Aggressiveness and social aggression in the youth environment: Philosophical and psychological field of interpretation

Abstract

© 2018, Slovenska Vzdelavacia Obstaravacia. All rights reserved. The topicality of the research lies in the fact that the challenges of the last decades, especially the last few years, caused the growth of crime, violence, extremist and terrorist sentiments, and extensively involved youth in these processes. For these reasons, there is an acute need to study aggression and social aggression, especially the aggressive behavior of youth. An interpretive comprehension of these phenomena by social philosophers is important because aggression, in any form, is a social construct, is formed and manifested in social interaction; and the use of philosophical methods allows studying all the factors that influence its formation: political, economic, social, psychological and others. In this paper, we present a review and analysis of various approaches to understand human and social aggression, their generalization, and develop a general and comprehensive point of view relate to their nature and determinacy. The methodology of the research is based on the universal laws governing the development of nature, human society, and thought: dialectical synthesis, the transformation of quantity into quality, and the identity of opposites; the philosophical theory of determinism; and system-activity approach. The leading theoretical methods to study this issue are concerned with the content analysis of scientific papers relevant to the research problem, and, hence, consider the factors associated with the formation and manifestation of aggressiveness in general and social aggression in particular. The paper provides a definition of the phenomenon of social aggression considering it as a system of aggressor's attitudes and behaviors in the interaction, his intention of inflicting damage or other unpleasantness upon another individual, the aim to create more efficient (dominant) terms of interaction and activity, and/or cause damage to the target victims. Using system-activity approach to characterize the phenomenon the following features have been distinguished: a specific way of organizing activities, rationality, a temporal duration, purposefulness, practicality, introductory nature, a possibility of control and self-control, invertibility and duality caused by human consciousness as the only factor. The authors hope that the materials of the article might be of theoretical and practical value for developing programs aimed at the prevention of aggression, especially social youth aggression, and bring the process of social adaptation and socialization of young people back to the normal state, thus reducing the risk of destructive tendencies.