Pick up any newspaper or watch a news channel and you will find that all's not well in Indian society
There can be little doubt that deviant social behaviour is rising in India. Pick up any newspaper or watch any news channel and you will get the proof. This, perhaps, is the reason why researchers of behavioural science are now advocating that people should avoid reading newspapers or watching news channels at night. It should not sound surprising given the state of affairs today, though it is widely believed that newspapers and news channels are also informing and educating us. However, a careful analysis of the kind of news stories that are being disseminated would reveal that the contents are depressing, creating a feeling of fear and disgust in the minds of readers as well as viewers.
Nothing better can be expected when crime and criminality hog the dominant part of the content. Psychologists opine that watching or reading such stories in the night raises the anxiety level of an individual, resulting in disturbed sleep. Not that reading newspapers or watching news channels in the morning will make things less depressing. Nevertheless, the hurly-burly of everyday life and the struggle to cope up with the daily grind make them forget the untoward. Rather they suppress those things as there are ‘important’ things to do.
The question, however, remains: Why are news contents becoming so depressingIJ Well, this needs to be examined. While there can be several explanations, one important aspect is that neuroticism is on the rise. Neurosis, according to many schools of psychology, is a learned set of responses. The notion of abnormal behaviour is misleading to many people. Contrary to the popular belief, it is not study of persons totally different from the rest of mankind. Rather, the very same variables that operate in extreme degrees in mentally ill people are there in normal people as well. The difference may be of degree, not of content. Thus, important variables which are difficult to find in mild degree become discernible when present in extreme.
It is against this backdrop that the rise in deviant behaviour has to be understood. The changing societal pattern where a nuclear family with a single child is the norm, gregariousness as a conditioned drive cannot be learnt because there is hardly any interaction with other individuals except the father and the mother. An interesting experiment carried out on sheep by a psychologist in 1947 can offer some insights. He found that bottle-fed sheep did not exhibit the kind of gregariousness which naturally-reared ones do. Usually sheep are extremely gregarious, but the bottle-fed ones grazed apart from the rest of the herd and showed a tendency to follow the people who had fed them. This suggests that gregariousness is something we learn.
Taking a cue, it can be hypothesised that human motives of sociability, dependence, need to show and receive affection, and desire for approval are learnt. In absence of these, one witnesses deviant behaviour.
The writer is professor, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad (Jharkhand). He can be reached at ppathak.ism@gmail.com
