[Music] [Applause] [Music] no [Music] gr if 2-year-olds were 2 m tall weighed 100 kilos and had access to weapons their aggressive behavior could cause serious harm and even death today scientists are looking for the earliest signs of violent Behavior give me the I want to see [Music] [Applause] it no because aggression and anger go hand in hand they began by studying the first signs of anger in [Music] newborns Dr Michael Lewis devised an ingenious methodology to study the development of angry reactions during the first few months after birth in studying emotion in very young children we see five or six early emotional Expressions anger is one fear is another disgust is a third sadness is a fourth interest is a fifth and happiness is a sixth it shows on the face and in the body and even some physiology so you can have these emotional States including Anger from birth [Music] for when you watch two year olds playing you get a very strong sense of them learning from every experience their brains are primed to soak up interpret and interact with their environment and we're often Enchanted by their discoveries but learning can involve some pretty hard knocks if you've ever seen a small child use their teeth to bite a playmate or a parent it's pretty clear that A Primitive and Powerful aggressive force shows itself very early in a child's development yeah tonight we take a close look at aggression in children and examine how it can evolve into cooperation and self-control [Music] people have long wanted to know what makes innocent young children turn into violent adults over the centuries philosophers and researchers developed various theories in attempts to explain and prevent aggressive behaviors some suggested that children are driven by an inborn aggressive instinct which they must learn to control in order to live in society [Applause] others concluded that on the contrary children aren't born with the predisposition towards physical violence they learn it by imitating others most people seem to be aware of this phenomenon during a national survey conducted in a large industrialized Nation respondents were asked at what age are human beings most likely to be violent more than 60% replied during adolescence the idea that aggression is learned is deeply rooted in our society and in modern psychological theories babies enter this world pure and innocent it is thought with a natural tendency to Peaceable Behavior it's the environment that turns some children into thugs as they grow up by their late teens those individuals will have learned as much about violence as they'll ever need to [Music] know but our acts of physical aggression really a product of [Music] adolescence Recent research on the development of physical aggression in animals and in young children has begun to provide new information to the the old debate about the origins of [Music] evil early in his career Dr Richard tromble devoted his time to rehabilitating dangerous criminals he decided that he needed to understand the development of violent behaviors from their onset in young children for this reason he and a team of scientists have for more than 20 years been following the development of thousands of Children and adolescents the problem with the age crime curve is that it's based on studies which focus on adolescents and adults and it's focused on those who get arrested there are many individuals who um use physical aggression and do not get arrested uh if you're 8 years of age and you hit someone you will not be arrested but you are physically aggressing someone when we realized that boys were at their worse in physical aggression when they were in kindergarten we asked ourselves well at what age does it start and so we decided to do a study of a large cohort of children but this time we started at Birth researchers made a troubling Discovery one that has shaken up modern psychological theories on the origins and causes of physical violence humans are most likely to resort to physical aggression around the age of two who would have believed that such cute kids could be capable of physical aggression as infant motor skills develop movements become more precise at 6 months babies sit up and begin to grab objects within their reach at 9 or 10 months babies can crawl and have more developed motor skills this is the start of exploratory [Applause] aggression Dr Peter Smith is one of the leading international experts on the developmental origins of aggression as soon as they can start moving around crawling they do what's often called exploratory aggression which is perhaps reaching out pulling another child's hair pulling their ears punching them a [Applause] bit around one year of age babies start standing which frees up their hands they now have the ability to thr threaten or to hit someone even though their movements are awkward and not very strong soon they will walk and move with much more confidence they'll even be able to run over to attack another child and then Dash [Music] away know around 2 years of age some children seem to turn into tiny terrors [Music] this is the famous period of the [Music] nose it's also when they start having spectacular explosions of Rage as sudden and unexpected as a summer thunderstorm [Music] [Music] what provokes Tantrums a wonderful question um they seem on the surface to be provoked by the most trivial of reasons um you have buttered the wrong side of the toast for the child the child wants his milk in a green cup not the blue cup you've taken one second too long to deliver the cereal these are all primary examples of things that will trigger tantrums and they will hit you and they will bash at you and if they can't get away they will scream and put up an immense scene and throw themselves to the ground and we see that in monkeys as well and that's an emotional appeal which the mother reacts to by sometimes taking it up and there is usually some kind of positive cuddling [Music] Etc by their third birthdays children possess the motor skills required to engage in any of the physically aggressive moves that adolescents and adults are capable of [Music] contrary to popular belief scientists have observed that around age four children's physical aggression begins to decrease rather than increase