I guess everyone has met people in stations or on trains, and therefore, you’ll know how random it can be. Initially, you don’t know how much time you have to do your seducing, and it could be that the person you meet lives 100’s of miles away.

Anyway, last year, I read a theory about meeting women on trains. It was published in real book on dating that you might buy in a bookshop (not one of these e-book numbers that any lunatic can publish); so the theory must have had a significant amount of testing, and then been subjected to editorial review by the publisher… or had it?

It went something like this: Women tend to wear shoes with heels, which although they make them more attractive, tend to be uncomfortable to walk long distances or run in. Therefore, on a train, it’s more likely that their will be a higher concentration of women travelling at the back of the train, that the front, since they wouldn’t want to travel the length of the platform to find an emptier carriage, wearing uncomfortable shoes.

Okay, I’ve never worn shoes with heels, but I’ve often heard women talking about them being uncomfortable, and I can’t think or any reason for people to lie about this. Therefore, it seems like a plausible hypothesis; as I doubt anyone would want to travel far in uncomfortable shoes; but it still hasn’t been tested in the real world.

So, armed with my new found information, and wondering if perhaps books on dating had changed for the better, I made sure I travelled in the last carriage of trains I took.

Result: no significant increase in the numbers of women met, and additionally I was threatened and very nearly assaulted by gangs of Hoodie thugs, twice in a month, even though I had chosen to ignore them.

Now, something was very wrong here; the author was obviously a fantasist, who did not care if the readers were put in danger. But then I suppose people desperate to make quick money with dubious information have only been encouraged by the likes of John ‘Fake PhD‘ Gray and his ilk.

I wondered how exactly the information had gone wrong; it has seemed plausible enough for me to test it. So, I spend a short while as a train spotter, and watched what happened when women boarded trains.

The answer is that women clearly have more sense than “Dating experts” give them credit for. They get to the platform barrier, remove their shoes and walk or run to an emptier carriage further down the train, thus negating any theory about a higher percentage travelling in the last carriage.

I suspect that they have either seen the Hoodie thugs board the last carriage or they intuit that lazy street trash have a tendency to travel in the last carriage and therefore they avoid them.

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Posted by Jonathan as Art & Literature, Sociology at 12:33 PM EST

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You have a theory about seduction? That’s fantastic… Obviously you’ve been doing some thinking and trying some experimentation, to try to disprove your theory. You’ve gathered evidence under various different conditions, with different types of people and in different environments. Then you’ve established its predictability, and expressed it in a form which is logical and testable… You haven’t? - Then you merely have an assumption or perhaps just conjecture.

A theory isn’t just an unsubstantiated guess or hunch which you only gather evidence in support of, and then claim to be a Seduction genius: If I may use a quote from Charles Darwin, “I always make special notes about evidence that contradicts me: supportive evidence I can remember without trying!”.

And to continue, I’ll borrow a snippet from Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time; “a theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations”

In summary, your theory should:

• be guided by natural law - Hearsay or supernatural explanations arn’t good enough.
• be explanatory by reference to natural law - As above.
• be testable against the empirical world - One observation that disagrees with your theory proves it wrong.
• have conclusions that are tentative - You might need to develop a new hypothesis.
• be falsifiable - Explanations such as “It’s axiomatic” or “Everyone knows” just arn’t good enough.

If your theory cannot follow the above points, then at best it’s just Magical thinking, and you may be wasting a lot of peoples time, including your own.

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Posted by Jonathan as Philosophy, Psychology at 11:42 PM EST

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Every time I hear some “Expert” waffle on about how only 7% of communication is verbal, I have to bite my tongue to stop laughing at such a ridiculous claim.

I saved this article a couple of years back, and the original seems to have disappeared since. Therefore, I’ll repost it here, and it can go to show that dramatic sounding information doesn’t become true just because its repeated quite often, by people who aren’t bothered enough to check their facts.

Blasting Away an Old NLP Myth

(www.neurosemantics.com)

Meta-States in NLP Patterns Series
What carries the Most Impact in Communication?
Verbal or Non-Verbal Channels?

I first read the following article by “Buzz” Johnson in 1994 when it was published in Anchor Point. Having worked in communications as a trainer and therapist I knew that the old statement that 93% of communication is non-verbal was wrong. I would have known that from having tried to watch and understand movies on planes when I didn’t buy the headphones. Watching their faces wasn’t enough. When the movie was in a foreign language, I’d get more of a sense of when the actors were angry, upset, in love, etc. But that was about it.

