Wild to Civilized
Friendship:
Together with Some,
Apart from Others
From small nomadic packs
in the African wilderness . . .
Interpersonal movements that combine both flocking and fighting to create lifelong bonds of friendship. Friendship leads to small nomadic packs as its group formation.
. . . to megacities linked in
a global industrial civilization
This page is Lenore's original draft from her doctoral dissertation, written around 1970. It is not always easy reading and will be edited for a general readership.
Friendship
Because the direction of their social responses are identical no matter where they encounter a conspecific, flocking individuals stay together without maintaining fixed positions vis-a-vis one another. Because the direction of their social responses varies with the geographic location of any encounter, territorial fighters maintain fixed positions vis-à-vis one another without staying together. Their fixed positions, however, stem from each fighter's attachment to his particular, personal territory and not from the motivational forces that fighting individuals arouse in one another. Like flocking individuals, territorial neighbors are, as individuals, entirely substitutable for one another. Rather than distinguishing between whole objects, then, flocking and fighting individuals distinguish their conspecifics' front from their backs, responding with motivational energy of opposing direction to each side. The direction of their social response depends, among other things, upon whether they see a front or a back, not upon which front or back they see.
If, besides staying together, individuals are not substitutable for one another and maintain fixed positions relative to one another, their social responses must be organized differently. When two particular objects remain together, they may no longer differentiate exclusively between the different sides of an object; they must discriminate between whole objects. To discriminate between, or "recognize," whole objects requires learning which fronts are connected to which backs. To know which front goes with which back simultaneously includes the capacity to differentiate the Front that goes with The Back from those fronts which do NOT go with The Back -- and to differentiate The Back that goes with The Front from those backs which do NOT go with The Front. All sides of one object, not the same sides of several objects, will arouse identical motivational energy.
"…We must learn about an object by examining it on all sides. As an adult familiar with a particular ashtray, if I should see it lying bottom side up, I should know that it was not a new thing but the same old ashtray -- turned over. This sense of an identity preserved across changes of appearance depends…on knowledge of certain reversible operations. The turning-over that has exposed the nether surface can be reversed to restore the upper surface…" [1]
Since flocking individuals all move in one direction, the reversible operations necessary for learning which of their conspecifics backs go with which fronts -- a pre-requisite for recognizing the identities of individuals -- do not occur. The stimuli emitted to one another by individuals who have established relations of dominance and submission, however, differ depending upon each individual's spatial location. In his own home territory, the individual responds to his conspecifics with "aggression" -- displaying to them his frontquarters. In strange and unfamiliar territory, the same individual responds to his conspecifics with "fearful" flocking -- displaying to them his rearquarters. Because the interaction between two such animals involves a sequence of "reversible operations," aggression and territoriality pave the way for the establishment of personal bonds of love and friendship.
"…there are animals totally devoid of aggression which keep together for life in firmly united flocks. One would think that such animals would be predestined to develop permanent friendships and brotherly unions of individuals, and yet these characteristics are never found among such peaceable herd creatures; their association is always entirely anonymous. A personal bond, an individual friendship, is found only in animal with highly developed intra-specific aggression; in fact, this bond is the firmer, the more aggressive the particular animal and species is…Proverbially the most aggressive of all mammals, Dante's bestia senza pace, the wolf, is the most faithful of friends. Some animals are alternately territorial and aggressive, and nonassertive and social, according to season, and in these species every personal bond is limited to the period of aggressiveness." [2]
Establishing Personal Bonds: The Fight That Never Ends
Establishing a bond of friendship between two individuals begins with the reversible operation Konrad Lorenz describes as an "oscillation" - see Figure F8 - when two territorial neighbors chase each other repeatedly back and forth across their common territorial boundary. Among cichlid fish, friendship-formation begins when adult males acquire a geographic territory and furiously defend it against the first advances of their potential mates. Lorenz describes the nerve-wracking experiences: "Again and again they are close to starting a vicious fight, again and again the ominous flare-up of the aggressive drive is only just inhibited and murder side-stepped by a hair."[3] Individual a, enraged by b's intrusion into his territory, chases b away; now b, enraged by a's intrusion into her territory, chases a away. Each neighbor's response to the other varies markedly, depending upon the geographic context in which each's perception of the other is embedded -- "…as though the location A were an attribute of the object rather than one of the infinitely numerous spatial loci it might occupy."[4]
Two neighbors reciprocal chasing behavior across their common territorial boundary repeatedly associates the view of both sides of each individual with two responses of opposing direction. Two such individuals respond alternately with approach and avoidance to both front and rear-quarters o their conspecific. Thus, individual a responds to b's frontquarters in his own territory with approach and in b's territory with avoidance; similarly, a responds to b's hindquarters in his own territory with avoidance and in b's territory with approach. Conversely, b responds to a's frontquarters in her own territory with approach and in a's territory with avoidance; similarly, b responds to a's hindquarters in her own territory with avoidance and in a's territory with approach. "In its original form…(t)he successive dominance of aggression, fear, protection-seeking, and renewed aggressiveness…depends entirely upon her position…"[5] Finally, their interaction leads each neighbor to experience a fifth in this sequence of stimulus-response connections. The loss of visual stimulation from the other for a specific duration of time and their own home territories elicit approach towards the other -- which is, simultaneously, avoidance of a spatial locus characterized by the absence of visual stimulation from the other. A personal bond of friendship will be established between two such individuals when, with sufficient repetition, these responses' original dependence upon a particular spatial location disappears.
