Suchergebnisse

Because the literature on the biological bases of human conflict deals nearly as much with extrascientific issues as with the purely scientific issues reviewed previously in these pages, the present review directly examines the former to illustrate the social and political context within which the scientific controversy must be understood. The discussion centers on three principal themes: (a) the distinction and often divergence between scientific knowledge and its public uses; (b) the highly selective and often partisan uses to which particular kinds of scientific knowledge about human behavior can be put; and (c) the necessity for scientists to understand the ways in which, and the reasons for which, scientific knowledge can be used in the public arena. It is concluded that safeguards must be instituted to minimize abuses of the biological approaches, and that future research on human aggression should continue to focus predominantly on structural-environmental causes.

Biologically oriented approaches to the study of human conflict have thus far been limited largely to the study of aggression. A sample of the literature on this topic is reviewed, drawing upon four major approaches: comparative psychology, ethology (including some popularized accounts), evolutionary-based theories, and several areas of human physiology. More sophisticated relationships between so-called "innate" and "acquired" determinants of behavior are discussed, along with the proper relevance of animal behavior studies for human behavior. Unless contained in a comprehensive theory which includes social and psychological variables, biolog ically oriented theories (although often valid within their domain) offer at best severely limited and at worst highly misleading explanations of complex social conflicts. The review concludes with a list of several positive contributions of these biological approaches and suggests that social scientists must become more knowledgeable about them.