Name: Why Are We Violent? [Social Learning Theory]
Uploaded: 2025-06-19T17:46:38.000Z
Duration: 4 min 3 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of manner

During the first winter of World War I, French and British soldiers were fiercely battling the Germans, but then, on Christmas Day in 1914, they laid down their arms and came together to celebrate.

In fact, they became friends for a few days.

So, what happened here and where did the violence go?

Violence is a trait shared by many animals, including Sapiens.

It allows us to protect our territory, hunt for food, or dominate others, but it can come at a great cost.

Conflicts often leave physical scars and psychological damage.

Aggressive people live a more risky life, tend to have fewer social connections, and are exposed to more stress, all of which impact their well-being.

In many modern societies, violence has lost its appeal.

We started innovating, collaborating, and nurturing communities that gave us a sense of belonging.

Some say that humans are violent by design.

Robert Sapolsky, a primatologist, developed another theory.

He spent 33 years following the same troop of wild baboons in Kenya.

Studying these monkeys that share 94% of our genetic code, he made a puzzling observation.

Baboons are primates that organize their behavior around hierarchies.

Females and weak males typically stay home caring for the children, while violent males lead the troop to explore their surroundings.

At one point, the most aggressive males went out to battle another tribe for some food at a garbage dump, which happened to be the source of a tuberculosis outbreak.

As a result, many of these violent baboons got sick and about half of them died.

The new generation of baboons was then raised by females and more gentle males.

As the small ones grew up, they became friendlier and less combative.

And just six years after the incident, the once violent troop was living in peace.

During the following years, the troop thrived by collaborating, and even when males from other groups joined the peaceful community, they let go of their aggressive sides and adapted to the new lifestyle.

As a result, all members exhibited lower levels of stress, were in better health, and had better odds of survival.

Sapolsky concluded that in baboons, violence is not a natural state, but mostly a learned response to the environment they grow up in, an idea that also seems to apply to most human behavior.

Children observe their parents and imitate what they see at home.

When abuse is part of daily lives, it is a behavior that they are likely to reproduce later and pass it on to their children and so on and so forth.

Sapolsky himself later wrote that it's more complicated.

If we want to make sense of our behavior, all the best, the worst, and everything in between, we're not going to get anywhere if we think it can all be explained with one thing, whether it's one part of the brain, one childhood experience, one hormone, one gene, or anything.

Are we violent by design or is it a learned human behavior?

And if it's mostly learned, is there a way to break the vicious cycle, or does it always need to come to a disaster?

Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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