Сборник текстов по психологии для чтения на английском языке с упражнениями Г.В. Бочарова, М.Г. Степанова

I. Choose the word from the box to match the definition on the left.

II. Answer the questions to the text.

1.How many people does therapy help according to H. Eysenck?

2.What is the general consensus upon the effectiveness of psychotherapy?

3.What is the correlation between the improvement and the duration of therapy?

4.What do different forms of psychotherapy have in common?

5.How can you characterize an effective therapist?

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6.When is insight therapy used?

7.What kind of therapy is the most appropriate for treating specific anxieties or other well defined behavioral problems?

8.Which therapy is used for the treatment of depression?

9.What is more effective for the treatment of drug abuse?

10.What are ESTs designed for?

III. Choose the facts to prove that:

1.It is possible that the recovery rate for people who receive no therapeutic help al all is even less that one third.

2.The “Consumer Reports” study lacked the scientific rigor of more traditional investigations designed to assess psychothera peutic efficacy.

3.Most forms of psychotherapy offer help.

4.Some kinds of psychotherapy seem to be particularly appro priate for certain people and for certain types of problems.

T e x t 11

DEFINING AGGRESSION: THREE DISTINCTIONS

When we think of aggression and violence, most of us probably think first of crimes committed by one individual against another. As the 1980s began, the United States was experiencing over 20,000 mur ders per year, over 75,000 rapes, and over 600,000 assaults — in reported crimes alone. The murder rate in the United States far exceeded that in most other civilized countries. New York City had 22 murders per 100,000 population and Los Angeles 18, but London had less than 2, and New Delhi only 0.1. The murder rate was 10 times as high in New York City and Los Angeles as it was in London, and 200 times as high as it was in New Delhi. The murder rate was over double in 1980 what it had been in 1960, and the assault rate was four times as high.

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We probably also think of war. There were over 50 wars in the 1970s, almost all in Third World countries — those most oppressed by poverty, disease, and all manner of other problems. Each year, the nations of the world spend over $500 billion on military forces, or about $170 for every man, woman, and child on the globe.

But the greatest threat to humankind comes from the threat of nuclear war. By the early 1980s, the United States had over 1000 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The nuclear warhead on each Titan II missile has the explosive power of 700 Hiroshima bombs. If the United States or the Soviet Union were to launch an ICBM, it would take about 30 minutes to reach the other nation. Experts estimate that of those 30 minutes, about 10 would be required to communicate word of the attack throughout the entire command structure of the targeted nation, including getting word to the chief of state. The American president or the Soviet premier would thus have about 20 mi nutes to decide whether or not to retaliate — and in any event, at least one nation would be devastated.

This is violence and aggression on a global scale, but in fact most violence is committed against people closest to us — against those in our families, our spouses, children, and brothers and sisters.

According to a recent national survey, each year 16 percent of all married persons engage in some act of physical violence against their mate, ranging from throwing something to using a knife or a gun on them. Straus et al. estimate that about 2 million Americans have at one time or another beaten up their spouses (and husbands and wives do so with about equal frequency), and another 1.7 million have used a knife or gun on their mates.

A great many parents commit surprising levels of violence against their own children. The same study showed that 13 percent of the parents had hit their child with an object in the previous year, 58 percent had slapped or spanked their child, and 3 percent had threatened their child with a gun or knife sometime in the child’s life. The authors estimate that about 1.5 million children are physically injured by their parents each year. The most violence in families occurs between siblings. In a given year, 40 percent of all children hit their own siblings with an object, and 16 percent beat up their sibling.

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Because people frequently treat one another so badly, even destructively, social psychologists have done a great deal of research to try to understand the violence people do to each other, usually under the general heading of research on aggression.

Although it might seem that everybody understands what aggression is, there is considerable disagreement about how to define it. Let us make three important distinctions here. The first is whether we should define aggression simply in terms of hurtful behavior, or whether we need to take into consideration whether the person has hurtful intentions. The simplest definition of aggression, and the other favored by those with a learning or behaviorist approach, is that aggression is any behavior that hurts others. The advantage of this definition is that the behavior itself determines whether or not an act is aggressive.

Unfortunately, this definition ignores the intention of the person who does the act — and this factor is critical. If we ignored intent, some actions intended to hurt others would not be labeled aggressive because they turned out to be harmless. Suppose an enraged man fires a gun at a business rival, but the gun runs out to be unloaded. The act is harmless because firing an unloaded gun is not dangerous. Despite the fact that the man was enraged and was trying to kill someone, he was not being aggressive because no actual harm was done.

