Steven Crane Compiled Section Handouts. Human Behavioral Biology 2012

Aggression I

Big themes here:

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  Aggression itself isn't good or bad. It's all about the context in which it is expressed.
  
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  Human aggression and empathy is both remarkably similar to animal precedents, and also remarkably unique in some cases.
  
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  The frontal cortex is all about doing the right but hard thing. It's also important for controlling behavior (NOT about knowing what's right and wrong).
  

What aggressive behaviors look like

What human aggressive behaviors also have animal precedents? How about anti-aggressive behaviors?

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  Aggressive: Murder, weapon use, organized violence, genocide, rape
  
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  Anti-Aggressive: reconciliation after fights (in bonobos, most likely to be sexy reconciliation time), empathy, justice, cooperation (remember reciprocal altruism?), dominance hierarchies reduce aggression when stable and working well, even bottom-up egalitarian hierarchies.
  

What behaviors in general are hard to classify as aggression or not?

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  Patas monkeys never fight in the wild. Their whole social structure keeps males away from each other and there's no aggression. But bring them together they're insanely violent. So does this count as an aggressive or not aggressive species?
  
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  Play fighting.
  
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  Hunting and predation.
  

What human aggressive and anti-aggressive behaviors DON'T have good animal precedents

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  Aggressive:
  

  • Aggression displaced over space and time

  • Passive aggression

  • Bizarre Indonesia village murder raids bringing along an orchestra "to make it more beautiful."

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  Anti-aggressive
  

  • Charity displaced over space and time

  • Reconciliation and forgiveness to talk it out afterwards

  • Purposely forgiving and loving the most reviled people in society: nun Helen Prejean.