Good and Evil: Empirical Studies - Recently Updated Pages

Extremely Negative Behaviors: Murder, Warfare, Rape, and Genocide

bwmgal — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:25:31 CST

The Entries on these pages examine extremely negative forms of human behavior...

Genocide

Extermination

The Evolutionary Psychology of Rape

Problems with Research Focusing on Victims of Rape

The Good & Evil of Focusing on Victims of Rape

Is War Really Natural?

Suicide

The "banality of evil"

TurnThe — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:08:03 CDT

This phrase was used by Hannah Arendt in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. The phrase is usually meant to suggest that evil is not an oddity in the world; that, rather, all people, and all situations, can become evil, since evil is done by ordinary people in situations that lead to negative actions. It is not clear that this is exactly what Arendt meant by the phrase, as she certainly believed that Eichmann performed incredibly negative, harmful, unjustified, horrific actions against others, and that he was completely aware of the nature of his behavior. He was "following orders," he arguably should have been aware that his actions were morally atrocious ones. However, Arendt points out at numerous points in the book that...

"The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal," (Arendt, 276).

"He was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us-- the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil," (Arendt, 252).

It can also be considered that the "banality of evil" refers not to the ordinary people caught up in situations that lead to negative consequences, but what they view to be the ordinary nature of their action. As Arendt mentions, Eichmann was completely aware of his behavior, yet he committed these horrific crimes. Maybe Eichmann felt his actions were ordinary in regards to human nature? That any man in his position, who is "following orders," would take the same course of action as he did.

Link to Hannah Arendt's book: Eichmann in Jerusalem

Eichmann Trial News Reel

Studies of Obedience and The Power of the Situation

bwmgal — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:08:04 CDT

One of the core assumptions of a social psychological view of evil and good is that the situation--meaning, the setting, including people in that setting--significantly shapes behavior. "The Power of the Situation," has nearly become the subtitle of the field. It stands in stark contrast to much of psychology's misplace trust in the power of the person: the idea that personal qualities, such as traits, shape behavior. They usually don't. Mostly, people respond to the situation, as Milgram, Asch, and Hitler all discovered.

But social psychologists don't really believe in situationism: that behavior is caused by external, environmental factors. They do believe in interactionism: the idea that situational factors interact with personal factors to create behavior. Situations sometimes push people around like pawns on a chess board. But, more often, people actively process the information available in the situation and in their own memories of such situations, and their reactions to the situation are influenced by the results of that processing. Clearly, the situation isn't all that matters: its the particular person in the situation that matters. That's interactionism.

This interactional approach to understanding good and bad is demonstrated in a number of studies of people's behavior when pressured by others, and by a situation. Asch (1955) showed that people will make errors when making simple judgments, if they are in a group that makes errrors. Newcomb discovered that people tend to adopt the values and beliefs of those around them, even if these values conflict with those taught to them by their families and communities. Two studies, however, stand out as the strongest empirical demonstrations of the power of the situation: The Milgram Study (1963) and the Zimbardo Prison Experiment (1971).

To watch Philip Zimbardo discuss "The Lucifer Effect," The Milgram Experiment, his own Stanford Prison Study, his opinions on the Abu Ghraib scandal, and how to prevent or ward off the evil of the situation check out his Full Address to the World Affairs Council (1 hour, 15 minutes) of Northern California in San Francisco, CA on Jan 24th, 2008. If you have less time check out the Highlights of his Discussion (~3 minutes) specifically on the Abu Ghraib: The Dark Side of Human Nature (4 min., 35 sec.), The Lucifer Effect (3 min., 33 sec.), and The Heroic Imagination: How we can perpetuate the idea that anyone can be a hero (6 min., 16 sec.)...

Related Topics:

Fraternities and Sororities: Good or Evil? What impact does being a member of a Greek organization on a college campus have on the behavior of the individuals involved?

References:

Asch, S. E. (1955). Opinions and social pressure. Scientific American, 193, 31-35.

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-378.

Zimbardo, P. (2007). The lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York, NY: Random House.

LDST390

dforsyth — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:48:44 CST

Good and Evil: Empirical Studies

When will an act, a thought, or a motive be characterized as immoral rather than moral? Why do people act in ways that others think are unethical? Are ethics based on rational thought, emotion, or intuition? When is an action judged to be evil rather than good and what causes people to act in such negative ways?

This website, rather than offering prescriptive answers to these questions—for example, a good act is one that is consistent with the highest moral principles or an act is only altruistic if done sole for the purpose of benefiting others—takes a descriptive approach to good and evil by exploring the personal and interpersonal factors that influence moral thought, action, emotion, and motivation.

To navigate the website, use the index to the left of the page to locate primary topics. In most cases each major heading includes a number of subtopics. The basic topics for the website include

(Source of icons: Paint Splatters)

Comment on "Shag the Dog"

dforsyth — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:21:02 CST

Response to "Shag the Dog"

In addition to showing how morality can have a "nonrational, emotional side," (Forsyth) William Saletan's article "Shag the Dog" also showed the role society plays in determining good and evil. In the article, Saletan introduces Peter Sieger's essay entitled "Heavy Petting," in which the philosopher makes moral arguments condoning bestiality. Sieger's essay, combined with news of recent scandals surrounding involving sex with dogs, has created a social outcry, condemming the actions as cruel and perverse. Despite the overwelming majority's moral condemnation of the actions, Saletan spends time in the article looking for a philosophical justification for the immorality of people having sex with animals. He exhausts many arguments that have been made, which state that sex with animals is unnatural, cruel, immoral, or even equivalent to rape, until he reaches the conclusion that since animals can't actually consent to sex with people, and since consent is neccessary to morally justify sex, that sex with animals must be wrong.

Personally, I found myself flabbergasted that Saletan would even give Sieger's arguments any consideration. Probably 99.99% of people would share my disgust towards bestiality, and would be emotionally unable to step back and consider the philosophical arguments justifying it. Besides sheer emotional disgust, we also have to consider the power our society's taboos about sex have over our own opinions. It seems to be part of our integration into society that we would unquestioningly adopt many of its views on good and evil. This point would support the idea that morality is a social construction. It seems that coolheaded philosophy is not always relevant in matters where right and wrong is decided simply because society says so.

One question: is "because society says so" a legitimate moral argument, or do we always need to use reasoned arguments to justify an action as good or evil? If you were born into a culture which accepted slavery, would you be able to view this as wrong, or would you simply accept it as the 'way things were meant to be' without any more thought? What drove American abolitionists to condemn slavery? They obviously had to use philosophical reasoning to challenge the status quo. The abolition of slavery certainly does not elicit a disgusted response today, but did people once have a visceral reaction to allowing former slaves to share the same rights as themselves? Food for thought...

Topics

dforsyth — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:19:47 CST

As people add pages, we can list the index here.

Comment on Shag the Dog	The Self as Evil
Religion: Good or Evil?	Meditations on Good and Evil
The Morality of Marijuana Use	The Evil of High School Football
Fraternities & Sororities: Good or Evil?	Terror Management Theory: The Politics of Evil

The Evil of Stress

Evils of Communication

Technical Issues

dforsyth — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:16:55 CST

Topics related to the process of collaborative information sharing.

Ambivalent effect of member portraits in virtual groups.

By Cress, U.

Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. 2005 Aug Vol 21(4) 281-291

Knowledge exchange with shared databases can be seen as a public-goods dilemma. People are reluctant to contribute information because they save time, effort and perhaps social power if they withhold their knowledge and socially loaf.

But if all people choose this individually efficient strategy, then no information exchange can take place, and the group is less effective than it would have been if all members contributed. Thus, in the knowledge-exchange situation, group norms and individual norms oppose each other.

In order to strengthen people's orientation towards the group, virtual collaborative tools sometimes provide member portraits. But based on the Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effect (SIDE)-Model, ambivalent effects of these member portraits are expected according to people's social categorization: when people identify more strongly with the group, such portraits enhance participation, whereas when people have a stronger individual identity, they undermine participation.

This study links the concepts of social value orientation to identity salience. The assumption is that in the information-exchange dilemma, the social value orientation of a group member will determine whether group identity or individual identity becomes salient for that group member. We then extend the SIDE-model to the domain of social loafing and expect that portraits of the group members will have different effects for people with individual orientation and for people with prosocial orientation. An experiment confirmed this expectation and revealed a significant interaction between social value orientation and portraits. Especially striking is the result that for prosocials the provision of member portraits leads to an increase in social loafing. This is analogous to the predictions of the SIDE-model.

The Evil of Being an Obama Supporter

dforsyth — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:16:25 CST

Depression Linked To Obama Victory

This post may not be entirely serious or legitimate...but as a campaign intern for five grueling months, I can't help but relate to the humor of this video. Being an Obama supporter really can be evil!

Power and Sex: An Evolutionary Perspective

dforsyth — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:13:34 CST

In Chapter 4: "The Origins of Human Nature" of David Livingstone Smith's The Most Dangerous Animal, Smith discusses how human nature is disturbingly similar to that of Chimpanzees:

"Chimpanzees are intensely status conscious, and live in communities bounded by high-powered alpha males at the top of the social ladder; low-prestige nobodies at the bottom, and everyone else occupying some intermediate rung. Dominant individuals get more food, more space, and more s ex with the more desirable partners than lower-ranking individuals. They are also, like big shots in the world of human politics, subject to the greatest amount of stress. Since dominance is usually established through victory in aggressive displays, dominant chimpanzees are often the brawniest and most intimidating members of their community. However, some dominants are hereditary aristocrats, whose status come from being the son or daughter of a high-prestige individual, and others get there by wheeling and dealing. These are the upwardly mobile schemers, who use their wits and social skills to get ahead." (p75)

Smith's analysis of Chimpanzee social working has me wondering whether it is simply "natural" for men of power to have access to more desirable females. It is not difficult to see how "human" it is for higher status Chimpanzees to have more access to women then the "lower status nobodies" who can barely afford to provide for themselves. Not only are higher status males typically more sexually attractive to women, they have the resources to provide for many women at the same time (something a less successful male does not).

