Natural Conflict Resolution / Edition 1

by Filippo Aureli

Overview

Aggression and competition are customarily presented as the natural state of affairs in both human society and the animal kingdom. Yet, as this book shows, our species relies heavily on cooperation for survival as do many others—from wolves and dolphins to monkeys and apes. A distinguished group of fifty-two authors, including many of the world's leading experts on human and animal behavior, review evidence from multiple disciplines on natural conflict resolution, making the case that reconciliation and compromise are as much a part of our heritage as is waging war.

Chimpanzees kiss and embrace after a fight. Children will appeal to fairness when fighting over a toy. Spotted hyenas, usually thought to be a particularly aggressive species, use reconciliation to restore damaged relationships. As these studies show, there are sound evolutionary reasons for these peacekeeping tendencies. This book also addresses the cultural, ecological, cognitive, emotional, and moral perspectives of conflict resolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520223462
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	08/07/2000
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.12(d)
Lexile:	1400L (what's this?)

About the Author

Filippo Aureli is Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological and Earth Sciences at the Liverpool John Moores University, and Collaborative Scientist in the Psychobiology Division of the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center of Emory University. Frans B. M. de Waal is C.H. Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Psychology Department of Emory University, and Director of Living Links at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center. He is the author of Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape (California, 1997), among other books.

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NATURAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION

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University of California

Copyright © 2000 Regents of the University of California
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-520-22346-2

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Chapter One

Why Natural Conflict Resolution?

The reason we customarily speak of the need for cooperation and the potential for conflict is because the former is desirable whereas the latter is inevitable. Whether the units are people, animals, groups, or nations, as soon as several units together try to accomplish something, there is a need to overcome competition and set aside differences. The problem of a harmonization of goals and reduction of competition for the sake of larger objectives is universal, and the processes that serve to accomplish this may be universal too. These dynamics are present to different degrees among the employees within a corporation, the members of a small band of hunter-gatherers, or the individuals in a lion pride. In all cases, mechanisms for the regulation of conflict should be in place.

It is sufficient to reflect on our everyday life to find examples. We employ various "rituals," such as handshaking or verbal apology, on a regular basis to prevent or mitigate conflicts. We have developed social rules to regulate interactions within a community and legal procedures to solve disputes when the individuals in conflict are not able to find an agreement by themselves. We are so concerned about the disruptive consequences of conflict that we celebrate its resolution at various levels: within our family, community, and nation and at the international level. Conflict resolution, like conflict and cooperation, appears to be a natural phenomenon. We should then find similarities in its expression and procedures across cultures and species.

During the past two decades we have witnessed a change in interests across disciplines from competition, aggression, and war to cooperation, peace, and conflict resolution. For example, there has been recognition that peace is more than the absence of war and that conciliatory reunions between former opponents play a key role in animal societies. Interest in spontaneous forms of conflict resolution has also increased among developmental psychologists, cultural anthropologists, and political scientists, and the legal system has recently emphasized conciliatory alternatives to the more traditional forms of litigation.

This growing interest in the mechanisms of dealing with conflict requires some explanation. We would like to address this issue in two ways. The first focuses on why natural mechanisms for conflict resolution and conflict management exist. The second follows from the first and explains how we decided to put this volume together and to provide views from various disciplines on the convergent trend toward the study of conflict resolution.

Why Natural Conflict Resolution Exists

Natural history teaches us that when individuals live in a group they gain benefits from the presence of others and from active cooperation in locating food, rearing offspring, or detecting predators. These basic functions are of paramount importance for the survival of the members of the group, whether they are ants, birds, or human hunter-gatherers. In modern societies, cooperation may be expressed in more complex ways (e.g., the cooperative fine-tuning of the LINUX operating system by computer experts at different locations on the globe via the Internet), but the underlying functions are still related to improved survival in a given environment.