"The closer the acquaintanceship, the more the picture of the partner becomes independent of its background, a process well known to the Gestalt psychologist as also to the investigators of conditions reflexes. Finally, the bond with the partner becomes so independent of accidental conditions that pairs can be transferred, even transported far away, without rupture of their bond."[6]
The first sign of their developing capacity to differentiate each other from strangers is the formation of a "nonaggression pact" between two territorial neighbors. The beginning of friendship-formation occurs when each neighbor's approach and avoidant responses both become conditioned to the stimulus of the other's frontquarters -- or front-half, as the species may be. Two such individuals respond to the view of the other's frontquarters simultaneously with approach and avoidant motivational energy. When face-to-face, then, two such animals neither chase nor fight the other but are instead behaviorally immobilized in relation to one another. Their "peaceful" response to the other's frontquarters is not, at this stage, fully independent of place, however.
"…the partner must always appear on the accustomed route, from the accustomed side; the lighting must always be the same, and so on, otherwise each fish considers the other as a fight-releasing stranger. Transference to another aquarium can at this stage completely upset pair-formation."[7]
Because they continue to respond with unidirectional -- or univalent -- avoidance to each's rearquarters as to any anonymous conspecific, moreover, the members of such a nonaggression pact will not follow after one another -- a pre-requisite if they are to stay permanently together. The failure to respond to all sides of their conspecific consistently, as a whole - or multi-dimensional -- object, as well as the dependence upon a limited and particular set of background stimuli for recognizing each other suggests that the quality o recognition characteristic of the nonaggression pact is two-dimensional -- one step ahead of the uni-dimensionality of complete anonymity; one step behind the three- and four-dimensionality of fully developed personal recognition.
"…In Gafsah…lives a mouthbreeding cichlid…The males build a closely knit colony of nests..in which the females lay their eggs…Every male tries to entice every passing female into his hollow…The males spend a very large part of the year performing these tactics, in fact it is possible that they are in the spawning place all the year round. There is no reason to suppose that they often change their territory, every fish has plenty of time to get to know his neighbor… Every fish knew the owner of neighboring territories very exactly and tolerated them peacefully at closest quarter, while he immediately attacked every stranger which approached his spawning hollow even from farther away.
"This peacefulness…is not yet that bond of friendship…there is not yet the attraction between personally acquainted individuals which keeps them permanently together -- and this is the objectively demonstrable sign of friendship."[8]
A Non-Aggression Pact
In the sequence of stimulus-response connections experienced by two neighbors interacting across their common territorial boundary, the view of each's rearquarters is also repeatedly associated with two responses opposite in direction -- avoidance in one's own and approach in the other's territory. With sufficient repetition, each's approach and avoidant responses both become conditioned to the stimulus of the other's rearquarters. When this happens the two former neighbors respond with identical motivation to both front and rear views of the other. Recognizing the other as a "whole" object in this manner requires recognizing him from more than one point of view. Since the background stimuli perceived by the individual change as his point of view changes, such "wholistic" recognition is necessarily fully independent of place. With this development, each individual will have "…or the other an attraction that could cause him to follow if the partner would swim away…"[9]
Finally, a loss of visual stimulation of some duration, by arousing avoidant motivational energy towards a spatial locus characterized by the other's absence, impels the individual to reverse his direction and approach his friend. Each friend's attraction for the other causes him "…should the partner stay in one place, to stay there too for his sake, or…to search for him actively should he disappear."[10] Unlike sexual energy which can more easily be discharged towards any anonymous conspecific, the behavioral "rituals" of friendship "…cannot be indiscriminately discharged at any anonymous fellow member of the species, but demands for its object the personally known partner. Thus, it forms a bond between individuals."[11] As with the highly territorial animal, exploratory behavior -- anxiety -- is aroused as much by the failure to perform customary actions as by the absnece of familiar stimuli. Indeed, familiar stimulation from the friend becomes the one and ony external releaser allowing the individual to perform a specri sequence of actions. The stronger his need to perform these actions, the stronger his need to be with the friend in whose presence alone they can be performed.
