The Psychology of Violence, Intimidation & Hate

Posted by permission of Dr. Thomas O’Connor. Copyright by T. O’Connor.

 

“Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

All violence is aggression, but not all aggression is violence. Intimidation, for example, is a case of nonviolent aggression. Violence is a case of aggression where physical, not psychological harm, results. Aggression is the concept that has been studied the most by psychologists, so much that it’s a standard topic of discussion in undergraduate social psychology (e.g., Feldman 2001; Kendrick et. al. 2002), but also because aggression is “social” by nature in its determinants and consequences. Sociologists have also not been remiss in studying the topic (e.g., Meadows 2000; Barak 2003), and of course, criminology, as a field, has always seemed interested in expanding the domain for what’s considered violent crime. Criminal justice, for its part, has made significant inroads with an understanding of domestic violence and stalking. This lecture focuses simply on a few select issues or topics that are likely to be of most concern in the field of forensic psychology.

A COMPOSITE DEFINITION OF VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION

There are probably an infinite number of types of aggression; people are probably always going to come up with new ways of hurting one another; and future forensic psychologists are probably going to deal with more bizarre cases of violence than ever before. What’s needed is a definition that combines the best features of what is already known about aggression and what is yet to be known about it. Such a definition would be “behavior intended to injure or harm another person or group of persons either physically or psychologically” (Baron & Richardson 1994; Bartol 2002; Bartol & Bartol 2004; Berkowitz 1993). There are three crucial components to this composite definition:

• behavior — aggression is not the same as an emotion (such as anger)

• intent — aggression is purposeful or intended behavior, not inadvertent, accidental, or teasing (although psychological harm can involve teasing, etc. — the term “violence” usual refers to when physical harm only is considered part of this definition)

• injury or harm — aggression has detectable effects, either from marks on the body or looks on the face (it can be distinguished from assertiveness, dominance, and playfulness)

Violence and aggression may be committed for a variety of reasons, and sorting out the motivational mechanisms behind all these reasons is a rather large academic research enterprise too long to be adequately summarized here. There are literally dozens of theories about the causes of aggression, and such theories cover the full spectrum of psychological schools of thought. To cite just a few examples, Freudian or psychoanalytic theory holds that there is a basic human instinct toward aggression because rather than kill ourselves (to be finally rid of all life’s irritations), we redirect our self-destructive impulses toward others. The ethologist Karl Lorenz (1966) put forth the catharsis theory of aggression that built-up aggressive energy just needs to be released sometimes. John Dollard et. al. (1939) proposed the frustration-aggression hypothesis, which holds that aggression is an automatic response to any blocking of goal-directed behavior. Albert Bandura (1973) created a popular social learning theory of aggression, which held that rewards, either direct or indirect (in the form of observation of models), were the influencing factors in aggression. Numerous other theories exist, implicating concepts as diverse as Type A personality, territoriality, self-esteem, and intrinsic appeal (Baumeister & Campbell 1999). Suffice it to say that aggression has been extensively studied, andforensic psychologists are most likely to be called upon to consult or testify about research stemming from Bandura’s (1973) social learning theory, as it relates to the effect of glamorized violent role models, such as those in the media, on computer games, in cyberspace, and in music. Forensic psychiatrists, on the other hand, are most likely to be called upon to address the issue of whether people, especially children, can tell the difference between reality and fantasy.

GENDER AND ETHNIC PATTERNS

What is most generally known about violence is that it is predominantly a male phenomenon. It has always been universal (across societies and across history) that murder, for instance, is committed by males at least 90% of the time. The “maleness” of serious violence and aggression has led most researchers to suspect that either biology (testosterone) or socialization (how males are raised) might be involved as causal factors. Racial or ethnic differences have also been studied, but the results are often controversial and caught up in politics (Hawkins 2003). For example, whenever someone tries to suggest that biology or socialization factors should be looked into for blacks (who account for well over 50% of arrests for violent crime in America), they are usually accused of being a racist who doesn’t understand the many forms of discriminatory treatment at the hands of the criminal justice system. Research on Latino and Asian American violence is very inconclusive, as some studies report lower levels of overall aggression, and other studies report higher levels, especially with school failure-related pathways for Latinos and intimate or family violence with Asians (Bartol & Bartol 2004). It is important for any aspiring forensic psychologist to rid themselves of any ethnocentrism and educate themselves about how American society sometimes gets “locked into” historical traps.