Looking at our modern culture, we see that those who are successful are almost always seen as more sexually desirable and have many young, attractive, high-status mates. Movie and TV heroes like James Bond, Tony Stark from "Iron Man", and the mafia men from "The Sopranos" are just a few examples of the thousands of other profligate womanizers portrayed by Hollywood. Rappers and rock stars are frequently portrayed in their music videos as being surrounded by a plenitude of young, desirable females (who it is implied they have access to). Clearly, in every realm except for politics, it is acceptable (and even downright reinforced) that a financially successful and/or famous man will have more sexual opportunities than lower status men. Even PEOPLE magazine doesn't look down on this kind of sexual success; indeed, it is the natural order of things.

However, there is one peculiar exception to this norm in American society: politics. While it is okay for American business tycoons, rap artists, and movie stars to be very public in expressing the sexual success that comes from being on top of the social hierarchy--politicians are not given the same green light.

Indeed, American politics is very puritanical compared to most other countries in the world. That is, we expect our politicians to be good family men (and women) who are loyal to their spouses and behave as good examples to the community at large. Most other countries do not hold their politicians to this kind of scrutiny (in fact, neither did the US until after Watergate). In Europe the sex lives of politicians is generally seen as "not the public's business" with the presence of mistresses being generally ignored if not accepted. In less developed, democratic, and less media friendly countries, the most powerful political males will be less shameful of their sexual flagrance. Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, for instance, has 4 wives (and many more unofficial consorts) and 22 children.

Below is a list of all the political sex scandals that have occurred in just the last three decades. These of course, are only the ones that have been reported, meaning that there likely hundreds more than we even realize.

POLITICAL SEX SCANDALS
(Wikipedia provides a detailed listing of scandals involving politicians)

Insanity as an Excuse for Evil

dforsyth — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:09:09 CST

"Because of these and other compelling illusions about war, it easy--in fact, all too easy--to regard the perpetrators of mass violence as depraved monsters or madmen. For example, George W. Bush proclaimed that he ordered the invasion of Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein's regime becuase he "was not about to leave the security of the American people in the hands of a madman." French president Jacques Chirac described Osama bin Laden as "a raving madman," while British foreign secretary Jack Straw described Bin Laden as "psychotic and paranoid."

What evidence was there that these people were insane? There is usually none at all. The psychologists wh painstakingly sifted through data on the senior Nazi officeers brought to justice in the Nuremberg trials found that "high-ranking Nazi war criminals...participated in atrocities without having diagnosable impairments that would account for their actions." They were "as diverse a group as one might find in our government today, or in the leadership of the PTA." if the Nazi leaders were not deranged, what about the rank and file who did Hitler's dirty work? ..."The truth seems to be, writes social psychologist James Waller, "that the most outstanding characteristic of perpetrators of extraordinary evil lies in their normality, not their abnormality." Purveyors of violence, terrorist, and mercahnts of genocidal destruction are, more often than not, people who fit the profile that Primo Levi painted of his Nazi jailers at Auschwitz: "average human beings, averagely intelligent, averagely wicked...they had our faces." To Hannah Arendt they were "terribly and terrifyingly normal." They could be your neighbors, parents, or children. They could be you.

-THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL: David Livingstone Smith (pages 3-4)

Smith is uncomfortably correct in his analysis of how evil is perceived by Hollywood, literature, and cultural storytelling as being simply the province of the insane and diabolical. In truth, however, discarding the perpetrators of horrendous violence as simply being "insane" is little more than a form of self-denial used to protect ourselves from the truely evil potential that lies dormant within all of us ("good", normal") people.

This (nongraphic) clip from the movie "Se7en" illustrates this self-delusion:

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". As we discussed earlier in the semester with the Kitty Genovese case, an insane person does not realize that what he/she is doing is wrong. The legal definition of insanity has sparked a great deal of debate within the American legal system, as a person who pleads "insanity" is not considered responsible for their actions. However, while it nice to think that those who perform some of most cruel and inhumane atrocities are insane (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot); these people are not only aware of the nature of their actions but rather believe they doing good. Therefore, while it may be comforting to think of of the most evil of human behaviors as being the result of insanity, it is not an accurate description of the cause of human evil.

The sad truth of the matter is, as Smith said so pithily: "All human beings, have the potential to be hideously cruel and destructive to one another" (p.4).

According to a recent CNN article:

"Researchers say most perpetrators of genocide were not destined for murder and had never killed before: 'You don't have to be mentally ill or even innately evil or criminal. You can be ordinary, no better or worse than you or me, and commit killing or genocide,' said Harvard psychiatrist Robert Lifton, who has studied Nazi doctors. 'The truth is that we all have the possibility for genocidal behavior.'
Experts have reached a troubling conclusion: It was actually very easy for the architects of genocide to find more than enough ordinary people to do the killing.
Genocide is often the result of a "perfect storm." A country reeling from political and economic turmoil, a fanatical leader promising to make things better and a vulnerable population targeted for blame -- all combine in a blueprint for mass murder." - (citation)

John Doe from "Se7en" might seem like an extreme example, but looking back at the atrocities committed throughout human history and all around the world today, even his most heinous of actions are nothing beyond the scope of supposedly "normal" human beings. This begs the question: are you capable of committing hideously evil acts? Evidence shows, in the right situation, you are.

Extermination

dforsyth — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:07:39 CST

In Chapter 10: “Predators, Prey, and Parasites” of The Most Dangerous Animal, David Livingstone Smith discusses some of the psychological ways people (particularly groups of people) use to overcome the inborn revulsion to killing fellow human beings in genocidal ways. Genocide and Democide, and Smith discusses, are not particularly useful in terms of expanding our genetic “fitness”, and most normal (non sociopathic) humans have difficulty killing human beings that have done them no wrong.

Three of the psychological tricks that perpetrators of genocide use that Smith discussed that I found particularly interesting were under the sub-headers: pollution, revulsion, and extermination.

According to Smith’s evolutionary psychology perspective, humans are instinctively fearful of natural enemies that are small and impossible to see. Parasites (such as ticks, lice, worms, etc.) viruses, and diseases are something that--despite their tiny size--can cause serious illness or even death if proper care is not taken to keep clean. According to Smith, perpetrators of genocide and democide accuse their enemies of being “viruses”, “worms”, “parasites”, and/or accuse them of “polluting” their particular gene pool or society. A particularly effective example use by Smith is on page 202, when he uses an example from the mouth of Adolf Hitler:
“The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that has taken place in the world. The battle in which we are engaged today is the same sort as the battle waged, during the last century, by Pasteur and Koch. How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus! We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew.” – The Most Dangerous Animal

As Smith notes on the same page, diseases have a “profound biological underpinnings” in the human mind. Hitler exploits this phobia by relating disease with the Jewish race. Thus, the only way, according to Hitler, that the disease of humanity can be erased is by cleansing the Europe of their existence—in much the same way a person might eradicate termites.
A CNN article that was only just released attests to this disturbing phenomenon can cause normal human beings to perform inhumane atrocities by “self-deceiving” their moral consciousness. Recently discovered photos show Nazi officers at a retreat near Auschwitz “relaxing as thought they are taking break from routine job, not an extermination factory”.
As Phillip Zimbardo—author of The Lucifer Effect says in the article: “Dehumanization is the most powerful psychological tool used in all mass murder and genocides.... Dehumanization blurs your vision. You look at these people and you do not see them as human…Instead, the enemy is treated as a germ -- as something to eradicate, or else face the threat of infection.” Indeed the Nazi officers depicted in the CNN article do not appear to be disturbed by the atrocious genocidal acts in which they are taking part. Their self-delusion has tricked their minds into feeling as though what they are doing is both acceptable and perhaps even morally right.

In discussing the pitfalls of moral objectivism, Smith uses a passage from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn in which Huck feels guilty for not having turned in Jim—the fugitive slave—to white bounty hunters. While in retrospect it might seem ridiculous that Huck felt morally conflicted over helping to free a slave, he made a rational decision to help Jim and bad for doing it. The Huckleberry Finn example shows how the context of a situation can turn objective morality on its head. It is not hard to see how in such situations good-willed human beings will commit atrocious acts of evil in the interest of moral goodness. In Nazi Germany, the public sentiment was that Jews were “vermin” and a disease that sullied the otherwise perfect German “master race”. It is no surprise, therefore, to see Auschwitz workers smiling and having fun on their time off. And why shouldn’t’ they? In their minds, they are doing Germany and the world a great favor. “Morality” and “goodness” can be collective illusions that are used to justify heinous and inexcusable acts of violence towards our fellow human beings. Not only will they be able to do it without feeling remorse, but they often will feel pleasure and satisfaction.

