The Three Rs: Retaliation, Revenge, and Redirected Aggression. Some New/Old Insights into the Roots of Violence

Violence is probably the single greatest threat to humanity, and yet it its causes are largely unknown; or rather, as Mark Twain noted about how easy it is to stop smoking: it's easy to explain violence—there are hundreds of explanations! An important and hitherto unappreciated cause of violence—in non-human animals as well as human beings—is what we might call "passing the pain along," the powerful tendency to respond to psychological and physical pain by hurting someone else. Moreover, this "someone else" isn't necessarily the original perpetrator. With distressing frequency, the victim is an innocent bystander, which only further perpetuates the cycle.  Dr. Barash will consider both proximate and ultimate causes of this phenomenon.