Peacemaking among Primates

Frans B. M. de Waal, F. B. M. de Waal, Frans B. M. DE WAAL

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 1990
• Print ISBN: 9780674659216, 9780674659209
• eBook ISBN: 9780674253643
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Does biology condemn the human species to violence and war? Previous studies of animal behavior incline us to answer yes, but the message of this book is considerably more optimistic. Without denying our heritage of aggressive behavior, Frans de Waal describes powerful checks and balances in the makeup of our closest animal relatives, and in so doing he shows that to humans making peace is as natural as making war.

In this meticulously researched and absorbing account, we learn in detail how different types of simians cope with aggression, and how they make peace after fights. Chimpanzees, for instance, reconcile with a hug and a kiss, whereas rhesus monkeys groom the fur of former adversaries. By objectively examining the dynamics of primate social interactions, de Waal makes a convincing case that confrontation should not be viewed as a barrier to sociality but rather as an unavoidable element upon which social relationships can be built and strengthened through reconciliation.

The author examines five different species—chimpanzees, rhesus monkeys, stump-tailed monkeys, bonobos, and humans—and relates anecdotes, culled from exhaustive observations, that convey the intricacies and refinements of simian behavior. Each species utilizes its own unique peacemaking strategies. The bonobo, for example, is little known to science, and even less to the general public, but this rare ape maintains peace by means of sexual behavior divorced from reproductive functions; sex occurs in all possible combinations and positions whenever social tensions need to be resolved. "Make love, not war" could be the bonobo slogan.

De Waal's demonstration of reconciliation in both monkeys and apes strongly supports his thesis that forgiveness and peacemaking are widespread among nonhuman primates—an aspect of primate societies that should stimulate much needed work on human conflict resolution.

CHAPTER ONE

False Dichotomies

It is scientifically incorrect to say that in the course of human evolution there has been a selection for aggressive behavior more than for other kinds of behavior.

—“Seville Statement on Violence”

Mine is a policy of peace. It is founded not upon words, gestures, and mere paper transactions, but comes from an elevated national prestige and from a whole network of agreements and treaties which cement harmony between peoples.

—Benito Mussolini

Three unrelated dichotomies have dominated research on aggression. First, there is the classification of certain behaviors as desirable and others as undesirable. Second, over the past decade biologists have emphasized the individual at the expense of the social group. Simmel’s ideas concerning the role of conflict at the societal level have been overshadowed by the view that conflict merely serves the interests of the winning party. Finally, there is the distinction between studies on animals in their natural habitat and on those in captivity. Whereas some scientists regard field research as the only work that matters, others compare such research to an uncontrolled, inconclusive experiment. Each of these dichotomies has its usefulness, but in this chapter I will challenge them all. For I strongly believe in the complementarity of different concepts and approaches.

“Good” Aggression

Two village heads of the Eipo-Papuans were about to make their first trip in an airplane. They had helped build an airstrip in the inaccessible highlands of New Guinea, and in return were invited on the flight by Wulf Schiefenhovel, a German ethologist, who told me this story. The two Papuans, not at all afraid to board the plane, made a puzzling request; they wanted one side door to remain open. Wulf explained to them that it is cold up in the sky, and that they, being absolutely naked except for their traditional penis sheath, would freeze. The men answered that they did not care. Next, they expressed the desire to bring along a couple of heavy stones. “Why would you want to do that?” asked Wulf in astonishment. The reply was that if the pilot would be so kind as to circle over the enemy village, the men could shove the stones through the open door out of the plane. Obviously their request was not granted. At the end of the day the scientist could note in his diary that he had witnessed the invention of the bomb by neolithic man.

