Chapter 6Microcosmic Theories of

Violent Conflict

Su Chen Wen

Introduce

• Social scientists have turned increasingly toward motives, reasons, and causal factors that may be operative both in individual human beings and in social collective

• Even though people are not immediately aware of them and do not become consciously aware of them except as a result of scientific observation and methodical analysis

• Why do individuals behave aggressively ?• Why do states and other groups or actors

wage wars ?– Macrocosmic and Microcosmic– Psychological – Multiple explanatory factors

Biological and Psychological theories

• Conflict has an inside and an outside dimension.

• It arises out of the internal dimensions of internal dimensions of acting singly or in groups, and also out of external conditions and social structures.– Sociobiology– Sociobiologists

Socialization, Displacement, and Projection

• The frustration-aggression school has attempted to move from the individual to the social level more by logical inference than by experimentation.

• Frustration-aggression patterns are culture-bound, the socialization of aggression takes place in all human societies, attenuating hostile action among members of the in-group by directing aggressive impulses against out-groups.

Other Psychological Theories

• “Intolerance of ambiguity” • “Nationalism” certainly contains strong and

unmistakable psychological ingredients.• “Escape from freedom”

Learned aggression and military training

• Bandura has shown that the conversion of socialized individual into effective military combatants requires a carefully conceived and executed training program

• Frustration-Aggression-Displacement syndrome.

Learning, Images, and International conflict

• Should not discount too much the role of psychological factors in the onset and conduct of war.

• Leaders and citizens alike form their attitude-friendly, hostile, or indifferent-about the world, foreigners, and other nations and cultures through a complex process of psychosocial development from youth to old age.

• Kenneth Bouding, the behavior of complex political organizations is determined by decisions that are in turn the functions of the decision maker’s image.

• The images of decision makers are more important than the images of the masses.

• According to Boulding , the folk-image is a mass image, share by rules and ruled alike.

• The notion of mirror images became popular during the Cold War and was based on the assumption

• the people of two countries involved in a prolonged hostile confrontation develop fixed, distorted attitude that are really quite similar.

Instinct theories of aggression

• The key microcosmic concept developed by biologists and psychologist for the explanation of conflict is aggression.– Hostile aggression– Instrumental aggression

• “Social labeling process”, that is , on social judgment that determine which injurious or destructive acts are to called “aggressive”.

LORENZ : Intraspecific aggression

• Konrad Lorenz, aggression is an instinct, which under natural conditions helps to ensure the survival of the individual and the species.

• The typical aggressive instinct, he says , occurs among members of the same species, not between members of different species.

• It is intraspecific rather than interspecific, and it is best illustrated by the tenacity with which a fish, mammal, or bird will defend its territory against others of its own species.

Frustration-Aggression Theory

• Most psychologists today trace individual aggression to some form of frustration.

• “Aggression is always a consequence of frustration” and that frustration always leads to some form of aggression.

• “Frustration-Aggression Theory” appeals to the common sense of most people, who know from personal experience that they have at time felt aggressive urges after being frustrated.

Aggression diversion and reduction

• Social psychologist often point out the expression of aggression within a society may be either covert or overt.

• Scientists may develop culturally acceptable ways of either reducing or working off aggressive impulses.

Conclusion: Microcosmic theories in perspective

• This chapter has shown how complex are the biological and psychosocial foundations of politics.

• However important first-image causes of war may be –and no one denies their important- we may never completely understand the factors that operate, consciously or unconsciously , and personal level.