Conclusion:
How genocide on the kind of scale that occurred under the Nazis during the Second World War was allowed to happen without public outrage is a question that is still asked today. As morally idealistic and civil human beings, we want to believe that the world is a just and fair place and that humans are naturally good. We like to think of the Holocaust (like American slavery) is simply a dark spot on human history that does not represent the true character of human nature. However the truth, as Smith shows, is a far less positive picture. Indeed, mass exterminations (genocides and democides) occur throughout modern and ancient history; be they in Cambodia, Rwanda, the Balkans, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, or even right now in Darfur. Only by understanding how normal, decent, everyday human beings are driven to genocidal actions through dehumanizing self-delusions will we ever have any chance of preventing future exterminations of our own species.

The meaning of "good" and "evil"

dforsyth — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:33:53 CST

Good and evil, as basic terms for describing people, their actions, and circumstances, defy easy definition. Leading expert on the psychology of positive and negative forms of action, Irvin Staub, defines evil as "intensely harmful actions, which are not commensurate with instigating conditions, and the persistence or repetition of such acts. A serious of actions also can be evil when any one act causes limited harm, but with repetition, these cause great harm" (Staub, 1999b, p. 180). This definition leaves many things to question like what instigating conditions make evil admissable? Do things have to be persistent or repetitive? Staub states that the social-psychological perspective finds it best to interpret on the basis of action. Actions are evil; thoughts are up for interpretation.

Staub also takes a stab at defining goodness. Like Arthur Miller (2004), who equates the good with prosocial action, Staub simply says that good actions benefit others; "it is an extreme form of helping other" (Staub, p.52). Good remains a fuzzy definition as well. A good action can be done with a bad motivation. Does goodness work like evil in the way that action should be the only consideration and not motivation?

Miller, recognizing the complexity of the issue, raises two questions at the heart of determining an act good or evil:

Are people behaving in the best interests of others and of themselves?
Are they harming others and possibly themselves as well? (Miller, p.2)

These questions about 1-the motive behind an action and 2- the consequences of those actions. Further, how do these questions relate to whether or not a person/group is evil? Miller says that it is easier to place such a description on groups or organizations. However, frequently people suffer from the fundamental attribution error (FAE). The FAE simply describes the error of attributing behavior based on personal or dispositional factors. This applies to the meaning of good and evil by observers labeling people who do good as good people and people who do evil are evil. This obviously has a strong effect on determining who and what is good and evil.

Evil and good are also, at least in part, "in the eye of the beholder." One person's evil can be another person's good. Baumeister's studies of the difference in perspectives of perpetrators and victims illustrate the systematic biases the result from being the doer, and the recipient, of negative behaviors. Other perspectives to consider include cross-cultural differences, differences across eras (historical differences), and individual differences.

Unresolved issues include

Why is there no clear opposite to the word "evil?"
Is “evil” the right word for an objective scientist to use? Does evil have religious connotations?
How do people use the word "evil" in everyday conversation? Don't they sometimes use it to describe despicable acts, but also in a more cavalier fashion?
Are people evil, or are situations evil? Does a person become evil if caught up, involuntarily, in an "evil" situation?
What about thoughts? Can thoughts be "evil"? Is a person who has evil thoughts also evil?
Is evil something that is reserved for long-term, unrelenting, processes?
A person or an organization that does one bad thing may not be evil, but if the negative actions are long-term ones then the work evil seems more appropriate.
If a person does something bad, are they permanently corrupted? Are small "evils" "gateway" behaviors that lead the individual down a darker path? Does confession prevent individuals from become corrupted by their small evils?

Sources:
Four Roots of Evil, Roy F. Baumeister and Kathleen D. Vohs. In A. Miller (2004), The social psychology of good and evil.
Topics

The Social Psychology Viewpoint on Morality

dforsyth — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:02:37 CST

The philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn argued in his provocative book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that scientists working in a particular field share a set of assumptions about the phenomena they study. This philosophical and metatheoretical paradigm is rarely discussed explicitly, yet it provides an undergirding structure that guides such scientific practices as theorizing, data-collection, dissemination of findings, and training.

What is social psychology's paradigm, and how does it determine how social psychologist examine the causes and consquences of good, bad, and evil behavior?

It is, admittedly, impossible for one person to speak for all social psychologists--they are a diverse lot, and any any generalization about them would be an overgeneralization. But, still, some generalities must be offered about the field's paradigm.

One solution is at least say what social psychology is not. Even though social psychologists are a subset of the larger group of psychologists or sociologists, or social scientists, they don't possess the same characteristics or embrace the same assumptions as these larger groups. Their uniqueness sometimes surprise people--for most people think of social psychologists as psychologists, and therefore they think that they are concerned with other people's well-being or want to intervene to help other's psychological problems. Yet, most (not all) don't.

What would social psychology's anti-paradigm top ten list look like? Social psychologists, in general, would have some pretty strong objections to these notions:

People act in consistent ways across situations.
This behavioral consistency is caused by their personality traits.
People are so predictable.
Experts, such as clinicians, can use their clinical judgment to make accurate predictions about people.
People are basically good-hearted.
People are basically rational.
People who "know themselves" well are better adjusted than people who are confused about their identity.
Commonsense is filled with wisdom.
Positivism is an outmoded philosophy of science.
Psychology is both a science and a profession.

But, what about the paradigm itself? Social psychologists accept a number of implicit assumptions about the world--too many, probably, to enumerate easily. But four assumptions seem particularly noteworthy: interactionism, constructivism, dynamicism, and empiricism.

Interactionism: thoughts, actions, and emotions result from the interaction of personal and situational factors. (Or as Kurt Lewin would say B=f(P,E), meaning our behavior is a function of our personality and our environment...)

Constructivism: people actively create social situations and their perceptions of social situations, and these "contruals" function as proximate causes of thoughts, actions, and emotions.

Dynamicism: social thoughts, action, and emotion result from the complex integration of often-opposing processes in patterns that change over time, yet never repeat themselves in precisely the same way.

Empiricism: the best way to understand the causes of thought, action, and emotion is through scientific research.

Interactionism

Interactionism is situationism taken one more step. Social psychological research is blatantly situationist, to the point that "The Power of the Situation," has nearly become the subtitle of the field. It stands in stark contrast to much of psychology's misplace trust in the power of the person: the idea that personal qualities, such as traits, shape behavior. They usually don't. Mostly, people respond to the situation, as Milgram, Asch, and Hitler all discovered.

But social psychologists don't really believe in situationism: that behavior is caused by external, environmental factors. They do believe in interactionism: the idea that situational factors interact with personal factors to create behavior. Situations sometimes push people around like pawns on a chess board: Milgram's subjects were overwhelmed by the setting they faced. But, more often (and even to a degree in Milgram's study), people actively process the information available in the situation and in their own memories of such situations, and their reactions to the situation are influenced by the results of that processing. Clearly, the situation isn't all that matters: its the particular person in the situation that matters. That's interactionism.

Constructivism

I don't really like the label constructivism, but at least its consistent with tradition. It can be traced back to early work of memory and perception researchers who discovered that simple perceptual processes--just seeing the words on this screen, for example--aren't passive at all, but the result of an active, constructive process whereby the perceiver practically builds the perceptual experience. Social psychologists apply this notion to social behavior with their assumption that people are active participants in social settings. They aren't just passive reactors to social events, but instead busy creating them perceptually and behaviorally. Much of this construction work is perceptual. Ross and Nisbett (1991) refer to this process as contrual, for people's perceptions of settings in many cases drive their reactions to it. But people also actively make the settings themselves, or at least actively choose to enter one kind of situation and avoid another. Note, though, that the results of this construction process are rarely accurately understood by the people actually doing the construction. Just as people don't know exactly how the eye takes light and turns it into vision, so people don't know exactly how they can look at a person's face and make estimates of that person's honesty.

Dynamism

Social psychologists are fond of studying the dynamic interplay between integrated, but somewhat opposing, systems. They believe that anything as complex as human behavior is likely to have multiple causes, and that these causes push in different directions--and hence create tension. The individual, for example, strives to maximize personal self-esteem, yet must also contribute to the survival of the group. Consumers want to be reassured that they have selected the finest automobile on the market, yet they also must buy a better car next time if their current car is undeniably a lemon. Individuals striving to be successful athletes seeks to confirm this conception by avoiding information that throws doubt on their aspirations, yet at the same time they must not deny the undeniable.

The idea that much of behavior is based on the integration of fundamentally opposing systems is telegraphed by the sorts of topics social psychologists study. They don't just study how people process information, but how people process information badly. They don't just study why people are altruistic, but also why people fail to help when they should. They don't just study people's quest to "know themselves," but also people's quest to hide from self-insight. People are viewed, simultaneously, as rational and irrational, cold-information-processors and hot- motivated-manipulators, instinctive-survivors and nurtured social beings. These processes are, in some cases, diametrically opposed, but they nonetheless mesh to generate human thought, emotion, and action.

This interest in systems of tension also reflects the field's overall endorsement of a dynamic systems theory. Like meteorologists attempting to predict long-term changes in the weather, economists who have charted changes in wages and prices over decades, and physicists trying to develop computer simulations of wind turbulence, social psychologists study both simple and complicated systems that appear to be chaotic, yet display recurrent patterns over time. Social situations that seem simple actually aren't--the number of variables that influence people is enormous, and often create apparent chaos. Yet, these variables combine in predictable, recurrent patterns that generate dynamical systems; patterns that change over time, yet never repeat themselves in precisely the same way. The milling of a crowd, the transmission of rumors, the change of attitudes after influence, the deliberations of a jury, and the evolution of social norms may be complex, unique, processes, yet they display nonrepeating regularities that follow predictable patterns.

