Human Ethology Human Ethology IRENAUS EIBL-EIBESFELDT Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 1989 by Transaction Publishers Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 1989 by Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2006048043 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenaus. [Biologie des menschlichen Verhaltens. English] Human ethology / Irenaus Eible-Ebesfeldt. p. cm. Originally published: New York: Aldine De Gruyter, c1989. (Foundations of human behavior) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes. ISBN 978-0-202-30970-5 (alk. paper) 1. Genetic psychology. 2. Human behavior. 3. Psychobiology. 4. Sociobiology. I. Title. BF70 l.E4313 2007 304.5—dc22 006048043 2006048043 ISBN 13: 978-0-202-30970-5 (pbk) Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Mirror-Image Illustrations xv 1 OBJECTIVES AND THEORETICAL BASES OF HUMAN ETHOLOGY 2 1.1. Inquiry Formulation and Definition 3 Summary 1.1 6 1.2. Phylogenetic and Cultural Adaptation 7 Summary 1.2 16 BASIC CONCEPTS OF ETHOLOGY 18 2.1. The Concept of the "Innate" 19 Summary 2.1 23 2.2. Phylogenetic Adaptations in Behavior 23 Summary 2.2 84 2.3. Decoupling of Actions from Drives and Conscious Self-Control: The Neuroethology of Human Freedom 86 Summary 2.3 90 2.4. The Units of Selection—A Critical Evaluation of Sociobiology 90 Summary 2.4 102 METHODOLOGY 104 3.1. Gestalt Perception and Cognition 105 Summary 3.1 107 3.2. Methods of Data Gathering, Observation, and Description 107 Summary 3.2 112 3.3. Film and Sound Documentation 112 Summary 3.3 132 3.4. The Comparative Approach 132 Summary 3.4 147 3.5. Quantifying Ethology 148 Summary 3.5 161 3.6. Models 161 Summary 3.6 165 4 SOCIAL BEHAVIOR 166 4.1. Origins of Sociability 167 Summary 4.1 169 4.2. The Ambivalence of Approach and Withdrawal in Human Interactions 170 Summary 4.2 184 4.3. The Human Family as the Nucleus of Society 184 Summary 4.3 234 4.4. Family and Marriage 235 Summary 4.4 238 4.5. Pair Formation, Courtship, Sexual Love 238 Summary 4.5 260 4.6. Incest Taboos and Incest Avoidance 261 Summary 4.6 264 4.7. Sex Roles and Their Differentiation 265 Summary 4.7 288 4.8. The Individualized Group: Family, Kin, and Alliances 289 Summary 4.8 296 4.9. Rank Order, Dominance 297 Summary 4.9 314 4.10. Group Identity Maintenance 314 Summary 4.10 320 4.11. Territoriality 321 Summary 4.11 339 4.12. Origin and Social Function of Possession 339 Summary 4.12 358 5 INTRASPECIFIC AGGRESSION: CONFLICT AND WAR 360 5.1. Concepts 361 Summary 5.1 364 5.2. Aggression Theories 365 vi Summary 5.2 386 5.3. Functional Aspects of Aggressive Behavior 391 Summary 5.3 396 5.4. Socialization of Aggressive Behavior 396 Summary 5.4 399 5.5. Duels 399 Summary 5.5 402 5.6. Intergroup Aggression—War 402 Summary 5.6 421 6 COMMUNICATION 424 6.1. Olfactory Communication 426 Summary 6.1 429 6.2. Tactile Communication 430 6.3. Visual Communication 437 Summary 6.3 492 6.4. Interaction Strategies—The Universal Grammar of Human Social Behavior 493 Summary 6.4 522 6.5. On the Ethology of Verbal Communication 523 Summary 6.5 546 7 BEHAVIOR DEVELOPMENT (ONTOGENY) 548 7.1. Developmental Theories 549 Summary 7.1 580 7.2. Curiosity and Play 580 Summary 7.2 593 7.3. The Development of Interpersonal Relationships 594 7.4. Child Groups—Child Culture 600 Summary 7.4 605 8 MAN AND HIS HABITAT: ECOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS 606 8.1. Ecotype Homo sapiens: Hominization and Behavior 607 Summary 8.1 616 8.2. From the Individualized Society to Industrial Society 616 Summary 8.2 628 8.3. On the Ethology of Settlement and Residence 629 Summary 8.3 648 vii 8.4. Social Order and Human Behavior 649 Summary 8.4 662 8.5. Concluding Thoughts 663 9 THE BEAUTIFUL AND TRUE: THE ETHOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTION TO AESTHETICS 664 9.1. Aesthetics and Fine Arts 665 Summary 9.1 673 9.2. Species-Specific Biases of Perception of Aesthetic Relevance 673 Summary 9.2 677 9.3. Art as Communication 677 Summary 9.3 685 9.4. Cultural Manifestations: An Observation on Style and Stylization 685 Summary 9.4 690 9.5. On the Ethology of Music, Dance, and Poetry 690 Summary 9.5 702 10 BIOLOGY'S CONTRIBUTION TO ETHICS 704 Summary 10 717 Conclusion 718 Bibliography 720 Film Publications 789 Author Index 805 Subject Index 824 viii Preface With the discovery of conditioned reflexes by I. P. Pavlov, the possibilities for experimenting, following the example set by the classical, exact sciences, were made available to the behavioral sciences. Many psychologists hoped that the component parts of behavior had also been found from which the entire, multi- faceted cosmos of behavior could then be constructed. An