Group life also entails costs. Living in close proximity to members of the same species implies the simultaneous exploitation of resources; under these conditions competition is likely. These conditions are easily encountered by various species in their natural environments as well as in various settings of modern human societies. More indirect costs result when group members are obliged to coordinate their activities in order to remain together. This may lead to clashes of interests when individuals of different age, sex, dominance rank, and reproductive condition differ in their needs and, accordingly, would like to follow different courses of action. For instance, in macaques the feeding requirements differ between males and females, and the presence of females with young infants tends to slow down group movement (e.g., van Schaik & van Noordwijk 1986). Accordingly, group members have conflicts over when and where to carry out important activities and over travel decisions (Menzel 1993; Boinski in press). Similarly, scheduling conflicts are a daily occurrence among family members in our societies.

In order to maintain the benefits of group living, individuals need to reduce its costs by mitigating competition and solving conflicts of interest. It follows that mechanisms of conflict management are a critical component of the social life of any group-living species. Natural selection should have favored the expression of the mechanisms best fitting the social organization of each species. This does not imply that these mechanisms are strictly genetically based; in fact, there is ample evidence for learnability and flexibility of expression, as reported in several contributions in the present volume. According to evolutionary theory, it is logical to expect conflict management mechanisms as natural phenomena that function in maintaining the integrity of groups and the associated benefits to each group member.

A balance between costs and benefits is a universal feature of stable social relationships: we would argue that major imbalances threaten the stability. Consequently, so long as an individual is interested in maintaining a cooperative bond, he or she should ensure that the cost-benefit balance for the partner does not tip to the negative side. This implies that whenever a conflict of interest between partners arises, both partners have an interest in constraining exploitation of the other, so as to keep their balances positive. When competing for a resource, group members should therefore take into account not only the value of the resource or the risk of injury but the value of their relationships as well (de Waal 1989a).

Aggression is not a negative social force per se (de Waal 1996). Traditionally, psychologists, social scientists, and evolutionary biologists have presented aggression as an antisocial behavior. The new perspective on conflict management views aggression as an instrument of negotiation between partners. To exchange services and favors or to combine their efforts in cooperative actions, partners need to communicate their relative positions and clarify potential conflicts. Overt expression and especially the threat of aggression (e.g., in the form of punishment) are powerful tools during the bargaining process between partners. Considering the mechanisms for its control and the mitigation of negative repercussions, aggression becomes a well-integrated component of social relationships.

The critical role played by the mechanisms for the control of aggressive expression and conflict resolution explains why they have been readily found in animal societies once researchers started to look for them. We know, of course, that the same mechanisms exist in our own species, and in fact the terminology employed in animal studies borrows heavily from concepts traditionally applied to human social relationships. The beginnings of conflict management skills are present at an early stage in human children, and cross-cultural comparisons indicate the universality of these skills. The recent emphasis on alternative techniques for dispute resolution in the legal system is strongly based on the revival of natural forms of dealing with interpersonal conflict. Even the least spontaneous forms of conflict resolution, such as the mediation of international conflict, are based on the natural foundations of the phenomenon, that is, interpersonal relationships. In sum, conflict among monkeys, people, and even entire groups or nations follows a certain dynamic that is universal, and so is its resolution.

Why a Book on Natural Conflict Resolution?

Both of us have been trained as ethologists-that is, biologists studying animal behavior-and we have mainly studied nonhuman primates. The history of this volume necessarily is influenced by our background and by the perspectives on conflict and its regulation that we have developed in the course of the years. If scientists from other disciplines were to put together an analogous volume, the starting point would certainly have been different, but the end product might be rather similar. Our background and experience with animals have made us appreciate the natural bases of the various human expressions of conflict management and consequently stimulated an interest in the common ground across disciplines. The convergence among various disciplines on the theme of conflict resolution is so compelling that we cannot imagine delivering a different final product at this empirical and theoretical stage, even though the species selection is obviously biased.