This article confirms the fact that most information which we receive from each other in our communications is not non-verbal information and not conveyed by the non-verbal channels of tone, facial expressions, or body “language.” No. It is rather our meta-representational system of language that allows us to convey most of the information in our lives. Try to “say” (send the informational content) that “Supper will be ready at 5:45 p.m.” with just some tones and facial expressions! This highlights the crucial role that the higher linguistic systems play in our lives. We need words to convey higher level as beliefs, concepts, understandings, ideas, plans, meanings, etc. So while primary states are valuable and important, meta-states are much more so. They truly govern our experiences inasmuch as they set the conceptual and semantic frames that we live in. Enjoy.

L. Michael Hall

THE 7%, 38%, 55% MYTH

Dr. C. E. “Buzz” Johnson

In the remote sense that anyone in the NLP field needs their memories refreshed concerning the numbers in the above title, let me briefly give my recollection from numerous sessions. The total message one receives in any face to face communication is divided into three components. The words themselves, the tonality used in delivering those words, and the body language accompanying the other two.

The numbers indicate the relative weight or importance assigned to each of these three areas with body language receiving the 55% figure, tonality the 38%, and the actual words themselves being tagged with a paltry 7%. This strangely skewed distribution has bothered me ever since my introduction into this marvellous arena called NLP.

Out of the Mist

The first reason for my puzzlement was that none of my NLP instructors could tell me where those figures came from. Please do not interpret this to mean that I had been cursed with unknown and unknowing fly-by-night mentors. They are all very well known and active in the NLP community. They are also, in my opinion, excellent teachers. However, when asked where I might find further information about the research that produced those numbers, I was vaguely referred to a variety of well known universities. I later drew a blank at each of these institutions.

Secondly, if these percentages are really valid it would mean that the learning of foreign languages could be greatly abbreviated. After all, if the words only account for 7% of the meaning of communication, we should all be able to go to any country in the world, and simply by listening to the tone and carefully observing the body language, be able to accurately interpret 93% of their communications! And I’ll bet you always thought that learning Chinese or Russian would be a real stretch. In fact, from these percentages, it appears that you needn’t even bother. You may be better off without being encumbered by all the intricacies of any language. People like Leo Buscaglia are looking forward to the time when words will no longer be necessary as he states in his book Living, Loving & Learning. Since a word such as “love” has as many definitions as it has definers, he feels it will be a happy day when the world of word hang-ups is replaced by “vibrations.”

Counting on What?

I wonder how many of you have a 93% rate of accuracy when it comes to interpreting and understanding even your most intimate friends and family members? And that’s with people speaking the same official language with its 7% impact!

It is not only the NLP community that is espousing and apparently believing the 7_38_55 myth. I’ve heard therapists and counsellors who were unfamiliar with NLP allude to those same numbers. There also seems to be a widespread belief among the general population that words are relatively unimportant. I’m sure most of us have heard people mid-read with statements such as, “She didn’t really mean what she said; she probably meant XXX instead.” Or, “He may have said that but he didn’t really mean it.” Or, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it.”

In NLP change work, note how carefully we re-word statements in order to reframe a client’s personal perceptions. And by very skilfully using just the right hypnotic language patterns, we are able to rapidly enhance desired shifts in our clients’ understandings and attitudes and beliefs. Would we need to be this meticulous and conscientious if we were really dealing with only 7% of a person’s awareness and comprehension?

I was finally able to track down the source of this myth thanks to a professional speaker who makes his living giving sales seminars and workshops. And yes, the 7-38-55 was an important part of his presentations. He didn’t know how to spell the name of the individual responsible for the research that originated those numbers or which university was involved, but he gave me a valuable starting point by offering me a couple of different possible pronunciations. I think you’ll be interested in what I found.

The Study

Albert Mehrabrian, Ph.. Of UCLA was the originator of the 7-38-55 theory. He speaks of it in two books, Silent Messages published in 1971, and Nonverbal Communications published in 1972. In these two books, he refers to research projects which were published in various professional journals. I will get to the journals in more detail later, but first let’s look at some of his statements from one of the books.

