Destructive Behaviour: Why Are we Prone to Violence?

Many people assert that human beings are the most enlightened of the animal kingdom, but then why are we so self-destructive? Unlike most animals, humans engage in many behaviours that damage the wellness of others, and even our own physical and emotional wellbeing. Whether it’s lying, cheating, stealing or killing, our apparently intelligent species can be extremely nasty, spiteful, self-destructive and hurtful, so let’s take a look at a few of those behaviours: violence and bullying.

You cannot look through the recorded history of our species and not notice we have a violent streak. Some researchers believe that humans crave violence, due to genetics and the reward centres in the brain. However, if you go back far enough (we’re talking millions of years), evidence indicates that your ancestors were more peace-loving than you are today, albeit with signs of cannibalism among the earliest pre-history humans.

According to a 2008 study, it appears that humans crave violence just like they do sex, food, or drugs. Reported in the journal Psychopharmacology, researchers found that the clusters of mice’s brain cells which are involved in other rewards are also behind their craving for violence, and the same can be applied to human brains.

Study team member Craig Kennedy, professor of special education and paediatrics at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, commented, ‘Aggression occurs among virtually all vertebrates and is necessary to get and keep important resources such as mates, territory and food. We have found that the reward pathway in the brain becomes engaged in response to an aggressive event and that dopamine is involved.’

However, other researchers, such as David Carrier of the University of Utah, believe that our violent behaviour has evolved as a tendency to help with survival. ‘Aggressive behaviour has evolved in species in which it increases an individual’s survival or reproduction, and this depends on the specific environmental, social, reproductive, and historical circumstances of a species. Humans certainly rank among the most violent of species,’ the biologist said.

If you look at bullying, which is not always violent but certainly exhibits violent emotions, you can see instances in both children and adults. According to Sarah Tracy, director of the Project for Wellness and Work-Life at Arizona State University, the apparently non-violent forms of bullying can actually be the most violent, or at least the most damaging, in the long term.

‘Bullying, by definition, is escalatory. This is one of the reasons it’s so difficult to prevent it, because it usually starts in really small ways,’ she said.  According to psychologists, bullying occurs because we crave status and power, and, again, it’s in our evolutionary status. Studies on the bullying behaviour in monkeys have indicated that the behaviour may stretch way back in our evolutionary tree.