Professors Discuss Rage at Interdisciplinary Symposium

Speaking on Wednesday at a symposium hosted by the Harvard Society for Mind, Brain, and Behavior, Harvard professors from four different departments discussed the phenomenon of rage and its implications for human behavior.

Human Evolutionary Biology professor Richard W. Wrangham, History of Science lecturer Nadine M. Weidman, Molecular and Cellular Biology professor Catherine Dulac, and Psychology professor Steven Pinker presented on topics ranging from historical debates about human nature to aggression in mice.

Wrangham discussed whether humans are “inherently violent and selfish” or “peaceful and cooperative.” He said there can be two kinds of aggression—aggression between groups and aggression within groups. Humans demonstrate high levels of between-group aggression but low levels of within-group aggression, he said.

Weidman also discussed theories of human nature, but in the context of an intellectual debate that took place during the Cold War. In the 1950s, proponents of the theory that human beings are innately loving and cooperative challenged the view that man is aggressive by nature. Weidman suggested that, despite these contrasting positions, both groups aimed to attack the Soviet Union, which they worried was striving to change human nature.

“The debate over human nature is not and never has been a simple dichotomy,” she said.

After discussing the role of pheromones in aggression among male mice, Dulac spoke about the difficulty of studying aggression in female animals.

“The literature on animal behavior has very, very little on female behavior,” Dulac said.

In presenting his 2011 book “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” Pinker said he attempted to explain the “unmistakable downward trend” in human violence that has occurred despite the fact that our brain that is wired for aggression.

“Violence is universal and reliably developing in the human desires, but rates of violence vary across time and places,” he said.

Joyce C. Zhou ‘17, a member of Harvard Society for Mind, Brain and Behavior, said the organization hosts a symposium on a different topic each semester.

“We always hope to facilitate an interdisciplinary discussion,” Zhou said. “I think in general right now people are talking a lot about ideas of violence and aggression, so we wanted to have people hear an academic side.”

For Sarp Gurakan ’19, the event was instructive.

“[I learned] that violence is not necessarily peaking and it is not as simple as we think it is—it has different forms,” he said.