From Chapter 3 of Silent Messages we find that the numbers 7-38-55 expressed as percentages have to do only with what he calls the resolution of inconsistent messages, or to put it in NLP terms, incongruencies. He also states that there are very few things that can be communicated non-verbally. He initially was investigating liking/ disliking which he later generalized into feelings. In speaking with him by phone in March, 1994, he stated that his findings and inferences were not meant to be applied to normal communications. They were of very limited application.

Let me paraphrase some of his thoughts from page 134 toward the end of that book. Clearly, it is not always possible to substitute actions for words and therefore, what are the limitations of actions as instruments of communication? If you’ve ever played charades, you know that words and language are by far the most effective way of expressing complex and abstract ideas. The ideas contained in Silent Messages, and most other books for that matter, couldn’t be done with actions. A very important thing to remember about the differences between words and actions is that actions only permit the expression of a limited set of things; namely, primary feelings and attitudes.

The Details

Now let’s examine in more detail the specifics of a couple of his experiments from which some people have made some rather sweeping and inaccurate generalizations. From the Journal of Consulting Psychology, 1967, Vol. 31. No. 3, pg. 248-252 is a report entitled Inference Of Attitudes From Nonverbal Communication In Two Channels. This study was designed to investigate the decoding of inconsistent and consistent communications of attitude in facial and vocal channels. The experimental team found that the facial component received approximately 3/2 the weight received by the vocal component. You can readily see that this roughly corresponds to the 38% and 55% figures mentioned earlier.

You may be wondering how this study was conducted. There was only one word used. That word was “maybe,” selected for its apparent neutrality. Three female speakers were tape recorded saying that word wile varying their tone of voice so as to communicate three different attitudes (i.e., like, neutral, and dislike) towards an imagined addressee. Then the tapes were listened to by 17 female subjects with instructions to imagine that the speaker is saying this word to another person and judged by the tones what the speaker’s attitude is towards that imaginary addressee. So there was no direct feedback by anyone who was being addressed. It was a number of third-party listeners who were asked to mind-read, guess, interpret, imagine, etc., how the speaker felt towards someone who wasn’t even there and, in fact, didn’t even exist. There was no way to see or hear the reactions of this phantom individual, about whom someone was going to make several long-lasting and powerful speculations.

Next, black and white photographs were taken of three female models as they attempted to use facial expressions to communicate like, neutrality, and dislike towards another person. Then photos were shown to the same 17 subjects with the instructions that they would be shown the pictures and at the same time hear a recording of the word “maybe” spoken in different tones of voice. “You are to imagine that the person you see and hear (A) is looking at and talking to another person (B).” For each presentation they were to indicate on a rating scale what they thought A’s attitude was toward B. Again, third-party mind-reading with no direct contact with the person addressed, B, because that person was non-existent. The conclusions from this experiment were that the facial components were stronger than the vocal by the ratio of 3/2 as referred to earlier.

An interesting comment that came out of the discussion section indicated that the effect of redundancy (i.e., consistent attitude communication in two or more channels) is to intensify the attitude communicated in any one of the component channels. Perhaps this is something that could be more profitably pursued instead of the denigration of words. Or as you can see from this particular study, word, not words. And that word was “maybe.” It seems to play words under quite a handicap not much different from playing charades.

Two Studies Combined

They integrated this study with another one to come up with the .07, .38, and .55 coefficients. This second study was reported in the Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 1967, Vol. 6, No. 1, pg. 109-114 entitled, Decoding of Inconsistent Communications. Here they dealt with inconsistent communication of attitude in two components; tone of voice and nine different words. Three words were selected that seemed to indicate a positive attitude, “honey,” “thanks,” and “dear.” Three were neutral, “maybe,” “really,” and “oh,” and three were negative, “don’t,” “brute,” and “terrible.”

Two female speakers were employed to read each of the nine words with each of the three tones, positive, neutral, or disliking of an imaginary addressee. These were recorded on tape which was then listened to by 30 University of California undergraduates.

They were instructed to imagine that each word was being said by one person to another and to judge what the speaker’s attitude was towards the imaginary recipient. One-third were told to ignore the information conveyed by the meaning of the words and to pay attention only to the tone. Another third were told to ignore the tone and pay attitude only to the meaning of the words. The last third were told to utilize both the tone and the content.