"The newly arisen motor co-ordination of the ritualized behavior pattern bears the character of an independent instinctive movement: the eliciting situation…which…is largely determined by the answering behavior of the addressee, acquires all the properties of the drive-relieving and situation, aspired to for its own sake…The chain of actions that originally served other objective and subjective ends, becomes an end in itself...it would be misleading to call the ritualized movement pattern...the "expression" of love, or of affinity to the mate. The independent instinctive movement is not a by-product, not an 'epiphenomenon' o the bon holding two animals together, it is itself the bond…If a bird loses its mate, it loses the only object on which it can discharge this drive, and the way it seeks the lost partner bears all the characteristics of so-called appetitive behavior, that is the purposeful struggle to reach that relieving end situation wherein a dammed instinct can be assuaged."[12]
Establishing a personal bond of love and friendship is (a process that is) as intellectual as it is an emotional process. Indeed greater variability exists regarding the emotional intensity of the process than regarding the intellectual elements involved. In this work, fighting behavior refers to a pattern of movement two interacting individuals perform, not to a level of intensity. While contemporary usage commonly defines only intense instances of this interactive for as a "fight," fighting behavior of low intensity is, in all probability, the more empirically frequent phenomenon. The rapidity with which a friendship bond is established may therefore vary, depending upon the intensity with which two individuals perform their preliminary reciprocal, repetitive fighting behavior. Because they are only aggressive seasonally, friendship-formation among cichlid fish must occur relatively rapidly; their preliminary fighting behavior is therefore very intense. Among vertebrate species whose members are aggressive continuously throughout the life-cycle, personal bonds of love form gradually as well as explosively.
Highly social animals like geese, for example, literally fall in love -- without quotation marks, says Lorenz. Falling in love, like imprinting, occurs only during a restricted phase of the life-cycle "…when last year's young birds are obliged to leave their parents, who are now getting ready for the new brood."[13] Falling in love solves the problem of mate-choice among such animals. In and of itself, however, it I no substitute for the reciprocal, repetitive fighting behavior from which bonds of love evolve. "…the strength of the triumph-rite bond is proportional to the duration of the friendship of the partners; or one might even say that a triumph rite always develops when companionship between two or more geese has lasted over a prolonged period of time."[14] Thus, strong friendship bonds may develop between two or more individuals when only one of them has fallen in
Often, but not always, the mating drive of two ganders linked by the triupoh rite finds outlet in another direction: probably their social superiority, attained by their united strength, has a particularly strong attraction for unpaired females; at all events, a goose will soon be found to follow the two heroes at a respectful distance, since, as subsequent events show, she has fallen in love with one of them. This young female at first stands or swims beside them, but when the ganders make their unsuccessful attempts at copulation, she soon cunningly learns to push herself between them in an attitude of readiness at the critical moment when the male of her choice is trying to mount the other. She always offers herself to the same gander, which then regularly mates her but immediately afterward turns to his friend and addresses the ceremony of post-copulatory display to him. 'It was really you I was thinking of, all the time !'…
The longer they know each other, the smaller becomes the distance between the goose and the two ganders, and gradually the second male, too, becomes used to her presence. Very gradually she begins to join in the triumph ceremony of the two friends first shyly and later with increasing confidence until the ganders are quite used to her participation. So the goose, by the devious way of long, long acquaintance, changes from the status of a more or less unwanted appendage of one of the ganders to an equal member of the triumph-rite community!"[15]
[[[^where does the above Lorenz quote begin? - Matt]]]
In males, a one-sided love quite frequently achieves a happy ending, even if the gander does not for a long time find the desired response. The male is able to force his attention on the female, to follow her around pertinaciously, and above all, to spoil the chances of all rivals he is capable of vanquishing. A goose finds it difficult to love a male who is too patently afraid of another, so a gander, provided he persists long enough in his advances, usually succeeds in getting the female so accustomed to his constant offers of a triumph ceremony that she finally joins in."[16]
Friendship: The Fight That Never Ends (phrase repeated above)
Two neighbors interacting across their common territorial boundary form a figure-eight pattern. Each animal individually moves in a circular pattern with his own territorial center as his starting and finishing point.
The stimulus-response connections underlying a fully established friendship bond also lead an interacting pair whose motivation is exclusively social to form two circles in a figure-eight pattern. Each animal individually continues to move in a circular pattern. However, instead of two spatially separated loci forming each individual's starting and finishing points, one spatial locus comes to function as the starting and finishing point for both animals -- that spot occupied by the personally bonded friend. Two friends, attracted by each other's frontquarters, approach. When close enough so that avoidance outweighs approach, given the avoidance curve's greater steepness, they turn away -- exposing their rearquarters. Attracted by this dorsal stimulation, the two friends approach each other's rearquarters, thereby moving apart from one another. The loss of stimulation from the other impels each one to turn back, once again exposing their frontquarters. Being far enough away so that approach outweighs avoidant motivation, the two approach each other -- once again coming face-to-face.
