Men’s Interest in Allying with a Previous Combatant for Future Group Combat

Intra- and intergroup conflict are likely to have been recurrent features of human evolutionary history; however, little research has investigated the factors that affect men’s combat alliance decisions. The current study investigated whether features of previous one-on-one combat with an opponent affect men’s interest in allying with that opponent for future group combat. Fifty-eight undergraduate men recruited from a psychology department subject pool participated in a one-on-one laboratory fight simulation. We manipulated fight outcome (between-subjects), perceived fighter health asymmetry (within-subjects), and the presence of a witness (within-subjects) over six sets of five rounds of fighting. Following each set, we asked men how interested they would be in allying with their opponent for future group combat. We found that men were more interested in allying with their opponent for future group combat if their opponent won the fight or if a witness was present, but perceived fighter-health asymmetry did not affect men’s decision to ally with their opponent. Exploratory analyses revealed a two-way interaction between fight outcome and the presence of a witness, such that winners without a witness present expressed less interest in allying with their opponent for future group combat. Our findings suggest that men attend to the benefits of allying with a man who has demonstrated relatively superior fighting ability. Alliance with a previous opponent for group combat may vary with the relationship value of the opponent and the utility of demonstrating cooperativeness to third-party observers. These findings inform our understanding of coalition formation.     

Do Lanchester's laws of combat describe competition in ants?

Lanchester's laws are mathematical models, originally designedto model military combat, that describe battle outcomes basedon the sizes of armies and the potencies of individual fightingunits. The "square law" describes a scenario in which small-sizedcompetitors may use a numerical advantage to overcome large-sizedcompetitors in simultaneous combat. The "linear law" describeshow a competitor with large-sized fighting units may use one-on-onecombat to favor victory when outnumbered. Lanchester's lawshave been suggested as an important regulator of interspecificcompetition in social insects, but without experimental support. In this study, experimental platforms were designed to invokethe conditions of both Lanchester's laws in a community ofants in lowland tropical wet forest in Costa Rica. I measuredbehavioral dominance at the food platforms in two separatemanners: an ordinal ranking of the number of workers present,and the monopoly of the food platforms. At the platform invokingsimultaneous combat, satisfying the square law, small-sizedants were more behaviorally dominant by numerical superiority.At the platform invoking one-on-one combat, satisfying thelinear law, larger ants were more behaviorally dominant by monopoly. These results suggest that Lanchester's laws explain,in part, the outcome of interspecific competition in ants.     

Editor's Preface

The occasion of the XVIIIth International Congress of Psychology in Moscow this summer is an event of importance for Soviet psychology and for world psychology. Accordingly, we have prepared this special issue of Soviet Psychology and Psychiatry to serve as a guide to Soviet psychology. I hope that this guide will be especially useful to Western psychologists participating in the Moscow Congress, and that it will be useful to a broader public as well.     

Influence of male relatedness on lethal combat in fig wasps: a theoretical analysis

In many fig wasp species, flightless males fatally fight with rivals. In a recent comparative analysis, West and colleagues found no influence of male relatedness on the frequency of fatal fighting. Inspired by this study, I used a simple theoretical model to examine the conditions that should influence the probability of fatal fighting in a closed mating system. I show that, without kin recognition, relatedness can be expected to have no influence on the frequency of fatal fighting. Under such conditions, males should fight if their chance of winning is greater than a threshold determined by the number of competitors. If males recognize kin, a non-linear relationship between relatedness and the frequency of fatal fighting can be expected. However, two other factors should also be important when there is kin recognition: male number and variance in male fighting strength can be shown to have decisive influences on the frequency of fatal fighting. My results thus corroborate and explain one finding of the empirical study--that there is no significant influence of relatedness on fatal fighting--but point to a role for other factors besides foundress number--male number and male variance in fighting strength. These are probably important factors determining the occurrence of lethal combat in fig wasps.     

The 24Th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Tasks of Soviet Psychology

Congresses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union are central events for Soviet society, for they adopt general lines of attack on the problems Soviet leaders view as centrally important. This brief statement concerning psychology makes very clear the role that psychology is asked to play in such areas as increasing labor productivity and improving the techniques of upbringing for the nation's youth.     

