Ethological explanations

    Cards (10)

    • Ethology is the study of animal behaviour in their natural environments.
    • Lorenz's view on aggression
      • The tendency to behave aggressively is innate but aggressive behaviour is being elicited by stimuli by the environment
      • It is a drive that needs to be satisfied, like food and drink, and buillds up until it is released
      • Aggression has survival value
      • Most animal encounters are ritualistic and do not become physical (snarling and showing teeth)
      • It is used to indicate status in a group, establish dominance and leads to power and resources such as territory or mating rights
    • Ritualistic aggression
      • a series of behaviour carried out in a set order
      • not all aggression involves fighting, some involves using threatening behaviour, for e.g. a wolf will show defeat to its victor by displaying its neck, which makes it useful as wolves have powerful tools such as their teeth
    • Innate releasing mechanisms
      • network of neurons in the brain (circuit)
      • they are activated when stimulated by the presence of a specific stimulus called a sign stimulus and produce a fixed action pattern for that stimulus, for e.g. a certain facial stimulus
    • Fixed action patterns
      • According to Niko Tinbergen, they are stereotyped behaviours that do not require learning.
      • Characteristics of fixed action patterns include, a sequence that occurs in the same way for a specific stimulus, they're innate (there is no learning involved) and they are ballistic (once triggered it runs its course)
    • Tinbergen showed FAPs by using Stickleback fish
      • they are territorial during spring mating season when they develop a red spot on their underbelly
      • if another male enters their territory, then their FAP is triggered
      • the sign stimulus is the sight of a red spot
      • a realistic shaped model did not provoke aggression as it did not have a red underbelly
      • all other models with a red spot provoked aggression
      • this study supports the FAP and their sequential nature
    • A problem for the idea of ritualised aggression is the killing of conspecifics (members of the same species) in some predator species is more systematic than accidental e.g. male lions will kill off the cubs of other males.
      These findings pose a challenge for the ethological explanation of aggression as they can cast doubt on the claim of animal aggression being ritualistic.
    • This criticism of killing members of the same species is backed up by Goodall (2010) who studied chimps in Tanzania in what was termed the four year war.
      Male chimps from one community went about systematically slaughtering chimps from another group. It was co-ordinated and premediated
    • A problem in generalising ethological evidence to humans is that Lorenz didn't study higher primates and Tinbergen's research didn't study the extreme destructive violence that's prevalent in humans. However, both generalised findings of aggressive behaviour to humans. A further problem of generalising ethological evidence to humans is that much of the animal aggression is more automatic than human. Humans use cognition to mediate the response to aggression.
    • Fixed action patterns are more flexible than ethologists claim. For e.g. cognition in humans can lead to avoidance rather than aggression is response to a stimulus. Thus human behaviour is more varied and less predictable.
      Even within the same species, people respond differently, which makes presence of an innate mechanism and a FAP unlikely.