The case presents Levi Aron who abducts, kills through suffocation and dismembered Leiby Kletzky, an eight-year-old boy. The child is walking back home from school but becomes unable to trace the way back to where the mother is waiting. Leiby meets Aron, a strange and asks for direction. Aron decides to take the child to his room with a promise that the following day he would lead Leiby home.  Esther, the mother to the boy, reports the matter to a volunteer group, which, together with the New York police launches a search for the boy. After two days, the cops discover the boy’s body dismembered in an apartment. They arrest Aron in connection with the murder where camera footage confirms the act. The shocking thing about the case is the fact that Aron, like Leiby, was a Jewish which had a tradition of caring for each other.

Characters behaviors

Parents

The parents are reluctant although they finally allow their child to walk alone from the camp. The reluctance shows that they still observe the Jewish tradition, which does not allow association with other people outside their culture. However, they are open-minded that they finally use logic to analyze the reasons why the child can walk alone and permits Leiby. Although they are open minded, they do not get out of the tradition completely. Social psychologists argue that people behave in ways they do because of the influence of others around them. Society socializes the parents to avoid strangers and protect their children from them. The reluctance behavior of the parents, therefore, results from the society molded characters. Allowing the child to walk alone means that Leiby can interact with strangers on the way including the classmates who are not Jewish. The parents despite the social influence, they are open-minded to judge by themselves on whether the child should walk alone to interact with other people. They have developed cognitive behavior to decide on things, which make sense, and the ones, which do not make, making them become allow to accept Leiby’s request.

Aron

The first act of Aron accepting to help the child reveals a caring and generous character. The character is not strange as the article describes that the Jewish community is concerned with each other.  The caring personality is a conditioned behavior, which the society has instilled in Aron. Behavioral psychology points out that the people or environment trains people to behave in certain ways regardless of their traits or genetics as long as they have the ability. Aron, therefore, has learned to take care of others from the Jewish tradition. Aron accepts to kill the child and therefore, honest. The character may partly be coming from society, which conditions its members to care for others or because of complex mental processes as described in cognitive psychology. According to the article, Arron claims to hear a voice persuading him to commit suicide. Through logical reasoning that the voice might lead to the action of committing suicide, Aron makes a judgment to accept the action. Cognitive psychologists explain that people make decisions based on the information, which is in mind. The honest character is, therefore, temporal on the one hand because of the cognitive behavior making Aron confess.

Leiby

The article describes Leiby as an independent person, a character that leads to the behavior of wanting to walk alone. Leiby appears to depend on his mind to make the judgment that he should be making part of the journey alone. The child has developed a cognitive behavior, which allows people to reason through logic rather than depending on instructions thought by others. Leiby does not submit to parents and society reasoning on why children should not walk alone. The child contemplates through logic and sees it essential and reasonable to be alone for some time in a part of the journey. Leiby is open-minded on issues other than confining to the strict rules set by the parents and society. The character is seen from the way the child accepts to talk and walk with Aron, a stranger. The school has socialized him to become open-minded since that is what the teachers and other students expect from him. Social psychologists argue that the behaviors, which people portly to others results from interactions.

The society including colleagues in the camp seems to influence Leiby’s independence character and therefore defy Jewish character of avoiding strangers. Human beings are social, and Leiby as a young person want to explore and interact with others. The child looks at how the other children are playing and talking while going home and feels the urge to join such conversations. The children’s interactions in school influences Leiby’s decision to become mentally independent to enable self-decisions. The school, therefore, seems to make the child develop social behaviors, which the parents did not nature since the Jewish tradition teaches people not to interact with strangers.  The independent character also results from behavior conditioning from the Jewish tradition, which does not encourage men and women interactions as described in the article. Leiby does not like the act of walking along with the mother being a female.

Abnormal behaviors in the case study

One of the strange behaviors in the case is that of Aron killing the child to escape from society. Aron was willingly helping the child to locate the direction although he was not quick in doing so making the parents launch a search. Aron discovers that the action of taking the child and staying longer without reporting the case or searching for the parents was wrong. The conclusion, which Aron makes, is that the people who are searching the child will be harsh and not understanding. Aron’s reasons that suffocating the child will hide the case and make it simple compared to opening up to the people in search. Killing the child was not the right decision for Aron even from his conscience as he describes to the lawyer. Aron could have come out and explained the case to police and society.

Another abnormal behavior is the one exhibited by Aron through dismembering the child after killing. Aron perhaps thinks that by cutting the child in pieces, the police will not know that Leiby was murdered. The victim forgets whether the body is divided or not, it is a dead body and the conclusion made is that it was killed. The behavior of dissecting the body appears to be abnormal again because it does not merge with the idea of Aron helping Leiby. The sympathy of helping the child could have guided Aron to spare dissecting and even killing the child. The victim, therefore, appears to behave abnormally by doing contrary to his wishes.