The mind of Homo sapiens evidently follows the same dark path everywhere. At the same time, most of us claim to be peaceloving. In order to understand this paradox, we need to make a distinction between in-group and out-group. All human societies distinguish between killing within their own community, an act that is judged and punished as murder, and killing outsiders, which is often seen as an act of bravery and a service to the community. The lack of inhibition described by Lorenz applies, as far as I can see, mainly to war and other forms of aggression between people of different communities. If this were not so, it would be difficult to explain the cohesiveness and complexity of human societies. A gang of uncontrolled killers would build a very different kind of society indeed. Such a society might fit George Myers’ description of cold-blooded terror in a school of piranhas: “The fishes swam slowly about, each keeping well away from its fellows and showing a plain desire not to have another directly behind it, where the neighbor could attack unseen. They reminded me of a set of ruthless gunmen, each with a pistol in his pocket and each quite mindful that all the rest were ready to use them at any moment.”

The evolution of safety measures against damaging aggression started with the care of offspring. Even crocodiles, archaic animals with powerful jaws, may be seen walking around with a mouthful of trusting youngsters, who look out from between their mother’s teeth like sightseers from a bus. The more complex the group life of animals becomes, the more remarkable the inhibitions that can be observed, not only toward kin but also toward unrelated members. Nonhuman primates are endowed with particularly highly developed checks on escalated fighting. Some of these are innate, others seem publicly enforced. Severe attacks by young adult males on females, for example, are often stopped by other members of the group. Older males have learned to control their aggression against females.

Similar social rules and acquired inhibitions play a role in human social life. If a woman hits her husband in public, this is not nearly as socially disturbing, except to the poor man himself, as when it occurs the other way around. In the first case we may think “What a temperament!” whereas in the second case we tend to think disapprovingly “What a brute!” I recall a Peanuts cartoon in which Lucy nastily smiles in Charlie’s face and challenges him: “You can’t hit me, Charlie Brown! I’m a girl!” Because of the difference in physical strength, lack of respect by men for women is a serious matter. In the privacy of our homes the fighting rules between the sexes do not always conform to the ideal, as is now increasingly evident. Male aggression may tip over into violent crime if the appropriate balancing mechanisms and social controls are lacking. Undoubtedly, the degree to which men are in charge of their anger depends very strongly on the education and example that they receive from society as boys.

The most direct way of avoiding escalation is via soothing remarks or body contact. Tension regulation by means of gentle touching, grooming, or embracing exploits the insatiable need for contact that is characteristic of the primate order. Lorenz studied primarily fish and birds, but have you ever tried to calm an upset fish or bird? When my tame jackdaws panic they do not want to be touched at all. Preening, especially of the neck feathers, does have a tranquilizing effect, but only after disappearance of the danger. Primates, in contrast, make body contact when upset and often relax after some grooming or hugging. Young monkeys are carried by their mother for nearly a year, and chimpanzee children for up to four years. It is not surprising, therefore, that they retain the need for contact comfort all their lives. Adult chimpanzees of twenty years or more still show the clasp reaction of infants, holding firmly onto each other and screaming in times of danger or of tense confrontations with rivals. Frightened soldiers at the front are said to act in the same way.

In a series of experiments William Mason was able to demonstrate that distress caused by pain can be neutralized if people take young chimpanzees in their arms. This sounds so logical that one wonders whether we needed experimental proof. But Mason’s investigation took place during a period in which human and animal behavior, at least in the United States, was explained entirely on the basis of simple reward and punishment schemes. There was no attention whatsoever to more basic needs. The most outspoken representative of the behaviorist school, B. F. Skinner, saw feelings as meaningless by-products of conditioning.

Strong mother-infant bonds, found in all mammals, were explained by the rewards derived from mother’s milk. According to behaviorists, that was all there was to it. Harry Harlow, founder of the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, refuted this simplistic explanation by showing that the need for contact is a crucial factor, perhaps even more fundamental than the need for milk. Motherless monkey infants were given the choice between a surrogate mother made of metal wire and provided with a milk nipple, and a “mother” without a nipple but covered with soft, warm cloth. The youngsters formed a bond with the second type of surrogate, spending the day on “her” and making only brief excursions to drink from mother number one.