Empiricism

Social psychologist are nothing if not empiricists. Although I've pawed through hundreds of definitions of science, I still prefer George Caspar Homans' definition: "When the test of the truth of a relationship lies finally in the data themselves, and the data are not wholly manufactured--when nature, however stretched out on the rack, still has a chance to say `No!'--then the subject is a science" (1967, p. 4). Social psychologists strive to collect data to test their ideas.

For more information

Ross, L., & Nisbett, R. E. (1991). The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Dawes, R. (1994). House of cards. New York: Free Press.

Religion: Good or Evil?

bwmgal — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 11:31:13 CST

Is religion good or evil? Are religious individuals more righteous and good than others? Or are they instead more likely to commit evil in the interests of their goals? What factors might moderate this relationship?

Religion has historically been one of the most powerful driving forces of human behavior. Instigating deep changes in personal beliefs and actions, there are many who claim that religion has lead them to become good as a result of their faith. However, it is undeniable that many of the greatest acts of violence and evil were committed in the name of religious interests. Baumeister and Vohs (2004) cite Idealism or "doing good by doing bad" as one of the four root causes of evil, and describe how individuals can be motivated by religion to view evil acts as the result of their moral duty or obligation. As Americans it is easy for us to recall the result of fundamentalist religious factions of Al Queda through the terrorist attacks on 9/11, although for many others across the world the equally haunting events of the Crusades and the Holocaust speak the universal potential for evil across faiths.

The intersection between religion and psychology is sometimes an area in which our education falls short. It frequently seems that in an effort to avoid offending others we are unable or unwilling to explore the complicated nature of religious issues in our lives. Thankfully, however, there are numerous researchers who are not afraid to take on these issues and thus this page is designed to serve a foundation and a springboard for us to share and consider research from a wide variety of different sources. Regardless of whether we choose to begin with the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS website-- which is devoted to understanding the relationship between religion, personal well-being, health, and people's actions), or to start to understand opposing viewpoints linking religion to evil (Religion & Evil Psychology Articles), it is essential that we begin to understand the circumstances in which religion can both benefit and harm groups and individuals.

Religion and Well-Being: Are Religious People Really Happier?
Explore some of the connections of the well-documented link between religion and positive well-being. Are all religious people happier and healthier? Does this mean that religion is good? Which religious people are happiest and is it really religion which makes them happy? Can religion sometimes negatively impact personal well-being?

The History of the Psychological Study of Religion

Early 1800s: William James (1842-1910) is one of the first psychologists to comment on the relationship between religion and psychology. In particular, in his book Varieties of Religious Experience he makes distinctions between personal (spirituality-based) and institutional (organized, group, or societally based) religion which continue to be influential in modern psychological research on religion. James also made a clear distinction between what he called "healthy-minded" religion in which individuals use religion as evidence of the good in the world and "sick-souled" religion in which people use religion as a means to cope and find meaning for the good and evil in the world.

Late 1800s: Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was also very influential in the early study of religion and believed that religion rested on the idea of god as a father-figure and as such religious individuals must be fixated in very childish states of development in order to believe in religion. Carl Jung (1875-1961) opposed this idea and believed that religion was a valid pursuit but one which could not be fully understood empirically by psychologists.

Early 1900s: Alfred Adler (1870-1937), believed that the human belief in god reflects the tendency to strive for perfection and superiority and that by developing a close relationship and unity with god people are thus able to find meaning and purpose in life. Adler also believed that religion and the conception of god are strong motivators for human behavior and are relevant to psychology because they represent people’s goals and reasons for action. Gordon Allport (1897-1967) was a psychologist who emphasized the many different uses of religion and the differences between those who were extrinsically motivated to pursue religion (immature: driven by social status & norms) and those who are intrinsically motivated by religion (mature: driven to a genuine, heartfelt devout faith because of their flexible and open approach to religion).

Mid 1900s: Erik Erikson (1902-94) is a well-known identity development psychologist who viewed religion as one of the most significant influences on healthy personality development because of facilitation of the development and virtues of society. Erich Fromm (1900-1980) challenged the Freudian conception of religion by emphasizing not a merely sexual developmental desire but a need for a “stable frame of reference” which religion might provide. However, Fromm hypothesized that the relationship between stability and successful development only holds when religion maintains a sense of free will in the individual as strictly authoritarian conceptions of religion can be detrimental to mental health.

More Recent Work on Religion and Well-Being

1984: St. George and McNamera found that religious involvement is more strongly related to life satisfaction and other aspects of well-being for African Americans than for White Americans.

1985: A review by Donahue finds a link between intrinsic motivation to better health and less prejudice and extrinsic motivation to higher levels of prejudice.

1987: Jarvis & Northcott and Levin & Vanderpool found religious effects various physical health issues including heart disease, hypertension and stroke, overall self-rated-health, mortality risks, and self reported symptoms were also affected

1988: Pargament et al. found three approaches to coping: self-directing, deferring, and collaborative. The self-directing approach is linked to higher self-esteem and greater sense of control, The deferring approach is linked to low self-esteem, lower personal control (more control to chance) and greater intolerance for differences between people. The collaborative approach is tied to greater self-esteem and sense of personal control (less control by chance).

1989: Pollner found that feelings of a closer relationship with the divine are more closely related to well-being for less educated than more educated individuals.

1993: Ryan, Rigby, and King found that people who personally chose their religion (internalization) had less anxiety and depression and higher self-esteem. Those who chose their religion out of fear, guilt, or external pressure (externalization) experienced higher levels of anxiety and depression and had lower self-esteem.

1999: Mahoney et al. found that measures of religiousness related specifically to marital relationships were better predictors of marital well-being than global predictors.

Biggar, Forehand, Devine et al. and Coleman & Holzemer have found that poorer spiritual well-being have been linked to increased risk for depression and other mood disorders. It was also found that, religiosity was not associated with lower levels of depression.

2001: Greenspoon and Saklofske found that a lack of pathology was not necessarily and indicator of well-being. In their study involving children they found that the children low on pathology were also low on well-being. Pargament, Ellison, Tarakeshwar, and Wulff found that positive and negative religious coping serve as predictors for positive and negative depressed affect; these results indicated that religion can be a double edged sword where those that benefit because of increased religiousness also suffer the negative aspects more strongly.

Using the Depression-Happiness Inventory, Lewis and his colleagues found that there was no association between religion and happiness in two separate studies (Lewis et al., 2000, and Lewis, 2002)

2003: Simoni & Ortiz and Coleman have noted a inverse relationship between levels of spiritual well-being and level of depressive symptoms

2004: Yi et al. found that characteristics such as self-worth are associated with depressive symptoms. Greater levels of depressive symptoms associated with religious coping mechanisms and less organized religious activity. Other aspects of religiosity were not significantly related to depressive symptoms.

References:

Allport, G. W. (1950). The individual and his religion, New York: Macmillan.

Biggar H, Forehand R, & Devine D. (1999). Women who are HIV infected: the role of
religious activity in psychosocial adjustment. AIDS Care,11,195–199.

Bergin, A. E., Masters, K. S.,&Richards, P. S. (1987). Religiousness and mental health reconsidered: A study of an intrinsically religious sample. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 34, 197–204.

Coleman CL. (2003). Spirituality and sexual orientation: relationship to mental well-being and functional health status. Journal Advanced Nursing, 43, 457–64.

Coleman CL, & Holzemer WL. (1999). Spirituality, psychological well-being, and HIV symptoms for African Americans living with HIV disease. Journal of Assocociated Nurses AIDS Care, 10, 42–50.

Donahue, M. J. (1985). Intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness: Review and meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,48, 400–419.

Ellens, J. H. (2007). The destructive power of religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Westport, CT, US: Praeger Publishers/Greenwood Publishing Group, 97-104.

Ellison, Christopher G. (1999). Introduction to symposium: Religion, health, and well-being. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 692 – 694.

Erikson, E. (1958).Young man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History. New York: W. W. Norton.

Freud, S. (1928). The future of an illusion. New York: Liveright.

Fromm, E. (1950). Psychoanalysis and Religion. New Haven, CT: Yale University.

Hill PC, & Pargament KI. (2003). Advances in the conceptualization and measurement of religion and spirituality. Implications for physical and mental health research. American Psychology, 58, 64–74.

Jarvis, G.K., & Northcott, H.C. (1987) Religion and difference in morbidity and mortality. Social Science and Medicine, 25, 813-824.

Jung, C. G. (1992). Psychology and Religion. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.

Koenig, H. G., Pargament, K. I., & Nielsen, J. (1998). Religious coping and health status in medically ill hospitalized older adults. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 186, 513–521.

Krause, N., Ellison, C. G., & Wulff, K. M. (1998). Church-based emotional support, negative interaction, and psychological well-being: Findings from a national sample of Presbyterians. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 37, 725–741.

Levin, J.S. and Vanderpool, H.Y. (1987) Is frequent religious attendance really conducive to better healthier: Toward and epidemiology of religion. Social Science and Medicine, 24, 589-600.

Mahoney, A. M., Pargament, K. I., Tarakeshwar, N., & Swank, A. B. (2001). Religion in the home in the 1980’s and 90’s: Meta-analyses and conceptual analyses of links between religion, marriage, and parenting. Journal of Family Psychology, 15, 559–596.

