Role of Social Skills and Social Status in Aggressive Behavior - Assignment Example

Topic: human motivation essay (Forensic Psychology) Fully explain the role that social skills and social status--or the lack thereof--may play inaggressive behavior. Give real-life examples. Social skills and social status play a big influential part on the aggressive behavior a person. In terms of social skills, the rich generally have better social skills than the poor persons. As the saying goes “no money, no honey”. It is common knowledge, according to Maslow, that the basic need of man or woman is food, clothing and shelter. Next, the social needs or needs to belong crop up only AFTER these basic needs are satisfied. Thus, the poor are not interested in developing their social needs as compared to the rich because their stomach is empty. In terms of social status, the person with higher status generally has lesser aggressive behavior than the poor persons. For, the rich have so many choices to choose from. Whereas, the poor are more aggressive for the poor have lesser choices to pick from. Consequently, the poor will try to force the other side to implement their choice. For example, the rich can choose to eat at the exclusive but costly restaurants because they prefer privacy and restaurant ambience is filled with only a few people. Or, the rich can choose to eat a hurried lunch at the fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken. Here, the McDonalds place is bustling tight with people both young and old. Thus, a person who does not have social skills usually ends up behaving aggressively in order to get attention or to get the other person’s forced approval. Furthermore, the person that is lesser in social status will be more aggressive because he or she is not after the social status in life but rather what to eat now, what to wear now and where. According to the journal Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology (Nanale et al., 2004), Homophily is a natural phenomenon. It is the standard situation where people would rather join a group that have similar likes and dislikes as they have. The popular saying “birds of the same feather flock together” explains this. This is generally true with human behavior. Thus, friendship are more solid between friends of the same interest ( prefer NBA, Soccer, poker, girls, drinks and even nightspots) as compared to friendships between relatives and people who are not friends. Describe how a person’s ability to make choices influences aggression, coercive action, and anger in human motivation. As discussed above, the person that have the ability to make choices will have less aggressive human motivation. In turn, these people are likewise less coercive and angry for they will generally not force their wishes on the other persons. To reiterate, a person who can make choices from many alternative actions is less aggressive than a person who can not make choices due to social status and social skills factors. According to the article Impact of Social Problem-solving training on aggressive boys: Skill acquisition, behavior change and generalization (Guevremont, 1993). The above human motivation scenario would improve if the subjects or patients were introduced to a social problem-solving training. For, this acquisition of problem –solving skills were proven effective when the children were researched upon in a controlled classroom environment. The study was conducted where the researchers used the tools of direct observation and behavior ratings. The teachers would rate the status in the child’s classroom behavior before and after the motivation skills training program. The research proved that there were marked improvements in the children subjects. The findings have shown that all subjects had not the training successfully assimilating problem solving skills making them equal to their peers that have no motivation behavior problems. In fact, one child had acquired problem solving skill acquisition. Also, three subject –children showed moderate behavior change after the training. Last, only one child did not show improvement after the training. Also, the research showed that the cognitive-behavioral treatment of the subject children displayed aggressive behavior which had generated changes of limited magnitude and durability. Explain the relationships among fear, frustration, threat and retaliation. When a person has a fear of something he or she may be frustrated or be provoked and thus will retaliate in order to defend himself or herself against such fear. For example, a student will be taking a long test, thus he fears that he or she may fail the test because he or she will lose the college scholarship. He or she is frustrated because she failed the exams despite her best efforts. She or he feels that the teacher is a threat because of the difficult exams. Thus, she entertains the possibility of retaliating against the teacher by asking the entire class to write a petition letter to the school president to terminate the teacher’s services immediately (Smette,2005). Also, a person may FEAR that people will dislike a person’s approach because he lacks social skills and /or belongs to the lower rank of the social status rank. Consequently, he is FRUSTRATED because he can not have them as friends of his own doing. Next, he feels a THREAT when these sample people approach him because they may hurt or attack him in the realistic and unrealistic sense. In response, he RETALIATES when they enter his safety zone by saying unwelcome or hurting words in order to drive them away. Based on previous learning and information from this chapter of your text, devise a preventative action plan for one or more individuals acting in this situation. Since the article Negative interactions and social competence for preschool children in two samples: Reconsidering the interpretation of aggressive behavior for young children(Vaughn, et al., 2003) reports that the observation and sociometric assessment findings on of children in a classroom setting that the children’s social skills in relation to their aggressiveness that the children of the Head Start program had higher results for negative initiations. Also, one aggression scale also had higher scores. One other finding is that there is coherence between the aggressive social skills problems and aggressive behavior. Thus, a plan is needed to lessen the aggressive nature of the socially unskillful and socially low -status person. First, the problematic person should first be integrated into mainstream society through the help of the social worker or a psychologist. Also, this same person should also join the Social Problem-solving training program discussed above. Lastly, such persons should be given community work so that he will slowly be a less aggressive person. Furthermore, the FEAR -FRUSTRATION – THREAT – RETALIATION problem above, the psychiatrist should nip the problem by the bud. Meaning, the FEAR factor should be remedied. For, the other three phases here will not arise. First, the problematic person should be slowly treated so that he can be assimilated into mainstream society. This can be done with the help of the social worker or the professional care of a psychologist. One alternative to teach the patient frustration coping strategies. For, he is confident enough to counterattack any frustration, then his fear will automatically go away. Lastly, Social Problem-solving training is good. REFERENCES: Nanale et al., Opposites do not attract: social status and behavioral-style concordances and discordances among children and the peers who like or dislike them, Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, August, 2004 Guevremont, D., Foster, S, Impact of social problem-solving training on aggressive boys: skill acquisition, behavior change, and generalization, Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Feb, 1993 Vaughn et al., Negative interactions and social competence for preschool children in two samples: Reconsidering the interpretation of aggressive behavior for young children, Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, Jul 2003 Smette, D., Permission to Forget: And Nine Other Root Causes of Americas Frustration with Education, School Administrator, June, 2005 Read More