The findings were that the independent effects of tone, overall, were stronger than the independent effects of content. I should think so! After all, the words allowed were very limited while the tones allowed were unlimited as long as certain feelings were being demonstrated. But, after all, Mehrabian’s main interest is in non-verbal types of communication. However, in fairness, it was mentioned in the discussion that the methodology used failed to solve the problem for which it was intended. An alternative methodology could have employed written communication for assessing the independent effects of content and electronically filtered speech (with the content rendered incomprehensible) for assessing the independent effects of tone. I don’t know if an alternative experiment like that was ever carried out.

After commenting on some of the methodological problems, they do go on to say that the results indicate that judgments of attitude from inconsistent messages involving single words spoken with intonation are primarily based on the attitude carried in the tonal component. The use of single words is a long way away from normal communications, don’t you think? In fact, they admit that their findings can only be safely extended to situations in which no additional information about the communicator-addressee relationship is available. This seems to relegate it to the realm of tightly controlled laboratory-pure experimentation only.

I would invite all of you readers to examine not only Mehrabian’s books, but also his articles in the professional journals which go into more detail concerning his experiments. If enough of us carefully analyze the available data, perhaps we can reinterpret the results in a more useful, meaningful, and workable way than we have in the past.

Time for Accuracy

If we continue to disseminate erroneous information such as the 7-38-55 myth, I feel we are doing a grave disservice not only to the NLP community, but to the public in general. We could do a great service by helping the public realize that the words they use on themselves as well a on others are extremely important in determining the effectiveness and longevity of relationships, the strength of personal self-esteem, and a whole host of other psychological physiological phenomena.

Words and language are probably the primary motivation factors for human beings and they can be enhanced by proper congruent tonality and body language. They can also be somewhat diminished by incongruencies which then often show up as confusion and bewilderment in relationship situations. For example, think how often some battered women have desperately believed the words of their batterers despite overwhelming incongruent behaviour. “He said he was really going to change this time.”

Think of your own personal experiences in close relationships that have gone sour. Haven’t you also hoped and waited for change that would transform incongruent communication signals into congruent ones? Especially before NLP training? Haven’t most of us, at some time, hopelessly clung to our own inaccurate interpretation of another’s actions hoping for a miracle that would once again make everything whole and comfortable just like we thought it used to be? And what was the total affect of the spoken word at those times? Did the words really have only a 7% influence on our hopes and desires? Not likely. Given the emotional impact of prior experience and beliefs, our memories are not about to logically reduce the words of a loved one, or former loved one, to such an insignificant role instantaneously.

Such impersonal and coldly analytical reactions are probably destined to remain in the safety aloof confines of the experimental laboratory with its pretend situations and imaginary interactions. Perhaps we could benefit from a re-assessment of old acquired beliefs in the glaring light of real life relationship reactions and perceptions.

References:

• Buscaqlia, Leo. (1982). Living, loving, & learning. Charles B. Slack, Inc.
• Mehrabian, Albert. (1972). Nonverbal communication. Aldime Atherton, Inc.
• Mehrabian, Albert. (1971). Silent Messages. Wadsworth Publishing Co.
• Mehrabian, Albert; Ferris, Susan. (1967). Journal of Consulting Psychology, Vol. 31. No. 3. Pg. 248_252.
• Mehrabian, Albert; Wiener, Morton. (1967). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 6, No. 1. Pg. 109_114.

Author:

Dr. C. E. “Buzz” Johnson, retired Optometrist, has been through Master Practitioner and Trainer’s Training. He has been researching the power of words in a variety of different disciplines, medicine, education, addictions, relationships, psycho-neuro-immunology, hypnosis, psychotherapy, etc.

Quoted by Permission from Dr. Johnson, Published originally in Anchor Point, July 1994.

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Posted by Jonathan as History, Psychology at 11:00 AM EST

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Studying nature can tell us a lot about the different ways there are to find sexual partners. As Seduction Labs is still relatively new, here’s a an extremely simple example taken from research by scientists from the University of California at Santa Cruz, that describes lizard mating strategies.

The same strategies could also be adopted by humans aiming to have more sex.

Strategy #1: Have a Lot of Territory

The Orange-Throated Lizard: These males establish large territories, with several females. The more females the more often they can mate.

