Page 294 - The Social Animal

276 The Social Animal

horns on their hats? If you want to get rid of someone, usually
you tease ’em. So the whole school would call them homos . . . . 62

Of course, not all students who are rejected and taunted go on a
murderous rampage.The behavior of the shooters was pathological in
the extreme—but certainly not unfathomable. My best guess is that
there are hundreds of thousands of students undergoing similarly
stressful experiences. They may suffer in silence—but they do suffer.
In the weeks following the Columbine massacre, Internet chat rooms
were flooded with postings from unhappy teenagers. Although not
condoning the behavior of the shooters, the overwhelming majority
certainly understood it. They expressed their own hurt and anger
about being rejected and taunted. A great many of these students
made statements that can best be summarized as: “Of course, I would
never shoot anybody, but I sure have had fantasies about doing it!”
That kind of statement should make us sit up and take notice. Is there
anything we can do to change the social atmosphere in our schools?
Yes. I will discuss some tried-and-true interventions near the end of
this chapter, as well as in the following chapter.

Social Learning and Aggression Social learning plays an im-
portant role in determining whether a person will aggress in a given
situation. We have already seen how social learning can inhibit an ag-
gressive response. Recall that, when the area of a monkey’s brain that
characteristically produces aggressive behavior is stimulated, the
monkey will not aggress while in the presence of a monkey whom it
has learned to fear.
Another qualification based upon social learning is the intention
attributed to an agent of pain or frustration. One aspect of behavior
that seems to distinguish human beings from other animals is our
ability to take the intentions of others into account. Consider the fol-
lowing situations: (1) a considerate person accidentally steps on your
toe; (2) a thoughtless person whom you know doesn’t care about you
steps on your toe. Let us assume the amount of pressure and pain is
exactly the same in both cases. My guess is that the latter situation
would evoke an aggressive response, but the former would produce
little or no aggression.
This phenomenon was demonstrated in an experiment by
63
Shabaz Mallick and Boyd McCandless in which they frustrated