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Inadequacy of pain–aggression hypothesis revealed in naturalistic settings
Author(s) -
Blanchard D. Caroline,
Blanchard Robert J.
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
aggressive behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.223
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 1098-2337
pISSN - 0096-140X
DOI - 10.1002/1098-2337(1984)10:1<33::aid-ab2480100106>3.0.co;2-2
Subject(s) - offensive , aggression , psychology , social psychology , management , economics
Hutchinson has recently [1983] suggested that the pain‐aggression hypothesis can account for fighting behaviors of rats in natural or seminatural settings: Specifically, this viewpoint questions the validity of a distinction between offensive and defensive behaviors which holds that pain‐produced attack is a component of the defense pattern. We argue that the distinction between offense and defense is based on many analytic points, including history and present circumstances of the behaving animal, differential domestication effects on the two behavior systems, and differential effects of manipulation of a number of independent variables, including brain lesions and stimulation, drugs and hormones, and alterations in the level of fear. Also, offensive and defensive behaviors are not merely different: They involve systematic patterns of back‐attack (offense) and back‐defense aimed at enabling or preventing, respectively, bites at a particular target (the opponent's back) which is specific to offensive attack. Both the target site for offensive attack and the behavior patterns of offense and defense are to a considerable degree preprogrammed in rats, and may be seen in socially naive animals under appropriate circumstances. Finally, the offense‐defense distinction may be made in species other than the rat, and in a variety of natural and laboratory situations. The distinction may not, therefore, be rationally viewed as a misinterpretation of the fighting behaviors of rats in a colony situation. Hutchinson defends the pain‐aggression hypothesis by means of an “alternative functional account” giving sequential and dyadic behaviors of fighting rats. However, crucial behavior descriptions of this scenario are strikingly at variance with our detailed records of social interactions in colonies and habitats, and appear to reflect a “best‐case scenario” rather than actual data. The “alternative functional account” thus appears to be without substance as a basis for interpretation of aggression in rats.