Physically strong men are more militant: A test across four countries

There is substantial evidence from archaeology, anthropology, primatology, and psychology indicating that humans have a long evolutionary history of war. Natural selection, therefore, should have designed mental adaptations for making decisions about war. These adaptations evolved in past environments, and so they may respond to variables that were ancestrally relevant but not relevant in modern war. For example, ancestrally in small-scale combat, a skilled fighter would be more likely to survive a war and bring his side to victory. This ancestral regularity would have left its mark on modern men's intergroup psychology: more formidable men should still be more supportive of war. We test this hypothesis in four countries: Argentina, Denmark, Israel, and Romania. In three, physically strong men (but not strong women) were significantly more supportive of military action. These findings support the hypothesis that modern warfare is influenced by a psychology designed for ancestral war.     

The Concept of Set In Soviet Psychology in the Light of Research By The Georgian Psychological School

I. Scientific psychology in Georgia originated and developed only after the establishment of Soviet power (1921). The history of Georgian scientific psychology is the history of psychology in Georgia in the Soviet period.     

On the Content of Social Psychology

1. Attitude to the Discussion: A discussion of social psychology was opened in the pages of Voprosy psikhologii. [Translated in this journal, 1963, 1 (3), 32-38. — Ed.] This event has both a good and bad side. The good side is that, finally, the central organ of Soviet psychology has begun to speak about social psychology. Soviet psychologists will at last state their positive word about social psychology. The discussion will permit a more profound definition of the content of social psychology and will attract the attention of the Soviet public to the phenomena of social psychology. The bad side is that while much is said about the content of social psychology, the most urgent problems for Soviet social psychology is not so much one of its content as of the development of concrete methods and concrete investigations. A. V. Baranov's article [5] presents an incorrect understanding of the history and contemporary state of social psychology in the USSR.     

Some Manifestations of Categorization Processes in Perception

Study of the role of expectancy in cognitive activity has a long history in experimental psychology, extending back into the 19th century. Among German psychologists the idea of a "determining tendency" or "set" has long been influential. A variation of this same concept forms the foundation of the "Georgian" school of Soviet psychology founded by D. N. Uznadze (see Soviet Psychology, 1968-69, Vol. VII, No. 2 [Winter]).     

The Development of Higher Psychological Functions

Soviet psychologists' views of the relationship between psychology and Pavlovian psychophysiology (or the study of higher nervous activity, as it is referred to in the Soviet literature) has long been a matter of curiosity and concern in the United States. Not accidentally, it has also been a matter of concern and dispute within the USSR. The following is an excerpt from a work by one of the Soviet Union's most seminal psychological theorists on this issue. Written in the late 1920s, this essay remains a classic statement of Soviet psychology's commitment to both a historical, materialistic science of the mind and the study of the unique characteristics of human psychological processes.     

Indicating Success with Material Symbols after the Collapse of the USSR

The growth in the role of the military sector of certain Soviet states in the overall structure of the national economy, to the detriment of other sectors, along with providing military assistance to other countries, with government subsidies to unprofitable enterprises and long-term unproductive production that never reached a buyer—these were the factors that provided the prime conditions for the collapse of the Soviet Union. The authors survey the stark economic status of the country, and show that in conditions of complete deficit citizens would value highly any chance to get hold of products that reflected the viability and status of their owners, even though the quality of these products declined steadily for a number of reasons. This article seeks to describe in detail the reasons and components of these prerequisites, as a way to review life in Russian society under conditions of shortage and poverty that presaged the collapse of the USSR, and the consequences this all had for post-Soviet Russian culture.     

Effect of morph types, body size and prior residence on food-site holding by males of the male-dimorphic stag beetle Prosopocoilus inclinatus (Coleoptera: Lucanidae)

Mate-securing tactics of small males in male-polymorphic species exhibiting male–male combat is an important issue in behavioral ecology. While most studies have focused on the outcomes of such combat encounters, the holding of a mating resource like a feeding site has a greater impact for obtaining reproductive success. We examined the effects of the prior residence at a feeding site on resource acquisition in the male-dimorphic stag beetle, Prosopocoilus inclinatus. More than 70 % of encounters did not result in combat. While larger males tended to occupy a food site after a combat, smaller males with prior residence tended to occupy food sites when no fighting occurred. Morph types or body size have no effect on the occurrence of combat, meaning that small males do not hesitate to fight with large males. These findings show that, under experimental conditions, the prior residence has a positive effect to hold food site in P. inclinatus.     

Editor's Note

This issue of Soviet Psychology — Vol. V, No. 1 — marks a new point in the development of English translations of Soviet psychology and psychiatry. Our original journal, published in Volumes I-IV as Soviet Psychology and Psychiatry, has given birth to two new journals: Soviet Psychology and Soviet Psychiatry. This will give International Arts and Sciences Press the opportunity to publish twice as much material from the fund of Soviet theory and research in the study of human behavior. The increased space in this new journal will allow for a broader coverage of Soviet work in psychology, as outlined in our last issue, the special Handbook of Soviet Psychology.     

