Traditional explanations for anti social behaviours in children consider poverty, low intelligence, dysfunctional families and the availability of guns. However the case of the Eric Harris (18) and Dylan Klebold (17) disproves these explanations. These boys – who killed a total of 13 people, and then themselves, with a homemade bomb and sawn off shot guns – were considered intelligent, and came from stable, affluent backgrounds. This is where psychology comes in, to suggest dispositional and situational explanations for these behaviours, such as social identity, media influence and childhood development.

Media Influence

Bandura’s study told us that children learn behaviour by modelling, but to what extent is modelling coming from the media? It is undeniable that the media influences us, but is it possible for this influence to become malicious? Endless coverage of the Denver school shooting lead to several “copy cat crimes”, such as a 15 year old boy in a Georgia school who started shooting at random, injuring six pupils. Along with this, doctors found that following an episode of Casualty featuring a paracetamol overdose, hospital admissions for similar emergencies rose by 20% (Bulstrode, 1997). Harris and Klebold admitted to giving up sports for computer games such as “doom”, which were graphically violent. Whilst this would have encouraged and potentially even inspired the homicide that occurred later on, there has been no causal relationship found between violent video games and anti social behaviour.

In-groups and Out-groups

The social hierarchy had a large part to play in the boy’s “outcast” image. Their interests in Marilyn Manson (the “antichrist superstar”) and KMFDM (A German rock band) orchestrated their isolation from mainstream culture. A group labelled the “Trench coat mafia” was created in the school, as a sort of counter-cultural group from the jocks. This group had Nazi undertones, obtaining a “uniform” of long black coats, berets and sunglasses. A crucial piece of information is that the boys were in this “uniform” when the homicide took place. Zimbardo identified this uniformity as contributing to a process called “deindividuation”, in which the anonymity of a uniform allows people to behave in ways that would not normally be acceptable.

The Strains of Adolescent Masculinity

Adolescence brings rapid physical change, hormonal surges and a rejection of parental values, all of which can make this a disturbing period of transition. Inter-male competition is most pronounced when sexual interests and testosterone levels are at their peak, along with cultural values which emphasise exaggerated masculinity. All of these influences can result in impulsive and violent activities. The pressures surrounding conformity and fitting into an idyllic social identity is strongly displayed in Harris and Klebold’s case, where they decided aggression with weapons was the only way they could ever acquire the social status they were previously denied. This time of unstable development in boys, accompanied by other environmental factors, is what drives a desire for a sense of meaning, even if this meaning is unacceptable to everyone else.

Conclusion

Psychological evaluation is the only way we will ever be able to establish an understanding of why these boys committed mass murder, given their “normal” background and upbringing. The psychological discoveries and applications that came from this case have provided us with an understanding of how to identify warning signs in individuals. This is a form of intervention that can help prevent anything like the Denver killings from happening again.

These days, there are constant reports in the media of school grades being better than ever before, and of schools being of higher standard every year. Many have suspicions about these results, and these suspicions are generally put down to the exams becoming easier, however until now no one has seriously considered that children’s cognitive abilities have declined, past academic performance.

Michael Shayer of King’s College University of London investigated this issue, and ultimately concluded that in terms of cognitive development, 11 and 12 year olds (in Year 7) are “now on average between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago”. A key issue Shayer faced in his investigations was being able to define ability. In other words he needed to establish a model which could accurately and scientifically assess children’s cognitive capabilities. From this he identified the Piagetian developmental model as being the most practical, as it had “an underlying, logic-based, theoretical model to differentiate different levels of complexity”.

Piaget identified four stages that a child goes through in development, sensorimotor (infancy), pre-concrete (up to age 5), concrete (5-11) and formal (11-16). Shayer conducted tests with 14,000 school children in order to assess their capability according to the Piagetian scale. Naturally, Shayer put his focus into the concrete and formal stages. Concrete was assessed through a child’s ability to put things in order, use descriptive models and plot simple graphs. The formal stage was assessed using abstract concepts, and the ability to predict.

Shayer’s results showed that Piaget had only described the top 20% of the population. Shayer’s finding contradicted Piaget’s predictions, in that Piaget estimated that the average 11 year old would be firmly in the formal stage of development, whereas Shayer found that the average 11 year old was in the middle of the concrete stage.

Shayer generated a large amount of criticism based on his findings. In the educationalists found it hard to comprehend the idea that children were less able than originally thought, and refused to believe that development was largely affected by a variety of factors, not purely environmental influences. The biggest objection however came from those who argued that Piagetian tests only assessed a child’s ability in terms of those particular functions, not performance in general. However this was disproved by Shayer’s “subsequent work in the 1980s”, said Paul Black, emeritus professor of education at King’s College.

From his research Shayer created two year intervention programmes for children who were identified as below average on the Piagetian scale in Year 7. These intervention programmes were based on science and maths, but were primarily to improve general developmental skills. These interventions were seen to significantly improve children’s Piagetian scores, along with their maths and science GCSEs, which somewhat validated Shayer’s research.

Why are siblings so different?

Two children from the same family can often be very different. If nature fully accounts for our behaviour then siblings should be identical, which can be evidence which contradicts the perception that our genes are what determine who we are. However if nurture fully accounts for our behaviour then siblings should also be identical, given that they are raised in the same environment. It is this debate that creates controversy around this topic.