Miller, A. (2004) The social psychology of good and evil. Guilford Press: New York, NY.

Pargament, K. I., Kennell, J., Hathaway, W., Grevengoed, N., Newman, J., & Jones, W. (1988). Religion and the problem-solving process: Three styles of coping. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 27, 90–104.

Pargament, K. I., Ellison, C. G., Tarakeshwar, N., & Wulff, K. M. (2001). Religious coping among the religious: The relationship between religious coping and well-being in a national sample of Presbyterian clergy, elders, and members. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40, 497–513.

Pargament, Kenneth I. (2002). The bitter and the sweet: An evaluation of the costs and benefits of religiousness. Psychological Inquiry, 168 – 181.

Pollner,M. (1989). Divine relations, social relations, and well-being. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 30, 92–104.

Ryan, R. M., Rigby, S., & King, K. (1993). Two types of religious internalization and their relations to religious orientations and mental health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 586–596.

Simoni JM, Ortiz MZ.(2003) Mediational models of spirituality and depressive symptomatology among HIV-positive Puerto Rican women. Culture Divers Ethnic Minor Psychology; 9, 3–15.

St. George, A., & McNamera, P. H. (1984). Religion, race, and psychological well-being. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 23, 351–363.

Yi, M.S., Mirus, M.M., & Wade, T.J. (2004) Religion, spirituality, and depressive symptoms in patients with HIV/AIDS. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 521-527.

The Stanford Prison Study

bwmgal — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 11:30:02 CST

The Power of the Situation: Philip Zimbardo's 1971 Prison Experiment.

The Basic Design:

Zimbardo’s famous (1971) experiment was designed to study the effect of the role of prisoner or prison guard on “normal” individuals.
Nine perfectly healthy and mentally stable young men were randomly assigned to be prisoners, and nine were randomly assigned to be guards.
In a Stanford basement that had been converted into a makeshift jail, the prisoners were held and subjected to processes meant to strip them of dignity and power. The guards were given a great deal of freedom in their treatment of the prisoners.
The experiment produced unexpectedly strong results – the prisoners quickly forgot that they were participants in the experiment and acted much like real prisoners, becoming submissive to authority and planning escapes. The guards soon became harsh in their treatment of prisoners, coming up with overly controlling rituals such as middle-of-the-night cell checks.
Though the experiment was supposed to last for two weeks, it was terminated after only 6 days because of the powerful hold their roles had on the participants. This study demonstrates that social context drives behavior more than people think it does. It illustrates both the power of social roles on behavior on the importance of being sensitive to potential ethical issues throughout the course of research.

Timeline of Events:

Day 1 (Sunday): Surprise arrests: Local police officers Prisoners are stripped naked "deloused" and put into prisoner outfits, basically a smock with a number Learn the Rules Degradation: Counts
Day 2 (Monday): Rebellion in cell2 Good cell 3 Prisoner 8612 has a meltdown
Day 3 (Tuesday): Visitors & rioters: Clean the prison & have families come to visit Complaints hearing Zimbardo plants an informer Zimbardo moves the prisoners out of fear of break-in
Day 4 (Wednesday): Things spiral out of control Priest visits Prisoner 819 leaves Spy leaves New Prisoner #416 enters: Refuses to eat his sausages Parole Board Hearing (3 themes: blurs line of reality of experiment vs. imprisonment, prisoners subservience & seriousness, and transformation of Prescott)
Day 5 (Thursday): Violence begins Prisoners 1037 (Rich) & 4325 (Jim) breaks Zimbardo's Fiancee Christina Maslach gets upset after seeing the boys lead to the bathroom with bags over their head Tim the lawyer comes and consults with the boys Sexual harrassment begins: Makes the boys act as camels & hump one another
Day 6 (Friday): Ends experiment

Video Links:

Philip Zimbardo on The Daily Show with John Stewart

References:

Zimbardo, P. (2007). The lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York, NY: Random House.

Jim Henson - A Good Life

bwmgal — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:35:24 CST

“When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people
who made a difference in this world…
My hope still is to leave the world a bit better for having been here.”
Jim Henson

After writing about evil and things that have a negative impact on the world, I wanted my last post on this Wiki to be about the opposite, something good. As I was racking my mind trying to think of good things, Mr. Rogers was the first person to come to mind. However, Mr. Rogers did not have quite the lasting impact as the person I thought of next. Jim Henson has always been a hero of mine. He was a creative genius who worked tirelessly to make entertaining shows and movies that had positive messages and made the world a better place.

The Man

A Brief YouTube Biography
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIhzGWeFqAc&feature=related

I have never heard anything negative said about Jim Henson. To prepare for this post I looked for a long time online to try to find something negative about him. I may have been searching the wrong places or there may been some deeply hidden secret about his life, but at the end of my search I was unable to find a negative side to Jim Henson. He seemed to be a kind man who cared about his family, making Muppets, and teaching children important lessons.

The Legacy

While the Muppet Show has not been on air for while, Sesame Street is still producing new shows. It is broadcast in over a hundred countries and empirical evidence shows that this show is changing the world.

After viewing Rechov Sumsum/Shara'a Simsim, A Sesame Street television series, Israeli-Jewish, Palestinian-Israeli, and Palestinian preschoolers described outgroup members more positive and made more prosocial judgment of conflict (Cole et al., 2003).

Preschool teachers rated preschoolers that were randomly assigned to frequently watch Sesame Street as better prepared for school than preschoolers that did not watch Sesame Street (Fisch, Truglio, & Cole, 1999).

Preschool children who watched more Sesame Street also spent more time reading and doing educational activities and scored better on standardized tests (Fisch et al., 1999).

In one experiment, children who watched a 30-minute segment of Sesame Street about prosocial behavior showed less aggression during free play. (Fisch et al., 1999).

This video is a bit cheesy, but I think it’s a good tribute
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olHV1o9TE-8&feature=related

Another tribute, this time from Ray Charles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZJxL3PrrLM

Ray Charles said this about Jim Henson, "Jim Henson took a simple song and a piece of felt and turned it into a moment of great power. The song says it's not easy being green, but the song is about knowing who you are, and in it you can hear Jim's message loud and clear. We should learn to love who we are and be proud of it. And that's the way we learn to love each other."

References

Cole, C. F., Arafat, C., Tidhar, C., Tafesh, W. Z., Fox, N. A., Killen, M., et al. (2003). The educational impact of Rechov Sumsum/Shara'a Simsim: A Sesame Street television series to promote respect and understanding among children living in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 27, 409-422.

Fisch, S. M., Truglio, R. T., & Cole, C. F. (1999). The impact of Sesame Street on preschool children: A review and synthesis of 30 years’ research. Media Psychology, 1, 165-190.

Everyday Evils

lauraliz1812 — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:56:11 CST

The line between what we might call "evil" and what only qualifies as "bad" is an indistinct one. Unlike the clearly negative actions of murder, rape, genocide, the actions considered here are less obviously injurious and may well even be more mundane, yet they are evil in many respects. Here we consider some lesser evils, including difficult, stress-inducting circumstances, groups that oppress their own members, racism, sexism, and elitism. Though we encounter these evils each day, and their familiarity may to some extent take away their sting, yet they still contribute to the overall decline in the quality of human life.

Topic	Contents
Aggression and Violence	Intentionally inflicting harm on others, including analysis of the how aggression is learned
Stress and Distress	Negative consequences of threatening environmental experiences, including post-traumatic stress disorder
Politics and Threat	The use of threats and fear for political purposes
Fraternities and Sororities	An analysis of the positive and negative sides of fraternal organizations on college campuses
Prejudice	Negative attitudes towards people based on their membership in social groups
Sports and Morality	The negative aspects of participation in sports programs
The Evil of Happiness	Is it really good to be happy?
Shooting the Messenger	Negative treatment of those who must deliver negative information
Mean Police
Mother Teresa	Was Mother Teresa really the saint that so many Catholics believe her to be?
Is a Refrigerator Evil	Morality of mundane, everday objects.
The Wiki as an Evil Entity	Learning & Leading with Technology article discusses both the good and the evil of WetPaint Wiki for educational use.

Genocide: Personal Connections

lauraliz1812 — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:53:04 CST

Samaday

The name of our temple guide was Samaday; he had been a temple guide for years, and at 42-years-old he seemed to know everything that one would want to know about the temples: their construction, their symbolism, their history. He had studied history and passed the official temple-guide exam years before; his training as a former Buddhist monk also enhanced his understanding of the carvings and the principles behind them. From the symbolic meaning of the Bayon temple’s faces to the minute detail of a bass-relief in the North Gallery of Angkor Watt, Samaday continuously imparted knowledge to us while we strolled the temple grounds and rode in our tuk-tuk around the temples’ circumferences.

During one tuk-tuk ride from Angkor Watt back into downtown Siem Reap, Samaday and I began to talk politics. With the fourth democratic election set to occur in only three days’ time, the different parties were canvassing the town for last-minute support. Siem Reap was painted in political propaganda; hundreds were riding around town waving flags, and blaring messages over loud speakers. Despite the emergence of new parties, like the Human Rights Party, and the increased support of more-established opposition parties like Sam Rainsy, the “democratic party,” and FUNICPEC, the party with royalist leanings towards King Hun Sen, the propaganda seemed more like a facade than a set of campaigns that would influence public opinion. The Cambodia Peoples’ Party still faced little opposition, and despite their name, past actions as the incumbent government provided little proof that they were actually working in the peoples’ interest.