THE VARIETY OF EXPLANATORY FACTORS

Among the biological factors that have been looked at, much of forensic psychology has focused on the significance of early life experiences, such as — birth trauma; alcohol or drug ingestion by the mother while pregnant; other prenatal dietary deficiencies; traumatic head injury via abuse or accident; and exposure to toxic materials such as lead or cadmium as a child. This list, in no way, exhausts all the biological factors which exist, and battles over which government and medical research reports, for example, have the most credibility are a matter of contention in most courts of law.

Among the more sociological, or social psychological, factors which have been looked at, the list would include: socialization “scripts” (patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving from early life experiences); glamorization of violence in TV, games, sports, music, and art; hostile attribution bias (which is a misreading of cues to fight when there is no reason to fight); stress (which is sometimes calledstrain in criminology); the influence of pornography; and the influence of unintentional encouragement of aggression by being raised around guns and weapons. It should be noted that weather, overcrowding, and other ecological conditions frequently trigger aggression in people.

The criminological literature on homicide has much to say about violence and aggression in general. However, generalizing from what is known about a “typical murder” (single incident, usually committed while engaging in another offense against an intimate or acquaintance, and usually involving people between the ages of 18 and 25) to an “atypical murder” (like homicide-suicide terrorism, mass murder, spree murder, serial murder) can be a tricky business. Terrorists and serial killers, for example, don’t frequently “telegraph” their warnings like a typical killer or mass murderer might, and serial killers tend to be older, usually between the ages of 25 and 35. Nevertheless, there may be enough overlap with certain explanatory factors (e.g., pornography, stress, etc.) to at least build on the criminology of two atypical crimes: school shootings and workplace violence. The following lecture notes summarize what is known about these two phenomena.

THE INFLUENCE OF VIOLENT MEDIA

Popular explanations of violence and aggression often rest on ideas about the corrupting influence of television, movies, music videos, video games, computer games, rap/hip hop music, or whatever happens to be the latest scapegoat du jour. The fact is that TV is much more pervasive, and has become the de facto babysitter in many homes, with little or no parental monitoring. Where there is strong parental supervision in other areas, including the teaching of moral values and norms, the effect of prolonged exposure to violence on TV is probably quite minimal. When TV becomes the sole source of moral norms and values, this causes problems. Our nation’s children watch an astonishing 19,000 hours of TV by the time they finish high school, much more time than all their classroom hours put together since first grade. By eighteen, they will have seen an extraordinary number of acts of violence (200,000), including at least 40,000 senseless acts of murder, with every hour of prime time TV continuing to expose them to at least 6 acts of violence (Huston & Donnerstein 1992; Gerbner 1996).

Feldman (2001) summarizes much of the scientific research in this area, and correctly points out that there are many research hypotheses that make up ongoing lines of study. To name a few, there is: (1) the catharsis effect, which means that society could be getting it out of their system via exposure to media violence, particularly during wartime when most of the violence occurs abroad; (2) the brutalization, or desensitization effect, which means we become so desensitized it doesn’t bother us anymore or we have no negative reactions to it; (3) the disinhibition effect, which means that exposure to media violence reduces inhibitions against behaving aggressively because we see no negative consequences to it; (4) the attributional effect, which means that we produce self-made attributions or justifications for senseless violence when we see it; (5) the cultural or normative effect, which means that we create beliefs about the world as a hostile place and come to see societal violence as normal; and (6) the social learning effect, which holds that we learn long-term violent scripts which are played out in the future. With exposure to unusually extreme acts of violence, there are a variety of other trauma effects; for example, there are various “survivor” syndromes, “sleeper” effects (seven years or more), and lagged-time effects (one or two years later). The results of research on extreme trauma effects are too mixed to make any definite conclusions, but the notion of sleeper effects is indeed supported by a piece of relatively famous twenty-year longitudinal research known as the Rip Van Winkle study (Eron et. al. 1972). Further research by Huesmann et. al. (2003) has also produced some hard evidence for the criminogenic effects of exposure to media violence, and the model used was not unlike that of Bandura’s (1973) popular social learning theory.