The motivational forces underlying the relationship between a pair of personally bonded friends leads them I short to revolve around one another! Rishi, my greyhound, and Elektra, my friend Kate's Irish Setter, are the only pair of dogs described in this work who have develop a strongly ritualized -- and therefore easily identifiable -- friendship ceremony. While particular details may be unique, their interaction conforms in its general outline to the figure-eight pattern of friendship. When Elektra nears him Rishi's mouth forms a found O and his breathing becomes audible as he grabs one of her long flowing ears and starts pulling. Elektra slowly rolls over into the surrender position, having abandoned her first attempts to bite Rishi on the mouth. When her squeals reach a sufficiently intense level, Rishi abruptly lets go of her ear and straightens himself up. Rising rapidly to her feet, Elektra takes off -- running first away from Rishi and then circling back towards him. Rishi more often than not stands for an instant and then slowly turns round -- to be met by Elektra emitting a rapid succession of high-pitched barks. This ceremony like the triumph rite of personally bonded greylag geese, is the "leitmotif" of Rishi and Elektra's friendship.
"As a slight undertone, it is present in all their daily activities….(I)t is silent only when they are seriously alarmed…or when…covering great distances on the wing. The moment, however, that whatever occupation interrupts or prevents the continuous communing of the partners is happily past, the greeting ceremony breaks out again the louder and more intensely the longer it has been suppressed. On the reunion of partners that have been separated for an appreciable time, say for a few hours, the full-blown ceremony in its highest intensity is triumphantly performed."[17]
Although differing in its detail, a friendship ceremony identical in its general pattern to that of Rishi and Elektra has developed between Rishi and my husband Skip. Rishi initiates the interaction by charging towards Skip, trying to grasp Skip's hand with his mouth. Skip pulls back and then reaches to grab hold of one of Rishi's front legs. Rishi jumps back, emitting a relatively high-pitched "Woof!" As Skip's arm starts pulling back, Rishi charges with open mouth prepared to grab it, this time emitting a low-pitched growl. Alternating between trying to "get" the other and trying to avoid being "gotten" oneself, the two may continue in this fashion for one or two minutes. The interaction is ordinarily terminated by Rishi who, when less excited, simply turns away, his attention caught by some exogenous stimulus, or, when more excited, runs in two or three large and beautiful circles around Skip. Skip in his turn stands following Rishi with his eyes, waiting for him to return to get petted.
Konrad Lorenz's illustration of the triumph ceremony performed by personally bonded greylag geese and ganders reproduces exactly the pattern formed by Rishi with Skip and Elektra; Lorenz's verbal description, moreover, conveys the bivalent quality of the motivational forces underlying the personal bond between two friends. Figure N suggests the gradients of those forces.
The graphs' abscissa (the horizontal line) refers not to any concrete spatial loci as in the case of two neighbors but to the abstract amount of distance separating two friends. The graph's ordinate (the vertical line) indicates the strength of each's approach and avoidant responses to the other's frontquarters. Dotted lines refer to individual a: solid lines refer to individual b. The beginning of the triumph ceremony corresponds in Figure N to a point beyond e where on or both birds are more strongly motivated to avoid than approach the other's frontquarters. Once the gander, moving away from his partner, crosses point e in Figure N, his increased motivation to approach her is expressed as he emits an apparently high-pitched "trumpeting" sound -- like Rishi's "Woof!" when away from Skip and Electra's "Arf!" when away from Rishi.
"The first part of the triumph ceremony, the attack performed with head and neck pointing obliquesly forward and upward, and accompanied by a loud raucously trumpeting fanfare, is called rolling…
"Motivation analysis .. shows rolling to be a behavior pattern of very complicated and conflicting motivation. The form of the movement shows a mixture of elements, including aggression, ear, and social contact. The same is true of the accompanying unique production of sounds. In order to elicit 'rolling' two entirely different set of stimuli must be simultaneously present: those represented by the presence of a friendly cackling partner as well as those emanating from a hostile stranger."[18]
P 56 gradients geese picture
What is this graphic supposed to be ???
Once past Point e in Figure N, the ascendance of the gander's approach over this avoidant motivation is expressed when he turns and moves back towards his partner as if to engage in "mortal" combat with a deadly enemy. Greylags themselves on occasion erroneously interpret this phase of the triumph rite as a "genuine" attack, so slight is the difference.[19] What distinguishes a triumph "attack" from a neighborly attack is the gander's increasing "fear" which inhibits his "aggression's" discharge. This fear, expressed subtly, lowers the tone of his vocalizations from the higher-pitched "rolling" to a "…low but rather passionate chatter…," deflects the angle of the gander's neck, and finally stops his forward motion. As he nears his partner, then, the gander's vocalization becomes lower -- like Rishi's "Gr!" when near Skip and Elektra's "m ! m ! m !" when near Rishi.
