Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
CLASSIFICATIONS OF BEHAVIORAL INTERACTIONS
How, in practice, can we impartially assign positive or negative implications to
behavioral interactions such as proximity or grooming that are ambivalent,
without recourse to the very theories we seek to support? One solution lies in
sequence analysis, using unequivocal behavior patterns as anchors; high-inten-
sity attacks are certainly detrimental to the receiver's fitness, whereas allowing
mating is usually beneficial to fitness. If transition probabilities revealed
grooming as a predictor of attack, then it might usefully be classed as aggres-
sive, but if grooming often precedes acceptance of mating, it is probably ami-
cable. Firm grounding of a behavior in context may justify an interpretative
classification. Often, however, it is impossible to establish a uniform link
between ambivalent behaviors (e.g., grooming) and anchors (e.g., coalitionary
aid or attack) until the whole social network of interactions within the group
has been described. Descriptions based on ultimate function should be
eschewed until such links are established.
A very long list of behavior patterns or relational types could be described
and analyzed at each level of the structural hierarchy of social dynamics. Here,
we consider just one example at each of three levels: grooming as an interaction,
dominance as a relationship, and the concept of “social group” as a structure.
Grooming
Allogrooming can be abundant, observable, and clearly bidirectional or unidi-
rectional, a combination of attributes that have made it perhaps the most fre-
quently studied social interaction. Despite the common assumption that it is
amicable or beneficent, it may also cue either dominance or submission in a
ritualized context. The style of grooming, be it simultaneous, alternating, or
routinely one-sided, is often largely species typical and even a small sample
may give important clues to social relations in a wider context. Grooming has
been the focus of many primatological studies (reviewed by Goosen 1987),
among which it appears to have more to do with social bonding than with
hygiene. For example, there is a significant correlation between time spent
grooming and group size but not body size (Dunbar 1988). The idea that pri-
mates compete for grooming access in a social setting has also been very influ-
ential (Seyfarth 1983).
To unravel more complex intricacies requires more probing analytical
techniques, of which an especially rigorous example is Hemelrijk and Ek's
