Susceptibility to Violence

Violence does not necessarily lead to more violence which is evidenced by millions of people in armed conflict situations all over the world that have not chosen to adhere to violent behavior.

Research (see for instance here the Metropolitan Area Child Study by Guerra, N. G., Huesmann, L. R., Spindler, A., Sept/Oct. 2003, and Huesmann, L. R., in Green, G. and Donnerstein, E., eds., 1998) has among other things shown that susceptibility of children to violent behavior needs to be understood in a context of for instance how much exposed a child has been to violence, and whether a child fantasizes about violence. Another issue is that not all children or youth view the outcome of a specific conflict situation in the same way in deciding whether to use violence.

One issue would be if the child/youth would think that the use of violence would actually be doable for them, such as whether they thought that they would be able to actually win in such a situation. Issues such as exposure to violence and the risk for children to develop aggressive behavior, whether children would view violence as something normative because they have gotten used to violence (can a person get used to violence?), desensitization to violence after exposure to repeated violent acts, all require much thought. Another issue is what kind of message children and youth get in a long-term on-going armed conflict situation when there has been no serious attempt to put an end to the conflict, or ending practices such as the recruitment and use of children by armed forces and groups.

This question also needs to be seen in the context of that so many children and youth also experience many losses including having to leave their homes, and maybe having seen a parent, family member or friend being killed. While feelings of revenge and retaliation are very strong motivators to act violently, and many do act violently because of harboring these feelings, it is still necessary to understand violent behavior in a more comprehensive way.

This is not to say that people still would not choose to act aggressively emotionally by for instance dismissing other people, by neglecting other people, by not duly acknowledging other people, or by excluding other people.  There are many forms of violence and violent behavior.