SOCIOBIOLOGY

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2009

A perspective on human social behavior made accessible by the publication in 1975 of E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology and Richard Dawkins's 1976 publication of The Selfish Gene.

This perspective begins with the assumption that humans are above all else animals and therefore the roots of human social behavior can be found in our evolutionary heritage.

Since this way of understanding relies on genetics and biological adaptation it is not a sociological perspective.

The term sociobiology has been replaced to a great extent by the term evolutionary psychology.

E. O. Wilson After Twenty Years - Is Human Sociobiology Possible? 
Antony Flew, Reading, England 
The second word in the subtitle of this article is crucial. For there can be no doubt but that the possibility of sociobiology below the human level has already been abundantly realized in, for instance, the main body of E. O. Wilson's enormous and encyclopedic treatise Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. What may more reasonably be doubted, and what is in fact questioned here, is whether, as Wilson and others hope and believe, there is much room, or indeed any, for a sociobiology of our own notoriously wayward and idiosyncratic species. In proposing this particular project Wilson and his colleagues have seen themselves as promoting a climactic conquest for evolutionary biology. For surely, they seem to have thought, now, more than a century after Darwin, it is high time and past time to launch the final assault upon the last citadel. But, as we shall proceed to argue, there are reasons—reasons which were available at least in outline even to Darwin himself—why the ideas which have been so triumphantly successful in explaining The Origin of Species cannot properly be applied to what is in truth a fundamentally different task. They cannot, that is to say, properly be transferred to explain developments either within or out of the particular problem species of which the author of that book, along with both all the authors and all the readers of all other books, have been themselves members. - pos.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/3/320

Ethology, Zoosemiotic and Sociobiology
JACK P. HAILMAN, Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin 53706 
Current research reveals that the somewhat separate subdisciplines ethology, zoosemiotic and sociobiology function together in clarifying animal behavior. Ethology is taken as the study of individual behavioral patterns, zoosemiotic as the study of animal communication, and sociobiology as the study of social organization. The explosive progress in all research areas cannot be summarized briefly but examples are drawn to provide the flavor of each subdiscipline and their interactions. Among the illustrative topics selected are behavioral development, animal orientation, signal structure, the context of communication, language, mating systems and cooperative breeding. At junctures some possible paths toward future study are identified, but the concluding examples point to the principal theme and prediction: the integrated study of behavior combining historically distinct approaches—which promises to help clarify not only the lives of our fellow earthly inhabitants but our own lives as well. - icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/25/3/695

Abstract: wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/theses/emchuang/abstract.pdf 
The central theoretical question of sociobiology is explaining how cooperative behavior may have
evolved between unrelated individuals. Currently, reciprocal altruism provides the most
convincing explanation. However, its validity has been questioned because thus far, no
examples of reciprocal altruism in non-human animal species have been found. This thesis
reports the results of a series of experiments aimed at investigating the existence of reciprocal
altruism in the cotton-top tamarin, a non-human primate species. It begins by reviewing the
sociobiological debate surrounding the evolution of cooperation and the empirical literature that
has established reciprocal altruism as the most convincing explanation. It then reviews proposed
animal models of reciprocal altruism and why they have been disqualified. Next, it presents the
results of three experiments aimed at examining the existence of reciprocal altruism in cotton-top
tamarins. Experiment 1 demonstrated that cotton-top tamarins are capable of understanding the
experimental paradigm and that they will participate in a “game” of reciprocation. Experiments 2
examined whether cotton-top tamarins could distinguish between a cooperator and a defector
and modify their behavior accordingly. The results indicated that they could, and that
investigating intentionality might be worthwhile. Experiment 3 reran the cotton-top tamarins on
the experimental paradigm presented in the first experiment in order to determine the potential
effect of experience and learning and also to further examine their understanding of goal-oriented
behavior in others. The results of this final experiment were inconclusive. When viewed
together, these experiments suggest that cotton-top tamarins meet the basic cognitive
prerequisites for reciprocal altruism but that further analysis of learning strategies and
intentionality needs to be conducted. The implications for future research using a Prisoner’s
Dilemma paradigm are also discussed.

