Violence Among American Youths Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Violence Among American Youths - Essay Example ates, homicide resulting from violence committed by or suffered by the youth has been identified as being identified as the second leading cause of death among American people aged between 15-24 years old. The increasing violence has also been identified as having a number of negative economic effects on the country’s economy. By exploring the different causes and effects of increasing levels of violence among the youth and children, this paper will seek to show that increasing violence among children and youth across the entire United States is having an adversely negative impact on the country’s economy. Media Exposure and Aggressive and Violent Behavior: There has been an intensely raging debate over the years as to the extent to which media violence has served to contribute as a major cause of children and youth violence and aggression. The exposure youth and children in the United States get to violent media has been noted to be extremely high. Different bodies have presented reports and advisories against media violence but these have largely been ignored. Some of these bodies include the AMA and the APA (Escobar-Chaves & Anderson, 2008). There have been numerous empirical studies conducted that have been able to establish links between aggression and media violence. These studies have all managed to reach the conclusion that media violence definitely increases aggressive behavior among youth and children. Poor Parenting: Various aspects of parenting have been identified as possibly contributing to the increased violent behavior among children and youth in the United States. These include poor supervision, parental disharmony in the home, limited involvement by parents in a child’s activities such as school plays and games, erratic and harsh discipline as well as the rejection of a child (Seifert, Ray & Schmidt, 2012). The effect of these poor parenting traits is that parents who exhibit these behaviors often tend to engage in various parent-child

Psychology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 3

Psychology - Essay Example In that context the recent usage of scare tactics by some sections of the corporate world, media and politicians is an apt example of the usage of psychology knowledge and knowhow to influence public opinion and approach. The Health Debate It is a known fact that the healthcare is an issue of debate in the current American politics. The Obama administration wants to reform the healthcare system. However, there do exist people in the American political and corporate life who do not want these reforms to succeed. These people want the American people to oppose the healthcare reforms. These people are using the psychological weapon of scare tactics to make the people afraid of reforms and thereby oppose them (NPR, 2009). They are spreading the word that the reforms will make the healthcare system like the way it was during the Great Depression, when only the rich afforded medical care (NPR, 2009). In fact the opponents of health reforms are going as far as to claim that the system that these reforms will create will be somewhat like the health system existing in the communist countries. Some of them have gone as far as to say that the proposed reforms intend to convert the American democracy into a communist system. Thereby, by associating healthcare reforms with something bad that happened in the past or something that people hate and are scared of, these people are trying to scare the masses about the present reforms. This may cause some people to oppose the reforms (NPR, 2009). To put it simply, the opponents of healthcare reforms are using scare tactics. Psychological Importance The psychological importance of the media event under consideration is that it clearly shows the exploitation of psychological tactics by a section of the American politics, corporate life and media to scare people regarding the proposed health reforms and to make them go against the proposed reforms. The psychological weapon used by these opponents of the health reforms to subvert pub lic opinion is popularly known as the scare tactics. Scare Tactics Scare tactics is a psychological weapon that has been used by people since ages. It is based on the simple fact that fear is the most common human emotion. The human brain tends to remember the things or incidents that cause fear. In future when a person comes across a thing or incident that reminds him of the past incident that caused fear, the person responds to this stimulus by getting scared (Goleman, 1996). Suppose a person at some time in one’s life came across a poisonous snake and got scared. Then at some other time in the future the same person came across a rope lying in the dark. That person’s brain may associate that rope with the snake and may cause him to get scared, irrespective of the fact that the rope is not the snake. The use of this psychological phenomenon to achieve results in politics and social life is commonly known as scare tactics. Scientific Explanation of Scare Tactics The p art of the brain that stores the facts pertaining to past incidents and objects is the hippocampus. In contrast the part of the brain that stores the emotions associated with the past incidents and objects is called amygdale. For example if a person comes across a car accident, it is the hippocampus that stores the facts associated with the accident like the stretch of road on which the accident