This political discussion between Samaday and I shifted from present to past when he admitted to me his former political leanings. As a young boy of only 9 years, Samaday had not only supported, but also acted as a member of the Khmer Rouge party. After being in Cambodia for two months, I had understood what this statement implied: during 1975-1979, Samaday had collaborated with the auto-genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, responsible for the death of two million people. Although he didn’t get into details, he did admit that he’d killed a lot of people; knowing the context of the Khmer Rouge regime, I knew that the those hands he had used to wielding clubs in fatal bludgeons were the very same hands he had used to help us traverse the sacred Khmer temples.

How did Samaday seem so blaze about his former actions? When he admitted his involvement with the Khmer Rouge, he never changed his tone or his facial expressions. He disclosed the fact that he’d killed many people in more of a matter-of-fact way than he delivered his spiels about the temples. When he mentioned his newly born son, that topic sparked more energy in his demeanor than his combative, even fatal confession about his former profession with the Khmer Rouge. Did he have no remorse, no guilt? Even though he had only been a young boy, did his actions “killing lots of people” have no effect on his adult conscious?

How did this happen?

David Livingstone Smith takes a multidimensional approach to human nature by examining psychology, evolutionary theory, history, and anthropology in his new book, The Most Dangerous Animal, which gives grueling accounts of why human beings are their own worst enemies. Noting that over 200 million people had been killed, mostly civilians, in the last 100 years, Smith seems to be on to something. Smith presents some ideas that help us to see the rationale behind Samaday and his previous action as a Khmer Rouge solider.

Imagined Communities and People-making

Smith uses the ideas of Benedict Anderson, imagined communities, as a jumping off point that could serve as one explanation of Samaday's behavior. In his book Imagined Communities, Anderson states that communities are united by treating one another as members of a larger, imagined community that shares an essence. Using this idea as a model, Smith twists Anderson's ideas around. Traditionally essence has been seen as something that exists withing racial or blood boundaries. When interpreted incorrectly, Smith believes that essence leads to xenophobia, nationalism, and other things that lie at the heart of ideology. When essence becomes tied to ideology, it becomes dangerous. In the case of the Khmer Rouge, Pol-Pot and other leaders played upon their essence, leading to the creation of the Khmer Rouges' ideological structure. In the name of their ideologies as the Khmer Rouge, they caused Khmers to turn on one another; this resulted in Cambodians killing one quarter of their countrymen.

Another interesting idea that affects essence is how people-making comes into play. The idea of people-making is founded on the assumption that humans will only attribute essence to those who are considered human by fitting the people-making model. The people-making model exists within and is a function of the unconscious mind. While this might be a potential contribution to the Khmer Rouges' action, the connection seems to week because the Khmer Rouge soldiers were primarily killing other Khmers, members of their own ethnic group. How would they have functioned if they did not identify themselves as people. In war, Smith found that the people-making model is turned off and is replaced with a more primitive, fight or flight response. Because of the paranoia and instability of war time, perhaps the Khmer Rouge soldiers and the civilian victims were all functioning on a level of fight or flight.

Engaging in Violent Combat, like Genocide

Smith discovered is that the ideal military recruit is a psychopath, someone who is unable to feel empathy for anyone else. Between 75 and 85% of non-psychotic soldiers in battle refrain from fighting directly. Thus, perhaps one could say that in battle most normal human beings do not feel inclined to kill their kinsmen. This phenomenon results in the fact that while in battle, soldiers are much more apt to do indirect, impersonal killing. Soldiers do not want to feel personally responsible for committing intimate, horrific acts with their own hands; they would rather destroy a tank than destroy the four men operating the tank. Perhaps this is because the mirror neurons within the brains fire when a soldier is killing another. As a result of the mirror neurons, the soldier feels empathy for the person they are about to shoot, and will be much less inclined to do so.

So why would any soldiers become involved in the first place? Another area that Smith focuses on is the reasons for and means in which soldiers engage in battle. One reason that soldiers engage in battle is because they fear punishment if they do not comply with their superiors who order them to take violent actions. As a result, even reluctant soldiers might act only out of fear for themselves, not out of principle; they might feel the need to "obey orders or else." This sounds much like the power of the situation: Samaday might have been reluctant to become involved during a "kill or be killed" time. Thus, perhaps Samaday felt his only option was to join the Khmer Rouge and fight.

Placing Value on Others

Another point that Smith makes in his book revolves around the idea that some human beings matter more than others, it just depends who you ask. Because empathy and care are not universal and constant across the human race, human beings are more disposed to take action that helps the people that they care about. In a sense sympathy is selective. According to Smith, sympathy is contingent on similarities, direct contact, and kinship. If similarities exist between the person suffering and the person observing, the level of the observer's sympathy will increase if the suffering person is similar to them. The observer also feels more sympathy for those that they have come in direct contact. Humans are also sympathetic towards their family. This might have affected the Khmer Rouge soldiers in the sense that they wanted to do what was right in order to protect their family. Perhaps they lacked the sympathy for strangers, which made it easier to kill them, if they knew it would protect their kin. Samaday did not detail his family situation, but that may have influenced him to become involved.

Devaluing Others Completely

Placing less value on strangers than kin can be taken to the extreme through dehumanization and demonizing. To dehumanize is to make others out to be less than human. In genocide, many leaders demonize to mobilize their forces. By making the others appear to be dangerous, less than human, and lacking the essence that makes someone human, leaders have the potential to frame the other as a non-human enemy. As a result, the victims in these struggles are viewed as less than humans; they may, instead, be equated to something like a parasite or a disease.

In a war, leaders have taken the parasite image and run with it, calling for their supporters to exterminate the unclean enemies in the hygienic operation of war. This is the tactic that the Khmer Rouge used, in fact, during the 1970s. Samaday and other Khmer Rouge soldiers were told by Pol-Pot and their other leaders to "cut out" the infection and remove the "rotten" aspects of their society. The others in the Cambodian civil war were labeled as more than enemies: they were microbes and pests from within. Through this system, the Khmer Rouge sough to "purify Cambodia," bringing the society back to "year zero," the start of a utopian, agrarian society.

Can Samaday be Blamed?

Considering all of these different things that go on within society and within peoples' heads during wars, it seems hard to point fingers. After looking at the ways the Khmer Rouge manipulated their soldiers, taking advantage of their power, one might say that Samaday was a victim of the power of the situation. Yes, he killed people as a member of the Khmer Rouge, but perhaps the Khmer Rouge killed his judgment. Because of the power of the situation, one should at least consider how their ideas and manipulations would have affected the judgment and action of a seemingly normal, friendly guide.

References

Smith, D. L. (2007). The Most Dangerous Animal. New York: St. Martin's Press.

The Wiki: Evil Entity or Educational Enhancement

bwmgal — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:31:15 CST

A recent publication on the use of a Wiki in a collegiate classroom highlights the concieved notion of the evil of wikis. Many professors liken the word and work done on an online environment (especially those labled Wiki) to the unreliable yet unyieldingly popular site Wikipedia. For years students have been using Wikipedia as a means of information--even to the extent of citing it as a credible source in research papers. This has been the thorn in many professors' sides as they continue to demand scholarly research and discourage the use of wikipedia as a trustworthy source. The public forum of a wiki instills fear in many educators' minds just by mere association with the ever changing status of wikipedia articles.

Patrice Williams of Okaloosa Walton College in Florida writes in the August 2008 issue of Learning and Leading with Technology of her experience using a Writing Wiki in her Composition classes. She has found that WetPaint.com, a wiki provider, allows for easy editing and formatting flexibility that both she and her students find very accessible. She says "my students...view our private class wiki as an 'academic' networking site" where they can post their own profiles, communicate with one another, as well as the professor. Most importantly, Williams notes the privacy of the entire wiki. Trying to pacify the fears of weary professors to engage in an online academic community, she reassures that members must be invited by the professor (which is easily done she explains) and then once again granted access after requesting it through the invitation.

Williams confesses that she too was guilty of condeming wikis and encouraging students to avoid them at all costs. She says she felt this way until she stumbled across WetPaint.com and very easily created a community for her students. She uses it not only as a means for extended class discussion but also in a familiar "Blackboard" manner posting the syllabus, class deadlines, and announcements. She says "Students love these features. They appreciate the fact that there is a portion of our class that exists in cyberspace that they can access regardless of the time of day or their physical location." Finally, with the very apparent push and love for online sources and information she makes a call for post-secondary as well as secondary levels of education to truly engage and "journey into the world of wikis."

This once "evil" world of wikis is slowing turning good.

The Morality of Marijuana Use

wikwiki — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:27:58 CST

Ron Paul Meets Medical Marijuana Patient

Reefer Madness — The Federal Response to California's Medical-Marijuana Law, George J. Annas, J.D., M.P.H.

"Angel McClary Raich, a California woman at the center of the recent Supreme Court case on medical marijuana, hasn't changed her treatment regimen since the Court ruled in June that patients who take the drug in states where its medicinal use is legal are not shielded from federal prosecution. A thin woman with long, dark hair and an intense gaze, Raich takes marijuana, or cannabis as she prefers to call it, about every two waking hours — by smoking it, by inhaling it as a vapor, by eating it in foods, or by applying it topically as a balm. She says that it relieves her chronic pain and boosts her appetite, preventing her from becoming emaciated because of a mysterious wasting syndrome. Raich and her doctor maintain that without access to the eight or nine pounds of privately grown cannabis that she consumes each year, she would die.