Some animal societies, such as eusocial insects, are characterized by great genetic similarity among group members and have apparently little conflict. The conflicts of interest are mitigated at the genetic level and are not as individualized as in human societies. In any society, conflicts of interest certainly have evolutionary bases, and much has been theorized, for instance, on the conflicts of interest between parents and offspring (Trivers 1974; Bateson 1994) or between breeding individuals of the opposite sex (Trivers 1972; Gowaty 1996). Those conflicts often manifest themselves at the behavioral level, and this is the level at which our volume deals with conflict. Our perspective provides a complementary view to the more theoretical approach to conflict (cf. Godfray 1995) by focusing on the behavioral expressions of everyday conflicts and the mechanisms that individuals use to regulate them.

To follow the history behind this volume, we need to go back to the late 1970s when the first ethological study focusing specifically on conflict resolution was conducted on captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) by de Waal & van Roosmalen (1979). After this study, many researchers from different backgrounds began to examine various aspects of animal conflict resolution. The behavior that has been most extensively studied is reconciliation, that is, a friendly reunion between former opponents soon after an aggressive conflict. Most of this research has focused on nonhuman primates; 27 species have been studied so far, and post-conflict reunions have been found in the vast majority of the studies (Appendix A). Only recently has systematic research started to focus on post-conflict reunions in other animals (see below). Figure 1.1 shows the rapid increase of publications focusing on these reunions in nonhuman primates in the past two decades. From the virtual absence of systematic studies before 1979, we have witnessed a slow but steady increase of publications in the 1980s and a substantial production in the 1990s.

The increase of interest in conflict resolution has not been limited to primatologists. In fact, primatological studies have stimulated similar research on other taxonomic groups. In 1994, during a plenary lecture of the XXXI Meeting of the Animal Behavior Society, in Seattle, Thelma Rowell concluded that the major contribution of primatology to the general field of animal behavior over the past decades has been the study of reconciliation. The Reconciliation Study Group was formed in 1994 and consists of members from various disciplines and from many countries covering five continents. The group has organized several roundtables and workshops and has its own Internet discussion network and home page. Through discussion sponsored by this group and direct contacts between scientists, the approach and methodology used in studies of nonhuman primates crossed the taxonomic and discipline traditional boundaries. This fruitful exchange has led to research on post-conflict resolution mechanisms in species other than primates and in children (some of the products of this research are included in this volume).

In the past few years, scholars from different disciplines have found one another despite quite different perspectives because of the common interest in problems related to conflict management. Various plenary lectures and symposia at meetings of anthropological and psychological associations and other interdisciplinary initiatives have included speakers on conflict resolution in nonhuman primates. Religious foundations and primatologists have joined forces in the study of the origins of "forgiveness." The Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research has been instrumental in helping biologists interested in conflict resolution and lawyers realize the similarity in recent trends within their disciplines toward more emphasis on cooperation and peaceful resolution.

Interdisciplinary forums have provided, and will continue to provide, opportunities for useful exchanges of methodological and theoretical issues. Ethological observations of naturally occurring behavior typical of animal research on conflict resolution can be applied in other settings, such as children's playgrounds, cross-cultural studies, and even mediation sessions. Noninvasive, carefully designed experiments that had provided pivotal information about the functions and the rules of post-conflict behavior in nonhuman primates (Cords 1994) can be revealing for the study of the basis of human conflict resolution skills. Emphasis on the role of personality and individual differences in psychology can bring useful insight to research on animal conflict regulation. Similarly, concepts such as attachment and separation (Bowlby 1969), so central in developmental and social psychology, appear to share unexplored similarities with aggressive conflict and post-conflict reunions in nonhuman primates. Primatologists and other students of animal behavior would benefit from learning more about these psychological concepts.

