Mirror neurons - connected with notion of feeling someone else's pain.
Dopamine into the cortex - long term rewards. Serotonin also stimulates the frontal cortex (except for violent sociopaths). The literature suggests that low levels of serotonin are associated with aggression. Of course low levels of serotonin cannot cause aggression (the absence of something doesn't provoke something else - though serotonin can be inhibitory by encouraging a restraint = reward mentality).
Alcohol doesn't make people aggressive; it heightens the existing tendency. Alcohol has many effects in the brain. The main neurotransmitter effect is to increase gabba signalling. Gabba doesn't act directly at the action potential level. Instead what it does is bind to neurons at the dendritic level and block other neurotransmitters from binding to the neuron. Thus it has a depressing effect because those neurons cannot get their excitatory signal going. This is where the disinhibition comes from.
Pain and frustration encourage aggression. But it's a modulation thing again - those who are predisposed toward aggression will go in that direction.
Crowding is the same - when there's a crowd more aggressive individuals become more aggressive. More submissive individuals become more submissive.
PMS and heightened irritability and aggression in women and baboons. Curiously, the spike in aggression occurs in high ranking baboons while a spike in depressive moods spikes in low ranking baboons.
Progesterone can be mildly sedative - it can bind at gabba sites. It drops around the menstrual period. Natural opioids also drop.
Konrad Lorenz. "On Aggression." Role of environment in aggression. Probably good that Sapolsky calls him unrepentant Nazi swine. Are we really going to accept instruction from a Nazi on the environment not impacting aggression? Oh, it's just biology. "There is no love without hate." What a swell guy. He used a pressure builds up until release model, arguing that the longer it's been since the individual was aggressive, the less of an environmental trigger that will be required to provoke aggression. This is of course utter nonsense. Aggression thus decreases the likelihood of aggression soon afterward.
On the other end, there's the Soviet advocated notion that aggression is about frustration, fear, pain. Environment is thus having a huge impact.
For example when unemployment goes up, stress goes up and so do rates of spousal abuse and associated aggression. Displacement aggression.
The poorer you are the more likely you are to be violent.
Realistically aggression is a possibility and early learning is about learning when to be aggressive.
Lawrence Kohlberg and the stages of moral development in children. A disciple of the Swiss psychologist Piaget who pioneered the notion of stages of development. Kohlberg looked at sequential development of morality.
1. Preconventional Moral Reasoning
2. Conventional Moral Reasoning
3. Postconventional Moral Reasoning
These can be understood through the lens of the reason why you act morally. At the preconventional level your motivation is that you might get caught if you do the wrong thing. If you act morally you might get a reward.
At the conventional stage shared group values, rules, norms, law and order predominate. Here following the moral rules makes you "good."
Postconventional morality - transcending those base laws for the more important ultimate right and wrong. Here bad laws are broken, people's opinions are disregarded, the good and the true is pursued. This is the Socratic realm.
Not everyone reaches the same level of development.
Not surprisingly, the more violent your childhood neighborhood, the more likely you are to be violent. And if it's in the home, the likelihood increases.
Same thing again - watching violent tv makes you more violent if that's your tendency, same with music, video games, etc.
Age and likelihood of being violent (age as proxy for testosterone). Likelihood of committing murder in late teens to early 20's - similar rate in Chicago, Toronto and London. Super-imposable curves. However, in the year studied the murder totals in London and Toronto were way lower than Chicago.
Side note and socialization. Low ranking baby female baboon attempts to go see a high rank baby female baboon and gets pulled back by her mother. The lesson is that if you're low ranking you don't approach the high rank baboon - you sit quietly and hope you aren't noticed.
Not that humans ever behave this way or experience a related fear/anxiety.
Judith Rich Harris - "The Nurture Assumption" - peer groups are often more important than the field recognizes in establishing social values. Kids vastly prefer the language and accent of peer group. At the end of the day parents are mostly good for determining what peer groups kids have access to. On the bad side, this is the whole world of conformity and us-them mentalities.
Important study - Levett and Donahue studied crime rates and noted that there's been a significant drop off in the US since the late 1980's, or around the time that a whole batch of would have been kids didn't hit their late teens in the wake of Roe v. Wade. Again, suggesting the importance of environment, especially to kids that no one wanted. They argued Roe v. Wade accounted fro 50% of the drop.
