Social Psychology - Violence

Question : Violence leads to more violence... I believe reducing the propensity towards violence is a worthwhile goal. How could we integrate psychological concepts to make a positive impact on society?

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Answer: That's a great question. There are ways which I think we could make a positive impact towards this issue. One way is to reduce the amount of violence through media such as TV, movies and advertisements. After all, the findings have proven that it has no effect to the promotion of the products. It's going to be a lose-lose situation as people will focus more on the violence than the product.

As for movies, I think it is good if people are pre-warned that the violence found in movie are purely for entertainment, they are "fake", just acting and not for mimicking. Giving a pre-warning would lessened the arousal of aggression.

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Another Answer: I agree with the previous answer that excess amount of violence in media may induce violence. By the same token, we can also use media to reduce violence. Government ad on domestic violence is effective, remember the slogan "wins the fight, loses the family." They are easy to remember, a good reminder to induce positive image to family.

In Hong Kong, we can see no smoking ad. However, it seems that no government can impose this strict censorship in media - no violence owing to freedom of speech. Can we induce such resistance to our next generation? i.e. inoculation effect? Hopefully they can be immunized against violence virus. To reduce propensity towards violence, the concepts introduce in the textbook seems like commonsense. Theoretically, every rational person in a civilized society has learnt and continually practiced these concepts in their daily lives. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case because rational people can at times, more frequent than you or me would like to admit, behave irrationally. I believe the key to reduce the propensity towards violence is education. I am reminded of the tactics of “pure reasoning”, “building empathy towards others”, etc., by reading the Social Animal. Thus I am more conscious of my reaction to others, how I should react in the face of violence/ aggression.


In school, the most common form of discipline is punishment, because it is the easiest, and least time-consuming on the part of teachers to impose punishment on kids. I believe a lot of teachers in Hong Kong would agree that they do not spend as much time as they would like to on providing counseling to students. But counseling is a very effectively way to teach students the importance of “building empathy towards others”, and learn “reasoning”. I believe expanding school counseling services, especially in band V schools, will introduce some long-lasting impacts on reducing the propensity towards violence.

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Another Answer: Great points on censorship. I was struck by the study on the long term effects, "that the more violence individuals watch on TV as children, the more violence they exhibit years later as teenagers and young adults." (Aronson, 279)

Children and young people seem to be exposed to violence at younger ages, I wonder how this exposure to violence will be manifested in the future.

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Another Answer:

I am not sure if the "Band system" is still in place today in Hong Kong's Educational Context, but it was there definitely 10 years ago. There were grading of schools based on a a set of criteria (mostly on performance and conduct). It goes from Band I to Band V, where Band I with the best performance/ conduct. I am not a teacher, maybe some of our classmates may know more accurate on what criteria the school is graded.