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Developing a Comprehensive Social Psychology with Shared Explanations of Primate Social Behavior

Abstract

Two primate social psychologies have developed in recent decades-one that focuses on the social behaviors of humans and the other on nonhuman primates. Despite the gains in knowledge in each field of social psychology, the two research traditions seem to be largely unaware of the other's existence. Our common evolutionary ancestry makes this ignorance about the "other" social psychology especially troublesome for both fields. This article explores possible points of mutual interest that might lead to shared explanations of social behavior. In particular, I discuss how the topics of sexual behavior, cooperation and conflict resolution, and culture could benefit both social psychologies with respect to theory and methodology. One control group of neonatal monkeys was raised on a single wire mother, and a second control group was raised on a single cloth mother. There were no differences between these two groups in amount of milk ingested or in weight gain. The only difference between the two groups lay in the composition of the feces, the softer stools of the wire-mother infants suggesting psychosomatic involvement. The wire mother is biologically adequate but psychologically inept...A charming lady once heard me describe these experiments and, when I subsequently talked to her, her face brightened with sudden insight: "Now I know what's wrong with me," she said, "I'm just a wire mother." Perhaps she was lucky. She might have been a wire wife

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