A Critical Analysis of Why We Hate by Rush W. Dozier, Jr.

A critical analysis of Why We Hate: Understanding, Curbing, and Eliminating Hate in Ourselves and Our World By: Rush W. Dozier, Jr. In the world today, young teenagers are bringing guns to school, people are flying airplanes into buildings, and riots are erupting in the city streets. Frighteningly enough, these actions find their origins deep within the regions of the human mind, the amygdala (Dozier, 2002, p.5). When this part of the body perceives a particular object as a threat to its survival or chances of reproduction, it commands the body the react aggressively in order to eliminate the threat. This extreme form of aggression, this emotion that drives terrorists to kill perfect strangers and which allows the ex-husband to think†¦show more content†¦Through lessons on empathy, the children learned to see another person’s position and understand the emotions of others. With this value present, it is harder for one lose his humanity in the eyes of his enemy and allows both parties to deal with their problems constructively under the mutual respect to each other as human beings. Students ar e also taught to deal with problems by identifying the problem, â€Å"brainstorming (Frey, Karin, Hirschstein, Miriam, Guzzo, 2000)† in order to formulate some sort of solution, ask whether or not the endeavor is safe, and to consider how others will feel about this solution. By utilizing these methods, children are taught to stop and think about their actions in a rational manner and incorporate and apply their lessons on empathy into their decision making (Frey, et al. 2000). Another study on adolescents from America and Croatia was done in order to determine if cultural immersion was an effective way to reduce prejudice and ethnic hostility. An undisclosed number of American teenager ages varying from 12-20, ranging from African-American to Asian to Latino were bonded with an equal number of Croatian youths of about the same age for 24 hours a day for a little over a month. Results showed that cultural immersion among the adolescents seemed to gear them away from an â €Å"us vs. them† mentality. â€Å"Them† no longer was a vague term used to identify the enemy, and differences were made negligible by