Based on current knowledge, similarities across disciplines are already emerging. One of them is especially interesting. The quality of social relationships plays a key role in the occurrence of conflict resolution not only among nonhuman primates (de Waal & Aureli 1997). As reported by several contributions in this volume, relationship quality also has important theoretical and practical implications in the regulation of conflict among children, in conflict intervention in various cultures, and in mediation processes at various levels including international conflict. Such similarities suggest that contributions from all disciplines (i.e.,

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Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Why Natural Conflict Resolution? Filipo Aureli and Frans B. M. de Waal

Part 1 - History
Introduction
2. The First Kiss: Foundations of Conflict Resolution Research in Animals Frans B. M. de Waal
Methodological Progress in Post-Conflict Research Hans C. Veenema
3. Conflict Management in Children and Adolescents Peter Verbeek, Willard W. Hartup, and W. Andrew Collins
4. Law, Love and Reconciliation: Searching for Natural Conflict Resolution in Homo Sapiens
Douglas H. Yarn
Interpersonal Dynamics in International Conflict Mediation Joyce Neu

Part 2 - Controlling Aggression
Introduction
5. Dominance and Communication: Conflict Management in Various Social Settings Signe Preuschoft and Carel P. van Schaik
Conflict, Social Costs, and Game Theory Shuichi Matsumura and Kyoko Okamoto
The Use of Infants to Buffer Male Agression Jutto Kuester and Andreas Paul
Greeting Ceremonies in Babboons and Hyenas Fernando Colmenares, Heribert Hofer, and Marion L. East
6. Covariation of Conflict Management Patterns across Macaque Species Bernard Thierry
Physiological Correlates of Individual Dominance Style Robert Sapolsky
7. Coping with Crowded Conditions Peter G. Judge
Conflict Prevention before Feeding Nicola F. Koyama
8. The Peacefulness of Cooperatively Breeding Primates Colleen M. Schaffner and Nancy G. Caine

Part 3 - Repairing the Damage
Introduction
9. Reconciliation and Relationship Qualities Marina Cords
The Function of Peaceful Post-Conflict Interactions: An Alternate View Joan B. Silk
Distance Regulation in Macaques: A Form of Implicit Reconciliation? Josep Call
10. The Role of Emotion in Conflict and Conflict Resolution Fillipo Aureli and Darlene Smucny
Vocal Reconciliation by Free-Ranging Baboons Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth
The Development of Reconciliation in Brown Capuchins Ann Ch. Weaver and Frans B. M. de Waal
11. Beyond the Primates: Expanding the Reconciliation Horizon Gabriel Schino
The Ethological Approach Precluded Recognition of Reconciliation Thelma E. Rowell
Peaceful Conflict Resolution in the Sea? Amy Samuels and Cindy Flaherty
Conflict Management in Female-Dominated Spotted Hyenas Heribert Hofer and Marion East
12. A Multicultural View of Peacemaking among Young Children Marina Butovskaya, Peter Verbeek, Thomas Ljungberg, and Antonella Lunardini
Post-Tantrum Affiliation with Parents: The Ontogeny of Reconciliation Michael Potegal

Part 4 - Triadic Affairs
Introduction
13. Conflict Management via Third Parties: Post-Conflict Affiliation of the Aggressor Marjolijn Das
Do Impartial Interventions in Conflicts Occur in Monkeys and Apes? Odile Petit and Bernard Thierry
14. Redirection, Consolation, and Male Policing: How Targets of Aggression Interact with Bystanders David P. Watts, Fernando Colmenares, and Kate Arnold
Triadic versus Dyadic Resolutions: Cognitive Implications Duncan L. Castles

Part 5 - Ecological and Cultural Contexts
Introduction
15. The Natural History of Valuable Relationships in Primates Carel P. van Schaik and Filippo Aureli
Prescription for Peacefulness Karen B. Strier, Dennison S. Carvalho, and Nilcemar O. Bejar
Divergent Social Patterns in Two Primitive Primates Michael E. Pereira and Peter M. Kappeler
16. Conflict Management in Cross-Cultural Perspective Douglas P. Fry
17. The Evolution and Development of Morality Melanie Killen and Frances B. M. de Waal
Forgiveness across Cultures Seung-Ryong Park and Robert D. Enright

Conclusion
18. Shared Principles and Unanswered Questions Frans de Waal and Fillipo Aureli

Appendixes
Appendix A. The Occurrence of Reconciliation in Nonhuman Primates
Appendix B. Key Terms Used in the Volume
Contributors
Index