Ontogeny of Social Behavior

Abstract

Social ontogeny is the process of becoming social. If all organisms sprang into the world Minerva-like, complete and fully equipped with adult forms and functions, social ontogeny as a discipline could not exist. If all organisms moved from conception to maturity as though every detail in their individual careers was determined from the outset by the inexorable unfolding of some grand primordial plan, it would exist as a legitimate field of inquiry, but one that held little interest for the behavioral scientist. All is not ordained, however. What makes the study of social ontogeny an absorbing and challenging field for behavioral research is the presence of ordered variability in process and outcome. Becoming social is a matter of individual history---part of the unending dialogue between the organism and its environment that is characteristic of all life processes. More than that, it is the development of competences and skills, of deficiences and aberrations, the realization of potentials whose nature can be discerned only after the fact.