Comp 5 Flashcards
What is aggression?
Any behaviour that is related to attack, threat or defence. There is two models, the appetite model and the aversion model. Lorenz (1963) said aggression is the outcome of the build-up of an internal, action-specific energy, which motivates the animal to perform aggressive acts. This is the appetite model. THe aversion model (Calhoun, 1962) said aggression is produced by the frustration induced by competition for limited resources.
Discuss the causes of aggression
Life in a group offers many benefits for individuals but there are also some costs and trade-offs. For example, a positive is the protection against a predator or access to mates. However, living in a group means competition for resources such as food, mates, territory and social status. This competition leads to the establishment of a dominance hierachy or pecking order, this is a relative measure (compare an individual to conspecific) and is an attribute for dyadic relationships.
Dominance is an attribute of repeated agonistic interactions between 2 individuals characterised by a contsant outcome in favour of the same member of the dyad and a default yielding repsonse of its opponent rather than escalation. The winner is the dominant and the looser is the subordinate.
Dominance can be seen as conflict management.
Discuss dominance in relation to conflict management
Cominance can be seen as a conflict management adpatation to reduce the frequency of aggression and reduce the probability of escalating violence. It can further assess fighting ability.
It can be a sign of benign intent - greeting ceremony for example in baboons which reduce aggressive tendencies when there is uncertainty about an individuals motivation. It signals a non-aggressive intention, elecitis non-aggressive behaviour from the receiver and facilitates the occurance of affiliative behaviours.
It can also be a formal indicator of dominance and subordination. For example, silent bared teeth by subordinate. When SBT where displayed in terms of conflict, there was a much higher fight frequency than no SBT and peaceful SBT. Also a mock-bite demonstrates a formal indicator of social status, being directed from dominant to subordinates, is frequent between individuals having frequenct agonsitic interactions (Demaria & Thierry, 1990).
Discuss the importance of power asymmetries
Asymmetrical power balances predict high agonsitic encounters with signals being unidirectional and used as status indicators.
Symmetrical power balances predict low aognistic encounters with context-dependent signals.
Discuss post-conflict interactions
Life in groups implies competition, and competition can lead to conflicts which can damage social relationships both at the level of the dyad and the level of the group. To preserce the benefits of group living, damages need to be repaired by post-conflict interactions. These include reconcilitation, redirection, consolation and third party interventions. However, we have to make sure the behaviours demonstrated after a conflict are related to the conflict using a matched control design whereby there was no conlifct before the behaviour (deWaal & van Rosmalen, 1979).
Discuss reconciliation
In stump-tailed macaques post-conflict behaviour was compared to matched controls and found that friendly behaviours are more frequent in post conflict and friently contact occurs earlier in post conflict (Call et al., 1999).
Reconciliation was more frequent when opponents were close to each other.
Friends reconcile more than non-friends.
Kin reconcile more than non-kin.
The mainstream view of the function of reconciliation is that it resolves conflict and repairs relationships. However, the alternative view suggests it is an honest signal indicating that the conflict is over and that the actors intentions are now benigns.
Discuss redirected aggression
Redirection is when an individual threatens or attacks a third party shortly after being the target of aggression. Males who redirct aggression have lower basal glucorticoid levels than those who did not. The function of this is to reduce aggression-induced stress but also increase social instability. (Virgin & Sapolsky, 1997).
After being the victim of a conflict, Japanese macaques are more likely to attack the former aggressors kin. These individuals usually redirect towards lower ranking individuals and individuals younger than the former aggressor.
Discuss consolation
Consolation: increase in affiliative interactions between tragets and third parties specific to post-conflict interaction. As for reconciliation, third parties engage in friendly interaction towards the victim of an aggressive encounter more often in the PC than the MC.
Reconciliation is more frequent when consolation does not occur. consolation is more frequent when reconciliation does not occur. Does this mean reconciliation = consoaltion? The same behaviours are used (kissing and embracing) with both reconciliation and consolation.
The function of consolation is to alleviate stress, repair relationship and reduce risk of aggression directed towards the consoler. Romero & de Waal (2010) hypothesized stress reduction reduces recipients post-conflict anxiety and bystanders should direct affiliation to close social partners.
After conflict, victimes are more likely to be consoled by their own friends rather than the aggressors friend. Frequent target of aggression are not more or less likely to offer consolation.
Does empathy relate to consolation?
Consolation has been observed in apes but not in monkeys. This has been explained as sympathetic concern, an expression of empathy present in apes but not in monkeys. It has weak empirical support, as consolation occurs more often between strongly bonded individuals and occurs more often in females than males (like in humans).
Discuss the third party intervention
Often, an individual who is not intially involved in a conflict will intervene. Intervention can be friendly or aggressive, in either case, the individual chooses a side. The function is to stop conflict, prevent escalaiton, assert dominance status and create alliances.
Aggression intervention in 10% of the conflict, with same percentage for friendly intervention. Interventions are more likely to occur in conflict involving physical conflict and friendly interventions were twice as likely to put an end to the conflict than aggressive interventions.
In general inividuals intervene in favour of their kin/ In friendly interventions, the intervener always outranked the 2 opponents. This may be to protect beneficiary without endangering the relationship with the opponent. Intervener uses his high social status to end the aggression.
Discuss the differences in third part interventions with aggressive and friendly interventions
Aggressive interventions:
Competitive and dangerous, support kin or allies. They benefits from indirect fitness, assert status, strengthen alliance, prevent social disruption.
Friendly interventions:
Cooperative, support kin or allies. Benefit from minimizing aggressive intervation, strengthen alliance, prevent social disruption.
Summarise this lecture
Life in group offers many benefits for individuals but there are also some costs, including competition for resources which can lead to aggression.
To preserve the benefits of group living, damages caused by aggression need to be prevented and repaired when they do occur.
Dominance can be seen as a conflict management adaptation to reduce the frequency of aggression and reduce the probability of escalating violence.
Redirection, reconiliation, consolation and third party interventions are efficient post-conflict interactions. THey efficiently reduce stress and to some extent repair damaged relationships.