"The second part, the return to the partner with the neck stretched forward low along the ground, the head tilted upward, accompanied by low but rather passionate chatter, was termed cackling by Helga Fischer …
"Unlike rolling the second part of the triumph ceremony, cackling, is dependent on a single motivation…The expression moment with which the cackling goose turns toward the partner closely resembles the threatening gesture…and it is, indeed, only distinguishable from it by the slight deviation caused by the ritualized redirection…Viewed in profile, this is quite imperceptible and neither man nor goose can tell whether a goose approaching another in this attitude intends to cackle with it or launch an attack against it."[20]
Dominance Between Friends: Who Revolves Around Whom?
While fighting animals disperse themselves across all the space available to them, the actual sizes of the distances separating them depends upon the density of the species' food supply within an area. Actual fights between two aggressive individuals are precipitated by the presence of commonly desired third objects -- most often food. A plentiful food supply allows members of the same species to live in relatively close quarters since each individual may satisfy himself within a smaller geographic area before coming into conflict with another conspecific. A sparse food supply, on the other hand, forces each individual to fight for food across a larger geographic area.
Thus any decrease in an area's food supply will be accompanied by a proportionate decrease in the population. The order in which such individuals migrate depends upon their dominance or rank order -- that is, upon the intensity of each's aggressive energy relative to his competing conspecifics. Since aggression increases with the individual's age, the older members of a species who establish territories before their juniors remain in any given area longest and migrate the shortest distances; less aggressive juniors low in the dominance order migrate fist and fathers.[21] The dominant individual always remains relatively more immobile than the submissive individual. Whether such individuals migrate collectively or individually, however, is determined not by their dominance order but by the nature of the social relationships between them. Dominance between neighbors leads them to migrate individually; dominance between friends leads them to migrate collectively. Because the quality of their interaction varies distinctly, however, one can tell not only who is dominant and who submissive but also whether any pair of interacting animals relates as neighbors or a friends -- without waiting until a food shortage forces migration.
Ethologists describe relations between two dogs who are friends and two chickens who are neighbors both as examples of dominance and submission. In each case, one member of the dyad is more strongly aggressive than the other. Beyond this, however, the similarity ends. Two neighbors distinguish each other's front and back, responding with motivational energy of opposing direction to each side. Since they can only see both sides one after the other and not simultaneously, they respond first with motivational energy of one direction and then with motivational energy of the other direction. Among barnyard chickens, for example, the dominant member of every pair responds to his subordinate with simple fighting -- approaching his frontquarters; avoiding his hindquarters. The submissive member of every pair, in his turn, responds to his superior with simple flocking -- avoiding his frontquarters; approaching his hindquarters. The submissive member of every pair, in his turn, responds to his superior with simple flocking -- avoiding his frontquarters; approaching his hindquarters. When two neighbors interact at close quarters, then, the "superior" individual's dominance is expressed without inhibition, as he physically attacks his subordinate. Similarly, the "inferior" individual's submission is expressed without inhibition, as he freely runs away. Because tow friends respond to any view of the other with simultaneous approach and avoidant motivational energy, the "superior" individual's dominance is inhibited in its expression as well as the "inferior" individual's submission.
Figure N suggests the approach and avoidant gradient of two personally bonded friends who relate with relatively extreme dominance and submission.
The graph's abscissa (the horizontal line) refers to the amount of distance separating the two friends. The graph's ordinate (the vertical line) indicates the strength of each's approach and avoidant responses to the other -- the avoidance gradient being steeper than the approach gradient. The smaller set of gradients refer to individual I, the submissive "inferior" member of the pair; the larger set of gradients refer to individual s, the dominant "superior" member of the pair. When the distance separating two friends is larger than the inferior's area of avoidance but smaller than the superior's are of avoidance, the dominant animal's behavior in fact appears less aggressive than that I his submissive friend. Because the subordinate's approach outweighs his avoidant motivation within this area, he is free to "agress" against his dominant fried; because the superior's avoidant outweighs his approach motivation, he is prevented from aggressing back. The dominant friend's response reveals nonetheless his greater aggressive strength. Neither running away nor performing submission or appeasement gestures, the dominant friend tolerates his inferior's aggression with equanimity.