Strategy #2: Guard Your Mate

The Blue-Throated Lizard: These males defend small territories holding just a few females. Because the territories are so small, they can guard their mates carefully.

Strategy #3: Be Sneaky

The Yellow-Striped-Throated Lizard: These males are sneaky and can mimic the markings and behavior of females.

So, orange-throated males are able to grab territory and females from blue-throated lizards when orange-throated lizards are rare.

But, blue-throated males can take over a population of yellow-striped-throated males when blue-throated lizards are rare.

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Posted by Jonathan as Biology at 11:32 PM EST

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I found this article in one of today’s free newspapers.

I’m not really sure what the “chat up” part has to do with manners, but I must say I was surprised to read about a girl even attempting to talk to guys on the tube; therefore Poorna Shetty gets full marks for effort. However, neither reporter realised that a conscious attempt to “chat someone up” is most likely doomed to failure. Furthermore, starting a conversation with any questions that might only be answered ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ is a bad start; as the reporters go on to demonstrate, but apparently not realise.

Finally, the man attempting to meet women has some small success starting a conversation with a compliment, and the woman he “chats up”, in her brief quotes, gives an example of how moronic guys make the seduction process trickier than it needs to be, by acting weird or scary around women.

But, to sum up, in meeting people to seduce, what have you got to lose?

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Posted by Jonathan as Miscellaneous at 7:01 PM EST

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Work goes on, finalising the website. In the meantime, I need to make sure it all works properly; so I’ll post up an interesting article I found, discussing sex and aggression in mans closest animal relative, the bonobo chimp. I expect something more original to follow shortly.

Why bonobos make love, not war
By Matt Kaplan (New Scientist)
November 30, 2006

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the most volatile and hostile countries on the planet, yet its dark interior is home to a group of pacifists who look like refugees from the Summer of Love. Pygmy chimps or bonobos are both literally and metaphorically our kissing cousins. If you know them at all, it is probably as the most highly sexed of all the apes, but they are also considered by many to be our closest living relative - closer even than the common chimp. Bonobos seem to live by the principle “make love, not war”. They are very docile towards one another, never aggressive or murderous, and possess many of the psychological traits we value most, including altruism, compassion, empathy, kindness, patience and sensitivity.
How did they get to be so nice?

Think of it this way. Somewhere between 6 and 8 million years ago, our ancestors split from the line that would become today’s two species of chimps. Then around 2.5 million years ago, bonobos and common chimpanzees went their separate ways. Today our human world is characterised by war, oppression and terror. Common chimps also have a reputation for aggression and bloodshed. And then you have the bonobos. Which poses a few questions. How come they have taken such a different evolutionary path? Can they teach us to be more tolerant?
What would it take to turn on our inner bonobo?

The question of how bonobos got to be the way they are has long baffled primatologists. Nobody has been able to put their finger on exactly what makes this ape so different. What is becoming clear now though is that its behaviour is influenced less by its nature – the genes - and more by its environment, culture and learning. What bonobos eat, how they structure their social interactions, and their ability to pass on certain psychological attitudes from one generation to another all seem to play a part. That being so, there may indeed be lessons we can draw about how to make human society more peaceable.

At most, there are a few hundred thousand bonobos left in the wild. They live only in the rainforests of the central Congo basin in DRC. Although their exact distribution is still unknown, the northern extent of their territory is bounded by a loop in the Congo river that forms an impassable barrier. On the face of it, their habitat looks very similar to a chimpanzee’s, although the latter are much more widely distributed (see Map). The habits of the two species couldn’t be more different, though.

When communities of bonobos from different areas of a forest meet, the females of each tribe initiate sex with males from the other. When chimp tribes meet, the encounters are extremely violent and it isn’t unusual for at least a few individuals to end up mauled or even dead. Chimps create despotic male-controlled societies where males beat up females to display dominance. Bonobo society is egalitarian, until it is time to feed, at which point females tend to get preferential access. Tool use is another huge disparity between the two species. Chimps make use of varying tools in different regions to obtain and prepare food. To date, wild bonobos have never been observed using even a single tool.

