Aggression in Humans & Non-Human Primates

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 lea

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thorough examinations of the topic.). Whether or not aggression occurs in the context of play or in some other social context, it can serve as an element in the process of social learning. Very simply, social learning occurs in a stimulus-response cycle in which an individual performs an act that is positively rewarded and so repeats it or performs an act that is negatively rewarded and so tends not to repeat it. This is as true of aggressive actions as it is of many other types of behavior. Thus aggression may be seen to be at least at times a form of social response that is either encouraged or discouraged by the social group. Another way in which aggressive behavior is learned is through contagion - the phenomenon by which violence travels quickly from one individual to another such as in a peaceful crowd that seems to turn almost instantaneously into a violent mob. Although the transmission of aggression is so quick during episodes of contagion as to appear to preclude learning, in fact is it a subset of learned behavior. Megargee and Hokanson (1970) summarize the ways in which aggression can be learned: An individual may actually learn particular aggressive responses merely by observing someone else carry out the behaviors.

Category: Psychology - A