More Violent Personality example essay topic

Violence is behaving in an aggressive or abusive manner towards people or objects. Violence generally occurs as a physical response to the emotion of anger or frustration. Another common reason for violence is to gain something from the violent act. However many violent crimes occur for no gainful reason, these crimes seem to have no purpose other than to act in an aggressive manner. Violent crimes include physical abuse, verbal abuse and the making of violent threats It appears as some individuals act violently for different reasons and that certain people are more likely to become violent than others, this can be due to several main reasons. One is that people are born with a more violent personality behave in a different manner to other people; the idea behind this is that people are born with the predisposition to act in a violent manner.

People have the innate desire to act or behave in a violent manner. Therefore they are satisfying the innate desire that drives or motivates them to behave in that particular way. There is also the argument that violence is hereditary and that it is passed on through genes. If this is the case then it is likely that people born with a set of genes including violence are more likely to act in a violent way than those who do not inherit that gene.

The second reason that only some people become violent is that people live in different circumstances and have different lifestyles, which may create the need to be violent, for survival purposes. Therefore if people live in a situation where using violence is the only way of gaining something they are more likely to act violently than if they could gain the necessities through other means, for example a homeless person may be more likely to commit a violent act such as mugging to gain money than they would if they lived in a house with the necessary items available to them. Therefore situation may influence the development of violent personalities. Another reason is that people react violently to the emotion of anger or frustration. This is that if a person feels frustrated or angry at the situation they are in they are likely to react in a violent manner; the violent act is the outlet for the person's feelings. This would be more likely to occur in some people than others as people show their emotions in different ways, using different traits of their personalities.

So a person with a violent trait in their personality would use aggression, where as a person with the trait to withdraw from frustrating situations would not. The main differences with these explanations is that aggression is either a personality trait or that it is a means of survival, therefore people who act aggressively to survive may not have completely aggressive personalities. I agree with the idea that people are more likely to behave in a violent manner if they are born with the predisposition to do so, but I think that it is situation and emotion that triggers peoples acts of violence. If the trait of violence is one that begins in childhood, it will mean that you are not born with a violent personality but that you develop one as you age.

This would indicate that it is nurture not nature that causes violent personalities, so it is not a biological or predisposed trait it is a learned aspect of personality. Violence can be learned during childhood through direct reinforcement (experienced by the person) and vicarious reinforcement (witnessing someone else be rewarded or punished), as demonstrated by Band ura with the bobo doll, where children observe violent acts either being rewarded or punished. Children learn from getting what they want and if they use violence and gain what they want they are more likely to repeat the behaviour, i.e. being rewarded or reinforced, by acting aggressively. I think therefore that violence is learned through reward process during childhood. I also think this is the reason that some people develop violent personalities and others don't. If you are punished you will not be as likely to develop a violent trait as if you are rewarded for a violent behaviour.

However Freud also believes that we are born with the desire to be aggressive or violent the same way we are born with the desire for food. He believed that these urges should be displaced onto things such as sport. The displaced need for violence needs a route of discharge and if this is not given violence may occur. Freud believed that violence occurs when manifestations take place in the psychosexual stages; this is that the needs for this stage are not satisfied or discharged. An example of violence at these stages is a child biting things such as the breast during the oral stage is showing signs of oral sadistic tendencies, or the in the anal stage when sadistic tendencies to hurt and dominate others are frequently shown From looking at these theories I believe that we are born with the predisposition to be violent, but this is then only under covered and developed as a trait through learning via the reward or punishment system.

Therefore I do believe that the trait itself is on that develops in childhood. This also shows why I believe some people are more likely to become violent than others. Although it may be the case that all humans are born with the necessary components to become violent only a few actually do and this is because of the circumstances they are raised in and whether they see violence as being the best method of gaining what they want or desire.