Page 313 - The Social Animal

Human Aggression 295

gressive film character being punished displayed less aggressive be-
havior than did children who watched an aggressive film character
who was neither rewarded nor punished. On the other hand—and
this is crucial to our discussion—seeing a model being punished for
aggression did not decrease the general level of aggression below that
of a group of children who were never exposed to an aggressive
model. In other words, the major thrust of the research seems to in-
dicate that seeing an aggressor rewarded will increase aggressive be-
havior in a child and that seeing an aggressor punished will not
increase the child’s aggressive behavior, but it’s not clear that seeing
an aggressor punished will decrease the child’s aggressive behavior. It
might be just as effective not to expose the child to aggressive mod-
els at all. The implications of this research for the portrayal of vio-
lence in the mass media have already been discussed.

Rewarding Alternative Behavior Patterns Another pos-
sibility that has been investigated is to ignore a child when he or she
behaves aggressively and to reward the child for nonaggressive be-
havior. This strategy is based in part on the assumption that young
children (and perhaps adults, as well) frequently behave aggressively
as a way of attracting attention. For them, being punished is prefer-
able to being ignored. Paradoxically, then, punishing aggressive be-
havior may actually be interpreted as a reward—“Hey, look, gang!
Mommy pays attention to me every time I slug my little brother. I
think I’ll do it again.” This idea was tested in an experiment con-
ducted at a nursery school by Paul Brown and Rogers Elliot. 108 The
nursery-school teachers were instructed to ignore all aggressive be-
havior on the part of the kids. At the same time, they were asked to
be very attentive to the children and especially to give them a lot of
attention when they were doing things incompatible with aggres-
sion—such as playing in a friendly manner, sharing toys, and coop-
erating with others. After a few weeks, there was a noticeable
decline in aggressive behavior. In a more elaborate experiment, Joel
Davitz 109 demonstrated that frustration need not necessarily result
in aggression; rather, it can lead to constructive behavior if such be-
havior has been made attractive and appealing by prior training. In
this study, children were allowed to play in groups of four. Some of
these groups were rewarded for constructive behavior, while others
were rewarded for aggressive or competitive behavior. Then the kids