Harlow’s pioneering exploration of what he termed the affectional system of rhesus monkeys has been and still is highly influential, although his conclusions have met with resistance. For some scientists it was hard to accept that monkeys may have feelings. In The Human Model (an exposition of the usefulness of humans as a model for monkey behavior!) Harlow and Mears describe the following strained meeting: “Harlow used the term ‘love’, at which the psychiatrist present countered with the word ‘proximity’. Harlow then shifted to the word ‘affection’, with the psychiatrist again countering with ‘proximity’. Harlow started to simmer, but relented when he realized that the closest the psychiatrist had probably ever come to love was proximity.”

An adolescent chimpanzee (right) seeks reassurance from her mother while watching a tense conflict in the community. (Yerkes Primate Center)

Among wild baboons grooming is the most common friendly contact. In addition to cleaning the fur, it has a calming effect, as evidenced by the relaxed posture of this adult female olive baboon enjoying the attentions of a juvenile. (Gilgil, Kenya)

Because primates, young and old, use contact for reassurance and reconciliation, the results of aggression are not always what we might expect. Dispersal, the spreading out of individuals over a given area, is often mentioned as the predominant effect of aggression. Some older textbooks even call this the function of aggressive behavior in animals. In primates, however, major fights are followed by a wave of grooming and other friendly contacts among the members of a group. It is conceivable that with such mechanisms in operation, mild antagonism does not disturb bonds, but actually makes them stronger. Of course, aggression by itself cannot have such an effect; it first requires attraction or interdependency between the individuals.

Male hamadryas baboons enforce the unity of their harem by biting females who attempt to stray in the nape of the neck. This is followed by a “reflected escape”; instead of running away from the male, which would be the most logical response, the female runs toward him and resumes her position nearby. There is also evidence that the attachment of an infant monkey to its mother is strengthened by maternal punishment and rejection. Further, there are theories about the reinforcing effects of status-related aggression. These theories emphasize the enormous amount of attention paid to the rulers of the group, by making them either the center of visual attention, or the focus of fur cleaning by subordinates. In the same vein, it is said of dogs that they lick the hand that beats them. Obviously, this can only be true of a species with a strong sense of hierarchy. Never expect it of your cat!

If we look for a human analogue of the use of aggression in bonding, a pertinent example is initiation procedures. As a young university student I myself underwent all the jokes and humiliations, including the shaving of my hair, deemed necessary for the joining of a fraternity. In those days being initiated was not entirely risk free; injuries, even death, were known to result. In this case, too, attraction is a prerequisite. Ridicule and hostility are unlikely to have any bonding effect on newcomers who have no wish to join the club. It is only in combination with desire that harsh treatment can serve both to test the new members and to strengthen their attraction and loyalty. The fact that painful initiation rituals are known from a great variety of human cultures makes it unlikely that the psychological mechanisms involved in this peculiar bonding process are an independent invention of each society.

In very global terms, then (we lack the knowledge to be more precise), it seems that aggression is often so well integrated into otherwise positive relationships that it begins to contribute to their strength. Aggressive behavior has its dangers and needs to be contained, yet it also serves to achieve solutions and compromises when there are conflicts of interest. In the absence of possibilities for open disagreement, individuals might drift apart or become insecure about one another’s intentions. Aggression and subsequent appeasement, as we are learning, have an intensifying effect on relationships so that, paradoxically, some forms of abuse may tighten the social bond. In psychiatry, ambivalent but powerful attachments resulting from sexual or child abuse are not unknown.

One outdated theory suggests that anger and murderous tendencies are like water accumulating in a reservoir behind a dam. According to this “hydraulic” or “ventilationist” model, the discharge of bad feelings is both spontaneous and inevitable. I rather prefer the metaphor of aggression as fire. A pilot flame is burning in all of us, and we make use of it as the situation demands. Not in an entirely rational and conscious way, but not blindly either, as if we have to get rid of stored energy. And when things get out of control, which they regularly do, we do not exclaim that fire in itself is malevolent. We realize that it is indispensable.