Huesmann et.al.’s Findings on Exposure to Violence on TV

The long-term effects of repeated, or heavy, exposure to dramatic violence on TV can be explained as follows. Young children, at certain developmental periods, have a strong tendency toward what Bandura called observational learning, which is the tendency to imitate any human being or person they admire (role model). When such a role model displays specific aggressive behaviors, the learning of this consists of the aggressive material being stored into the cognitive system where it eventually “crystallizes” and becomes difficult to change as the child grows older. This crystallized cognitive structure has three components: (1) schemas, which form a sort of outlook on life or characterization of the world as a dangerous or hostile place; (2) scripts, which become part of the child’s inventory of problem-solving skills for when they face a situation like the one their role model faced; and (3) beliefs, which consist of rationalizations, justifications, or moral statements that violence is all right under certain circumstances.

In short, Huesmann et. al. (2003) found that media violence tends to have short-term effects on adults, and long-term effects (as described above) on children. Furthermore, the specific kind of violence that has the most long-term impact on children may NOT be of the more brutal, senseless variety. Any kind of “subtle” violence (e.g. where the role model wins and the losers are only psychologically harmed in the process) may produce the criminogenic effect. However, observations of “unnecessary” violence still tends to produce the strongest effect, and a steady diet of observed aggression clearly has severe consequences.

For the effects of playing violent video games, Anderson & Bushman (2001) have reviewed most of the literature on this subject, and the crux of their findings suggest that exposure to first-person shooter action games like Doom, Duke Nukem, Wolfenstein, Postal Dude, Halo, and the like tend to produce a consistent increase in aggression-related thoughts and feelings along with a corresponding decrease in prosocial behavior. This effect occurs regardless of age, and it doesn’t matter if those exposed are children, young adults, or middle-aged adults. Boys, of course, are influenced more than girls (as they are in most studies of media violence), but there is also some research indicating that those who are already prone to aggression are the ones who play violent video games, and since there is NO cross-cultural support for an effect (in Japan, for example), some researchers say there is “no solid evidence” as of yet regarding a criminogenic effect from playing video games (Cooper & Mackie 1986; Griffiths 1997). Likewise, there have been no strong effects found in research on cyber-online gaming, nor much on rap music. A few sensational cases exist which make up documentary or anecdotal evidence, however.

For the effects of watching pornography, there is evidence suggesting that exposure to some types of sexually arousing material leads to increases in aggression (Allen, D’Alessio & Brezgel 1995). A model known in the literature as Zillman’s excitation transfer model (Zillman 1984) is frequently used in most studies of a pornography and violence connection. According to this line of research, it depends upon how the pornography links sex with violence, and it doesn’t have to be any kind of “slasher” film, either, because viewing that kind of pornography usually just leads to a general state of desensitization and a slight decrease in empathy. More “subtle” forms of pornography are influential because they portray myths that women enjoy being used (victimized) for sex, and regular viewers of this kind of pornography tend to develop schemas, such as beliefs, attitudes, and justifications for aggression; and there is even the possibility of long-term “scripts” being developed. A word of advice to forensic psychologists at this point — avoid being dragged into an obscenity & free speech debate when testifying about pornography & violence. Obscenity issues and a pornography-violence connection are two very separate areas of study, usually requiring separate expertise.

Likewise with gun control & Second Amendment issues, it’s easy for a forensic psychologist to be drawn outside the range of their expertise. The leading psychological research on a weapons effect (that the mere presence of guns or an enthusiasm about them is linked to violence) is a line of studies that mostly uses Leonard Berkowitz’s revised frustration-aggression hypothesis (Berkowitz & LePage 1967; Berkowitz 1993). This line of research only suggests that guns produce a “priming” of aggressive associations in the mind, and that is not the same thing as the formation of any schema or script, for which research on a gun-violence connection is inconclusive. The revised frustration-aggression model requires some “triggering” mechanism, like a stressful life event or one of the other painful stimuli which make people mad, as outlined in Agnew’s general strain theory (Agnew 1992).