Then there is the sex. Bonobos are famous for it. Aside from the typical male/female activity, they also engage in more “creative” behaviours: wet kissing, masturbation, oral sex, female/female and male/male couplings, group activities, the list goes on and on. The only restriction seems to be incest between mothers and their children. Chimps by contrast restrict themselves almost entirely to male/female sex and don’t have nearly as much of it as bonobos. What’s more, males are dominant, frequently use food to lure females into having sex with them, and sometimes beat uncooperative females.

Primatologists Gottfried Hohmann and Barbara Fruth from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have been studying bonobos in their natural habitat since 1989. It hasn’t been easy. When they first arrived in DRC there were a thousand obstacles in their way and no infrastructure for them to work with. “We were lucky though,” Hohmann says. “In Congo money buys everything, and this made logistics easier because money was the one thing we had. But even with a lot of money you still need to meet and communicate with the right people.” Fortunately, Hohmann speaks Lingala (the native tongue) and knows the “right” people, allowing his team to establish a permanent presence in what he describes as the most incredible forest on Earth.

Over the years, Hohmann has become convinced that one of the keys to the differences between chimps and bonobos lies in their ecology, more specifically their diet. Jane Goodall revealed that chimps have a taste for meat. Capable predators, Goodall observed them hunting in groups for monkeys, wild pigs and even antelope. Their attacks were anything but swift and merciful. Chimps have been seen slamming monkeys into rocks and then feasting on their flesh. Bonobos, by contrast, were long thought to be entirely vegetarian.
In 1993, though, Hohmann and his colleagues published evidence that they do sometimes hunt, kill and feast communally on other forest mammals, shattering the image of the peaceful herbivore (Folia Primatologica, vol 60, p 225). In recent years it has become clear that the most carnivorous bonobos eat almost as much meat as some chimps. Unlike chimps, however, where males get the lion’s share, bonobo females always control the prey and share it primarily with other females and with youngsters.

Bonobo power bars

Meat is high in protein, and its fat content makes it a rich source of energy. So if bonobos are primarily plant eaters, what are they eating to fulfil their needs? It seems that their particular part of the rainforest is a very well-stocked larder for hungry vegetarians. Studies by Hohmann, Fruth and their group reveal that the plant species bonobos consume are particularly high in nutrients and low in the components that tend to make plants indigestible.

The herb Haumania liebrechtsiana, for example, is unusually rich in protein and unlike most high-protein plants it contains very little indigestible fibre. Hohmann describes it as the “bonobo power bar” and is amazed that a plant that is so regularly feasted upon is not yet extinct.

Chimps do not eat haumania, which is rare or absent in their habitats, and their diet also differs from the bonobo’s in another important way. Hohmann and Fruth have found that vegetation in chimp forests contains significantly higher levels of tannins – noxious chemicals plants often use as a first line of defence against predators, and found in particularly high concentrations in bark, seed coats and other tissues protecting the most nutritious parts.

Chimps expend much time and ingenuity preparing their food to avoid ingesting tannins and similar chemicals. Indeed, many experts including Hohmann believe this was a major driving force in the emergence of tool use in chimps. Bonobo forests do contain tannins, but at much lower levels. As a result, bonobos waste little time preparing food. Add to this the presence of haumania and other nutritious herbs, and their life looks relatively carefree. With no need to make tools or even think too carefully about what plants they eat, feeding time has become a social activity, allowing highly gregarious behaviour to emerge. What’s more, the abundant supply of nutritious vegetation means bonobos have little need to compete for food or to hunt for meat, which the researchers believe contributes greatly to their peaceful lifestyle. Put bluntly, …

“bonobos are nice because the environment they live in is nice”.

Could that really be all there is to it though? Frans de Waal from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, a pioneering researcher of captive chimps and bonobos, thinks not. “Bonobos and chimps under exactly the same captive conditions behave in totally different ways,” he says. Captive bonobos still have more sex and are ruled by females, while chimps maintain their male dominated society and are far more violent. Genetic differences control some of this variation, argues de Waal. For example, the difference in size between males and females is greater in chimps than bonobos. He suspects that this, combined with the fact that bonobo males are poor cooperators – they never work together as male chimps do - has made it possible for female bonobos to gain the upper hand.

