Clara B. Jones, Ph.D.
Livingstone College
Community Conservation, Inc.
Natural Conflict Resolution (NCR), edited by F. Aureli and F.B.M. de Waal
(2000), is a handsomely crafted and creatively designed volume celebrating
the "heuristic" of reconciliation and documenting the rich database on the
topic from animal, including human, research. Reconciliation is defined in
this book as "post-conflict friendly reunion of former opponents that
restores their social relationship disturbed by the conflict" (p. 387)
and may be viewed as one category of non-damaging conflict-resolution
(Fagen, 1980; Maynard Smith & Price, 1973). The book is divided into five
parts: History; Controlling Aggression; Repairing the Damage; Triadic
Affairs; and, Ecological and Cultural Contexts. The volume begins with an
Introduction and ends with a Conclusion written by the editors providing a
synthetic framework for the varied topics and academic approaches of the
remaining 16 chapters. A notable feature of the present book is the
incorporation of one or more "boxes" for brief discussion and
review of special topics related to a chapter's main theme, a format
popularized by the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution. Because of
constraints on the length of this review, I will address only those issues
in Aureli and de Waal's 409 page book that I believe will advance the
reconciliation program and locate it within a neo-sociobiological paradigm.
If effected, terminology would be clarified and operations made tractable
to theoretical (mathematical) modeling, leading empirical research to focus
on those proximate and ultimate mechanisms that are a consequence of tactics
and strategies for inclusive fitness maximizing over time and space in
group-living organisms.
Aureli and de Waal's Introduction reveals the essentialist nature of the
book's assumptions. This essentialism takes five forms. First, the book
stands as a Festschrift to de Waal & van Roosmalen (1979) as if the
hermeneutics of reconciliation did not have a very long history indeed (see,
for example, Heinroth, 1911). Second, and related to the first point, most
of the papers in NCR are highly derivative and fail to cite critical work
upon which their interpretations, arguments, and findings rely. Preuschoft &
van Schaik's interesting contribution (pp. 77-105), Matsumura & Okamoto's
important discussion in Box 5.1 (p. 79), Watts, et al.'s probing chapter
(pp. 281-301), van Schaik & Aureli's helpful review (pp. 305-333), and
all of de Waal's writings are particularly notable for these oversights.
Among these missing citations are: Crook, 1970 a, b; Frank, 1996, 1998;
Zahavi, 1974, 1976, 1979; West-Eberhard, 1979, 1987; Wilson, 1971, 1975;
Chase, 1982; Parker, 1974; Horn, 1978; Maynard Smith, 1974; Schoener,
1971; Kelly, 1981; Markl, 1980; Jeanne, 1972; Trivers, 1985; and, McCleery,
1978. This list, in no particular order, is not exhaustive. It is
unfortunate that de Waal dismisses Maynard Smith & Price's (1973)
seminal paper demonstrating that it is to the mutual benefit of
interactants to resolve a conflict, an idea central to the assumptions
of NCR. Maynard Smith & Price also showed that damaging
conflict-resolution is expensive in energy while non-damaging conflict-
resolution (e.g., reconciliation) is expensive in time, a finding with
important implications for modeling and observing tactics and strategies
of reconciliation, for an understanding of the currencies used for
interindividual competition, and for the analysis of data on
interindividual interactions over time and space using methods of sequence
analysis and the resulting transition probabilities (see McCleery, 1978;
Chase, 1982; Jones, 1983; for an alternate approach, see Emlen & Wrege,
1994). These methods would permit the evaluation of pre-conflict, conflict,
and post-conflict events and their significance in units of benefit and
cost to the agents' survival and lifetime reproductive success. Further,
it is regrettable that de Waal dismisses classical ethology (see Tinbergen,
1952; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1970, pp. 330-331)and S. Freud (1950, quoted in Eibl
Eibesfeldt, 1970), a decision that is surprising given de Waal's continuous
use of the term "need" and its shades of meaning from the "hydraulic"
model of motivation upon which the early ethological and psychodynamic
work depended.
A third essentialist quality of NCR is its teleological thrust. Throughout
the book, reconciliation is said to result from a "need for cooperation" as
if the authors do not appreciate the idea that social behavior is a
"subterfuge" for ultimately selfish gain. Thus released from the constraints
and lessons of Williams (1966), a fourth essentialist idea surfaces
throughout NCR. The authors of the volume continually revert to group
selectionist logic (e.g., "...males establish close bonds in which
conflicts are minimized for the sake of group solidarity. They need to
maintain a united front in the face of competition with neighbors.", p. 305).