The behavior portrayed by Aron to walk with the child to pay bills and attend a wedding as well as staying with Leiby until the following day is also abnormal. Aron did not take a few minutes to know whether the child was just next to their home or very far to determine whether it was wise to wait until the following day or take the child home. The child did not ask for a place to stay in but direction. The behavior shows that there was something wrong with Aron mentally or had the intention to kill the child. However, if the claims that Aron wanted to take the child home the following day, then it means that the act of keeping Leiby is abnormal because it was easier to get the direction on that same day. Leiby was talking and therefore could explain the route to their home, which could have helped Aron.

The behaviors are considered abnormal because first, they resulted in personal distress. The society expects people to behave in ways which will not hurt themselves physically or mentally but. The behaviors become abnormal if people make decisions by themselves, which are hurting. Such behaviors mean that there is a fault in the thinking process. Aron regrets because of killing the child leading to distress. The society also considers the behaviors abnormal because the victims base them on a false assumption. Aron assumes that by killing the child, the problem will be over not knowing that it was to magnify. The behaviors are abnormal again because they are rare and the society does not expect them. Some of them may commonly be resulting from low intelligent quotient (IQ) level, but the community does not recognize them because few people have low IQ.  The series of abnormal behaviors from Aron shows that probably the IQ level is low.

Psychological Approaches to Comments

A commenter in the seventh comment argues that the killer was not mentally ill as people claimed but had an evil mind all along. Any person can possess bad behaviors regardless of their race or nationality. The commenter continues to argue that, some people have evil thoughts in them, which they express in different situations. People are not safe because nobody is sure what kind of a person the neighbor is. The commenter uses a psychodynamic approach to psychology. According to psychodynamic psychologists, there is an unconscious part of the mind, which stores memories, feelings, urges, and thoughts. The unconscious part together with early childhood experiences makes people behave the way they do. The commentator tries to show that Aron was having some hidden motives, which drove the behaviors. The hidden motives relate to the unconscious motives in psychodynamic psychology. Also, there is the argument that people are not safe because they are not aware of the characters of their neighbors. The comment is in line with the approach because the psychodynamic psychologists point out that people are not aware of some of the hidden thoughts in their mind. People will therefore not recognize the evils in neighbors’ mind.

In the fourth comment, Bellarain points out that the case proves that people are not safe no matter who is around them. People have the general idea that those around them including neighbors and relatives are good people who cannot offend or do anything terrible to them. The fact about the concept, which people do not accept, is that the neighbors are no different from any other person who has the potential to harm them. The commenter uses a behavioral approach to comment. According to behavioral psychologists, the external surrounding train people to behave and think in certain ways. Bellarain argument means that the Jewish tradition has trained the community to believe that everyone from their community is good and will always portray good behaviors on each other. The thought is in line with the behavioral approach because it shows how a behavioral thought is common in the Jewish through socialization. The commenter further points out that it should not be shocking that the killer is a Jewish only that people have acquired behavioral thinking that neighbors are right.

Jordana in the sixth comment points out that Aron’s family is not stable making Aron have stress. The commenter continues to expand that before the murder, Aron was emotionally disturbed. Jordana is trying to show that Aron’s act is not normal but results from brain disorder as a result of the unstable family. The commenter uses a biological approach to psychology. According to biological psychologists, people behave the way they do because of their brain condition and body needs. The comment is in line with the approach because it tries to show that Aron’s behavior was a way of serving the body’s need to relieve the stress present just before the murder.

References

McMinn, J. G., & Dunn, D. S. (2011). A Social-Cognitive Exploration of Reactions to Leiby Kletzky’s Abduction and Homicide.

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Voicu, C.G., & Shirvani, M. (2017). Cognitive Approaches to Mental Disorders: A Psycho-Cultural Case Study of Portnoy’s Complaint. Romanian Journal of Experimental Applied Psychology, 8, 149–153.

Fred Paas, & Paul Ayres. (2014). Cognitive Load Theory: A Broader View on the Role of Memory in Learning and Education. Educational Psychology Review, 26(2), 191

Pi-Yueh Cheng, & Mei-Chin Chu. (2014). Behavioral Factors Affecting Students’ Intentions to Enroll in Business Ethics Courses: A Comparison of the Theory of Planned Behavior and Social Cognitive Theory Using Self-Identity as a Moderator. Journal of Business Ethics, 124(1), 35.

Yerushalmi, H. (2015). Impasses in the Relationship Between the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioner and the Consumer: A Psychodynamic Perspective. Journal of Social Work Practice, 29(3), 355–368.

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