Although Raich has embraced a public role advocating the medicinal use of marijuana, she says that her health suffered during the hectic days following the announcement of the Court's decision, when a whirlwind schedule of press conferences and congressional meetings in Washington prevented her from medicating herself with cannabis as regularly as she needed to. 'My body was shutting down on me,' she said in an interview from her Oakland home last month. "I'm scared of my health failing. I'm scared of the federal government coming in and doing more harm. [Recently,] the city of Oakland warned there were going to be some raids" on marijuana dispensaries. 'We're all just waiting. Sitting on the frontline is extremely stressful.'"

From:
Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court

Although this story portrays medicinal marijuana as a life saving drug, pharmacology has produced many drugs which will alleviate chronic pain. From
Advil to Valium, a broad spectrum of legal drugs have been created to subdue varying levels of pain.

What pharmaceutical companies have not been able to produce is an appetite increasing drug without the use of THC, one of the active chemicals found in Marijuana. Even the legal drugs that have been created with THC have proven relatively ineffective.
An article on medicinal marijuana alternatives

Appetite enhancing effects help sufferers of a variety of illnesses, including HIV/AIDS and cancer, to maintain healthy eating habits, thus maintaining strength and stamina. For cancer patients undergoing Chemotherapy, this is especially important because of the baleful effects of the treatment, often causing patients enormous stomach pain and frequent vomiting.

Marijuana as Medicine:

The criminalization of marijuana leads to unfair and unnecessary policing of individuals who use marijuana for medical purposes, as exemplified by Matthew Ducheneaux who was arrested for smoking marijuana in a park in South Dakota on July of 2000. He was a quadriplegic who used marijuana with his doctor's permission to treat violent muscle spasms. Wheelchair-bound since a 1985 car accident, Ducheneaux had tried Valium, codeine, and Marinol to treat the life-threatening muscle spasms that caused his legs to shake in profusely violent manners. Nothing calmed his tremors except for marijuana. Even more importantly, marijuana was a medicine that did not come with the baggage of side effects that other medicines had. He then proceeded to seek permission to use marijuana and in 1988, he was approved for a now-discontinued program through which very ill people could obtain marijuana from the federal government. However, the federal government required strong security measures for pharmacies serving patients marijuana, and Ducheneaux could not find a local pharmacy willing to comply. Hence, he turned to friends and drug dealers for his medicine. Ducheneaux asked his doctor for a note saying he used marijuana for medical purposes, and the note stated "Matthew is quadriplegic. He uses marijuana for muscle spasms caused by his paralysis." On August 28, 2002, Matthew Ducheneaux was convicted of marijuana possession. A previous ruling had barred him from letting the jury know that he used marijuana for medical purposes. Ducheneaux's attorney, in speaking of the jury, stated "All of them conclusively said afterward that they didn't want to find him guilty." Even prosecutor Matthew Theophilus stated, "I think there is some merit to his defense."
There are other important medicinal uses of marijuana besides inhibiting muscle spasms, as supported by the Institute of Medicine. The FDA has also approved marijuana as a treatment for cancer and the symptoms of HIV and Influenza but believe that isolated compounds (such as cannabinoids) are more effective than smoking or ingesting the plant (Meyer). Glaucoma, a condition of increased pressure within the eyeball causing slow loss of sight, can be treated with medical marijuana to decrease this pressure. Medical marijuana is also used for or pain relief and is reported to be beneficial for illnesses such as bipolar disorder (Russo). Case reports have found that cannabis can relieve tics in people with obsessive compulsive disorder and Tourrette Syndrome by fifty percent or more (Muller and Sandyk). A recent study has also concluded that cannabinoids found in cannabis might have the ability to prevent Alzheimer's disease (Ramirez). THC has been shown to reduce arterial blockages (Steffens). The most important reason marijuana is a priceless medicinal plant is because its side effects are limited to, at the worst, a joyous drowsiness whereas any other medication that would alleviate the aforementioned conditions would lead to several unwelcome side effects like migraines, confusion, and even depression.
With such beneficial effects, medical marijuana should be used so that individuals with medical conditions have alternative sources from which they can receive treatment from. In doing this, the side effects of common medicinal treatments will be circumvented to the relief of the patient. Yet most of those who need medicinal marijuana are unable to attain it due to strict marijuana laws. In essence, this conduct is a form of evil behavior, especially when effective medicine is being withheld from patients who are in crucial need of it.

Here are some pictures of Medical Marijuana:

check out a comprehensive list of medicinal/recreational marijuana strains: http://strainreview.com/

References:

http://www.november.org/razorwire/rzold/24/24016.html

Meyer, Robert J.. "[http://www.fda.gov/ola/2004/marijuana0401.html Testimony before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, Committee on Government Reform]". U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Russo and Grotenhermen; Cannabis and Cannabinoids, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Therapeutic Potential; Haworth Press, 2002;page 124-132

K.R. Muller, U. Schneider, H. Kolbe, H.M. Emrich (1999). "Treatment of Tourette's Syndrome With Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol". American Journal of Psychiatry 156 (3), http://www.marijuana.org/AmJoPsychMarch99.html.

K.R. Muller, U. Schneider, A. Koblenz, M. Jöbges, H. Kolbe, T. Daldrup, H.M. Emrich (2002). "Treatment of Tourette's Syndrome with Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC): A Randomized Crossover Trial". Pharmacopsychiatry 35 (2): 57.

R. Sandyk, G. Awerbuch (1988). "Marijuana and Tourette's Syndrome". Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology 8 (6): 444.

Ramíirez, B. G., C. Blázquez, T. Gómez del Pulgar, M. Guzmán, and M. L. de Ceballos (2005). "Prevention of Alzheimer's disease pathology by cannabinoids: neuroprotection mediated by blockade of microglial activation". Journal of Neuroscience 25 (8^): 1904–1913.

Steffens, S.,Veillard, N.R., et al.. "Low dose oral cannabinoid therapy reduces progression of atherosclerosis in mice". Nature 474 (7034): 782–786, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7034/abs/nature03389.html.

The Marijuana Drug War: Economic Analysis
Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year, finds a June 2005 report by Dr. Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard University. The report has been endorsed by more than 530 distinguished economists, who have signed an open letter to President Bush and other public officials calling for "an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition," adding, "We believe such a debate will favor a regime in which marijuana is legal but taxed and regulated like other goods." Dr. Miron's paper, "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition," concludes: Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of legal regulation would save approximately $7.7 billion in government expenditures on prohibition enforcement -- $2.4 billion at the federal level and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels. Revenue from taxation of marijuana sales would range from $2.4 billion per year if marijuana were taxed like ordinary consumer goods to $6.2 billion if it were taxed like alcohol or tobacco.

References:

The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition, June 2005, Jeffrey A. Miron, Visiting Professor of Economics Harvard University

The Marijuana Drug War: Moral Analysis
Rachel Hoffman, 23, had been in a pretrial diversion program after a minor marijuana arrest. Police in Tallahassee searched her home and found marijuana and ecstasy. The police threatened to send her to prison, unless she agreed to become a police informant. Upon complying, the police wired Hoffman and sent her to meet Andrea J. Green, 25, and Deneilo R. Bradshaw, 23, on May 7, 2008 to buy 1,500 ecstasy pills, 2 ounces of cocaine or crack, and a gun. She had $12,000 to $15,000 in cash when she met the men and her dead body was discovered two days later. Doesn't it seem that the drug war against marijuana has gone a bit too far? How can police justify sending a woman, who has most likely never dealt in shady dealings of cocaine and guns, into such an obviously dangerous situation? Clearly the marijuana drug war isn’t effective when there have been no deaths linked directly to marijuana use, but as an unpleasant surprise the known deaths that do involve marijuana are a result of an effort to force people to not smoke the harmless plant. Not only is the drug war against marijuana taking lives, but it is also severely punishing individuals for simple possession of the plant as well. In addition to the punishment imposed by a judge, a misdemeanor conviction for possession of marijuana can lead to bars on educational aid, a bar on serving as a foster parent, denial of federal housing assistance, revocation or suspension of occupational licenses, or suspension of one’s driver’s license (Center for CL & E). These sanctions are known as 'collateral sanctions' which are enforced differently according to state codes, but have more severe consequences than the direct punishment from a judge. A felony conviction (i.e., growing a marijuana plant) can result in all of the aforementioned sanctions, and more. If marijuana offenses are considered less of a menace to society than crimes such as murder, rape, or kidnapping, or even less of a crime than other drug offenses, this consideration is hardly found in any of the collateral sanctions. A person convicted of growing marijuana (a felony in most states) is often subjected to the same, and sometimes greater, collateral sanctions than a person convicted of murder, rape, or robbery.

Here is a link that provides an excellent summary of all the collateral sanctions that may come with either a misdemeanor conviction or a felony conviction based each states' laws: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/pdf/col_sanc_pdfs/appendix_c.pdf

Check out these videos for more information on the HUMAN COSTS of Marijuana Prohibition :

References:

"Life Sentences: Collateral Sanctions Associated With Marijuana Offenses." A report by the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics. Ver. 1, July 2, 2007.

Nic Corbett, August 2, 2008, Grand jury points to TPD negligence in Hoffman case, Tallahassee.com.

