ethological explanation

Question 1

what is ethology?

Answer 1

the study of animal behaviour

Question 2

what are the three ways that ethology helps us understand human aggression?

Answer 2

-helps define aggression and looks how it occurs in tandem with other factors
-we can understand how aggression has helped the evolutionary process in their natural settings
-controlled lab settings which isn’t possible to the same extent for humans

Question 3

what is the IRM?

Answer 3

-Innate Reasoning Mechanism
-Lorenz
-suggests animals have an innate mechanism for aggression and aggressive behaviour is a release
-similar to food and sleep, in the sense that it is a drive that needs to be satisfied
-specific neural circuits hardwired in the brain monitor the drive

Question 4

what is the FAP?

Answer 4

-Fixed Action Pattern
-a sequence of behaviours occurring throughout a species (universal but species specific behaviour)
-innate
-argued that they’re adaptive because they increase evolutionary survival chances

Question 5

research on ethological explanations of aggression

Answer 5

-Tinberg 1952 - sickleback fish FAP, attacked fake male fish, shows its innate
-Cooper et al 1989 / Cooper 2003 - viper venom secretion FAP,shows evolutionary survival advantage
-Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1977 - distinction between the automatic processing of animals and the considered processing of humans, ethological explanations are limited in explaining humans

Question 6

briefly evaluate the ethological explanation of aggression

Answer 6

-research lacks validity (animals can’t communicate)
-problematic to generalise animal findings to humans
-behaviour isn’t universal in humans (making IRM and FAP unlikely)
-not always an evolutionary advantage (if a female is scared of an aggressive male she won’t want to reproduce)