Social Learning Theory: Vlad Dracula's Violent Behavior
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Following psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder, I believe that a good way to explain Vlad Dracula’s violent behavior is through social learning theory. Social Learning Theory is the belief that, learning is a cognitive process that occurs through of social contexts, either through observation or instruction, experienced as an adolescent. As I described earlier in this paper, at the age of, either 12 or 13, Dracula, along with his brother Ruda, were both sent to be captives of the Turks as a deal made by their father, Dracul, in order to maintain good relations with the Turks (pg 36). Moreover, while his brother gave in to the Sultan and was released from his captivity to become his protégé, Dracula remained in captivity, which “had
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The General strain theory states that when an individual experiences certain sources of strain they gain emotions of negative affective states, such as anger and frustration, and will develop antisocial behaviors and actions. Moreover, when strain is “high in magnitude, seen as unjust, associated with low social control, and creates some pressure or incentive for criminal coping”, like the strain Dracula felt could be described, it’ll produce violence(http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_218/fulltext.html). Since I believe that Dracula had antisocial personality disorder, this theory would help to explain why he has such attitudinal tendencies. The sources of strain that would produce such affective states are failure to achieve goals, disjunction of expectations and achievements, removal of positive stimuli, and presentation of negative stimuli. Removal of positive stimuli and presentation of negative stimuli would be the easiest to point out in the case of Vlad. At a young age, Vlad was taken from his family and was held captive in a prison, away from his brother, who was released, and his father, would have made the deal to put him in the situation of his captivity (pg 36-39). This loss of his positively valued stimuli presented him with a strain through his attempts to escape from the Turks, but he continually failed, which provided him with negative affective states of anger. Additionally, when the Turks began to torture Dracula and force him to work as his pawn, he was introduced with negatively valued stimuli (pg 36-37). This again presented Dracula with anger, depression, and other negative emotional affective states, Moreover, when Dracula was finally able to get back to Wallachia and was told of how his brother was buried alive, he was produced by a failure to achieve his goal of bringing his
The General strain theory states that when an individual experiences certain sources of strain they gain emotions of negative affective states, such as anger and frustration, and will develop antisocial behaviors and actions. Moreover, when strain is “high in magnitude, seen as unjust, associated with low social control, and creates some pressure or incentive for criminal coping”, like the strain Dracula felt could be described, it’ll produce violence(http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4614-5690-2_218/fulltext.html). Since I believe that Dracula had antisocial personality disorder, this theory would help to explain why he has such attitudinal tendencies. The sources of strain that would produce such affective states are failure to achieve goals, disjunction of expectations and achievements, removal of positive stimuli, and presentation of negative stimuli. Removal of positive stimuli and presentation of negative stimuli would be the easiest to point out in the case of Vlad. At a young age, Vlad was taken from his family and was held captive in a prison, away from his brother, who was released, and his father, would have made the deal to put him in the situation of his captivity (pg 36-39). This loss of his positively valued stimuli presented him with a strain through his attempts to escape from the Turks, but he continually failed, which provided him with negative affective states of anger. Additionally, when the Turks began to torture Dracula and force him to work as his pawn, he was introduced with negatively valued stimuli (pg 36-37). This again presented Dracula with anger, depression, and other negative emotional affective states, Moreover, when Dracula was finally able to get back to Wallachia and was told of how his brother was buried alive, he was produced by a failure to achieve his goal of bringing his