This is only one of many such examples. It is often true that individuals
of social species cannot maximize their selfish ends without assisting the
reproductiion of conspecifics; however, individuals of both sex may "decide"
to disperse (see Vehrencamp, 1983) when the ratio of reproductive benefits
to costs declines below some threshold value. This behavioral option
receives no attention in NCR with the exception of brief comments by Watts,
et al. (p. 284). A fifth essentialism also appears to afflict NCR. Social
behavior, especially cooperation, alliances, and, by extension, tactics and
strategies of reconciliation to repair relationships after damage or
potentially damaging conflict, is assumed to be an ideal form of association
and a goal to be maintained indefinitely. Relationships, however, terminate
not primarily because of the failure of mechanisms of reconciliation but
because it is in the interest of one or both parties to "switch" to
another strategy and to play another "game" (see West-Eberhard, 1987).
Individuals are continuously shopping for a more advantageous tradeoff.
The essentialist assumptions of the book appear to be a function of the
authors' enmeshment in the view that complex social phenomena such as
tactics and strategies of reconciliation cannot be explained in mechanistic
terms at the individual-level of analysis. While I believe with these
authors that reconciliation is a useful "heuristic", most of the chapters
in this volume provide evidence for the view that the logic of this field
within primatology is moving away from or, at best, not incorporating,
theoretical and empirical findings of "classic" and contemporary
evolutionary biology. The result is that NCR remains within a traditional
social scientific paradigm. De Waal (p. 25), for example, criticizes
Maynard Smith & Price (1973) for "explanations focused exclusively on the
physical risks of combat" without acknowledging that theoretical biologists
model events under conditions of "stringency" since, by definition, a
successful strategy is that which wins when conditions are at their worst.
One searches in vain in NCR for a thorough discussion of the costs of
relationships, alliances, or sociality (see, for example, Alexander, 1974;
Wilson, 1975; Vehrencamp, 1983; Frank, 1996, 1998; Jones, 2000), especially
among kin (see Perez-Tome & Toro, 1982). Another example is found on page
175: "...the parent is central in the life of the child, and hence every
conflict needs to be followed by repair in order to preserve a relationship
on which the youngster's survival and the parents' reproduction depend."
This statement overlooks theoretical treatments in biology and empirical
data in biology, psychology, and primatology (e.g., the "Bruce Effect")
describing when and under what conditions females may terminate their
investment in offspring, and when males may desert (see Trivers, 1972).
Indeed, individuals may terminate their investment at any stage of life,
in particular reproductive stages, if reproductive costs are too expensive
relative to benefits for a given fitness budget.
Petit & Thierry's contribution (Box 13.1, pp. 267-269) deserves special
attention because of its theoretical and methodological implications. These
authors discuss "impartial interventions in conflicts", defining an
impartial intervention as one in which the intervener "act[s] evenhandedly
toward both opponents" engaged in a dispute. Adopting group selectionist
terminology, one of their examples states that "...males break up fights
in order to eliminate social disruption, thus promoting group stability."
(p. 267). Petit & Thierry's analysis would gain power with the assumption
that the intervener is not impartial to his/her own intererests relative
to the disputants' and that (s)he acts for his/her own potential gain,
thus permitting an assessment of costs and benefits by optimality or game
theoretical modeling (see Frank, 1998) or sequence analysis. An evaluation
of impartial interventions may also be enhanced by acknowledging that two
individuals (the disputants) are never equivalent in their potential value
to a third party. The authors recognize the inherent difficulties in
measuring costs and benefits of the apparently impartial act. Indeed,
partial interventions may, in part, be attempts to assess the value of
each disputant to the intervener. Theory has shown, however, that
individuals will not expend energy for some resource that is not worth
expending energy for (i.e., that cannot be converted to offspring) (e.g.,
Parker, 1974). Thus, it seems valid to assume that the intervener is acting
in his/her self-interest. Further, Bradbury & Vehrencamp (1998, pg. 380,
Figure 12.12) provide a simple schema for determining how the relative costs
and benefits of communication can be interpreted as well as rules for coding
(Chapter 15, also see Chapters 19 through 21). Using these formulations for
interpretation, sequential analyses of interactions between and among the
three parties before, during, and after the dispute might be conducted to
determine the proximate and ultimate advantages and disadvantages from these
triadic interactions. Such studies from the field require longitudinal data
and multiple researchers observing concurrently or, in the laboratory, wide-
angle moving pictures. Based upon studies already completed, Petit & Thierry
report one of the most significant findings in the book: "Peaceful
interventions halt aggression more effectively than aggressive ones." (p. 268),
a conclusion verified in three non-human primate species to date.
