Dear Russ,
Thank you for giving me an opportunity to
comment on the ranking problems of the Houston Oilers. I will do my best to apply our ranking theory
to their situation.
The
first thing to note is that there is a formal hierarchy, in which ranks are
allocated by appointment. This formal
hierarchy is not necessarily the same as the "dominance hierarchy"
which represents the interpersonally negotiated ranking of each dyad. In many ways formal rank is similar to
dependent rank as seen in animals, so that there may be two separate
hierarchies depending on whether the authority figures who determine the
formal/dependent rank are present. And,
for completeness, we should remember the "prestige hierarchy" which
Franz De Waal observed in his chimpanzees, which was not the same as their
dominance hierarchy.
But in
the case of the Oilers, I do not detect any informal
deviation from formal rank, and so we can write the hierarchy thus:
Oilman (owner)
Jack
Pardee (head coach)
Kevin
Gilbride Buddy
Ryan
(offensive coach) (defensive coach)
Legend = hedonic relationship
= agonistic
relationship
The next thing we need to know is whether the
relationships are in the agonistic or hedonic modes (I use the term agonistic
rather than agonic because the current definition of agonic excludes episodes
in which catathetic signals are being exchanged, and
I do not wish to exclude them). In the
agonistic mode the power bases of the relationships are being contested, in the
hedonic mode they are not. Thus it seems
that all the relationships are hedonic except that between the two assistant
coaches. According to the information
you give, the agonistic aspect of the Gilbride/Buddy
relationship is contributed by Buddy, who wants to be formally superior to and
informally dominant to Gilbride. Perhaps he is an "authoritarian
personality", which means that he has a deficit in the area of forming
hedonic equal relationships. Or he may
disapprove of the idea of the offensive and defensive coaches having equal
status, and instead of trying to change the formal structure,
he is trying to become informally dominant to the other coach. For whatever reason, he is challenging the
symmetry between himself and Gilbride. He is emitting catathetic
signals to Gilbride, in the form of both words and
blows. We are not sure of Gilbride's response, but our theory predicts that if the catathetic signals are not returned in full measure (or
dealt with by some other method), Gilbride will
suffer a fall in RHP and will be liable both to an episode of involuntary
subordinate strategy (ISS) and to being manoevered
into the one-down position in his relationship with Buddy.
Also,
since the exchanges between Buddy and Gilbride are
public, they are competing for prestige in the eyes of both their patrons and
their teams. We do not know on what
criteria the prestige will be allocated.
It may go to Buddy, who may be seen as desirably strong; or it may go to Gilbride if he is seen as chivalrously ignoring the boorish
behaviour of Buddy.
Buddy
has more manifest "up-hierarchy motivation" than Gilbride. Whereas Gilbride
has been offered positions of head coach, we do not know whether he wants them,
but we have been told that Buddy covets the senior positions. Nevertheless, we have not been told that he
covets Jack Pardee's job, nor
that Jack finds Buddy's bumptiousness threatening, so we have no direct
evidence that the relationship between Buddy and Jack is contested, and
therefore it can be said to be in the hedonic mode. The only suggestion of agonistic development
in the relationship is Buddy's criticism of the offensive play which Jack
brought from a previous job, and which is therefore presumably publicly
identified with Jack. This could be said
to be an indirect attack on Jack, so we might anticipate a switch in the
Buddy/Jack relationship from hedonic to agonistic.
If
Buddy's desire for advancement was backed up by an "involuntary dominant
strategy" (IDS) in the form of elevated mood, this would make him more
aggressive to Gilbride (whom he hopes to dominate),
more aggressive to Jack (whom he hopes to supplant), but more actively
submissive to the Oilman, who he hopes will support his attempt to supplant
Jack. This illustrates the important
point that, whereas passive submission is characteristic of depressed mood and
the ISS, active submission is a component of elevated mood and the IDS. Powles (1), if
no-one else, has pointed out that an increase in flattery (active submission)
is characteristic of manic but not of depressed patients.