Ignoring intention can also produce the opposite error — calling some act aggressive that are not, by the usual meaning of the term. If a golfer’s ball accidentally hits a spectator, has the golfer communicated an aggressive act? She has in fact caused somebody a great deal of pain, but surely no one would believe the golfer was being aggressive. Similarly, criminal law provides exceptions for acts that are painful but intended to help the victim, such as surgery performed by physicians.

Intentions have a central role in our judgments about aggression in another way. People are particularly motivated to make causal attribu tions when other’s actions are painful to them. People should therefore be especially likely to search for an attribution when they are the victims of aggressive acts.

One of the first attributions people make about aggression is of the person’s intent. If a person tries to hurt someone, we ordinarily consider her to be aggressive; if she is not trying to cause harm, she is not being aggressive.

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Thus, we will define aggression as any action that is intended to hurt others. This conception is more difficult to apply, because it does not depend solely on observable behavior. Often it is difficult to know someone’s intention. But we will accept this limitation because we can define aggression meaningfully only by including intent.

A second major distinction is also needed, between antisocial and prosocial aggression. Normally we think of aggression as bad. After all, if an aggressive act results from an intent to hurt another person, it must be bad. But some aggressive acts are good. We applaud the police officer who shoots a terrorist who has killed innocent victims and is holding others hostage. The question is whether the aggressive act vio lates commonly accepted social norms, or supports them.

Unprovoked criminal acts that hurt people, such as assault and battery, murder, and gang beatings clearly violate social norms, so they are described as antisocial. But many aggressive acts are actually dedicated by social norms, and therefore are described as prosocial. Acts of law enforcement, appropriate parental discipline, or obeying the orders of commanders in wartime are regarded as necessary.

Some aggressive acts fall somewhere between prosocial and antisocial, and we might label them sanctioned aggression. This includes aggressive acts that are not required by social norms, but that are well within their bounds. They do not violate accepted moral standards. A coach who disciplines a disobedient player by benching him or her is usually thought to be well within his rights. So is a shopkeeper who in self defense hits someone who is criminally assault ing him, or a woman who strikes back a rapist. None of these acts is required of the person, but they fall within the bounds of what is per mitted by social norms.

A third distinction is between aggressive behavior and aggressive feelings, such as anger. Our overt behavior does not always reflect our internal feelings. Someone may be quite angry inside, but make no overt effort to hurt another person. Society discourages and condemns most forms of aggressive behavior, and indeed can exist only if people control their aggressive feelings most of the time. We cannot have people hitting other people, breaking windows, or acting violently whether they feel like it. Society places strong restraints on such expression;

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and most people, even those who feel angry much of the time, rarely act aggressively.

We need to consider both the factors that increase anger and the restraints that may prevent it from being translated into aggressive action.

I. Choose the word from the box to match the definition on the left.

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II. Answer the questions to the text.

1.When we think of aggression and violence, what do most of us think of?

2.What is the statistical information about the murder rate in the USA?

3.How much money is spent on military forces each year?

4.What is the percentage of the parents who are engaged in some act of physical violence against their own children?

5.What are the drawbacks of the simplest definition of aggression?

6.What definition of aggression does the author offer?

7.Are there any drawbacks in it?

8.What is the distinction between antisocial and prosocial aggression?

9.How can sanctioned aggression be defined?

10.What is the difference between aggressive behavior and aggressive feelings?

III.Choose the facts to prove that:

1.The greatest threat to humankind comes from the threat of nuclear war.

2.In fact most violence is committed against those in our families, our spouses, children, and brothers and sisters.

3.There is considerable disagreement about how to define aggression.

T e x t 12

VIOLENT PRIDE

Several years ago a youth counselor told me about the dilemma he faced when dealing with violent young men. His direct impressions simply didn’t match what he had been taught. He saw his violent clients as egotists with a grandiose sense of personal superiority and entitle

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ment, but his textbooks told him that these young toughs actually suffered from low self esteem. He and his staff decided they couldn’t go against decades of research, regardless of what they had observed, and so they tried their best to boost the young men’s opinions of themselves, even though this produced no discernible reduction in their antisocial tendencies.

