In recent years, Malaysia has not only witnessed economic and political changes, but also an upsurge in violent incidents in the social sphere. These include gruesome murders, torture of domestic maids and sexual assaults against children.

What has gone wrong with Malaysians?

For some, the phenomenon can be explained purely in terms of the general lack of moral and religious education in an increasingly materialistic and hedonistic society. According to this school of thought, the solution is to suppress the materialistic and hedonistic currents and to promote moral and religious education, especially among youth.

While that school of thought may have a certain degree of merit, another school of thought opines that the trend can be understood from the perspectives of modern psychology and social psychology.

Psychologist Dr Edward Chan has been conducting psychological assessment and psychotherapy for individuals, families, couples, children and corporate personnel over the past eight years in Malaysia as well as in Britain. He occasionally writes for Malaysian newspapers and has authored several books.

This is the first of a three-part series of an email conversation with Chan.

Malaysiakini: Why has there been a seemingly sudden upsurge in physical violence in Malaysia over the past several years? What is the connection between violence and individual and social psychology?

Chan: The sudden upsurge could be caused by aggression that can be learned or (which is) instinctive behaviour in human beings. The innate pattern of behaviour in terms of aggressiveness is modifiable and flexible. An abuser can learn violent behaviour from mass media influence and modeling.

Previous research has shown that viewing violent acts on TV and in movies affects people in negative ways; it decreases viewers' sensitivity to violence and increases the likelihood that viewers will emulate the aggressive acts depicted. This has caused incidents of physical violence to rise in Malaysia.

In addition, changing social conditions may give rise to certain kinds of behaviour. When people get busier with work and stress levels are high at the workplace, they tend to show anger to their partner or even children, using physical violence.

What roles do photographs in newspapers or movies that depict, normalise or glorify violence play in the propensity for violence?

People will imitate behavior that they see in photographs and movies. Constant exposure to violent movies will make people more tolerant towards violence in real life. Therefore people weaken their previously learned inhibitions against violent behaviour. They will treat violence in a lackadaisical manner even though the situation could be extremely serious. Children tend to imitate more willingly than adults.

Physical violence within families or households, like wife-beating, husband-battering, child abuse and torture of maids also seem to have increased in recent years. What are the reasons that families or households are unable to restrain aggression?

Abusers are not too worried about the victims they are hurting. Most of the time, the abusers themselves have had a history of being abused when they were younger. Hence, it is a vicious cycle that is difficult to break. The public is starting to accept violence as a necessary aspect of life in the modern era. For example, there was news of a father killing his three children, which was caused by desperation and stress in life, feeling of rejection and emotional pain.

Physical violence such as wife-beating and husband-battering arises when there is a rift in communications between the couple. For example, a husband may not understand his wife's needs or a wife may not validate her husband's feelings. Such misunderstanding could be caused by external factors such as stress at the workplace as well as internal factors in the relationship.


Three-part series

Exploring the psychology of violence
Why do 'normal' persons turn violent?
Not only mad people need a shrink