Exploring School Violence from a Sociological Perspective using GAM Theory

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Abstract
School shooting has attracted people's attention. The society is in a period of great
change, which is prone to social anomie, which in turn affects the campus and leads to the
continuous occurrence of violence on campus. Students are affected by the escaping culture and
group psychology, the prevalence of traditional family tolerance culture and the influence of
school subculture, which have led to high incidence of school bullying. It is important to think
about solving school bullying from the perspective of sociology. This need forms the basis for
this essay. Using GAM theory, the essay will strive to explore key attributes of school violence.

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Introduction
Recently, bullying incidents in primary and secondary schools have emerged in an endless
stream, and they have been seen in the media from time to time. These incidents have once again
aroused people's concern about bullying on campus. Previous studies have focused on the
definition, current situation, causes, consequences, and experience of foreign solutions. Bullying
and pedagogy are the main perspectives for empirical research. In general, the existing research
on campus bullying mainly focuses on the relevant situation at the micro level, and lacks a
profound theoretical discussion. School bullying is a complex social phenomenon, and its
influencing factors are complex and diverse. This paper attempts to put campus bullying in the
current social environment, using sociological theory to re-examine campus bullying, in order to
gain a deep understanding of the phenomenon, and try to propose prevention and intervention
strategies. On April 20, 1999, two students entered the Columbia High School in Columbine,
Colorado, shooting 12 students and one teacher, injuring another 24 people. A year later, a
school shooting took place in Stockton, California, killing five people. Police investigations
revealed that among the two shootings, the perpetrators were victims of campus bullying. They
were frustrated by other students at school, and their spirits were frustrated and murder was used
as revenge. Using General Aggression Model, this paper will explore different attributes
responsible for rising case of school shooting and violence.
General Aggression Model
School shooting and violence is a complex issue that can be best explained using General
Aggression Model (GAM). According to Anderson & Bushman (2018), GAM take into
consideration both the individual and situational variables in explaining aggressive behavior.
This theory is relatively more comprehensive in explaining violence behaviors. As noted by

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Anderson & Bushman (2018), GAM theory encapsulates social learning theory, script theory,
cognitive neoassociation theory, excitation transfer theory, social information processing theory.
GAM theory beliefs that one of the contributing factors for aggression is what is termed as
maladaptive cognition. These maladaptive cognitions are initiated by rigid core beliefs.
General Aggression model and school violence
A closer look at the current time reveals that the tendency for children and adolescents to
develop rigid core beliefs is high. The atmosphere of schooling, the process of learning the
scientific environment, which consist of a combination of emotional, physical, mental,
psychological and psychological stresses, present new requirements for the development and
integrity of the personality, its socio-psychological level and adaptation to the new environment.
Education at school is always associated with a change in the familiar environment, lifestyle and
requires the development of adaptive skills (Tremblay & Dozois 2009). The stage of school
socialization has a huge impact on the future life of the child, becoming a certain facet, a step
that must be overcome for the correct formation of the personality in the future. The correct
emotions and feelings that the student will experience at the stage of personality formation will
help to form his skills of behavior and interaction in society and facilitate the process of
adaptation of the personality to new conditions. However, many students are not prepared. This
result on what Alvarado & Ramirez (2014) termed as cognitive dissonance. Considering the
process of maladaptation to school, it should be noted that this is a set of signs, roles, values and
norms that indicate a violation of the sociopsychological and psychophysiological status of the
child and non-compliance with the requirements and attitudes in the school environment, which
becomes difficult to master in connection with the current family situation (Allen & Anderson,
2018). Under the school maladaptation, in its essence, is meant the totality of the combined