Research shows we may all be born aggressive
The World Today - Thursday, 9 February , 2006 12:50:00
Reporter: Jean Kennedy


KAREN PERCY: Parents have long been led to believe that the tantrums and the tears of the terrible twos were "just a stage" their toddlers were going through.

But new research is pointing to something more basic - that we're all actually born aggressive.

A visiting Professor in Paediatrics and Psychology, Richard Tremblay, from the University of Montreal says the research involving 35,000 children found they are hard-wired for aggression, with the most violent outbursts occurring between the ages of two and four.

While some children learn to control their anger by the time they start school, others go on to become violent adults.

It also means that some of the common factors thought to contribute to violent tendencies in adolescents, like violent videos and peer pressure, mightn't have as much influence as first thought.

Jean Kennedy has been talking to the experts for The World Today.

ANTHONY KOTOWICZ: You find that it's almost a survival instinct, a natural instinct for kids to play aggressively – pinching, scratching, pushing it's all sort of natural. Kids just do it in the playground.

Anthony Kotowicz is a Sydney childcare worker who sees firsthand what's now been proven by a new piece of academic research.

Professor Richard Tromblay from Montreal University oversaw a study that examined the behaviour of thousands of Canadian children.

RICHARD TROMBLAY: We were asking the question "How do nice young children become violent adolescents?" And over the years we've realised that that was the wrong question.

Children are highly physically aggressive early on, and so what they learn is not to be aggressive.

They learn alternatives to physical aggression, and those who are violent in adolescence have simply not learned to control their emotions, to control their behaviour.

JEAN KENNEDY: So you're suggesting that we're hard wired for aggression?

RICHARD TROMBLAY: We are, otherwise human would not have conquered planet earth if they needed television to learn to use physical aggression.

JEAN KENNEDY: At what age does aggression kick, and how violent can kids actually be towards each other?

RICHARD TROMBLAY: It increases from birth to age two. Between two and four humans are at their worst in terms of frequency of physical aggression, and then we start learning that there are other ways of getting what we want.

JEAN KENNEDY: It's a finding welcomed by the New South Wales Commissioner for Young People, Gillian Calvert.

She says the results give governments around the nation food for thought when making policy decisions in the area of child welfare.

GILLIAN CALVERT: But at the same time I also think it's a much more, in a sense, positive frame for families, because what it's saying is that families don't make aggressive children, rather families are in a prime position to try and help kids regulate their feelings and their emotions, so that they learn to control their aggressive feelings.

You can make a positive difference by helping your child regulate their aggressive feelings.

JEAN KENNEDY: The study showed that between two and four children commit more aggressive acts than they’re ever likely to do later in life and backs up the concept of the terrible twos.

(sound of toddler having a tantrum)

Professor Tromblay.

PROFESSOR TROMBLAY: Every movement, every physically aggressive movement that an adolescent does, a two-year-old can do it.

So that if you take your two-year-old and put him to bed at night and he wakes up in the morning six feet tall you will put him in prison because it's impossible to live with a six feet tall that's behaving like a two year old.

JEAN KENNEDY: In the playground, back at the childcare centre, Anthony Kotowicz has seen it all.

ANTHONY KOTOWICZ: If a toddler for example has a toy that another toddler wants there's no stopping them from pushing them over and grabbing the toy off the other one.

And there's nothing wrong with it, as far as it being natural, but if you don't correct them and show them to right way to go about obtaining the toy or showing your affection, then it can stay with them.

KAREN PERCY: Childcare worker Anthony Kotowicz ending Jean Kennedy's report.

haha! You bugger Rem!

See now I thought that would throw a spanner in the works ...now we'll have to rewrite our papers on the subject of Aggression ..well, you already had a pretty good handle on 'aggression' being instinctual and relative to the human species survival.. so this should come as no surprise to you Roz . And I will have to complete the gaps in my cerebral theorum

To my mind the article hits the nail on the head with regard to social conditioning being par for the course, and toddler tantrums, violence and aggression dissipate through social learning and positive reinforcement of such, I think through the extensive studies throughout history that have assessed the subject, have proven beyond doubt that aggression is instinctual in Human's.
Taking the above conversation off at a tangent however I would question whether this social conditioning is accuratley pigeon holed at most necessary at 2-4years old. Personally I would argue that that is not the case. I don't think the ability to fully undertsnad apparopriate reaction to any given situation is complete into late into the teen years, possibly even into the early 20's. I cringe at the Dr Spock, Dr Phil types who pin our kids down to ages and stages, sure there are appropriate developmental benchmarks by which we can measure our childs developement, but I personally consider it kinda dangerous to pay too much attention to them. Many influences shape the development of our kids, not one of which can be recorded as Textbook, because they become a chain of events. For example, take two kids from the same family, at 13yrs old and question how they can be soooo different when it comes to reactive development. They have been exposed to the same parenting, the same schooling, the same social expectations, an so on....so how does one become violent and the other not?? It's not through social grooming,is it?