Hormonal Mechanisms for Human Coalitions

Mon. Feb 13, 3:30-5 p.m.

Human Evolution and Social Change
CASI
Wrigley Hall 481
Campus: Tempe
Cost: Free

As part of its Challenges of Complexity speaker series, ASU's Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative (CASI) presents Mark V. Flinn at 3:30 p.m., February 13, 2012, speaking on "Hormonal Mechanisms for Human Coalition."

Coalitions and alliances are core aspects of human sociality. Humans cooperate in a broad range of activities, including aggression and defense against other groups of humans. Mortality rates from intergroup conflicts in tribal societies for adult males average 10% to 30%. Long-term planning for inter-group conflict and cycles of “blood revenge” are commonplace. Conflict among human ancestors may have a deep evolutionary history. Surprisingly, given the key role of coalitionary behavior in human affairs, and its unique complexities, we do not know much about the neurobiological and hormonal mechanisms that facilitate and constrain cooperative in-group and out-group relationships, nor how such mechanisms develop during childhood and adolescence.

Here, Flinn first reviews briefly a model for the evolution of human coalitionary behavior based on a process of runaway social selection. He then examines possible neuroendocrine mechanisms that underpin coalitionary relationships with several empirical examples from a longitudinal study of a horticultural community on the island of Dominica. His findings suggest that dampening of aggression and competition among friends and allies is biologically embedded in what may be unique ways among humans.

Flinn is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Missouri. For the past 23 years he has studied child stress and health in a rural community on the island of Dominica. His work incorporates a variety of methodologies, including hormonal assays, quantitative behavioral observation techniques and standard human biological, ethnographic, medical and psychological methods. Flinn is the president-elect of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, an interdisciplinary society for scientists studying the evolution of social behavior.