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"Behavioral
Psychology"
Introduction:
A Behavioral Revolution In Combat
Behavioral
psychology, with its subsets of behavior modification and
operant conditioning, is a field that's ripe for use and
abuse in the realms of violence, peace, and conflict. Perhaps
the least subtle or most "directive" of all the fields of
psychology, in its purest form behaviorism rejects all cognitive
explanations of behavior and focuses on studying and modifying
observable behavior by means of systematic manipulation
of environmental factors. In its application, behavior modification
and other aspects of the behaviorists approach are generally
considered best for use on animals and children (who tend
not to resent or rebel against such overt manipulation as
reinforcers and token economies) and for the preparation
of individuals to react immediately and reflexively in life
threatening situations such as: children in fire drills,
pilots repetitively trained to react to emergencies in flight
simulators, and law enforcement and military personnel conditioned
to fire accurately in combat situations.
Throughout
history armies and nations have attempted to achieve ever
higher degrees of control over their soldiers, and reinforcement
and punishment have always been manipulated to do so. But
it was done by intuition, half blindly and unsystematically,
and was never truly understood. In the 20th century this
changed completely as the systematic development of the
scientific field of behavioral psychology made possible
one of the greatest revolutions in the history of human
combat, enabling firing rates to be raised from a baseline
of 20% or less in World War II to over 90% among modern,
properly conditioned armies.
In the post-Cold War era the police officers and the soldiers
of the world's democracies are assuming increasingly similar
missions. Around the world, armies are being called upon
for "peace making" and "peacekeeping" duties, and law enforcement
agencies are responding to escalating violent crime with
structures, tactics, training, and weapons that have been
traditionally associated with the military. Some have observed
that this process may be resulting in the creation of a
new warrior-protector class similar to that called for by
Plato in that first, fledgling Greek democracy more than
2000 year ago. If there is a new class of warrior-protector,
then one factor which is profoundly unique in its modern
makeup is this systematic application of behavioral psychology,
particularly operant conditioning, in order to ensure the
warrior's ability to kill, survive, and succeed in the realm
of close combat.
Today the behavioral genie is out of the bottle and in life-and-death
close-combat situations any soldier or police officer who
is not mentally armed may well be as impotent as if he or
she were not physically armed. Governments have come to
understand this, and today any warrior that a democratic
society deems worthy of being physically armed is also,
increasingly, being mentally equipped to kill.
When
this is done with law enforcement and military professionals
it is done carefully and with powerful safeguards, yet still
it is a legitimate cause for concern. But the final lesson
to be learned in an examination of the role of behavioral
psychology in violence, peace, and conflict is that the
processes being carefully manipulated to enable violence
in government agencies can also be found in media violence
and violent video games, resulting in the indiscriminate
mass conditioning of children to kill, and a subsequent,
worldwide explosion of violence.
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