Peaceful Behavior Research Articles

The Behavioral Foundations of Retaliatory Justice

Norms of positive and negative reciprocity constitute important constraints that affect human behavior. While much attention has been devoted to the economics of reciprocity in cooperation, the stylized fact that humans have a natural predisposition towards negative reciprocity and retaliation has received little consideration in the literature. In this study we investigate the behavioral foundations of retaliatory justice by considering the conditions under which norms of retaliation may constitute instruments for promoting desirable cooperation. The results suggest that human instincts for revenge may an important ingredient for the sustainability of peaceful social behavior.

The Baha’i curriculum for peace education

Although efforts to teach peaceful attitudes and behaviors have been documented in many countries, those very institutions centrally concerned with education have proven themselves ineffective in educating citizens to better learn to live together. This paper addresses peace education from the perspective of the Baha’i faith, which has concerned itself with peace education since its inception in the early 1800s. A description of peaceful behaviors is presented within an international overview of peace education generally. This leads to an overview of Baha’i peace program principles and practice within formal and informal settings. Comparisons with other peace education programs in both secular and religious contexts are provided, along with a general critique of all peace education attempts. Suggestions for addressing program weaknesses according to Baha’i guidelines for building unity are proposed as possible descriptors and assessment tools for peaceful behavior.

Individual Differences in the Use of Violent and Peaceful Behavior in Peer Conflicts Among Children Who Have and Have Not Witnessed Interparental Violence

ABSTRACT This research explored whether witnessing spouse abuse influences children's use of violent and peaceful behavior in conflicts with peers. Sixty-two child witnesses were compared with 53 non-witnesses across five types of childhood conflicts: limited resources, exclusion, aggression, intimidation, and jealousy. Each conflict was presented in two formats: (1) hypothetical conflicts, and (2) simulated conflict situations. For both, most children, and particularly non-witness males, were consistently peaceful. However, male witnesses were inconsistent and violent in both conflict formats. Female witnesses proposed peaceful strategies in hypothetical conflicts, but were inconsistent and violent in simulated conflicts. Female non-witnesses were consistent and peaceful in simulated conflicts, but were inconsistent and more violent in hypothetical conflicts. Group differences wereprimarily due to subsets of children.

PLoS Biology Issue Image | Vol. 2(4) April 2004

Robert Sapolsky and Lisa Share show that olive baboons (Papio anubis) can acquire a more pacific culture and that females, such as this one, help maintain the peaceful behavior of males (see article). Frans de Waal explores whether such studies can shed light on human aggression (see article). Image Credit: Photograph by Frans de Waal

