Sociobiological perspectives on human conflict, aggression, and cultural violence

Sociobiology

What are the central themes in the socio-biological study of conflict? Sociobiology is a field of scientific study that holds the basic premise that social behavior resulted from evolutionary pressures and the biology of the organism, thus explaining behavior within that context. Arguing that just as natural selection involved organisms evolving based on the useful traits that provided more opportunities to mate and survive, the same is true for genetic evolution of advantages in social behavior. Thus, behaviors that are exibited within organisms are passed (inherited) from generation to generation. Within this theoretical construct, conflict (or selfish genes) behaviors allow some organisms to be more aggressive, or more selfish, and thus outlast other, conceivably weaker, genes and fail to reproduce at the same level as those that are aggressive (Wenseleers and Ratnieks, 2006).

To what extends can sociological accounts explain the occurance of violence, what are the limitations? For human populations, violence is an expression of some type of force against one or a group of individuals. This may be individual against individual, group against group, or in sociology, society against or as a victim of violent behavior. Violence is a matter of perception, as well as empirically measured activities. Some sociologists tend to think of human violence as inherent, but not inevitable, often based on the violent male ape image (the idea of primitive bands having an aggressive alpha male as a protector). For sociologists, violence is likely inherited, but then accentuated by additional environmental pressures are concerns. Limitations of this theory are the failure to recognize that as cognitive beings, there is a choice made regarding violent behvior, or even setting up the predispositional factors that perpetuate violence (Wrangham and Peterson, 1996).

Is aggression an innate aspect of human nature? Much of the human idea of "human nature" is based on the assumption that humans are born with aggressive instincts. This may be true from a strictly biological tendency paradigm in that early humans likely had to fight for food, dominance, and to survive. However, modern humans have a large cerebral cortex, which allows for reasoning, creatitivy, emptahy, compassion and the formation of culture. Societies then, can control and choose whether to be hyper aggressive or hyper passive -- or something in between. A number of sociological and anthropological studies now believe it was the proto human ability to cooperate, not compete, that led to the eventual formation of society and culture (Baumeister and Bushman, 2009).