My thoughts on evaluating a theory of human violence

Some initial thoughts and impressions ...

The Goal ...

I can surely appreciate the motivation of people thinking about the violence of our species, and puzzling over solutions.

There's of course a great deal of existing data on anger, hatred, aggression, and violence (which are meaningfully different topics), from various research programs, and I think we're still at a loss to integrate it all into a coherent theory of human self-destructiveness, if such a thing is possible and makes sense.

I'm guessing that this is roughly what the present theory is trying to do ? A very ambitious task !

The Theory ...

The examples so far seem to me to be trying to identify temperamental roots of different social responses (and tie them back to gender). The word "genetic" is used a lot, though there is no reference yet to specific behavioral genetic or genomic data yet, so it is hard to see the link at this point, at least for me.

What seems to need explanation ... ?

I suspect that a good theory of human violence will have to deal with human decision-making processes in some way, to explain why we make the decision to kill each other, in what circumstances, and what factors affect it. This probably crosses the boundaries of what we currently consider human reasoning and human motivation, since violence can be "cold" and calculated, or "hot" and driven by passion. Violence is efficiently carried out under some very disparate arousal conditions.

The brain and behavioral state of a man finding his lover in bed with someone else is very different from that of a terrorist calmly awaiting the right moment to strike, at least in many cases. Some data has revealed ironically that the vital signs of premeditated killers sometimes actually becomes calmer just before they strike, reminiscent of an athlete entering their "zone" or a predator about to strike. The Nazi anti-semitism and similar ideologies of hatred seem to involve at least as much cold avoidance of seeing the victims as human beings as hot hatred of them as enemies. The newly jilted lover on the other hand strikes presumably (at least often) while at the height of rage. What links these different patterns of violence ?

They may both be presumably heavily motivated by an ancient agenda to punish betrayal, for example, but the final act of violence has different triggers and undergoes a different process of development. How does a theory of violence explain the whole process in a useful way so it can be altered ?

What starting place ?

Personally, I think a rough outline of an integrated theory of human motivation (hopefully somewhat broader than the traditional "emotions", including "cold" as well as "hot" origins of violence) is beginning to take shape from Darwinian, Jamesian, Cognitive, and Social Construction approaches. It potentially puts pieces of the puzzle of violence into clearer perspective. The parable of the blind men and the elephant always seems to come to mind when looking at the different bodies of data.

Albert Bandura had some very intriguing and influential data on the social imitation aspects of aggression, but I think it has become very clear that the aggression itself isn't learned socially, its expression is "tuned" during development and social learning mechanisms are an important aspect.

Helping to evaluate the theory ...

Given that; it isn't clear to me yet which approach or combination of approaches your theory takes (thus what body or bodies of data it relies upon), or is it supposed to be something completely novel ? That being the case, the question of the kind of data the theory is based on becomes particularly relevant, and a clear statement of the specific predictions it makes (in contrast with other theories) is needed to evaluate it fairly.

kind regards,

Todd

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