Harry J. Anslinger: Father of the Drug War
In understanding the history behind the criminalization of marijuana, it is important to know about the one man who worked aggressively to make the harmless plant illegal. In 1930, Anslinger became director of the newly established Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Upon assuming position in this new government agency, Anslinger was given a wide scope of power allowing him to both define the problems regarding drugs and provide a solution for it. As to why Anslinger chose to oppose marijuana so fervently is largely unknown but a look into his descriptions of why marijuana is detrimental to individuals, and society as a whole, will shed light on this mystery. Anslinger drew upon themes of racism and violence by reading from his "Gore Files" which consisted of wild tales of ax murderers, sex-crazed women, and violence-driven rapists. According to Anslinger, "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men;" and then there’s my favorite, "You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother." These are simply a few of the not-so-accurate remarks made by Anslinger regarding the effects of marijuana. By describing marijuana as more of a menace to society than it actually was he used it as a medium by which he could expand the Bureau’s powers, denigrate minority races, and belittle women. Anslinger may have also fallen under the influence of various companies as well. For example, pharmaceutical companies were not pleased when they could neither identify nor standardize cannabis dosages, and with cannabis, folks could grow their own medicine and not have to purchase it from the large companies. Combined with the efforts of Anslilnger’s propaganda and companies looking to eliminate the competition posed by marijuana, the stage was set for the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 which did not criminalize use or possession of marijuana but was the first significant step in the path to do so. Its net effect was that it increased the risk in dealing marijuana. In 1969, the act was repealed on the basis that it violated the Fifth Amendment and was followed by the Control Substances Act. Under this act, marijuana was unfortunately labeled a Schedule 1 drug with addictive qualities and no medicinal purposes. The shock waves of such a preposterous step has transcended generations, which is made visible by the continuing efforts of individuals and organizations, over decades, to legalize marijuana.

References:

Marijuana - Assassin of Youth, H.J. Anslinger, U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics, (The American Magazine, July 1937).

Statement of H. J. Anslinger, Commissioner of Narcotics, Bureau of Narcotics, Dept. of Treasury.

"Marijuana Tax Act of 1937," House Hearings

Controlled Substances Act--full text

How safe is Marijuana use?

One of the largest arguments against the use of medicinal marijuana and the legalization of marijuana is the harmful effects of the illegal drug. According to several studies, marijuana has some harmful and some negligible effects on the human body.

Neurological and Psychological Effects:

The use of marijuana has previously been linked to an increased possibility of depression in adults; however, a study in the October 2005 edition of Addiction, a scholarly journal about addictive substances, showed that even heavy users of marijuana are only 1.1 times more likely to experience depression than non-users. This debunks a previously held conception that marijuana is a causal factor of depression.
From: Marijuana Use and Depression Among Adults: Testing for causal associations (2005). Harder, et al.

Another study has concluded that smoking marijuana changes regional cerebral cortex blood flow (rCBF) in the brain. While the change was significant, it did not reduce behavioral performance or attention as previous conceptions of the effects of marijuana have suggested.
From: Effects of Smoking Marijuana on Focal Attention and Brain Blood Flow (2007). O'Leary, et al.

Although these two studies suggest little to no effect on these areas of cognition and neurology, a study performed in 2003 found that smoking marijuana reduces working and episodic memory. Working memory is the faculty of attention to a current task, while episodic memory is the ability to retain and reproduce information when a distracting factor has been introduced. This is consistent with previous assessments of the effects of marijuana use.
From: Effects of Marijuana on Neurophysiological Signals of Working and Episodic Memory (2003). Ilan, et al.

Respiratory Effects:

Because the typical method of introducing cannabinoidal elements into the body is through smoking, the harmful repiratory effects are a large consideration for the safety of marijuana use. A study by Yale's School of Medicine found that smoking marijuana has similar harmful effects to that of smoking tobacco.
From: Respiratory Effects of Marijuana and Tobacco Use in a U.S. Sample (2004). Moore, et al.

Conspiracy

Some conspiracy theorists believe that the reason for the hemp prohibition is not because of harmful effects, but because hemp may be useful for myriad applications. The picture below shows the proposed uses for hemp and marijuana. The conspiracy theory suggests that hemp is outlawed because many inputs for production would be easily replaced by hemp products due to its reusability, abundance, and low cost. These claims, however, are unfounded in empirical data, and the practical application of hemp is questionable.

From: Marijuana Conspiracy - The Sequel

Marijuana: Addiction and the Gateway Theory

Here is an interesting graph comparing marijuana to other drugs in relation to five categories: dependence, withdrawal, tolerance, reinforcement, and intoxication. As is evident from the graph, marijuana use is safer in terms of all five categories compared to nicotine, heroin, cocaine, and alcohol. And obviously, it poses more danger to an individual than does caffeine. In a book published by the American Chemical Society, health officials concluded that marijuana is the least addictive of drugs in comparison to nicotine, alcohol, heroine, and cocaine. They also found that alcohol is about as addictive as heroin, whereas marijuana’s addictive properties did not come close to any of the aforementioned drugs.

In a statement by the former Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders, she said that “After decades of looking, scientists still have no evidence that marijuana causes people to use harder drugs(IOM).” What many critics of marijuana so gladly forget is that marijuana itself is not a gateway, but the black market created by its prohibition acts as a medium by which harder drugs become more easily available to marijuana users. Another important point to consider is that most individuals do not begin drug use with marijuana, but instead start with alcohol and nicotine usually when they are too young to do so legally. Yet, those two drugs are never targeted and do not share the criticism that marijuana receives for being a gateway drug. In a study conducted by the Research and Development Corporation, it was shown that marijuana use in fact does not lead to the use of harder drugs such as cocaine or heroine, thus challenging the decades old assumption about the "gateway theory" that has helped shape government policy around marijuana use. The study demonstrates that associations between marijuana and hard drug use could be expected even if marijuana use has no gateway effect. Instead, marijuana typically is used first by individuals because it is more readily available (marijuana is the United States' number one cash crop) (RAND). Because of this widespread availability of marijuana, individuals tend to gravitate towards starting drug use with marijuana. Just because marijuana is often used first, due to its easier availability than harder drugs, does not mean that there is a direct causal link that makes a person who is smoking/consuming marijuana want to try harder drugs. In concluding, the lead author of the study Andrew Morral says "The people who are predisposed to use drugs and have the opportunity to use drugs are more likely than others to use both marijuana and harder drugs (RAND)."

References:

Jack E. Henningfield, PhD for NIDA, Reported by Philip J. Hilts, New York Times, Aug. 2, 1994 "Is Nicotine Addictive? It Depends on Whose Criteria You Use."

Institute of Medicine, Mar. 1999, "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base":

RAND. "Marijuana Not A Gateway To Hard Drug Use, RAND Study Says: Conclusions Raise Serious Doubts Regarding The Legitimacy Of U.S. Drug Policy." December 3, 2002. <http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=5490.>

Marijuana Use and Aggressive Behavior
A study conducted by Taylor et al. (1976) found that cannabis (aka marijuana) reduces the likelihood that individuals will engage in aggressive behaviors. Low doses of THC (the active, high inducing chemical in marijuana) can slightly increase aggression, moderate and high doses actually suppress and eliminate aggressive behavior. For instance, they found that aggression was more visible when participants were given a low dose (0.1 mg/kg) of THC, whereas participants in the medium-dose (0.25 mg/ kg) or high-dose (0.4 mg/kg) condition did not exhibit aggressive behaviors (Taylor et al., 1976).

Studies conducted on animals also support the idea that cannabis does not cause aggressive behavior. In fact, cannabis administration engenders submissive behaviors and suppresses attack behaviors amongst animals ( Sieber et al., 1980).

References:

Taylor, S., Vardaris, R., Rawich, A., Gammon, C., Cranston, J., & Lubetkin, A. I. (1976). The effects of alcohol and delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol on human physical aggression. Aggressive Behavior, 2, 153–161.

Sieber, B., Frischknect, H., & Waser, P. G. (1980). Behavioral effects of hashish in mice: III. Social interactions
between two residents and an intruder male. Psychopharmacology, 70(3), 273–278.

CONCLUSION:
There has always existed the argument that marijuana should be kept illegal in order to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, and improve the health and hygiene in America. This sounds awfully familiar to another propaganda-induced debacle in American history. Does alcohol prohibition ring a bell? Similarly, the war on marijuana is proving that the green tree is far more dangerous, and costly, a substance when it is illegal than if it were made legal, but regulated. A key factor in legalizing marijuana is to make sure there are limitations and constraints put on both its medicinal and recreational use. Legalization, as opposed to decriminalization, will create a legal, regulated market for marijuana, with age limits and controls akin to those placed on alcohol. Much like the dispensaries used in California for medical marijuana patients, or the ABC stores that sell alcohol, a similar system of attaining marijuana should be implemented across all states. But it should be kept in mind that the ability to freely smoke this herb in the comfort of one’s home, and without the disdain of those who may be uncomfortable with marijuana, should be a privilege, not a right.

In understanding the detrimental effects of marijuana prohibition and by implementing strict rules and regulations in the legalization of marijuana, lives will not be lost due to this ‘herbal’ drug war and resources and finances formerly used to contain the use of marijuana can be channeled to more effective uses.

As a final thought, it should be noted that individuals have the right to buy common household substances like nail polish, white out, sharpie markers, spray paint, and glue that can provide potential highs, with severe implications for a person’s health and lifestyle, so it comes as a surprise that the privilege to smoke, consume, and grow a risk-free plant is too often stifled.