Dopamine into the cortex - long term rewards. Serotonin also stimulates the frontal cortex (except for violent sociopaths). The literature suggests that low levels of serotonin are associated with aggression. Of course low levels of serotonin cannot cause aggression (the absence of something doesn't provoke something else - though serotonin can be inhibitory by encouraging a restraint = reward mentality).
Alcohol doesn't make people aggressive; it heightens the existing tendency. Alcohol has many effects in the brain. The main neurotransmitter effect is to increase gabba signalling. Gabba doesn't act directly at the action potential level. Instead what it does is bind to neurons at the dendritic level and block other neurotransmitters from binding to the neuron. Thus it has a depressing effect because those neurons cannot get their excitatory signal going. This is where the disinhibition comes from.
Pain and frustration encourage aggression. But it's a modulation thing again - those who are predisposed toward aggression will go in that direction.
Crowding is the same - when there's a crowd more aggressive individuals become more aggressive. More submissive individuals become more submissive.
PMS and heightened irritability and aggression in women and baboons. Curiously, the spike in aggression occurs in high ranking baboons while a spike in depressive moods spikes in low ranking baboons.
Progesterone can be mildly sedative - it can bind at gabba sites. It drops around the menstrual period. Natural opioids also drop.
Konrad Lorenz. "On Aggression." Role of environment in aggression. Probably good that Sapolsky calls him unrepentant Nazi swine. Are we really going to accept instruction from a Nazi on the environment not impacting aggression? Oh, it's just biology. "There is no love without hate." What a swell guy. He used a pressure builds up until release model, arguing that the longer it's been since the individual was aggressive, the less of an environmental trigger that will be required to provoke aggression. This is of course utter nonsense. Aggression thus decreases the likelihood of aggression soon afterward.
On the other end, there's the Soviet advocated notion that aggression is about frustration, fear, pain. Environment is thus having a huge impact.
For example when unemployment goes up, stress goes up and so do rates of spousal abuse and associated aggression. Displacement aggression.
The poorer you are the more likely you are to be violent.
Realistically aggression is a possibility and early learning is about learning when to be aggressive.
Lawrence Kohlberg and the stages of moral development in children. A disciple of the Swiss psychologist Piaget who pioneered the notion of stages of development. Kohlberg looked at sequential development of morality.
1. Preconventional Moral Reasoning
2. Conventional Moral Reasoning
3. Postconventional Moral Reasoning
These can be understood through the lens of the reason why you act morally. At the preconventional level your motivation is that you might get caught if you do the wrong thing. If you act morally you might get a reward.
At the conventional stage shared group values, rules, norms, law and order predominate. Here following the moral rules makes you "good."
Postconventional morality - transcending those base laws for the more important ultimate right and wrong. Here bad laws are broken, people's opinions are disregarded, the good and the true is pursued. This is the Socratic realm.
Not everyone reaches the same level of development.
Not surprisingly, the more violent your childhood neighborhood, the more likely you are to be violent. And if it's in the home, the likelihood increases.
Same thing again - watching violent tv makes you more violent if that's your tendency, same with music, video games, etc.
Age and likelihood of being violent (age as proxy for testosterone). Likelihood of committing murder in late teens to early 20's - similar rate in Chicago, Toronto and London. Super-imposable curves. However, in the year studied the murder totals in London and Toronto were way lower than Chicago.
Side note and socialization. Low ranking baby female baboon attempts to go see a high rank baby female baboon and gets pulled back by her mother. The lesson is that if you're low ranking you don't approach the high rank baboon - you sit quietly and hope you aren't noticed.
Not that humans ever behave this way or experience a related fear/anxiety.
Judith Rich Harris - "The Nurture Assumption" - peer groups are often more important than the field recognizes in establishing social values. Kids vastly prefer the language and accent of peer group. At the end of the day parents are mostly good for determining what peer groups kids have access to. On the bad side, this is the whole world of conformity and us-them mentalities.
Important study - Levett and Donahue studied crime rates and noted that there's been a significant drop off in the US since the late 1980's, or around the time that a whole batch of would have been kids didn't hit their late teens in the wake of Roe v. Wade. Again, suggesting the importance of environment, especially to kids that no one wanted. They argued Roe v. Wade accounted fro 50% of the drop.