Sociobiology and human nature 
Muņoz-Rubio J.
Abstract: One of the main theses of sociobiology is that between human beings and the so called 'social' animals there are no qualitative differences, and it is for this reason that it is possible to identify in human beings and social animals essentially similar behaviours, all of which are genetically determined. Sociobiologists often take this idea as a basis for the belief that there exists in the universe an ontological unity that can be understood by means of the scientific empirical method. In this sense, sociobiologists attempt to build a model of human nature in which the fundamental goal of all human action is biological survival, to be understood in terms of the preservation and transmission of genes. In this paper I present a critical approach to these sociobiological theses. Employing a dialectical method, I start from the idea that human beings are qualitatively different from the social animals. Without denying their biological foundations, I affirm that human behavioural characteristics should be understood as products of historical–cultural relations. Even phenomena considered to be the most basic and essential for biological survival, for example diet, rest, and sexuality, possess a fundamental cultural character in which biological survival does not necessarily play an important role. The same can be said of human attitudes towards death and pain. Sociobiology underestimates this historical–cultural dimension of human existence and, despite being a discipline grounded in the theory of evolution, it takes for granted a series of essential principles as unchangeable realities. In this way sociobiology produces an ideological discourse on human nature, a false representation of the world which can be of great utility for legitimising many oppressive and discriminatory practices. - ingentaconnect.com

Sociobiology and Moral Discourse 
Loyal Rue 
In the intellectual lineage of sociobiology (understood as evolutionary social science), this article considers the place of moral discourse in the evolution of emergent systems for mediating behavior. Given that humans share molecular systems, reflex systems, drive systems, emotional systems, and cognitive systems with chimpanzees, why is it that human behavior is so radically different from chimpanzee behavior? The answer is that, unlike chimps, humans possess symbolic systems, empowering them to override chimplike default morality in favor of symbolically mediated moral codes. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the power of religious symbols to influence moral behavior by reprogramming emotional systems. - blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0591-2385.00171

ETHICS AND SOCIOBIOLOGY 
by Peter Singer
Abstract. Sociobiologists make large claims for their subject. Knowing about the genetic underpinnings of human society will, they claim, enable us to understand all of human behavior and even to solve the ancient philosophical questions of how we ought to live. This essay assesses the significance of sociobiology for ethics. It argues that sociobiologists have misunderstood the relevance of facts to values and that their larger ambitions for their subject are bound to remain unfulfilled. Nevertheless, philosophers are wrong to ignore sociobiology. To give a genetic account of the existence of a widely held value does not justify that value, but it does say something of relevance to the ethical issues. The problem is to work out just what difference such an explanation makes. - blackwell-synergy.com

Mealey, Linda (1995) THE SOCIOBIOLOGY OF SOCIOPATHY: AN INTEGRATED EVOLUTIONARY MODEL.
Short Abstract:
Sociopaths are "outstanding" members of society in two senses: politically, they command attention because of the inordinate amount of crime they commit, and psychologically, they elicit fascination because most of us cannot fathom the cold, detached way they repeatedly harm and manipulate others. Proximate explanations from behavior genetics, child development, personality theory, learning theory, and social psychology describe a complex interaction of genetic and physiological risk factors with demographic and micro-environmental variables that predispose a portion of the population to chronic antisocial behavior. Recent evolutionary and game theoretic models have tried to present an ultimate explanation of sociopathy as the expression of a frequency-dependent life history strategy which is selected, in dynamic equilibrium, in response to certain varying environmental circumstances. This target article tries to integrate the proximate, developmental models with the ultimate, evolutionary ones. Two developmentally different etiologies of sociopathy emerge from two different evolutionary mechanisms. Social strategies for minimizing the incidence of sociopathic behavior in modern society should consider the two different etiologies and the factors which contribute to them. - bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/05/20/