Why Deviant Behaviour Is Rising

There can be little doubt that deviant social behaviour is rising in India. Pick up any newspaper or view any news channel and you will get the proof.  This, perhaps, is the reason why researchers of behavioural science are advocating these days that people should avoid reading news papers or watching news channels on television at night. It should not sound surprising given the state of affairs in the society today, though it is widely believed that newspapers as well as television news channels disseminating the news are informing, and educating the society by increasing the general awareness level of the common people. 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 readers and viewers. Nothing better can be expected when crime and criminality hog the major part of the content. Psychologists opine that watching or reading such stories in the night raises the anxiety level of the individuals resulting in disturbed sleep. Not that reading newspapers or watching news on television in the morning will make the content less depressing. Quite the contrary, it is as depressing or sometimes even more because the more heinous crimes committed in the previous night get added to them. Nevertheless, the hurly burly  of everyday life, the struggle to cope up with the daily grind makes them forget the untoward. Rather suppress those things as there are better things to do. This makes the crucial difference between the day and the night. But that apart, there is another and more important side of the storm, and a sordid one. Why are the contents becoming more depressing? Well , this needs to be examined but as a hypothesis this merits considerable attention. 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 too. The difference may be of degree not of content. Thus important variables which are difficult to find in mild degree become very discernible when present is extreme. It is against this back drop that the rise in deviant behaviour in the society has to be understood. The changing societal pattern where nuclear families with single child is the norm, gregariousness  as a conditioned drive cannot be learnt because there is hardly any interaction with other individuals except for the father and the mother.  A very interesting experiment carried out on sheep by a psychologist named Scot in 1947 can offer some insights. Scot 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 a learnt drive. Drawing a cue, it can be hypothesized that human motives of sociability, dependence, need to show and receive affection and desire for approval are learnt. In absence of these the tendency to care two hoots for others increases. And this results in errant and deviant behaviour. It is time to ponder why anomie is growing in society leading to rise in deviant behaviour.