Is it possible that pheromones serve these same functions in human beings. Could we also become territorial and wish to defend the boundaries. Several noted (and controversial) authors declared many years ago that primates (including human beings) are particularly territorial and devote considerable amount of attention to this collective activity (Ardrey, 1966) (Morris, 1967).
And pheromones certainly may play an important role in the activation of the human fight/flight/freeze behavior that we repeatedly reference in this book. While the physical sighting (or imagined sighting) of a threatening entity (be it a lion or impending court hearing) can provide strong defensive behavior, the “smell” of threat and accompanying “smells” of fear and hate might also play an important activating role in humans. Were “pheromones of hate” swirling around the L.A. Sports Arena during the Philbrick rally, around the crowds at Nurenberg, and the MAGA crowds recently gathered at the Madison Square Garden in New York City?
Neighborhood effect
Many years ago, Albert Bandura (1977) conducted a series of experiments with children. He invited them to observe an adult beating a bobo doll and shouting aggressively about the doll. He then observed them in a playroom and noted that they were more likely to be aggressive in their play. Children who did not observe the violent bobo doll act did not exhibit this aggression. The “neighborhood effect” seems to be at play. The child became violent in part because their “neighbor” (the observed person) was being violent. “I’ll do it because they’re doing it.” Bandura’s study led to a new emphasis on reducing violence in TV shows intended for children. However, what about adults. Aren’t we also influenced by bobo-type violence that is no display whenever we turn on our TV, watch cable news or a super-hero movie? We know that the violence in the movie is not real (much as the bobo doll isn’t a live being that is being hurt)? We also are viewing the TV news violence from a comfortable distance. Still, we may be influenced to the same (or even greater) extent than Bandura’s children.
We should also note that the neighborhood effect takes on a specific form when it comes to threat and the prospect of a negative outcome if coordinated effort is not taken. The movement often looks like something quite different from flocking or swarming. It looks more like the stampeding of threatened cattle, or the massive crowding at exit doors when a movie theater is on fire. There is initially no coordinated effort when a stampede begins. There is only hard coercion. There are often fatalities when people surge to the exit doors. Eventually, there might be coordinated activities as the cattle settle into their rapid movement across the plains. People do eventually begin to flow in an orderly manner out the exit doors—often at some expense in terms of injuries and even deaths.
There is another important distinction to be drawn between the hard coercion of a negative neighborhood effect and the soft cohesion of a positive neighborhood effect. The hard coercion (as the name implies) is based on an external locus of control. The cattle and movie goers are not assembled as a collective crowd until the threat appeals. The cattle are grazing in the field, being pretty much indifferent to one another. The movie goers are simply focused on the movie and could care less about other people attending the movie, other than to be softly influenced by the laughter or fear that emanates from specific scenes in the movie. Then the threat appears. Collective fear engulfs the crowd and an Enemy is identified. Fight or flight (usually the latter) kicks in, with the appearance sometimes of highly destructive freeze under highly stressful conditions.
Better than neighbor effect
Bateson’s (2000) complementary schizogenesis is fully in effect and, as Bateson notes, is likely to produce nothing but pain and suffering for both competing parties. Not only are there likely to be costs (injuries, diminished resources, unproductive time). There are also likely to be firmly set attitudes about one’s own team and culture but also similarly rigid attitudes about the “Other”.
Imagine what could have been done with the money spent on tanks, missiles and nuclear devices during the American “cold war” with Russia. Are the lingering hostilities between the many Hatfield’s and McCoy’s of contemporary times producing anything other than distractions, lingering anxiety and deteriorating health associated with the stress associated with this inter-family schizogenic hate?