"…if we judge the ranking order of the partners exclusively by recording who is doing the pecking and who is being pecked we must infer that she is plainly superior. However, on looking more closely we come to the opposite conclusion. When a male bullfinch is pecked by hi wife, he in no way assumes the submissive attitude but, on the contrary, he shows sexual self-display and tenderness. Thus he is not pushed by the pecking of his wife into a subordinate position, but, on the contrary, his passive behavior, the manner in which he accepts his wife's attacks without becoming aggressive and without letting himself be put out of a sexual mood, has an 'impressive' effect -- apparently not only on the human observer."[22]
The greater the difference in the motivational levels between two friends, the larger will be that region within the superior's area of avoidance in which the inferior remains free to approach his superior. When one friend's dominance is very much greater than the other's, then the inferior friend is more likely to approach his superior "too closely" for his superior's comfort -- beyond the point corresponding to Point es but before the point corresponding to Point e1 in Figure N above. At such close quarters, the dominant friend responds to his subordinate not by attacking but with stiff-legged immobility and "embarrassment" -- "…the objective physiological basis…" of which "…is the conflict between opposing impulses…"[23] The farther apart two friends are in age the greater will be the dominant animal's "formality" as well as the submissive animal's "spontaneity" since "…(a)ll other conditions being equal the age of an animal is, very consistently, in direct proportion to the position it holds in the ranking order of its society."[24] Thus, restrained and inhibited behavior has been observed to characterize relations of extreme dominance between humans -- particularly between fathers and their children.
"One gets the impression, from the ethnographic literature, that there is some sort of strong functional connection between power inequality and behavioral restraint or 'formality'…Curiously, it is not merely the submissive person who is restrained. The dominant person is also 'formal' withdrawn, and rather inhibited in his dealings with the submissive person…
"…It is particularly curious that the dominant person should be restrained. What is there about extreme dominance that demands a 'formal' demeanor? …"[25]
To answer Mr. Stephens' question, there is nothing about extreme and even not so extreme dominance per se that demands a "formal demeanor" -- there is nothing formal about the barnyard chicken at the "top" of his pecking order. It is the personal bond of friendship accompanying dominance that produces behavioral restraint. Indeed the motivational forces underlying the bond between two friends allow the submissive member of the pair to tolerate greater closeness than his dominant friend before becoming "embarrassed." As fully mature males, my former cat Bianco and my greyhound Rishi both respond with formality and restraint to very young and submissive creatures like puppies, kittens, and human toddlers -- stiffening into immobility and sometimes even jumping back in response to a youngster's approach. Though more spontaneous at close quarters than his superior, the inferior friend's behavior simultaneously expresses his lesser aggression. Like the subordinate chicken in the barnyard, the subordinate pup below behaves submissively -- his tail between his legs and his bearing servile. Unlike the chicken, however, this subordinate does not run away. Just as the dominant friend's avoidant motivation prevents hi from "freely" expressing his dominance by attacking, the submissive friend's approach motivation similarly prevents him from "freely" expressing his submission by running away.
"Wolf I visits his wife Senta and their grown-up children…He greets Senta…(t)hen…turns to one of his sons, who approaches his father gladly, shoves him with his nose but frustrates his attempts to sniff his hindquarters by drawing his persistently wagging tail between his legs. The young dog's back is arched, his bearing servile, nevertheless he exhibits no ear of his father, indeed he importunes him with constant nuzzling and attempts to lick the corners of his mouth. The old dog does not take on a self-assertive attitude but holds himself in such a stiff and dignified posture as to appear almost embarrassed: he turns his head to one side away from the muzzle of the licking pup and raises his nose high out of range. As the young dog, encouraged by this withdrawal, becomes more assiduous, a slight crease of disapproval crosses the father's face. The forehead of the young dog, on the other hand, is not only smooth but so widely stretched that the retracted angles of the eyes appear slit-like and depressed… (T)he expressional movements of the pup are exactly similar to those with which a very obedient dog greets its master. Anthropomorphically speaking, the young dog has found a compromise between a certain degree of fear and the love which urges him to approach his superior."[26]
While the submissive friend may be able to tolerate more extreme closeness with greater comfort than his superior, the dominant friend can tolerate greater distance with more comfort than his inferior. Thus, if individual a moves away from individual i to a location beyond Point e1 in Figure F above, individual's motivation to approach a outweighs his motivation to avoid s. Individual s, on the other hand, is free to move farther away -- to a location beyond Point es -- before his motivation to approach i outweighs his motivation to avoid i. Whenever individual s moves beyond Point ei, individual i is compelled to follow until his distance from s corresponds to i's own smaller area of avoidance. As long as individual i remains no further away from s than Point ei, he is within s's area of avoidance. Individual s is therefore free to continue locomoting away if he wishes. Whenever other objects like food, water, or a conspecific with whom to play arouse sufficiently intense attractive energy within i, however, i will stop following and let s get further ahead. Or, a sufficiently intense avoidant stimulus like a cramping foot or burr in his paw may stop i from following s. In either case, as soon as s moves beyond Point es, the ascendance of his approach over his avoidant motivation will bring him back to i.
