Page 311 - The Social Animal

Human Aggression 293

of released inmates, it does not completely rule out the possibility
that the mere prospect of harsh punishment might curb the criminal
tendencies of those who have never been convicted. It is certainly
possible that the threat of punishment deters many would-be crim-
inals from ever breaking the law in the first place.
Although this is possible, I consider it unlikely. What I do know
is that, although severe punishment frequently results in compliance,
it rarely produces internalization. To establish long-term nonaggres-
sive behavior patterns, it is important to induce people, when they
are still children, to internalize a set of values that denigrates aggres-
sive behavior. In two separate experiments discussed more fully in
Chapter 5, both Merrill Carlsmith and I and Jonathan Freedman 104
demonstrated that, with young children, threats of mild punishment
are far more effective than threats of severe punishment. Although
these highly controlled experiments dealt only with toy preference in
children, they strongly suggest that threats of mild (rather than se-
vere) punishment would curb aggression in the same way.
Here’s how it works. Suppose a mother threatens to punish her
young son to induce him to refrain, momentarily, from aggressing
against his little sister. If she is successful, her son will experience dis-
sonance. The cognition “I like to wallop my little sister” is dissonant
with the cognition “I am refraining from walloping my little sister.”
If he were severely threatened, he would have an abundantly good
reason for refraining; he would be able to reduce dissonance by say-
ing, “The reason I’m not hitting my sister is that I’d get the daylights
beaten out of me if I did—but I sure would like to.” However, sup-
pose his mother threatens to use a punishment that is mild rather
than severe—a punishment just barely strong enough to get the child
to stop his aggression. In this instance, when he asks himself why he’s
not hitting his infinitely hittable little sister at the moment, he can’t
use the threat as a way of reducing dissonance—that is, he can’t eas-
ily convince himself that he would be walloped if he hit his sister
simply because it’s not true—yet he must justify the fact that he’s not
hitting his sister. In other words, his external justification (in terms
of the severity of the threat) is minimal; therefore, he must add his
own to justify his restraint. He might, for example, convince himself
that he no longer enjoys hitting his little sister. This would not only
explain, justify, and make sensible his momentarily peaceful behav-
ior, but more important, it would decrease the probability of his hitting