Studies of twins reared apart

The Minnesota study of monozygotic (genetically identical) twins reared apart has been ongoing for decades, and has now concluded that monozygotic twins reared apart are about as similar as monozygotic twins reared together. This was based on several personality measures such as temperament, occupation, leisure time interests and social attitudes. These findings give strong support to the nature argument, in that they were the same despite being raised in different environments, meaning there identical genes must determine who they are.

Studies of adopted children

These studies lend more support to the argument that nature is of greater importance than nurture. Adoptive siblings share the same environment but not the same genes. Loehlin et al looked at the IQ of 200 adopted siblings. A correlation of 0.26 was found at 8 years old, but by the time the siblings were 18 there was no correlation. This displays some weak early similarities, but overall supports the nature argument in that the shared environment did not result in a shared IQ, meaning genes must determine our intelligence.

The unshared environment

In this uncertainty, the concept of the unshared environment offers explanation as to why sibling can become so different.

When we refer to environmental factors, we automatically assume that two people in the same home are sharing the same environment, when this is not necessarily true. An example of this is moving house. If one child is 12 at the time of the move, and the other is 5, the experience has different effects on each of them because of their age.

Another example that can be used is peer influences. Each sibling will have a different group of friends, and these friends play an important part in a child’s development. These peers will often determine factors such as music interest or social hobbies, all of which will shape the child as a person. This means it is very easy for siblings who have very different peer groups to become very different.

There are also other cases of unshared environments such as illness, accidents, teachers or hobbies that can make a person who they are. All of this is the force of nurture working, but unshared nurture.

Intelligence is notoriously difficult to define, however most experts agree that it is the ability to adapt and function effectively within a given environment. This definition is broad, and also allows us to consider that other animals posses “intelligence”.

Ecological explanations for human intelligence

Compared with other animals, primates in general have larger brains, and in order for us to fully understand human intelligence, we must first ask why the primate we have evolved from started off with such large brains?

Ecological explanations suggest that solving the problems of efficient foraging led to an increase in brain size. Evidence from fossils tell us that early primates were arboreal (tree living) and frugivorous (fruit eaters), and so solving the issues that come attached to having to move within their environment lead to larger and more cognitively evolved brains. Richard Byrne stated that early primates were effective at producing detailed cognitive maps as a result of this need to forage for food.

Around 14 million years ago, equatorial Africa began to shrink, opening up vast grasslands and savannahs. Consequently our ancestors had to begin to explore a wider range of food substances like meat. Whether the primates were “elbowed out” of the jungle environment by competitors, or whether they were better able to move on land than other species is strongly debated, however regardless of which event occurred, this change played a crucial role in human evolution

Then around 6 million years ago the common ancestor of humans and the chimpanzee split. The chimpanzees remained as they were, and the others became fully adapted to living in open plains. Becoming more fully adapted meant becoming:

• More upright
• More cooperative

Both in order to fashion tools and engage in group hunting.

The main premise of this explanation is that the evolution of human intelligence consists of two stages, the demand for foraging and the demand for hunting, both of which provided the problems that natural selection solved via creating a bigger, more intelligent brain.

Social complexity explanations for human intelligence

There are various different hypotheses surrounding this concept, however all of they agree on the key idea that predicting and dealing with the behaviour of others in a social group is the primary cause of our increased level of intelligence.

Nick Humphrey was the first to introduce this idea. He suggested that the most intelligent species (dolphins, chimpanzees, elephants) are, almost invariably, the most social. So it is not the problems of the physical environment but social ones that caused the evolution of intelligence.

This idea was developed by Richard Byrne and Andy Whitten, who composed the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis. This hypothesis said that individuals can best achieve their own aims by predicting and manipulating the people they encounter. This supported the claim that the driving force for a large intelligent brain is the ability to read the minds of other people in the group and use this information to your advantage. The most important feature of this hypothesis is the ability to “impute states of minds to others”. In context, when we tell the truth, we simply report the facts of how things are. However to deceive and lie, we must first be able to work out what the other person is thinking. So once we possess the ability to glean insight into another person’s mind, we will have an advantage in being able to predict the actions of others, be it hostile or friendly.

Overall the social explanation of intelligence defines it as our ability to predict the actions or mind sets of other people. Evolution in this sense is not about getting nicer, but is about winning the competition in order to pass genes on, which is why the more social animals have become more intelligent and have effectively won the competition over the years to the point where humans have evolved to become a dominant species.

The function of the neo-cortex

The social explanation also has scientific evidence regarding the neo-cortex, the outer layer of the brain. Robin Dunbar observed primates and noted that the increase in brain size compared to other mammals is largely down to an increase in the size of the neo-cortex. He established that:

• The larger the social groups of primates, the more time they spend grooming each other
• The larger the social group, the larger the neo-cortex

Putting these facts together, Dunbar suggested that grooming helps to maintain social bonds, and a larger neo-cortex is essential to recognising individuals and interacting with them in a large social group.

It is worth noting that the neo-cortex is the part of our brain that deals with higher functions such as decision making and predicting the outcome of our actions – in other words this is the part of our brain responsible for our intelligence

So on this basis we can see that the more social animals such as dolphins or elephants become more intelligent as a result of the development of the neo-cortex, which is needed for them to recognise and interact with individuals in their larger social groups. This supports the social explanation for the evolution of human intelligence, and its scientific validity means this hypothesis is strongly supported.