While the inferior friend chronically "embarrasses" his superior by coming too close, the superior friend chronically "upsets" his inferior by moving too far away. The greater the difference in the level of each friend's motivation vis-à-vis one another the greater will be this "conflict" between them. This conflict, however, functions to establish a stable leadership and followership between friends. If individual i tolerates only half as much distance as s he will stop and look for s twice as often as s looks for him. Though the exact proportions may vary the follower always looks more frequently at his leader than the leader looks at his follower. If the leader were not freed in this way to pay attention to the environment than to his followers, he would just lead them round in circles. Moreover, because followers, normally young and inexperienced, pay such close attention to their higher-ranking leaders, usually experienced elders, the way if paved for the spontaneous transmission of individual acquired information from generation to generation. The naïve young animal need not learn everything the "hard" way by hi own trial and error; much information essential for his survival is learned from his more knowledgeable elders. Among rats, for example, information about what poisons to avoid is handed down from one generation to the next.[27] Rather than learning from a low-ranking individual how to get bananas by operating a complicated apparatus, higher-ranking chimpanzees devoted themselves to taking away his bananas. When a high ranking chimp operated the apparatus, "the other members watched him with great interest and soon learned to imitate him."[28]
"In jackdaws, another form of 'authority' is already linked with the ranking position which the individual has acquired by its aggressive drive. The expression movements of a high-ranking jackdaw, particularly o an old male, are given much more attention by the colony members than those of a lower-ranking, young bird. For example, if a young bird shows fright at some meaningless stimulus, the others, especially the older ones, pay almost no attention to his expressions of fear. But if the same sort of alarm proceeds from one of the old males, all the jackdaws within sight and earshot immediately take flight. Since, in jackdaws, recognition of predatory enemies is not innate but is learn by every individual from the behavior of experienced old birds, it is probably of considerable importance that great store is set by the 'opinion' of old, high-ranking, and experienced birds."[29]
While the general pattern of movement formed by two interacting friends conforms to the general figure-eight pattern of friendship, the exact size of the circle each friend makes as well as the location of its starting and finishing points varies depending upon whether he is the dominant or the submissive member of the pair. The submissive friend's lesser "aggressive" is reflected in the relatively small circle he traces around his dominant friend; his smaller "area of avoidance" is reflected in the starting and finishing points of this circle which are relatively close to his dominant friend. Conversely the dominant friend's greater "aggression" is reflected in the relatively large circle he traces around his submissive friend; his larger "area of avoidance" is reflected in the starting and finishing points of this circle which are relatively distant from his submissive friend. Because he roams further away, then, the dominant friend initiates long-distance travel. The submissive friend's greater spontaneity, however, means that he more frequently initiates interaction at close quarters.
The friendship ritual illustrated above between Rishi and Elektra shows that, at close quarters, Rishi's behavior is characterized by greater immobility than Elektra's. Not only does Elektra revolve around Rishi when he is stationary, but she more frequently than he attempts to initiate interaction -- coming to within ten feet of Rishi and barking in a seemingly interminable series of high-pitched and ear-splitting "arfs". Rishi ignores Elektra's invitations to play at least as often as he accepts them. Elektra, on the other hand, always accepts Rishi's invitations which usually occur in less familiar golf-course on the opposite side of Fresh Pond Park and always result in a completely different pattern of movement. Rishi initiates interaction by running past Elektra and then, in front of her, he traces an enormously large circle, running to the far side of the gold-course before circling back, then stopping on his way in each sand-trap to revolve round and round, tracing several small circles. Barking excitedly as she chases after him, Elektra seems at these times to complain that Rishi is running too fast for her to keep up.
Skip's interaction with Rishi corresponds in its general pattern of movement to that o Rishi's interaction with Elektra -- with the exception that Skip is dominant and Rishi submissive. Thus, Rishi more frequently than Sip initiates interaction; Skip more frequently than Rishi ignores such invitations to play. When Skip is stationary, moreover, Rishi revolves around him; when Skip travels across long distances, Rishi follows after him.
When a personal bond of friendship is established between two individuals, the motivational forces within both friends impel them as their distance apart increases to decrease that distance to whatever constitutes their optimum amount. Thus no special training is necessary to "teach" one's dog to come when called -- other than that "training" involved in making friends with and establishing dominance over one's dog. Evidence that the distance between them is increasing spontaneously stimulates a dog to move towards his friend. The problem for many humans is one of learning how to communicate this information to the dog. When a human runs after his dog while calling, the message he communicates is "Keep going in the same direction, you damned annoying disobedient creature." The sound of his friend's voice locomoting in the same direction as he does not alter the dog's motivation enough to stimulate him to change his direction. Calling a dog while facing or locomoting in the desired direction allows him to understand the message. Training oneself to do this is, in fact, the most difficult part of the procedure since we civilized beings always direct our voices towards the addresses, depending almost exclusively upon the content of our words to communicate our message. Thus, when Rishi strays off while hiking in unfamiliar territory, I must make a special effort to direct y voice in the direction we want to travel rather than towards Rishi. The dog's understanding seems to be innate. Elektra responded my calls exactly as Rishi the first time I ever hiked with her in unfamiliar territory. When I mistakenly called in the same direction she was moving, she immediately veered around towards Skip.