experimentally oriented psychology subsequently developed including the influential school of behaviorism. Motivated by pedagogical idealism, psychologists indulged in the hope that ed­ ucation could achieve every desired result. Among behaviorists, the Lockean conviction that humans come into the world with "clean slates" crystallized into a doctrine. It seems certain that this conceptual approach restricted research in­ terest. Although behaviorists carefully investigated the various aspects of learning behavior, and extracted some fundamental laws of learning, their theoretical fix­ ation prevented their perceiving other possible approaches. The possibility that some aspects of behavior might, through phylogenetic adaptation, be genetically programmed was not even considered. Anyone referring to a possible antecedent innate human nature was, until recently, dismissed as a biological determinist or reductionist. As late as the 1970s, the majority of behaviorists and sociologists viewed humans as primarily passive beings subject to the formative influences of their surroundings. It was believed that through rewards and punishments almost all human behavior could be "conditioned" (B. F. Skinner, 1938, 1971). Such an extreme environmentalist approach would consign all behavior to learning, relegate all power to the educators, and ultimately, legitimize them to establish behavior norms as well. Parallel to the development of behaviorism in psychology there developed in anthropology a pronounced cultural relativism (discussed critically by W. Rudolph, 1968) according to which culture is a construct on which the laws of biology have no influence. This school of thought is traceable to Franz Boas (1911, 1928, 1938) and its tenets must have reflected the spirit of the times since leading anthropologists acknowledged them (A. L. Kroeber, 1915; M. J. Her- skovits, 1950, among others). Margaret Mead can be regarded as one of the victims of this doctrinal teaching; she was so convinced of the relativism of cultures that she saw and recorded only that which fit those theories. Her reports on Samoa, so often cited, could not stand the test of critical review (D. Freeman, 1983). The decisive impetus for revising this extreme environmental approach came from behavioral biology (ethology). The work of Konrad Lorenz (1935, 1937, 1961) and Nikolaas Tinbergen (1948, 1951) clarified the notion of instinct, a concept which, until this time, was a philosophical speculation of the vitalists. There were, of course, exceptions, such as W. James (1890) who defined "instinct" in fairly modern terms, as capacities of organisms based on an innate neuronal organization. Lorenz and Tinbergen demonstrated that phylogenetic adaptations determine be­ havior in well-defined ways, and also voiced the opinion that comparable phy­ logenetic adaptations influence human behavior. By introducing the dimension of phylogeny into the science of behavior their work incorporated Charles Darwin's findings; behaviorists had apparently forgotten to consider the evolutionary aspects of behavior in their theories. About the same time that Lorenz formulated his theories, Erich von Hoist (1935, 1939) refuted the classical reflex theory, according to which all behavior is a re­ sponse to external stimuli. Ethologists can look back over the last decade with a certain sense of satis­ faction, for within a short span of 10 years, six biological researchers have received the Nobel Prize: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and Karl von Frisch in 1973 (as founders of ethology) and Roger W. Sperry, David Hubel, and Torsten Wiesel in 1981 (as pioneers of neuroethology).1 The discovery that even the behavior of higher vertebrates is preprogrammed in well-definable ways through phylogenetic adaptation has initiated a process of reconsideration in the human sciences, to date so heavily influenced by behav­ iorism. In 1971, R. Sperry wrote that the new discoveries on the self-organization of the nervous system up to the point of functional maturity has hardly been noticed in disciplines beyond the fields of biology and ethology. Currently, however, the biological approach is well acknowledged by most fields of science dealing with humans. Konrad Lorenz indicated in his earlier works that the findings of animal behavior research could contribute to the understanding of human behavior. He devoted a number of important chapters to human behavior in Die angeborenen Formen moglicher Erfahrung (1943) and in 1950 he designated as one of the most important objectives of ethology the testing of the hypotheses derived from the study of animal behavior through the study of human behavior.