War, Mead and Nature of Criticism in Anthropology

Herbert S. Lewis (1998) has described in detail problems with criticism in anthropology with a focus on the period after the 1960s. His comments clearly demonstrate how subjective these criticisms were and it is important for us to understand the social context in which criticism arises in any field as Kuhn (1970) established. Geertz (1973) reminds us that the clash of ideologists may bring a problem to attention, but so charge it with emotion that ...any possibility of dealing with it rationally is precluded. Nevertheless, there is another element to criticism which is important to consider, the degree to which a valid criticism differs from a subjective personal attack which verges on a desire for publicity. Recently, The Exchange across Difference section in American Anthropologist contained an article by Paul Roscoe which follows in that old academic tradition, so ingrained in Anthropology, of beating a straw with a horse. The straw being any of those quaint romantic fantasies of the 19th and 20th centuries about the exotic other. The dead man being, well, usually Margaret Mead or Ruth Benedict, those favorite targets of Postmodernist male critics. In this case, Roscoe has done one better by attacking both. He blames Mead's errors on Benedict. In a recent book Clifford Geertz referred to anthropologists as merchants of astonishment, it seems, however, that we have really become purveyors of confusion and discord. Micaela di Leonardo has written a succinct commentary regarding the social and political context of Roscoe's criticisms of Mead as well as situating his attitude within the history of gender issues in anthropology. I will, therefore, pass over these topics. Rather what my essay is concerned with is the role of criticism in anthropology and I use the issue of war raised by Roscoe versus that of peaceful behavior. My point here is that to criticize the work of others we must have a clear conception of what they were attempting to achieve, what definitions of categories they were using and, finally, how effective their work was in both explaining events they experienced and how their explanations fit into later analysis and restudies. What Roscoe's work displays is a popular trend in anthropology where restudies and criticism attempt only to compare the reports of earlier workers with later reports. In this process if the early work does not show a correspondence with the later work, it is deemed faulty. This is a failure of anthropological theory where the field has abandoned efforts to understand cultural adaptation of societies as integrated entities in exchange for a atomized and fragmented study of components of culture. This problem has had a long history, but generally originated in the early part of the last century. The 19th century concept of determinism emanating from single causes and traceable through long periods of history in varying patterns, was replaced by the cautious search for multifaceted relationships and fields of interactivity of the 20th (Steward 1955). In most fields in the social sciences no alternative theory appeared to replace it. As Talcott Parsons (1968) stated in the Preface to the paperback edition of The Structure of Social Action, this tendency had become so entrenched in American social sciences by that time that ...one still hear very strident voices about the virtues of the sheerest empiricism- especially if quantitative, and about the dangers of theoretical speculation-especially if tending to produce 'grand theory'. Since we have decided to ignore the existence of any mechanics of social adjustment, we are left adrift unable to predict how societies will change and denying the existence of patterns in the past, in history, that can be used to frame actions in the present. Partly also this is because, ideologically, we have denied the value of history as a body of biased perceptions. Of course, one has to reflect on this in a relative sense, given the fact that economists cannot predict where the economy will go or the market, as Paul Krugman has noted (N. …

Presidential Diversionary Attempts: A Peaceful Perspective

This article considers the potential for presidents to attempt to distract the public when faced with difficult domestic conditions. It differs from previous work in the field by examining peaceful diversionary attempts and by including scandals as domestic conditions from which the president may seek to divert attention. The results strongly support the idea of peaceful diversionary behavior through presidential rhetoric. Comparison of economic and scandal events in terms of producing diversion suggests important differences between types of events.

Healthy Organizations and the Link to Peaceful Societies: Strategies for Implementing Organizational Change

When designing and implementing an organizational change process, we are intentionally and oftentimes significantly impacting the lives of the human beings who make up the organization. Individuals who work in organizations spend majority of their time, usually at least five days each week, in an organizational setting or framework. If the organization is structured in way that recognizes the needs of the employees; has code of behavior - oftentimes referred to as the organizational values - that is civil and caring; uses the code of behavior to give developmental feedback to employees; and, creates opportunities for variety of networks between people, the environment is very likely to be conducive for things such as positive conflict resolution and healthy organizational growth. If people are expected to behave respectfully and in civil fashion, and if the organization intentionally promotes such behavior, the continuous, daily reinforcement of a respectful way of working together will often spill out into behavior outside of the organization. If we hope to change the world, it means we have to consider how to positively impact the thinking and the behavior of people at all ages. Families, schools, religious organizations, social groups and business organizations all have the potential of contributing to more peaceful society by creating rules of the game that require respectful, civil and peaceful behaviors of their members.

Conflict in Africa: The Cost of Peaceful Behaviour

War provides economic opportunities, such as the capture of valuable natural resources, that are unavailable in peacetime. However, belligerents may prefer low-intensity conflict to total war when the former has a greater pay-off. The paper therefore uses

Social facilitation of synchronized molting behavior in the spider amaurobius ferox (Araneae, Amaurobiidae)

During the social period, molting behavior of the young spider, Amaurobius ferox, is highly synchronized within the clutch. Result of the experimental study suggests that social facilitation among group members increased the synchronization. The duration of the molting period of grouped spiderlings was significantly shorter than that of individually isolated spiderlings. Involving the particular maternal strategy in food supply, this phenomenon might have adaptive values in the maintenance of mutual tolerance among the siblings by decreasing the interindividual difference in development and in the avoidance of cannibalism on molting individuals. This probably will also serve to make the peaceful collective behaviors of the spiderlings in matriphagy and cooperative prey capture during their social period.

Development and the Liberal Peace: What Does it Take to be a Trading State?

