The Pleasure of Aggressiveness Among Inmates in Preventive and Long-Term Detention

Abstract

Abstract:To a large degree, humans use pleasure (hedonicity) maximization to guide decision making, thereby optimizing their behaviour, as shown by research on either sensory or purely mental pleasure (e.g., pleasure from video-game playing or mathematical problem-solving). Our group has now found that pleasure determines decision making in situations of interpersonal aggression, i.e., people tend to behave aggressively in proportion to the resulting pleasure. In the present study, two groups of inmates in a Spanish prison were compared: those serving long sentences and those being held in preventive detention. All participants answered self-administered questionnaires that had been devised to examine how hedonicity influences decision making in the case of aggressive behaviour. The questionnaires described social conflict situations and offered four options ranging from a passive response to a highly aggressive response. Previous research showed similar results between inmates serving long terms and a non-delinquent population, even though the degree of hedonicity was higher in the inmates: increasingly aggressive behavior is increasingly pleasurable to the aggressor, but only up to a certain level.. In contrast, this paper shows that inmates in preventive detention did not rate any of the aggressive responses as pleasant. Such a difference was present in males only and may have been caused by a desire for social acceptance.

Aggression, Pleasure, and Cognitive Dissonance

“…Cabanac and his group [17] suggest that cognitive dissonance may also be a possible mechanism for explaining the results found in our previous studies on the pleasure of aggressive behavior [7,8,14,15,22]. According to these results, the difference between aggressive and nonaggressive people would partially be found in their values, in their acceptance of the social norms, and consequently in the higher or lower need of reducing the tension caused by discordance between pleasure and aggression.…”

“…Applying the same methodology to inmates, it was shown that their election also shared a higher satisfaction or pleasure, even if this specific population was more prone to violence than the general population: they tended to solve conflicts by more aggressive means [14,15]. Such a result is consistent with a fundamental role of hedonia in decisionmaking, showing that the trend to maximize pleasure or minimize displeasure when it comes to make an aggressive decision is indeed a deeply rooted mechanism of decisionmaking that largely transcends cultural biases or pathological borderlines.…”

“…Aggressive Behavior and Pleasure questionnaires, originally designed and repeatedly used in previous research by our group [7,8,14,15,22]: a) Pleasure was assessed with a questionnaire on fifteen minor social conflicts, exploring the hedonistic valence they aroused. The items in this questionnaire placed the participants in different conflict situations, describing an incident that could be seen as insulting, upsetting, or offensive.…”

“…b) The degree of association between aggression and pleasure was assessed from a Decision Questionnaire designed also by us [14,15]. To evaluate preference for a given aggressive response to a situation, the same fifteen situations of the Pleasure Questionnaire were presented.…”

The Pleasure of Being Aggressive in Male Incarcerated Criminals

“…For the present study prison inmates were selected because research on this topic is quite sparse. To our knowledge, ours is the first investigation on the relationship between pleasure and aggression performed in a prison (Cabanac, Ramírez, Millana, Toldos-Romero, & BonniotCabanac, 2007, 2008Millana, Cabanac, Toldos-Romero, Bonniot-Cabanac, & Ramírez, 2006).…”