the psychology of good and evil: what leads children, adults and groups to help and harm others
For his entire life,David Chester, Ph.D., has been driven by a single question: Why practise people seek to harm others?
"As a child, I'd see these news articles and local Boob tube news showing murders and assaults and things similar that," said Chester, an assistant professor in theSection of Psychologyin theCollege of Humanities and Sciences. "It always perplexed me because we'd done such a dandy job of moving forward as a species and building this great society, merely nosotros still kept one part of our prehistoric past — we kept this tendency to exist violent and aggressive."
Chester, a leading scholar in aggression inquiry, is a recent add-on to VCU's faculty. HisSocial Psychology and Neuroscience Labis launching a serial of studies this autumn that aim to further our understanding of tearing behavior, exploring the function of the brain and homo psychology behind topics such every bit revenge, domestic abuse, psychopaths, and much more.
"The goal of our lab is to reduce violence in the real world. That's our mission statement. That'southward what we're here to exercise," he said. "By laying blank these psychological and neurological processes behind aggression, we can proceeds some serious traction in how to get about doing that."
Can violence exist an habit?
Chester's recent enquiry, in collaboration withNathan DeWall, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Kentucky, has focused on whether violence might actually exist addictive. And, if that'south truthful, could an addiction to aggression be treatable, similar to how alcoholism or opioid dependence is treated?
Conventionally, violence is understood to be often driven past negative emotions, such as anger or fear. For example, a person might become aggressive because they were enraged at another person, or they were afraid the other person might injure them.
"Our lab has really shown that that'south true — negative emotions are there," Chester said. "Only positive emotions actually as well play a pretty big role in ambitious beliefs every bit well. So aggression can experience good. And that pleasure — and the associated, what we telephone call hedonic reward — is a really potent motivating force."
In other words, he said, aggressive behavior tin be reinforced by positive feelings of ability and dominance.
"So assailment isn't just near 'I'g angry and I want to hit someone,'" Chester said. "It'south besides virtually how it feels good sometimes to go revenge on someone who has wronged you or who yous perceive as having wronged you lot."
That positive sensation, Chester has found, works on the same neural circuits as other addictive behaviors, such as cocaine, gambling and engaging in risky sexual beliefs.
"It follows this trajectory where negative and positive emotion fit together," he said. "And then, 'I feel bad, I don't want to experience bad, and then I'thousand looking for things that make me feel good.' Well, we've always known that drugs and risky behavior are in that group. We're proverb that aggression belongs in that group besides. And that people seek information technology out when they're feeling bad. And that they use information technology like a tool to aid themselves regulate their mood country. And when they practice that, it activates these addiction circuits in the brain and it reinforces this behavior."
In the months alee, Chester's lab is planning to launch a trial of a drug called Naltrexone to exam whether aggression tin be treated as an habit.
"What [Naltrexone] basically does is it blocks pleasure," he said. "Information technology keeps y'all from feeling good from things that would normally brand you experience proficient. Information technology's used commonly to treat alcohol dependence. These individuals, when they want to have a drink, they become a drinkable and they feel skilful. If you have a Naltrexone implant, which they supersede every half-dozen weeks or so, yous have a beverage, yous're waiting for the buzz to kick in, y'all might go a little but you're not really getting the same bump that you used to. Because this drug blocks the typical pleasure enhancing neurotransmitters and neurochemicals from doing their job. It stands in their style."
Then if aggression works on these same advantage circuits, he said, it'south very possible that Naltrexone might as well curb an habit to violence.
"We're looking forward to really testing this idea over the next year and see if we tin can't leverage this idea and become out into the real world and maybe reduce aggressive behavior," he said.
Understanding the psychopath'south brain
Emily Lasko is one of three doctoral students working in the Social Psychology and Neuroscience Lab. Her research focuses on the neurological connections betwixt psychopathy, empathy and aggression.
Specifically, Lasko has been investigating encephalon scans of people with psychopathic traits and finding that those traits may exist related to gray thing density in regions of the brain involved in emotion processing and behavioral control.
"By gaining a deeper understanding of the biological markers of aggression, empathy and 'dark' personality traits, also as understanding the ways in which such traits can emerge to exist both maladaptive and potentially adaptive, we can be better equipped to develop early on intervention strategies and rehabilitative programs for aggressive and antisocial behavior," she said. "This knowledge will too facilitate efforts to target and foster potential strengths or adaptive features of the 'darker' personalities."
