for the voice of the violent subject to be heard.

   One reason I chose this particular instrument for you was that I am familiar with Bandura's studies, in which he emphasized the local narrative and the situatedness of the behavior in question. He showed that children were more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior, such as hitting a table forcefully, when they had recently observed their teacher engage in the same behavior. Modelling behavior is stronger than verbal admonition.

2. What do you notice about the gender expectations in the early seventies?
   jeanne's notes on one plausible answer:

   I notice that the unstated assumption is that we are discussing male aggression. In this regard see the story of the two young women who exhibited such behavior in May 2001. The patterns are beginning to change.

3. Can you categorize Baandura's questions in terms of the stages of violentization they would fit, if any?
   jeanne's notes on one plausible answer:

   Well, it seems to me that I can. That's one reason I wanted you to look at this instrument.

   1. It makes you feel big and strong when you push someone around.

      This is a bullying statement that might come from vainglorification in violence coaching in the early stages of brutalization. Or it could come from a later stage of virulency, when a subject is trying to decide whether to make a new violent resolution.

   2. If you back down from a fight, everyone will think you are a coward.

      This is a vainglorification statement. The concern is not over violent subjugation, but over reputation amongst primary and secondary groups. It does not show that the subject has been through the violentization process.

   3. Sometimes you only have two choices---get punched or punch the other kid first.

      This sounds to me like a statement from someone who has been through some of the experiences of the violentization process. "Get punched or be punched" sounds like part ofviolence coaching.

   4. It's OK to hit someone if you just go crazy with anger.

      Again, this sounds like violence coaching, so I would suspect that a subject with a strong agreement on this has been through some violence coaching.

   5. A guy who doesn't fight back when other kids push him around will lose respect.

      Sounds again like vainglorification in violence coaching.

   6. A guy shows he really loves his girlfriend if he gets in fights with other guys about her.

      Sounds again like vainglorification in violence coaching. This statement is more likely to have been encouraged with respect to defending the female in the violentization process.

      This series of questions seems to show that the greatest emphasis falls on vainglorification and violence coaching. Athens' violentization process would seem to indicated that our concerns with these underlying beliefs about violence and aggression should cover more effectively the entire violentization process.