ethological explanation

• What is ethology?

  Lorenz states that ethology is the study of animals in their natural environment and within the context of evolutionary theory, humans are therefore, complex animals.
• Ethnological explanation


  Ethological explanations of aggression see aggression as adaptive meaning essential for survival.

  Not all aggressive behaviour involves fighting and may be ritualised in the form of threat displays. These displays of threat enable individuals to assess their relative strength before deciding to escalate a conflict and therefore costly and dangerous physical behaviour is less likely to occur as

  "opponents" will often back down. Examples include Gorillas who use a variety of vocalisations (such as hooting) and gestures (such as chest pounding) to intimidate an opponent without physical contact.
• Gardner and Heider (1968)


  Anthropologists who discovered evidence of ritualised fighting in humans.

  They described how the Dani of New Guinea engaged in ritualised patterns of intergroup hostility. This supports the idea that ethology can be used as an explanation for human aggression.
• What is an innate releasing mechanism?

  An innate releasing mechanism is a biological structure or process that is triggered by an environmental stimulus and sets off a fixed action pattern.

  for example, a certain facial expression
• What is a fixed action pattern?

  A fixed action pattern is a specific sequence of behaviours that is released by an innate releasing mechanism.

  An example of a FAP is the male stickleback fish.

  This species of fish is very territorial and aggressive. In the mating season they develop a red spot on their underside and male sticklebacks will attack another male stickleback that enters their territory. The red spot (a sign of breeding condition) on their underside acts as an innate releasing mechanism and when one stickleback observes another stickleback with this red spot it will trigger the aggressive attack behaviour which is an example of a fixed action pattern.

  According to Lea, FAP have 5 following features
• 5 features of FAPs

  1. Stereotyped - behaviour follows a certain pattern each time

  2. Universal - all the animals in that species act in the same way

  3. Innate - all born with it

  4. Ballistic - once it starts it cannot be stopped

  5. Specific triggers seem to set it off
• Tinbergen AO3 - support


  FAPs are seen in Tinbergen's (1951) study on stickleback fish where he introduced differently shaped models to a male stickleback, who only reacted aggressively when triggered by a red spot stimulus, no matter the shape of the model.
• Sackett (1966) - AO3 strength


  Researched old World vipers and New World pit vipers to show that fixed action patterns occur in reptilian species. When they have bitten their prey, both lizards and snakes use a chemical signal to help them locate the body later. This means that the aggressive or hunting act is always of use to them for survival and provides food, which supports the fact that it is innate and evolutionary adaptive.
• Limitations of ethological explanation

  It is not valid to make generalisations from animal to human aggression without evidence. Lorenz and Tinbergen assumed that the behaviour they had observed in birds and fish must also be typical of humans.

  
  

  alternative explanations e.g. SLT - aggression learnt via observations of models