De Waal also points to the important matter of advertising sexual readiness. Both bonobo and chimp females do this with genital swellings, but they do it in very different ways. The chimp display is “honest”, occurring only during the few days when females are likely to conceive - about 5 per cent of their lifetime. Bonobo females signal readiness around half of the time, despite the fact that for most of that they cannot conceive. As a result, levels of sexual competition between males of the two species are different.
Among chimps, where time is short and the males know it, there are aggressive fights over who gets to mate. Bonobo males always find plenty of receptive females, so there are few reasons to compete with each other. Hohmann doesn’t deny the physical differences between chimps and bonobos, but maintains that environment is the critical factor explaining their behaviour.

“I cannot believe for a moment that the cultures we see in the wild are hard-wired in their brains,” he says. “Behaviour is the most flexible aspect of these animals.” Bonobos and chimps show tremendous learning abilities, he points out, rapidly adapting to just about any situation. Tool use is a case in point. Cultural learning has led to distinct cultural traditions of tool use in different populations of common chimps. Although bonobos do not use tools in the wild they can easily learn to use them in captivity when the need arises.

“The question to ask is what would happen if bonobos were placed in chimp forests and chimps were placed in bonobo forests?” says Hohmann. There is no doubt that life would become a lot harder for the bonobos. The female alliances would probably crumble as competition for food increased, paving the way for the males to exploit their physical superiority. Necessity might even force them to work together as male chimps do. How the chimps would respond is even more intriguing. If they had access to haumania and food low in tannins would a culture of cooperation emerge, or would a violent male dominated culture endure? Unfortunately, there is no way to answer these questions, but studies at zoos do indicate that chimpanzees flexibly adjust to new environments and are capable of holding their aggression in check.

Studies of other primates also show they can quickly learn to be more or less aggressive as their environment changes. One classic example of this was observed by Robert Sapolsky, now at Stanford University.

Sapolsky was studying a troop of forest dwelling baboons that slept in trees near a tourist lodge in Kenya. In 1981, the lodge’s rubbish dump greatly expanded, and another baboon troop came to live and forage there. By 1982, many males from his forest dwelling troop had started visiting the dump for food. They were no different in age or dominance rank from the other males in their troop, but they were more aggressive - a prerequisite, Sapolsky surmised, to compete with the dump dwelling baboons for food. The following year brought an outbreak of tuberculosis, originating from infected meat in the dump. Over the next few years most garbage-eating baboons died, including all the aggressive forest dwellers. By 1986, troop behaviour had become much more peaceful.

In 1993, Sapolsky revisited the troop and marvelled at the lack of aggression, despite the fact that all the original passive males had died and new males from other troops had moved in to take their place. Remarkably, although these had been raised in distant, typically aggressive baboon troops, they adopted the troop’s passive culture. “My best guess is that having only passive resident males was the key to the appearance of this new culture,” Sapolsky says.

“I think what all of this shows is that if aggression works, any animal will use it. It isn’t an inherited characteristic, ” Hohmann says. The converse is also true. “With the bonobos, team work currently pays off, violence does not. If their environment were to change, so too would their behaviours.”

Where does this leave humans? As primates ourselves are we slaves to our environment or can we rise above it? “Our environment does shape our inner ape,” argues de Waal. “We can cooperate like the bonobos and be competitive like the chimps, but the conditions around us determine which side is seen.” De Waal thinks we tend to judge ourselves too harshly, though. We regularly comment on our chimp-like aggression. “Yet if you look at our hunter-gatherer histories, warfare is actually very uncommon. Even now, war is a rare thing,” he says. “It has been calculated that over the long haul the number of people killed in warfare is actually going down.” In contrast, we never compare ourselves to bonobos. Yet we have a remarkable capacity for peaceful cooperation not just in our daily dealings with each other but also in international organisations - consider, for instance, the ideas upon which the United Nations was founded.

Still, perhaps we can learn from bonobos. If Hohmann is right and they live peaceful and cooperative lives because they can feed without worries, shouldn’t we strive to create environments for humanity that bring out our best traits? After all, we tend to be at our most pugilistic when resources are scarce or unfairly distributed. As for the circumstances that bring out the best in us, if history is any judge, this happens when there is a common threat. “A lot of people suggest that if we had an extraterrestrial enemy that we would all stop fighting each other and work together,” quips de Waal. Aliens notwithstanding, there is already a common threat. Global warming is universal, imminent and life-threatening to millions of people. Perhaps it will be the environmental condition that awakens the bonobo in all of us.

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Posted by Jonathan as Anthropology at 2:27 AM EST

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