A constructive critique of NCR would not be complete without reference to
de Waal and Aureli's concluding chapter. Though several issues might be
addressed, I wish to concentrate on two. First, these authors state
that: "[The study of conflict-resolution] breaks with a tradition in
evolutionary biology that looks at conflict as a zero-sum game, ignoring
the long-term investment both parties may have made in each other."
(p. 376). Consistent with Hutchinson & MacArthur's (1959; also see Wilson,
1975) discussion of "aggressive neglect" and Jones ' (1983; also see Jones,
1980, 1985) discussion of "social neglect", evolutionary games are
ultimately zero-sum because they reduce to what is ultimately in ego's
selfish interests. Games may only be non-zero-sum over the short term,
except in the sense that genotypic (and phenotypic) benefits obtain across
generations. Second, de Waal and Aureli state: "If there is any common
theme emerging from the contributions to this volume, it is that the cost
of conflict increases with increasing value of the relationship between
the contestants, a variable thus far ignored in evolutionary modeling...."
(p. 376). One is obligated to point out that the biological meaning of
this statement is one of the seminal points of Hamilton's (1964) classic
work but that the advantages of "valuable" relationships, with or without
kin, will be limited by the differential costs and benefits of the
relationship relative to the distribution, abundance, and quality of
limiting resources (see, for example, Perez-Tomo & Toro, 1982).
Despite my reservations about this book, Natural Conflict Resolution is
a significant contribution to the literature on primates and is a worthy
tribute to de Waal and others studying reconciliation. Peacemaking Among
Primates (de Waal, 1989) is one of the few academic works that has taken
my breath away upon first reading, and de Waal's ability to form a
representation of events and to communicate them in writing with an
almost photographic precision is a skill that few attain. He deserves
credit for having observed, identified, named, and documented
reconciliation, an important social phenomenon. Nonetheless, while de
Waal and his collaborators are responsible for elevating the study of
conflict-resolution to a prominent position within primatology and the
study of reconciliation to prominence within the field of animal behavior,
the study of conflict resolution has a long theoretical and empirical
tradition in economics, organizational psychology, political science, and
biology. It would be unfortunate if primatologists did not utilize the
existing databases from other disciplines in an attempt to understand
their own phenomena. Some questions for future research might be: Does
post-conflict behavior mitigate stress? Are the autonomic signals
received by the individual experiencing anxiety or stress reliable
signals? Is communication during reconciliation "honest"? What is the
variability of post-conflict responses relative to environmental
variation? What factors determine the stability of a relationship
(continuous or discontinuous interaction between and among individuals
relative to differing optima [see Brown, et al., 1997])? In what ways do
individuals in a relationship in a given condition in a given
environmental regime influence each other, affect other group members
("reproductive skew"), and modify group structure? How is the risk of
losing group membership related to relationship value? Is conflict and
its resolution best viewed along a continuum from damaging aggression
to non-damaging aggression? Natural Conflict Resolution generates these
and many other questions that will occupy students of primates for
years to come, and the book will be an excellent resource for upper-
level undergraduate and graduate courses.
Finally, many of the chapters in NCR imply that tactics and strategies
of reconciliation depend upon higher-order cognitive processes. Since
the primatologist must continuously guard against the occupational hazard
of overidentification with his/her subject, one of the most important
topics to test in future concerns the differential costs and benefits
of higher cognitive processes (relative to environmental conditions).
There may come a time when primatologists and psychologists speak of
cognitive "neglect" and cognitive costs as freely as they currently
speak of cognitive benefits. Costs from higher mental processes are
ikely to be a function of an increase in response variability and mean
error with increasing complexity.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Larry Jacobsen for giving me the opportunity to write
this review and to Bob Williams for a discussion of complex organization
as studied in the discipline of political science.
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Correspondence to: Clara B. Jones, Ph.D., Livingstone College,
Department of Psychology and Sociology, 701 W. Monroe Street, Salisbury,
NC 28147, U.S.A. Work phone: (704)216-6059; FAX: (704)216-6729;
E-mail: cjones@livingstone.edu; howler425@cs.com
URL: http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/review/NaturRev.html
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