Social Displays and the Recognition of Individuals

Abstract

Ethologists often single out displays in their studies of social behavior. This chapter opens by considering the ways in which conspicuous social actions may be interpreted, and it suggests a framework of interpretation which attends particularly to the sequential and temporal relationships among social actions. Although this interpretation is contrasted with more widely used approaches to displays, it is not an exclusive alternative. It does, however, lead us to pay special attention to social interactions as processes occupying time which can lead to progressive and sometimes irreversible change in relationship. Much of this chapter is concerned with showing how some current approaches to animal behavior can make it difficult for us to describe progressive social exchanges and how these approaches limit the kinds of description that emerge. This limitation is to be expected of current approaches referring specially to physiological levels of description. This chapter is a plea for more complete descriptions of social processes at the behavioral level. One measure of the success of such descriptions will be the new questions they pose for physiological and developmental studies.