When I read the headline Aggression As Rewarding As Sex, Food And Drugs: I thought 'yeah; I recognise that there is a kind of buzz to it and it would explain the recreational fighting that I see and hear about in cities'. So while we humans are more peaceable than chimps (who couldn't manage to live in cities of several millions without a bloodbath), we do have to find ways to undermine this pleasure in aggression. Here's a summary of the research.
"“We learned from these experiments that an individual will intentionally seek out an aggressive encounter solely because they experience a rewarding sensation from it,” Kennedy said. “This shows for the first time that aggression, on its own, is motivating, and that the well-known positive reinforcer dopamine plays a critical role.”"
Some bullying is like courtship; it's the foreplay of a violent encounter; that's the payoff, the reward. That's what we have to work at delegitimising.
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