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Who here knows how to drive? What do you do when you see this sign? Do you think? No. You act. You are conditioned. What are you supposed to do if an animal jumps out in front of your car? Hit it. But, many accidents are still caused when people swerve to avoid hitting an animal. Why?
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Who here knows how to drive? What do you do when you see this sign? Do you think? No. You act. You are conditioned.
What are you supposed to do if an animal jumps out in front of your car? Hit it. But, many accidents are still caused when people swerve to avoid hitting an animal. Why? Because human beings have a natural aversion to killing.
People have an even stronger aversion to killing other human beings. • In World War II the percentage of soldiers that fired their weapons in combat situations was only 15 %. U.S. Army Artist- Yank Magazine
The average and healthy individual…has such an inner and usually unrealized resistance towards killing a fellow man that he will not of his own volition take life if it is possible to turn away from that responsibility…At the vital point [the soldier] becomes a conscientious objector. COL. S.L.A. MARSHALL
By the time of the Korean war, the military had increased that number from 15% to 50%
In Vietnam the military increased its number of riflemen willing to shoot at the enemy to over 90%.
How did the military make this change? • Operant conditioning. • Desired behavior • Positive reinforcement • Negative reinforcement B.F. SKINNER
What methods did the military use (and still use) to condition soldiers (people) to kill? • Desensitization • Talk of killing/injuring humans
Desensitization • Cadences • Chants • Prayers Load another magazine, in my trusty M16. Cuz all I ever wanna see! Is bodies, bleeding bodies. Throw another hand grenade! Should have seen the mess I made. Cuz all I ever wanna see, Is bodies, broken bodies. Stab em with the bayonet! If he squirms you're not done yet! Cuz all I ever wanna see, Is bodies, cut-up bodies. Call some more TACAIR. On that bunker over there. Cuz all I ever wanna see, Is bodies burnin bodies! http://www.infantrymen.net/cadence.html
The idea of me killing a person when I first came down here just…you know, it was unheard of, you didn’t do that…But once you came here and they motivated you and just kept you every day constantly thinking about it, and by the time you left here…you’ve got it in your mind that you want to do it so bad that you actually go out and do it when you have to. -Marine Corps recruit in 1968
We’d run P.T. [physical training] in the morning and every time your left foot hit the ground you’d have to chant, “Kill, kill, kill, kill.” It was drilled into your mind so much that it seemed like when it actually came down to it, it didn’t bother you, you know? • - Marine CorpsVietnam Veteran
World War II training consisted of soldiers shooting bulls-eye type targets.
Training then progressed to shooting at silhouettes shaped like humans.
More modern targets: Painted with enemy camouflage, or 3 dimensional, dressed like a person, or drawn representation of a person Targets
Shooting is not the only method of conditioning soldiers to kill. Aggression is rewarded. Violence encouraged.
Simulate killing lifelike targets • Shooting • Bayonet • Hand to hand
New technology allows you to practice shooting actual living people (MILES and Simunition)
Mass Media Include: Music Film Television Video Games
Mass media perform the same desensitization and conditioning on youths.
Cadences, Chants …This bitch tried escapin' the jackGrabbed her by the throat, it's murder she wroteYou barely heard a word as she chokedIt wasn't nuttin' for her to be smokedBut I slammed her on her back 'til her vertebrae broke All I see is murder murder, my mind stateMakes it too late for cops in tryin' to stop the crime rateAll I see is murder murder, my mind stateMurder, murder, murder, and kill, kill, kill! Marshall Mathers
Beautiful Anguish cast out by my race Now one that's Ageless I save my own face I write my own laws with Death I break bread Killers are quiet when they come from my head Slipknot
Violence in movies desensitizes youth… Reservoir Dogs Serial killer Nathaniel White described how he killed his first female victim while imitating a scene from the movie Robocop II: “I seen him cut somebody’s throat then take the knife and slit down the chest to the stomach and leave the body in a certain position. With the first person I killed I did exactly what I saw in the movie.”
Television does the same… Nine-year-old Olivia Niemi was sexually assaulted with a discarded beer bottle on a deserted beach in San Franciso. The four girls who took part in the attack said they were imitating a scene from Born Innocent, an NBC television movie they watched three days before committing the crime.
Finally, videogames let children shoot life-like people, just as realistic, if not more than military training.
The hero from “Grand Theft Auto III”, a street thug who uses various weapons like this baseball bat to kill innocent men, police officers, women and children…
Hand to hand violence. Aggression is encouraged through a point system…(sound familiar?)
Many games are “First Person Shooter”, which adds to the realism of the games-. These are the type of games Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris of the Columbine Massacre, as well as other school shooters, were “obsessed” with.
An Experiment (one of many): • Fifth Graders randomly assigned to watch 15 minutes of baseball or a crime drama that included several shootings and other violent acts. • Subjects were then put in front of a monitor and told to watch two younger children (actors on videotape) and report to an adult in the next room if anything went wrong. • The children (actors) on the monitor then became engaged in a violent fight. • The children who had watched the crime drama were five times more likely to fail to summon help. • This proved that they had become noticeably desensitized to violence. • Remember- these children had only watched fifteen minutes of T.V. Imagine the effects of 2,3, or 4 hours a day seven days a week for years must have.
Conclusion: It is difficult to find indubitable proof because there are so many variables that surround crime (such as economics and family) but… Consider: If… Desensitization and conditioning methods in the military are equivalent to mass media exposure… And In the military, those methods caused an increase in the willingness to kill from 15 to 90 percent… Then… Exposure of children and youths to similar desensitization and conditioning will increase their willingness to kill to some degree, a degree made obvious by the advent and horrifying number of school shootings.
DESENSITIZAITON + CONDITIONING ULTRA-VIOLENCE AND MURDER
Works Cited 1. Davey, Graham, and Chris Cullen, eds. Human Operant Conditioning and Behavior Modification. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1988. 2. Decker, Phillip J., and Barry R. Nathan. Behavior Modeling Training: Principles and Applications. New York: Praeger, 1985. 3. Degaetano, Gloria and Dave Grossman. Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie and Video Game Violence. New York: Crown Publishers, 1999. 4. Grossman, Dave. On Killing: The psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1995. 5. Levine, Madeline. Viewing Violence: How Media Violence Affects Your Child’s and Adolescent’s Development. New York: Doubleday, 1996. 6. Murray, John P., Eli A. Rubinstein, and George A Comstock, eds. Television and Social Behavior: Reports and Papers, Volume II: Television and Social Learning. Maryland: National Institute of Mental Health, 1971. 7. Overton, Willis F., ed. Early Childhood Television Viewing and Adolescent Behavior. Boston: Blackwell, 2001.
