Pressures Toward Socially Disintegrated Behavior: The Sources of Agression

Abstract

The approach taken in this book assumes that successful socialization is socially integrative. In the typical case, the developing individual acquires information about society’s expectations and develops associated emotional patterns required to give that information motivational significance. Individuals know how to order their behavior so as to derive the benefits provided by the society and avoid the punitive sanctions imposed by that society for major deviations from its norms. Socialized individuals typically want to do what they are expected to do. They also want to perform the behaviors that are socially approved and will fear, to a degree appropriate to the real consequences, to engage in major transgressions of law, custom, and role expectations. These statements are not intended to rule out the possibility that the individual may want and attempt to change the society, even at the risk of failure and retaliation. But, in the socially integrated person, activities aimed at protest and reform will, not be undertaken blindly and impulsively but rather from a position of cognitive and emotional appreciation of the society, a position that increases the probability of success while reducing where possible the likelihood of personal cost and distress. Moreover, the events of everyday life are not free of conflict since the objectives of individuals and social groups are sometimes contradictory. Social groups may, in fact, ritualize conflict in the form of contests in which aggressive behavior is condoned and applauded. Violent collective behavior in the form of war may have a socially integrative effect for combatants and produces heroes distinguished by the success of their violence. Nevertheless, the survival of individuals and social groups depends on keeping expressions of aggression within tolerable bounds. Uncontrolled aggression is a threat to orderly development of individuals and to the functioning of social groups.