This article investigates the liberal idea that trade between two states reduces the likelihood of militarized conflict between them. Richard Rosecrance's argument that industrial-technological developments have made peaceful trading strategies more efficient today is examined in connection with the empirical literature on trade and conflict. Development affects the utility calculations of states: since the costs of seizing and holding a territory increase with increased development, and the relative utility of occupying the territory decreases, the chance that the expected utility of occupation will exceed the expected costs decreases with increased development. Likewise, since the utility of trade increases with increased development, then increased development also makes it more likely that the expected costs of breaking the trade bonds will exceed the gains to be expected from occupation. Consequently, the relationship between trade and conflict is contingent on the level of development. Using Cox regression, and introducing a new measure of interdependence based on a gravity model of trade, I demonstrate that there is a clear negative relationship between trade and conflict. However, this relationship is basically restricted to dyads consisting of two developed dyads. Development itself is strongly associated with peaceful behavior. The results also suggest that the democratic peace requires a minimum level of development to be efficient.

War as a Institution, but what about Peace? Developmental Perspectives

The development of the comprehension and verbal articulation of the concept of war precedes the development of the concept of peace by several years. The implications of these findings for the norms, values, and attitudes towards peaceful and non-peaceful behaviour are discussed. It is argued that a "state of peace" is not necessarily the baseline or "normal situation" and that war and a "state of war" are not merely social inventions or the result of cultural deviations, but that war is institutionalised in our culture. Peaceful and non-peaceful behaviours are products of the interaction between human propensities (i.e. predispositions) and the contents of the sociocultural structure, and the sociocultural structure itself is the historical product of the interaction between the same propensities and the environment. In any attempt to undermine the institution of war and to permit the emergence of the institution of peace, these mutual interactions will need to be considered.

Peace, but what about social constraints?

In a recent article, Gillett (1994) noted that development of a is not easy in any circumstances … in which conflict has developed a long history and become part of the culture (p. 20). The purpose of this article is to clarify several features of the sociocultural structure. In agreement with Gillett (1994), the position will be taken that and peaceful behavior do not necessarily represent the baseline or normal state in a society in which the stimulation of peaceful behavior and education are approached. To the contrary, it will be argued that war and warlike behavior are in many cases still favored by the norms and values in sociocultural structures. For a peaceful world to emerge, a sociocultural structure that emphasizes and peaceful behavior and the establishment of peace as an win be necessary to counter the effects of the institution of war.

Peace in the psychology curriculum: Moving from assimilation to accommodation.

Drawing primarily from Western psychology, we delineate ways in which the discipline of psychology has contributed to peace education. We then extract and amplify psychological concepts and themes relevant for teaching about peace and conflict in traditional psychology courses, an approach that fits an assimilation model. The assimilation model, although well-suited for the goal of heightening students' awareness of the psychology of peace, is not sufficiently powerful when the goal is to produce peaceful people. Accordingly, we then propose an accommodation model in which the psychology curriculum and pedagogies are fundamentally restructured to support the development of peaceful people. Central to the accommodation model is the use of peaceful pedagogies to impart values, teach social competencies related to peaceful behavior, and give students a sense of political efficacy.

The Legal History of 'a Sir (Al-Mikhlaf Al-Sulaymani)

