This paper is an investigation of the topic of aggression in both humans and non-human primates with an attempt to understand the causes of such aggression and what links exist between the aggressive behaviors of different primate species.
The literature on primate aggression is reviewed and a number of bases for aggressive behavior are put forth, including psychoanalytic, biological, evolutionary and learned. The validity of each of these explanatory paradigms is examined and the evolutionary and social learning perspectives are established as being the most useful bases on which to create theoretical models of primate aggressive behavior.
A substantial amount of attention is paid to possible evolutionary causes of aggression and evolutionarily based links between the aggressive tendencies of different species of primates. The evolutionary pressures that have selected for aggression in primates are discussed in the context of other, related concepts such as the development and maintenance of social hierarchies and geographical territories.
After having established the broad-ranging nature of aggression in primate species and in a limited way differentiated among the different species in the way that aggressive tendencies are acted upon, the paper concludes with a discussion of the extent to which aggression can be said to be an irrefutable part of human nature. Since it is clear from the research material summarized for this paper that aggression in humans is at least partly learned, other learned behaviors may be substituted for aggressive ones.
Aggression in primates is a complex subject that can be investigated from a number of complementary but clearly different perspectives. These differing perspectives reflect differences both among various types of primates as well as different research paradigms and goals: The researcher who wishes to understand how chimpanzees define and defend territory will have different goals ...