The rapidity with which the submissive member of any pair responds to his dominant friend depends upon what competing stimuli are present in any situation. The single most important factor in this regard is the familiarity of the surrounding territory, since any animal's self-confidence increases as the familiarity of his surroundings increases. The more unfamiliar the territory, therefore, the more does Skip's dominance over Rishi approach "absolute power." Conversely, the closer Rishi is to familiar territory, the easier it is for him to "revolt" against Skip's authority. At home during a heavy rain, Rishi refuses to follow Skip. The attractive force of his own house combined with the repulsive force of a heavy rain outweigh Rishi's approach motivation towards Skip. As Rishi stands immobile in front of our house, however, the attractive energy Skip arouses within him points him towards Skip -- a worried frown furrowing hi forehead as his big brown eyes stare fixedly ahead at his increasing distance from Skip. A heavy rain in unfamiliar territory, on the other hand, find Rishi following so close behind Skip that a sudden step would bump his lowered head and neck against Skip's legs. At these times, the repulsive force of a heavy rain combines with the repulsive force of strange surroundings to push Rishi even closer to Skip than his approach motivation would do alone. Indeed going for walks in unfamiliar places is the most effective way to train one's dog to come when
"…The only way I could keep him close to me was by encouraging him to follow my bicycle for increasingly long distances. In entirely strange regions, far beyond the bounds of a dog's independent excursions, where a human friend is the only familiar objet, the relation of the dog to his master is similar to that of the wolf to the experienced pack-leader which conducts hi across unknown territory. In this way, the man acquires, for the dog, the status of leader-wolf, and I know o no better way of bringing a dog to accept one as his master. He keeps in every closer contact with him, the ore unfamiliar the surroundings become; thus a neighborhood in which the animal feels bewildered is particularly effective: take a country-reared dog to town, where the many disturbing stimuli of trams, cars, strange smells and people upset his self confidence, making him afraid to lose his one friend and the most disobedient animal will walk to heel like a well-trained police-dog. Of course, one must avoid taking him into a too fear-inspiring region, otherwise, though he will stick to his master exemplarily on the first occasion, he will simply refuse to accompany him a second time and an attempt to drag a strong-chartered dog forcibly on the lead would have exactly the opposite effect to the one desired."[30]
P 83 sketch
What this sketch supposed to be ???
Civilized Americans, more accustomed to interacting with machines than with living biological organisms, can regularly be observed making grotesque and cruel attempts to increase the rapidity with which their dog responds to their call -- apparently expecting no greater time-lag than when switching on an electric light. The most memorable incident I observed between a big man about thirty years and a small female English Setter about eight moths. Upon arriving at Fresh Pond, the Setter bounded over to where an opining in the fence would allow her to quench her thirst and cool off in the water. As soon as she was out of his sight, the man called after her to come back. When his first shout did not instantaneously produce the dog, the man began conversing vigorously apparently complain to a human companion. So busy was he that failed to respond when within a minute his dog came running hack to him at virtually top speed. Having ignored her spontaneous approach, the man began a "training-to-come-when-called-session." Holding a whip in one hand and a long rope attached to the dog's neck in the other hand, the man let his dog run with the rope slack for several second before commanding her to "come." At the very same instant, before his dog could possibly have had time to respond to his call, he jerked the rope taut around her neck and began pulling her towards him. The sudden pull knocked the dog to the ground. Screaming in fear and pain as she struggle to keep her balance, the man dragged her across the ground to him.
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[1] Roger Brown, Social Psychology (1965), p. 212.
[2] Konrad Lorenz, “On Aggression," 1967, fifth printing, p. 133.
[3] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 161.
[4] Roger Brown, Social Psychology, p. 216.
[5] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, pp. 55-56.
[6] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 162.
[7] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 162.
[8] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 149.
[9] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 159.
[10] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 159.
[11] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 167.
[12] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, pp. 63-64.
[13] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 184.
[14] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 185.
[15] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, pp. 190-191.
[16] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 194.
[17] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 198.
[18] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, pp. 176-177.
[19] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 178.
[20] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 178.
[21] Roger Brown, Social Psychology, p. 21; Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 42.
[22] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 120.
[23] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p 178.
[24] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 42.
[25] William N. Stephens, The Family in Cross Cultural Perspective (1963), p. 316.
[26] Konrad Lorenz, Man Meets Dog, p. 59.
[27] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, pp. 65, 155.
[28] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, p. 43.
[29] Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, pp. 41-42.
[30] Konrad Lorenz, "Man Meets Dog," p. 31.
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