In March 1925, Imam Yahya of Santa' occupied Hodeidah and the coast up to Midi to the north. But the three major warring tribes of Yemen were at war with the Imam. Hashid and Bakil resented the Imam's attempt to dominate them, and in 1925 the Zaraniq of Bayt al-Faqih and Zabid petitioned the League of Nations for recognition as independent states. The grievances of the Zaraniq were sectarian. Crown Prince, Saif al-Islam Ahmad took a year to crush the revolt of the Zaraniq which he viewed as Shafi'i, i.e. Sunni. In 1926 the Saudis defeated the Idrisis in 'Asir and made them proteges of the King of Hijaz and Sultan of Naid under the Saudi-Idrisi Pact of Mecca concluded in October 1926. The Idrisis were Malikis from al-Qairawan who started as an ascetic Sufi sect (from which the Marghanis of Sudan claim descent).l In 1927, an Anglo-Saudi Pact in Jeddah aroused the fears of Imam Yahya who responded by concluding the 1st November 1928 Yemeni-Soviet Treaty of Santa'. Thus Yemeni Soviet relations have in fact cornmenced in Santa' not Aden, although this is often overlooked. In November 1930 Ibn Saud virtually annexed 'Asir leading to a revolt by the Idrisis who occupied the port of Jaizan (also called Jazan) on 4 November 1932 and arrested and imprisoned the Saudi Prince in charge of it, Fahd bin Zutayr, on 7 November, 1932. The Saudis pushed the Idrisis out of Jaizan and back into Sabya and then forced them out of Sabya in February 1933. The Idrisis sought political asylum in Santa'. In the summer of 1931 the Imam's forces occupied Mount al-'Arw on the 'Asir border taking hostages, a normal practice of Yahya when ensuring forced loyalty. Ibn Saud at that time saw in 'Asir a buffer zone except for green cool Abha, the forest of the Arabian Peninsula, and the port of Jaizan. He was still busy consolidating his new kingdom. Therefore, on l5th December 1931, he agreed a treaty recognising that Mount al-'Arw was Yemeni territory. The treaty was ratified in January 1932 and marks the first formal step of border demarcation between Yemen and Saudi Arabia.2 The Al-'Arw treaty stipulated for the extradition of refugees. Therefore, when Ibn Saud claimed the Idrisis in 1933, he was invoking an agreed procedure, but extradition in public international law applies to fugitives from justice and not to exiles. Naturally Yahya declined Ibn Saud's request, but guaranteed the peaceful behaviour of the Idrisi refugees. However, the Imam had in the process of subjugating the tribes

Agonistic Behavior: Function and Dysfunction in Social Conflict

This paper outlines the basic principles arising from a polysystemic theory of agonistic behavior in nonhuman animals and the practical implications of these principles to the problem of the control of undesirable and injurious forms of human violence. A major conclusion is that one of the most effective methods of establishing and maintaining habits of constructive and peaceful behavior is employment in useful and rewarding occupations.

Difference and integration in groups

Many of us are called on to lead groups- seminar groups, business/organisational groups, therapy groups, support groups and what are termed growth groups, family groups, school groups and others. There are many ways of leading these groups. Groups can be challenging and also frightening, for both leaders and participants, especially larger groups and ones that are less easy to control. Many of us prefer peaceful behaviour in groups where one person speaks at a time, where one sentence is finished before moving onto the next, where staying seated in an orderly fashion is the norm, and efforts are made not to be too loud or outspoken and not to be too quiet as both attract unwanted attention, judgement and even analysis. In this paper, I present a way of working with groups, group diversity and conflict, that provides a possible direction we could follow to fully harvest the potential of our turbulent and challenging times. I will draw on the work of Arnold Mindell, originally a physicist, then Jungian analyst, who developed the framework of what we now call Process Oriented Psychology or Process Work.

The Relative Irrelevance of Moral Norms in International Politics

The Relative Irrelevance of Moral Norms in International Politics

At the Crossroads Mother Goddess Cult-Sites in Ancient India

The Trade Routes. If the prehistoric tracks ran as outlined above, it would be logical to find some of them developing into trade-routes and also into modern roads except where settlements moved down into the valley, by the riverside, as land-clearing progressed. Such movement makes definitive proof rather difficult. But there is enough in common between old tracks and new, particularly the passes, to show the development. The great Buddhist cave monasteries (all near mountain passes) at Karsambḷe, Ṭhāṇālā, Bhājā, āarle, Beḍsā, and Junnar outline main trade routes without any doubt, particularly when smaller intermediate caves are linked up. It is logical to expect merchants to use the tracks most frequented by whatever people lived there before there were ploughusing villages. The Buddhist monks who penetrated the wilderness to preach ahiṃsā and peaceful social behaviour would naturally follow the same tracks in order to reach the greatest number of savages. Their religion insisted upon the cessation of bloodsacrifices, and the cult-spots were the most likely places for their preaching. So these cults and the major Buddhist caves which are obviously at the junctions of great trade-routes should have some demonstrable connection. In fact, this is just what we find.