NCJ Number
86071
Date Published
1982
Length
8 pages
Annotation
Research suggests that social skills training and programs that facilitate the cognitive and affective control of aggression may be effective in helping reduce or eliminate violent behavior by persons who perceive such behavior as a problem they wish to overcome.
Abstract
Because research indicates that violent acts stem from various styles of social interaction relating to the handling of feelings stimulated by various relational stimuli, social skills training promises some success in modifying aggressive behavior. Instruction, modeling, role-play, and feedback are as relevant to revising aggressive social styles as they are in dealing with other forms of undesirable social interaction. Social skills training addressed to violent behavior differs from more conventional social skills training in attention to the specific verbal, nonverbal, and paralinguistic behaviors involved as well as the sequence of interactions culminating in a violent act. Further, because research shows that violent behavior is related to how persons know, construct, and interpret social reality, cognitive therapy is appropriate in modifying violent behavior. Raymond Novaco (1978) has outlined a systematic program for producing cognitive restructuring in persons prone to aggression. Attribution theory also suggests possible therapeutic interventions, particularly with persons having a paranoid cognitive structure. Novaco's analysis of aggression also indicates that cognitions are closely related to anger, such that anger itself ought to be a focus in any comprehensive treatment program. Novaco's stress-inoculation model of treatment involves teaching clients to monitor bouts of anger, to observe their relationship to previous cognitions and events, and to control anger. Twenty-four references are listed.