The basic plans of symmetrical relationships
The hierarchy of the Oilers
as described does not include a hedonic relationship at the same level, but I
would like to use the example to discuss the difference between the basic plans
for agonistic and hedonic "symmetrical" relationships. Perhaps we could assume that when they
started off together, Buddy and Gilbride were good
friends and all their apparent aggression was in the form of play; and that at some
stage they switched to being enemies (or at least rivals). What are the basic plans for symmetrical
relationships, and are there two basic plans, one for hedonic and one for
agonistic relationships, or is there one overall basic plan which can vary a
bit depending on how well people are getting on? In other words, is the variation between
hedonic and agonistic dimensional or categorical?
The
original basic plan for symmetrical relationships must have been laid down
hundreds of millions of years ago, at a time when all relationships between
members of the same sex were agonistic, and before the development of group
living with individual recognition (the requirement for hierarchy
formation). At that time there must have
been just two basic social plans, the agonistic symmetrical plan for dealing
with members of the same sex, and a (male and female) reproductive basic plan
for dealing with members of the opposite sex.
The
instructions of the basic plans were probably very simple. In dealing with the same sex, the plan must
have been designed to instruct the animal whether to attack or flee. Two variants of the plan seem to have
evolved, depending on whether the criterion of ownership is available on the
input side. If so, then the basic plan
is "If you are the owner of the territory, attack! If you are not the owner, flee!" If there is no difference in ownership,
another plan is needed, and this probably said, "Evaluate relative
RHP. If favourable, attack! If unfavourable, flee!"
Of
course we do not know how these plans are organised in the brain and so we must
treat the brain like a black box. But
the choice between two strategies has been traced right through the brains of
electric fish (2). When their output
frequency is jammed by another fish with a similar frequency, they have two
alternative and mutually incompatible responses (or strategies): they can increase their own frequency or they
can reduce it. Formally, this strategy
choice is similar to the decision whether to attack or flee in a social
situation with a same-sexed conspecific.
These
basic strategies do not seem to have changed much over the past 300 million
years or so. We can see Buddy appraising
Jack and if he thinks he can get the better of him, he swings with his
right. The main changes are the
extension of the strategy set from "attack or flee" to "attack
or flee or submit";
and the introduction of allies and especially patrons
(higher-ranking allies) into the evaluation of relative RHP.
Long
after the agonistic symmetrical basic plan came the hedonic symmetrical basic
plan. In the meantime, other basic plans
had evolved, particularly those relating to the parent/child relationship and
those relating to pair-bonding. Also
there was the hedonic asymmetrical pair of basic plans, according to which
there could be hedonic relationships between same-sexed animals of different ranks. I think that these must have evolved out of
the parent/child basic plans. Certainly
in monkeys, in which these hedonic asymmetrical relationships are very common,
they are based on the mother-daughter relationship,
and their extension to sister/sister and aunt/niece relationships are probably
secondary developments and family life became more complicated.
It is
only very recently in evolution that hedonic symmetrical relationships
appeared. They do not occur in monkeys
(except possibly in opposite-sexed animals who are pair-bonded). It is only in chimpanzees that same-sexed
individuals are able to tolerate close social relations without the
establishment of dominance. And it is
only in the human lineage that these equal relationships have become common and
the basic plans for them have presumably evolved in the context of enormous
advantages in cooperation with family and other group members. What are the instructions for the hedonic
symmetrical basic plan, and how do these differ from the modern human
equivalent of the primitive agonistic symmetrical basic plan mentioned
earlier? Here are some suggestions:
1. If I
get my own way on this occasion, you are more likely to get your own way on the
next occasion (reciprocity). This
contrasts with the agonistic rule that "success breeds success".
2. If I
detect any weakness in you (low RHP) I respond by boosting you up. This contrasts with the agonistic response
which is to take advantage of any weakness by putting the other down even more
than usual.