Psychopaths are unremarkably understood to lack empathy, Chester said, but they frequently also take other traits, such every bit charisma and the power to get what they want.
"There'southward this notion of successful psychopaths, and so think of like a CEO. Well, it'due south not just that they're walking around without empathy and that's letting them get what they want. They besides have these abilities to manipulate others. So that's got to stand for to something in the brain," Chester said.
"So nosotros see that they have this increased gray matter density — and greyness thing where information processing happens, that'due south where the piece of work gets done — in these parts of the brain chosen the lateral pre-frontal cortex, which is actually involved in cocky-control, self-regulation."
Lasko's data suggests that psychopaths' gray matter density may requite them greater control over how they regulate themselves, allowing them to adapt to different situations more easily and to manipulate others.
Aggression and romance
Another doctoral student, Alexandra Martelli, is exploring intimate partner assailment and is currently running a study in which she observes the encephalon activity of couples who are actively interim aggressively toward i some other.
"Close relationships are vital for our well-being and overall happiness and when nosotros have unresolved conflict with shut others it can accept devastating intrapersonal consequences on our health and well-beingness," Martelli said. "Especially in relationships where one or both partners suffers from various psychopathology — such as depression, feet, addiction or alcoholism — which tin put additional stress on the relationship."
Previous studies accept looked at the consequences of intimate partner aggression and how that affects the brain. Martelli's experiment is believed to be the first to involve watching that brain action in real time, as the conflict is occurring.
"We're really trying to explore what neural mechanisms, what brain processes are promoting and causing people to harm their romantic partners," Chester said. "What nosotros're looking at is, that given that intimate partner aggression is kind of a unique flavor of aggression, information technology's its own kind of matter. What is the encephalon doing to create that, as opposed to just being aggressive?"
Martelli's research interests include mindfulness training and how that can help healthy relationships function.
"My master interests involve better agreement how mindfulness training tin meliorate relationship operation in distressed couples, too as to better understand the neural mechanisms involved in mindfulness mediation and its impact on emotion regulation and relationship outcomes," she said.
Why exercise some serve revenge common cold?
Doctoral student Sam West is looking at provoked and unprovoked aggression in an inter-temporal context — pregnant, people sometimes want to hurt someone immediately, whereas other times they might choose to wait a while in order to exact a greater revenge.
"We know like nothing about that," Chester said. "Nosotros do not sympathise the motivational backdrop backside why some people cull to get ambitious sometimes right now in the moment versus why they're sometimes willing to wait and exact revenge at a later time."
West, who has conducted research on social rejection, aggressive behavior, disgust, and dehumanization, is developing a new research image for examining aggressive beliefs every bit a advantage in the context of delayed gratification and socio-economic status.
He is adapting an experiment used in addiction research, in which people who are, say, cocaine dependent are offered an immediate bump of cocaine, or a greater corporeality if they wait a certain amount of time.
"The people who cull the firsthand bump, that's the trajectory yous really don't want to be on. These are the people who have the worst outcomes," Chester said. "Information technology's this idea of rewards — you can have a modest reward now, or a bigger reward later. Then nosotros're doing the same affair with aggression."
W's findings could concur implications for addressing violent crime.
"What we're seeing from very preliminary work is that it does appear to make a similar pattern of responding (eastward.g., most people adopt the immediate reward) when compared to simply receiving money," Westward said. "A recent written report we conducted indicated that maybe cocky-control is the strongest predictor of this equally a college power to suspension earlier acting in guild to inflict more damage in the future."
Agreement assailment
In order to reduce violence, Chester says, we must first gain a deeper understanding of why people are violent.
"To utilise a metaphor, there'south a lot of mechanics who are working on a motorcar, only they don't know how the car works," he said. "There's thousands of people working to reduce violence every day, trying to make the globe a less violet place, simply we don't know how it works, y'all know?"
"So what we're doing in the lab is we're studying the car," he said. "Nosotros're studying the brain and human psychology, trying to empathise what motivates people to be aggressive. That way, nosotros know where to look when nosotros're trying to prepare the problem."
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Source: https://www.news.vcu.edu/article/What_is_the_psychology_behind_violence_and_aggression_A_new_VCU
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