Sigmund Freud tried to cure Viennese women of their neuroses, and Konrad Lorenz made his reputation studying birds, but the two men shared a belief that has become lodged in the popular consciousness. The belief is that we have within us, naturally and spontaneously, a reservoir of aggressive energy. This force, which builds up all by itself, must be periodically drained off -- say, by participating in competitive sports -- lest we explode into violence.
This is an appealing model because it is easy to visualize. It is also false. As an animal behaviorist has written: "All of our present data indicate that fighting behavior among higher mammals, including man, originates in external stimulation and that there is no evidence of spontaneous internal stimulation." Clearly, many people -- and, in fact, whole cultures -- manage quite well without behaving aggressively, and there is no evidence of the inexorable build-up of pressure that this "hydraulic" model would predict.
In 1986, a group of eminent behavioral scientists met in Seville, Spain, to discuss the roots of human aggression and concluded not only that the hydraulic model is inaccurate but, more generally, that there is no scientific basis for the belief that humans are naturally aggressive and warlike. That belief, however, has not been easily shaken. Among the arguments one sometimes hears are these: Animals are aggressive and we cannot escape the legacy of our evolutionary ancestors; human history is dominated by tales of war and cruelty; and certain areas of the brain and particular hormones are linked to aggression, proving a biological basis for such behavior.
The first thing to be said about animals is that we should be cautious in drawing lessons from them to explain our own behavior, given the mediating force of culture and our capacity for reflection. "Our kinship with other animals does not mean that if their behavior seems often to be under the influence of instincts, this must necessarily also be the case in humans," says an anthropologist. He quotes one authority who has written: "There is no more reason to believe that man fights wars because fish or beavers are territorial than to think that man can fly because bats have wings."
Animals are not even as aggressive as some people think -- unless the term "aggression" is stretched to include killing in order to eat. Organized group aggression is rare in other species, and the aggression that does exist is typically a function of the environment in which animals find themselves. Scientists have discovered that altering their environment, or the way they are reared, can have a profound impact on the level of aggression found in virtually all species. Furthermore, animals cooperate -- both within and among species -- far more than many of us assume on the basis of watching nature documentaries.
When we turn to human history, we find an alarming amount of aggressive behavior, but we do not find reason to believe the problem is innate. Here are some of the points made by critics of biological determinism:
Even if a behavior is universal, we cannot automatically conclude it is part of our biological nature. All known cultures may produce pottery, but that doesn't mean there is a gene for pottery making. Other institutions once thought to be natural are now very difficult to find. In a century or two, says a sociologist, "it is possible that people will look back and regard war in much the same way as today we look back at the practice of slavery."
Aggression, in any case, is nowhere near universal. The above-mentioned anthropologist has edited a book, which features accounts of peaceful cultures. It is true that these are hunter-gatherer societies, but the fact that any humans live without violence would seem to refute the charge that we are born aggressive. In fact, cultures that are "closer to nature" would be expected to be the most warlike if the proclivity for war were really part of that nature. Just the reverse seems to be true. Erich Fromm put it this way: "The most primitive men are the least warlike and ...warlikeness grows in proportion to civilization. If destructiveness were innate in man, the trend would have to be the opposite."
Just as impressive as peaceful cultures are those that have become peaceful. In a matter of a few centuries, Sweden has changed from a fiercely warlike society to one of the least violent among industrialized nations. This shift -- like the existence of war itself -- can more plausibly be explained in terms of social and political factors rather than by turning to biology.
While it is indisputable that wars have been fought frequently, the fact that they seem to dominate our history may say more about how history is presented than about what actually happened. "We write and teach our history in terms of violent events, marking time by wars," says a psychologist. "When we don't have wars, we call it the 'interwar years.' It's a matter of selective reporting."
The presence of some hormones or the stimulation of certain sections of the brain has been experimentally linked with aggression. But after describing these mechanisms in some detail, a physiological psychologist emphasizes that aggressive behavior is always linked to an external stimulus. "That is," he says, "even though the neural system specific to a particular kind of aggression is well-activated, the behavior does not occur unless an appropriate target is available...and even then it can be inhibited...."
So important is the role of the environment that talking of an "innate1'tendency to be aggressive makes little sense for animals, let alone for humans. It is as if we were to assert that because there can be no fires without oxygen, and because the Earth is blanketed by oxygen, it is in the nature of our planet for buildings to burn down.
All of this concerns the matter of human aggressiveness in general. The idea that war in particular is biologically determined is even more farfetched "When one country attacks another country, this doesn't happen because people in the country feel aggressive toward those in the other," explains a biologist. "If it were true, we wouldn't need propaganda or a draft: All those aggressive people would sign up right away. State 'aggression' is a matter of political policy, not a matter of feeling."
The point was put well by Jean Jacques Rousseau more than two centuries ago: "War is not a relation between man and man, but between State and State, and individuals are enemies accidentally." That states must "psych up" men to fight makes it even more difficult to argue for a connection between our natures and the fact of war. In the case of the nuclear arms race, this connection is still more tenuous. Says Bernard Lown, cochairman of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985: "The individual's behavior, whether he's aggressive or permissive or passive, is not the factor that makes up his outlook toward genocide. Even the person who's aggressive won't readily accept extinction."