The taming of fire was one of the landmarks of human history. The taming of aggression must have occurred long before that. One of the indications that primates are better at conflict management than many other animals, including the rats with which Lorenz compared us, comes from recent research on the effects of crowding. When large numbers are kept in small living spaces, rats are known to kill and even devour one another. Similar experiments with monkeys have produced much less dramatic effects. The most detailed study to date, by Michael McGuire and coworkers, compared groups of free-ranging ver-vet monkeys with groups kept in enclosures of different sizes. Nothing remotely resembling the bloodbath among rats occurred even under the most crowded conditions. Instead, as their living space was reduced, the vervet monkeys paid less attention to their groupmates. They looked in every direction (the sky, the ground, the outside environment) except at each other, as if they were trying to reduce the social input. This is an effective way to bypass irritation and friction, comparable to subway passengers avoiding eye contact by staring out of the windows into the darkness.

The only study of crowding in apes indicates that they go one step further than the monkeys; they actively reduce social tensions. The large colony of chimpanzees of Arnhem Zoo spends the winters in a heated hall twenty times smaller than their enormous outside enclosure. By comparing their behavior during outdoor and indoor periods, Kees Nieuwenhuijsen and I found that the increase in aggressiveness under the crowded conditions was surprisingly small. Since we also found that they groomed one another more in the hall, and that they exchanged many more appeasing greeting gestures, we speculated that these behaviors were used to minimize hostilities.

The same link between strained relationships and an intensification of contact could be observed during power takeovers among the adult males dominating the colony. Status contests always started during outdoor periods, presumably because indoors there are fewer escape opportunities—a situation that makes the challenging of an established leader very risky indeed. The extremely tense months during which status reversals are decided can easily be recognized in our graphs of the rate of grooming behavior; males never groom as much as when their position is at stake. Moreover, the maximum activity occurs between the two principal rivals. Here too we see primates coping with antagonism rather than allowing it to destroy their relationships.

“Bad” Peace

There are hundreds of definitions of aggression in the scientific literature. In English the term has a remarkably broad meaning, including such usage as “an aggressive radio reporter” or “an aggressive piano concert.” Even when restricted to physical abuse or the threat of it, the term means different things to different people. Many scientists classify aggression as antisocial behavior; I am not so sure, in view of the way it is embedded in powerful buffering mechanisms that mitigate its effects.

With the word “peace” we have the opposite problem. People invariably regard peace and reconciliation as desirable goals. I intend to use some human examples to demonstrate that the word “peace” can be just as deceptive as the word “aggression.” The connotations and moral values attached to these words coax us into false dichotomies, whereas in real life we rarely meet pure forms. In the absence of adequate information about human peacemaking at the personal level, I draw my examples from the only domain in which the topic is regularly discussed: international politics.

Whereas peace, generally speaking, may be good, the crucial question is good for whom? The Pax Romana must have been a blessing for the Romans, but could the same be said for all the subjects of their empire? Everybody wants peace on their own terms. That is why peaceful relationships can become unbearable for one of the parties, and why war and revolution can be seen as means to change the conditions of peace. Even the Norwegian Nobel Committee was confused by this phenomenon. While it is evident that Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement, rather than promoting harmony, was threatening the status quo in Poland, he nevertheless received the 1983 Peace Prize. In Western eyes the movement stood for a just cause; hence the curious interpretation of revolt as a peace effort.

Conor Cruise O’Brien, former editor of the Observer, relates how, in the fifties, a draft resolution for the United Nations required the approval of a Tibetan counselor of the Dalai Lama. The draft included the word “victory.” The counselor objected to so gross a word on the grounds that his people adhered to a religion of peace. Cruise O’Brien asked whether Buddhists get involved in conflicts, and how they would describe a state of affairs which their side won. “We do have words for that,” the counselor answered, “...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• 1 False Dichotomies
• 2 Chimpanzees
• 3 Rhesus Monkeys
• 4 Stump-Tailed Monkeys
• 5 Bonobos
• 6 Humans
• Bibliography
• Index