3. I do
not desire to dominate you, and I do not suspect that you desire to dominate
me. This contrasts with the mutual
desire to dominate which characterises an agonistic relationship.
4. If I
attack you, at the same time I metacommunicate that
this is "play". Thus in play,
friends develop their agonistic skills which are used "for real" in
other relationships.
5. I am
interested in knowing about you so that I can help you, compared with desiring
to know about the other in order to exploit weakness.
6. If I
boast, the boasting includes you, e.g., "We are great". This contrasts with expressions of "I am
great".
7. The
more powerful you appear, the more powerful I feel. In an agonistic relationship, your power
makes me feel less powerful.
8. Our
conversation centres on shared attributes, and serves to justify our beliefs,
affiliations and actions (3). Agonistic
verbal exchanges emphasise differences.
9. If we
have a serious difference of opinion, we negotiate rather than trying to impose
our own will.
10. (left blank for editorial insertion)
I think the hedonic symmetrical basic plan
probably evolved out of the hedonic asymmetrical pair of basic plans, which
evolved out of the parent/child plans; whereas the agonistic symmetrical
basic plan is a direct evolutionary descendant of the original plan for dealing
with members of the same sex. So we
should consider the possibility that the two symmetrical basic plans are of
different phylogenetic origin; so that when Buddy and Gilbride switched from their former hedonic relationship to
their present agonistic relationship, they switched from one basic plan to
another of an entirely different phylogenetic
origin. This suggests a categorical
change of strategy rather than a movement along a dimension of variation of a
unitary basic plan.
Before
trying this exercise, I had not realised how complex the hedonic symmetrical
basic plan is. No wonder it took so long
to evolve. Clearly a lot of people have
difficulty in relating hedonically to equals, and this has been the main problem
in those who have been labelled as having authoritarian personalities (4,5). At the moment I
am reading A.N.Wilson's biography of Tolstoy, and he
seems to fall into that category, especially in his relationship with Turgenev, to whom he was frequently and unnecessarily
aggressive; he
liked to affiliate with admirers, such as his serfs or the coterie which
surrounded him when he was famous.
The
cases presented in Anthony Ryle's excellent book on
cognitive analytic therapy are largely people who cannot relate to peers. Some feel they have to buy friendship with
subservience (and then feel resentful about it), some are so controlling that
they are rejected by others;
therapy is aimed to encourage symmetrical and hedonic relating.
I am
afraid I have strayed from the Oilers, but in a way
the interesting thing about their hierarchy was what wasn't there - like the
dog that didn't bark in the night - in the form of a hedonic symmetrical
relationship - what about that for an account of a football team from the land
of equality! (I have come across a
patient here in New Zealand who responds to the injunction, "Have a nice
day!" as if it were a catathetic signal...and
she was committed to hospital after responding to such an apparently friendly
greeting with a blow to the face (she has a paranoid psychosis)).
An
afterthought - why is there no existing social psychology of hierarchical
relationships? I think there are two
answers to this. One is that social
psychologists have denied the existence of hierarchy, or at least of the occurence in humans of the sort of hierarchical
relationships that occur in animals (6).
The other is that social psychologists have worked largely with
students, who do not form dominance/subordinacy
relationships in the sort of settings that social psychologists put them.
1. Powles, W.E. (1992) Human Development and
Homeostasis: The Science of Psychiatry.
Madison (
2. Heilingenberg, W.F. (1991) Neural Nets in Electric Fish. MIT Press: Computational Neuroscience Series.
3. Totman R (1985) Social and Biological Roles
of Language: the Psychology of Justification, London, Academic Press Inc.
4. Adorno T, Frenkel-Brunswik E,
Levinson D,
5.
Maslow, A.H. (1943) The authoritarian character
structure. Journal of Social Psychology, 18, 401-411.
6. Tedeschi, J.T. & Lindskold,
S. (1976) Social Psychology:
Interdependence, Interaction and Influence.
p 496.