Draft 1, The Pecking Order

This topic submitted by Leslie, Sarah, Brad (allanla@muohio.edu) at 11:11 pm on 2/20/01. Additions were last made on Thursday, April 19, 2001. Section: Cummins.

INTRO:
Our hypothesis is that as animals we all have the capacity to be either dominant or submissive, however, in human society it is not so much determined by genetic strength but by who has the power via social hierarchy. The infrastructure of human societies (ie. laws, religion, socio-economic status, etc.) are used by the people at the top to keep other people in submission. We are going to look at cases where people who are born in submissive positions become dominant and vice versa. We believe that people who are born with more submissive characteristics can become dominant by either technological advancement or other environmental influences. We also believe that dominance is highly situational, which would mean that it can be both controlled and induced, and is not genetically related. Some examples of this are the oppression of women, prisoners of war, concentration camps which will contrast to examples of dominance within the animal kingdom.

RELEVANCE OF RESEARCH QUESTION:
We will be looking at studies of psychological theories, social psychological theories, social structural theories and evolutionary theories of oppressive behavior. All of these theories approach oppressive behavior from different angles. For example, the book "Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression" by Jim Sidanus focuses on two major questions: Why do people from one social group oppress and discriminate against people from other groups? and Why is oppression so difficult to eliminate? Although there are profound differences between societies there are also elements of social power shared between societies. This relates to the bigger question of how a person's psyche is affected and why it is so maleable. This goes back to the question of how a person rationalizes things, especially the treatment of others.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:
For our experiment we will be analyzing not only the surveys that we are handing out and literature that we will be reviewing, but also specific case analysis of situations where there is evident submission and dominance. We will be examining honor killings and oppression of women in Pakistan, Jews in concentration camps of World War II, torture treatment of prisoners of war. We will then contrast these situations of human dominance and submission to dominance and submission of the animal kingdom.

Most of our materials are first hand accounts or personal experiences derived from literature. We will also be using information from scholarly journals and the surveys collected on campus.

We will involve the class by surveying them to find out their opinion and ideas on dominance, submission and torture. Below is the sample survey sheet:

1. What is power?

2. How does one achieve power?

3. How does a person dominate over others?

4. How has technology changed dominance?

5. Are you a dominant or submissive person?

6. What are some characteristics that make a person dominant?

7. Could you ever torture another person to save your own life? Could you ever kill someone? Could you ever kill someone to save your immediate family?

8. Have you ever squashed a bug just for the fun of it?

9. Is all dominant behavior aggressive?

10. Is dominance necessary?

11. Would you consider yourself to be desensitized to other people's pain?

12. Are you male or female?

We will be surveying our natural systems class, a global gender politics class and other students on Western's campus. We will end up distributing about 90 surveys. We plan to have these surveys tallied and taken at the end of two weeks.

SOURCES:

Bartov, Omer. "Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide and Modern Identity".

Barker, A.J. "Behind Barbed Wire"

Sidanius, Pratto. "Social Dominance"

Forrest, Duncan. "A Glimpse of Hell: Reports on Torture Worldwide"

http://students.depaul.edu/~lhandzli/auschwitz/index.htm?dropmenu

http://library.thinkquest.org/13195/gather/frame/htm.

Bryant, David M. and Newton, Anne V. "Dominance and survival of dippers Cinclus cinclus"

Nol, Erica & Cheng, Kimerly & Nichols, Cathleen. "Heritability and phenotypic correlations of behaviour and dominance rank of Japenese quail"

Khazraie, K. Campan, M. "The role of prior agonistic experience in dominance relationships in male crickets"

Hoysak, Drew J. & Ankney, C. Davison. "Correlates of behavioural dominance in mallards and American black ducks"

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