The view that aggression stems from low self esteem has long been common knowledge. Counselors, social workers and teachers all over the country have been persuaded that improving the self esteem of young people is the key to curbing violent behavior and to encouraging social and academic success. Many schools have students make lists of reasons why they are wonderful people or sing songs of self celebration. Many parents and teachers are afraid to criticize kids, lest it causes serious psychological damage and turns some promising youngster into a dangerous thug or pathetic loser. In some sports leagues, everyone gets a trophy.

A number of people have questioned whether these feel good exercises are really the best way to build self esteem.

Unfortunately for the low esteem theory, researches have gra dually build up a composite image of what it is like to have low self esteem, and that image does not mesh well with what we know about aggressive perpetrators. People who have a negative view of themselves are typically muddling through life, trying to avoid embarrassment, giving no sign of a desperate need to prove their superiority. Aggressive attack is risky; people with low self esteem tend to avoid risks. When people with low self esteem fail, they usually blame themselves, not others.

Faced with these incongruities, we cast about for an alternative theory. A crucial influence on our thinking was the seemingly lofty self regard of prominent violent people. Saddam Hussein is not known as a modest, cautious, self doubting individual. Adolf Hitler’s exaltation of the “master race” was hardly a slogan of low self esteem. These examples suggest that high self esteem, not low, is indeed an important cause of aggression.

We eventually formulated our hypothesis in terms of threatened egotism. Not all people who think highly of themselves are prone to

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violence. That favorable opinion must be combined with some external threat to the opinion. Somebody must question it, dispute it, undermine it. People like to think well of themselves, and so they are loath to make downward revisions in their self esteem. When someone suggests such a revision, many individuals — those with inflated, tenuous and unstable forms of high self esteem — prefer to shoot the messenger.

Pride Comes Before a Fall

It would be foolish to assert that aggression always stems from threatened egotism or that threatened egotism always results in aggression. Human behavior is caused and shaped by various factors. Plenty of aggression has little or nothing to do with how people evaluate themselves. But if our hypothesis is right, inflated self esteem increases the odds of aggression substantially. For those aggressive acts that do involve the perpetrators’ self regard, we believe that threatened egotism is crucial. Obviously, this new theory could have implications for designing effective methods to reduce violence.

So how does a social psychologist establish whether low or high self esteem leads to violence? Because there is no perfect, general method for understanding complex questions about human beings, social scientists typically operate by conducting multiple studies with different methods.

Researchers measure self esteem by asking a standardized series of questions, such as “How well do you get along with other people?” and “Are you generally successful in your work or studies?” The indi vidual chooses from a range of responses, and the overall score falls somewhere on the continuum from negative to positive. Statistical analyses respect the full continuum.

Many laypeople have the impression that self esteem fluctuates widely, but in fact these scores are quite stable. Day to day changes tend to be small, and even after a serious blow or boost, a person’s self esteem, score returns to its previous level within a relatively short time. Large changes most often occur after major life transitions, such as when a high school athlete moves on to college to find the competition much tougher.

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Quantifying aggression is trickier, but one approach is simply to ask people whether they are prone to angry outbursts and conflicts. These self reported tendencies can then be compared to the self esteem scores. Most research has found a weak or negligible correlation, although an important exception is the work done in the late 1980s by Michael H. Kernis of the University of Georgia and his colleagues. They distinguished between stable and unstable self esteem by measuring each person on several occasions and looking for fluctua tions. The general hostility was reported by people with high but unstable self esteem. Individuals with high, stable self esteem were the least hostile, and those with low self esteem (stable or unstable) were in between.

Take a Swig, Take a Swing

Another approach is to compare large categories of people. Men on average have higher self esteem than women and are also more aggressive. Depressed people have lower self esteem and are less violent than nondepressed people. Psychopaths are exceptionally prone to aggressive and criminal conduct, and they have very favorable opinions of themselves.

Evidence about the self images of specific murderers, rapists and other criminals tends to be more anecdotal than systematic, but the pattern is clear. Violent criminals often describe themselves as superior to others — as special, elite persons who deserve preferential treatment. Many murders and assaults are committed in response to blows to self esteem such as insults, “dissing” and humiliation.

The same conclusion has emerged from studies of other categories of violent people. Street gang members have been reported to hold favorable opinions of themselves and to turn violent when these views are disputed. Playground bullies regard themselves as superior to other children; low self esteem is found among the victims of bullies but not among bullies themselves. Violent groups generally have overt belief systems that emphasize their superiority over others. War is most common among proud nations that feel they are not getting the respect they deserve, as Daniel Chirot discusses in his fascinating book Modern Tyrants.

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