STALKING: THE CRIME OF INTIMIDATION

Prior to it being called stalking, this crime was referred to as harassment, threats, annoyance, or domestic terrorism (as well as a number of other names), and like harassment, stalking is a crime that depends upon the victim’s perception of fear, uncertainty, or disruption. It all started in 1990 in California with the first antistalking law. Since then, all 50 states have something similar. Famous celebrities have been killed or injured by stalkers, and have led the victim’s movement in this regard. Even women in domestic violence shelters often report being stalked. There are an estimated 200,000 serial stalkers in America, and all stalking is serial crime, involving repeat victimization by definition. Every year, there are an estimated 1.4 million people who are the victims of stalking. Women are four times more likely to be stalked than men. The majority of stalkers have been in relationships with their victims, which is to say, most victims know their stalker, but a significant percentage either never met their victims, or were just acquaintances – neighbors, friends or co-workers. Stalking can be considered a type of antisocial behavior bordering on sociopathy. Many serial killers and rapists engage in stalking. Stalking is like a long-term rape. The following is a list of stalking behaviors:

• Watching or following someone

• Making harassing phone calls or hang-ups

• Sending harassing mail

• Making threats to victim or victim’s family

• Vandalizing personal property or a vehicle

• Making repeated drive-bys

• Sending unwanted love notes, flowers, gifts, and so forth

Stalking always begins innocently, in what appears to be a chance encounter. Initial contacts are at the most innocent of places — health clubs, church meetings, schools, day care centers, etc., and then the relationship quickly becomes a nightmare. After about three weeks or so, the would-be stalker typically asks the victim to marry him. Then, the stalker begins to invade the victim’s place of work. Then, the stalker tries to take control of the victim’s finances, the victim’s vehicle, the victim’s house or apartment, any and all possessions or things that need fixed up or taken care of. Stalkers try to move quickly (possibly in order to be quicker than the criminal justice system) and are continually forcing the victim into early decisions, yes or no situations, and then they do what they want anyway. Most stalkers fit into three broad categories: (1) intimate partner stalkers; (2) delusional stalkers; and (3) vengeful stalkers.

1. Intimate partner stalkers are usually the guy who “can’t let go.” They are men who refuse to believe that a relationship has really ended. Often, other people – even the victim – feels sorry for them. Many have extensive criminal histories. About 50% of all stalkers fall into this category. With these types, the victim often unwittingly encourages the stalker by trying to “let him down easy,” or agreeing to talk to him “just one more time.” Such stalkers are just interested in dominance and control.

2. Delusional stalkers frequently have little, if any, contact with their victims. They have major mental illnesses like schizophrenia, manic-depression or erotomania, and come from an abusive or emotionally barren family background with a poor sense of their own identity. They hold tight to some false belief that keeps them tied to their victims. In erotomania, the stalker’s delusional belief is that the victim loves him. This type of stalker actually believes that he is having a relationship with his victim, even though they might never have met. The woman stalking David Letterman, the stalker who killed actress Rebecca Schaeffer and the man who stalked Madonna are all examples of this.

Another type of delusional stalker believes he is destined to be with someone, and that if he only pursues her hard enough and long enough, she will come to love him as he loves her. These stalkers know they are not having a relationship with their victims, but firmly believe that they will some day. John Hinckley Jr. and his obsession with Jodi Foster is an example of this type of stalker.

Delusional stalkers are typically unmarried and socially immature loners who are unable to establish or sustain close relationships with others. They rarely date and have had few, if any, sexual relationships. Since they are both threatened by and yearn for closeness, they often pick victims who are unattainable in some way; married women, a therapist, clergyman, doctor or teacher. Those in the helping professions are particularly vulnerable to delusional stalkers. Any kindness shown to this kind of stalker will be blown out of proportion into a delusion of intimacy. What these stalkers cannot attain in reality is achieved through fantasy

While some seek out a victim of higher status (doctors, lawyers, teachers), others seek out celebrities. Celebrity stalkers often psychotically “hear” or “see” something in the words or appearances of the victim. They are often convinced that the celebrity is sending them cryptic messages intended only for them to understand. Erotomanic delusions last an average of ten years.

3. Vengeful stalkers are angry with their victims over something, real or imagined. Politicians, for example, get many of these types of stalkers who become angry over some piece of legislation. Disgruntled ex-employees also stalk their former bosses, co-workers or the entire company. Some of these types are psychopaths; others are delusional (most often paranoid), and all believe that they are really the victims. They stalk to “get even.”