On The Fiftieth Anniversary of Soviet Psychology

1. The fiftieth year of Soviet psychology marks the fiftieth year in the struggle to construct a materialist psychological science on the firm foundation of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and on the progressive traditions of prerevolutionary Russian psychology. These fifty years have witnessed the concentrated efforts of Soviet psychologists to work out the basic theoretical problems of psychology, to integrate it vitally into the construction of a new way of life and a new society and into the development of the national economy and culture of our country.     

Inner Speech And The Processes of Grammatical Generation of Utterances

The present article contains no ultimate truths. As indicated in the title, the author's aim is to present, on the basis of presently available data, a few hypotheses concerning socalled "inner speech" in order to provide a foundation for experimental investigations. These hypotheses have as their premise the general conception of processes of speech generation that is current in contemporary Soviet psychology, in particular, in L. S. Vygotsky's school, as well as in another school of Soviet physiology of higher nervous activity associated with the name of N. A. Bernshteyn. However, these hypotheses are not, in principle, incompatible with certain other theories of verbal activity (verbal behavior); indeed, as will be evident later, they are partially based on material accumulated with the aid of these theories.     

Basic Principles of a Psychological Analysis in the Theory of Activity

The general psychological theory of activity created by L. S. Vygotsky, A. N. Leontev, A. R. Luria, and their disciples has entered a critical phase in its development. An external sign of the advent of this phase is the increased frequency of discussions of the role of the category of activity in building the conceptual apparatus of psychology. One hears ever more insistently the idea that the category of activity is threatening to become a kind of monster, ready to devour all other psychological concepts [4,14,37,45]A.n internal sign of the advent of this critical phase in the development of the theory of activity is the discrepancy between the tremendous amount of factual material accumulated in the various special areas of psychology in which the theory of activity plays a special role and the initial principles of this theory, formulated very early, when it was just being developed. As a result, a paradox has emerged: a theory engendered by the exigencies of practice is beginning to be perceived as a theory independent of practice. A critical phase in the development of any theory, like a crisis in the development of the life of a child, means the beginning of a new stage in its existence. For such a critical phase to occur, at least the following steps are, I think, necessary. The first step is enumerating the original principles of the theory of activity. The second involves an analysis, through the prism of these original principles, of all the factual material accumulated in the special areas of psychology and in general psychology. This analysis will overcome the discrepancy between the key principles of the theory of activity and the factual material, and will also help to refine and modify those principles. Finally, the third stage is the development of prospects for basic and applied research, i.e., defining the area for the most immediate development of a psychology built on the basis of a general psychological theory of activity.     

Adaptation to military-professional work

Theoretical and practical aspects of a problem of adaptation to military-professional work are considered. Neurophysiological mechanisms of adaptation of military men to conditions of hot mountain-desert climate are revealed. Condition of the opioidergic system is shown at fighting stress, and its role in occurrence of illness of adaptation is described. Influence of extreme factors of a hot climate mountain-desert district is accompanied by infringement of interhemisphere mutual relations and psychosomatic changes.     

Effects of physical and social experiences and octopamine receptor agonist on fighting behavior of male crickets Velarifictorus aspersus (Orthoptera: Gryllidae)

Fighting commonly occurs among animals and is very important for resolving conflicts between conspecific individuals over limited resources. The plasticity of fighting strategies and neurobiological mechanisms underlying fighting behavior of insects are not fully understood. In the present study, we examined whether physical and social experiences affected the aggressiveness of males of the cricket Velarifictorus aspersus Walker, and whether an octopamine (OA) receptor agonist could affected the aggressiveness of males exposed to different experiences. We found that flight and winning a fight significantly enhanced male aggressiveness, while losing a fight significantly suppressed male aggressiveness, consistent with the findings of existing studies on other cricket species. We also found that female presence had a stronger enhancing effect on male aggressiveness than flight or winning a fight. These findings demonstrated that physical and social experiences can affect the fighting behavior of male V. aspersus. Topical application of a 0.15?M solution of an OA receptor agonist (chlordimeform, CDM) significantly increased male aggression level, suggesting that OA may play an important role as a neuromodulator in controlling fighting behavior of males of this species. Despite displaying a significantly higher aggression level (level 5 or 6), CDM-treated losers did not escalate to physical combat, while fights between courting males usually resulted in physical escalation. It is likely that fighting behavior is only partly regulated by OA, and additional regulatory pathways may be involved in achieving physical combat.