Short transcript excerpt of a discussion (Nov 20, 2010) from a YouTube video by Jeffrey Bland, PhD, about the long-term impacts of war. Speakers note that war causes PTSD and that children raised under war-related stress may develop into more aggressive adults, perpetuating intergenerational aggression; however, they cite cross-fostering experiments suggesting early-life environmental changes can erase such effects.
We're a world, maybe historically it's not just right now, of war. We have all sorts of things that produce what we call, I guess, in this country, at least, post traumatic stress syndrome and post traumatic stress disorder, ptsd. I'm sure you have been approached by all sorts of people with returning veterans and all the implications of war around the world. What is the message? This must be a complicated question for you to have to deal with.
I think the message is that war has an impact well beyond the point at which the war has ended. So populations and children that are raised under the stress of war will become different kinds of adults. And that's how probably an aggressive behavior is perpetuated from one generation to the other. So that's the negative side of it. But the cross fostering experiment suggests that you can easily erase it by changing the environment early in life.