In general, for any type of stalker, the less of a relationship that actually existed prior to the stalking, the more mentally disturbed the stalker.

HATE OR BIAS CRIMES

Hate crime is basically bias-motivated crime. A bias-motivated crime is a crime in which the offender is motivated by a characteristic of the victim that identifies the victim as a member of some group toward which the offender feels animosity. The sociological literature on collective violence is somewhat helpful in explaining hate crime, but much of it is restricted to analysis of related, but different, social behavior like mobs, lynchings, crowds, and riots. As a summation of that literature, three (3) sociological explanations have existed historically, all revolving around the presumed “social” or symbolic status of the victim; i.e., victims being sought out primarily because their social group is seen in some negative light:

1. Group competition over scarce resources
2. Long-standing social rituals
3. Early socio-psychological trauma

These are all explanations of the behavior, not necessarily of the stereotypical thought processes behind the behavior. Although the study of stereotypes can provide useful information, there are a number ofother, more important attributes of hate crime that make them more than symbolic. It can be argued that most hate crime is NOT committed by members of organized hate groups but by individual citizens. Some perpetrators resent the growing power of a particular racial or ethnic group; others engage in random targeting of interchangeable representatives of minority groups; and still others believe they are on a mission to rid the world of some perceived evil. The most frequent group are believed to be spur-of-the-moment offenders, and very often, alcohol or drug use is involved.

Regarding spur-of-the-moment offenders, one of their more interesting characteristics involves the role of uncertainty, or what researchers call the “actuarial” dimension of hate crime. For the perpetrator, it doesn’t matter what specific race or nationality the victim is, only that they’re different or a stranger, as if the crime was driven by some kind of xenophobia, which is a factor playing a large part in crime against immigrants and the crime of genocide. In many ways, it’s the absence of information, the uncertainty about the social status of the victim, or lack of knowledge about the victim all together that is important. In this respect, this leaves some kind of guessing along with actuarial or accounting-like thinking going on in the perpetrator’s mind. The victim is rightly or wrongly identified or classified and then seen as “the last straw” in a long-imagined count of many insults, economic defeats, or lost opportunities the perpetrator (and his or her social group) have had. The manner and methods used in the violent attack usually tell whether the crime was expressive (satisfying for the perpetrator) or instrumental (to teach “those people” a lesson). Premeditation may be present by the offender planning the crime for weeks, or there may be none at all, with the crime being a spur-of-the-moment event. That’s why legislators have been busy passing extensive hate crime and hate-motivated crime statutes that attempt to make clear exactly what is involved by way of motive. Unfortunately, most hate-crime legislation doesn’t consider the role of “stranger crime”, uncertainty, and lack of premeditation.

Within the field of criminology, there is no lack of concern for organized hate groups (e.g., Ronczkowski 2004) since many such groups, like the Ku Klux Klan, have been long seen as a crime threat, and in more recent years, as a domestic terrorist threat, or “security threat group” (in intelligence parlance). As theLecture on Domestic Terrorism makes clear, organized hate groups tend to involve numerous splinter factions which spawn off from larger groups. Therefore, local group structure tends to be loose while the appearance exists, at least, of a strong, cohesive front nationally and internationally. The typical criminological inquiry focuses upon the similarities and differences between a street criminal and the average hate-oriented terrorist, and progress toward that inquiry has not yielded much more than simple typological distinctions. For example, McDevitt, Levin & Bennett (2002) offer the following “hate crime typology:”

• thrill-seeking — the most prevalent type of hate criminal, in it for fun, sadism, bias in general, with no specialization

• defensive — the most racist type, who stands up against any “outsider” they perceive as an outsider

• retaliatory — the type who believes their group has been dishonored or affronted, who plans special attacks

• mission — the type who is either organized or mentally ill, and plans to eliminate “evil” in the world

The last type, mission-oriented, is most likely to resemble most terrorist types. However, there are exceptions to hate crime typologies. One problem involves so-called “special issue” offenders, like ecoterrorists and abortion bombers. With the latter, it may very well be that a simple dichotomous typology will suffice, such as:

• martyrs — those who are suicidal

• stalkers — those who are non-suicidal

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