From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 08 Mar 2004 - 16:05:54 GMT
>>> Stockholm Syndrome, more descriptively capture-bonding, is a
>>> conditionally switched on evolved psychological trait humans have.
>>> See http://www.human-nature.com/nibbs/02/cults.html for discussion re
>>> this trait and the attention-reward mechanism (awkward terms, I know).
>>
>> Er, 'is'? A little bold there fella -- but I digress.
>
> Article has been out there for year and a half, is widely indexed and
> over 50k downloads. I started discussing this particular point of the
> article with psychologists close to 5 years ago and never had one I have
> talked to disagree on my categorization of Stockholm Syndrome as "a
> conditionally switched on evolved psychological trait." The 100%
> response after discussing what happened to our non-ancestors who did not
> socially reorient toward their captors was, "Yeah, that's obvious."
> This was actually disappointing since I like defending a thesis.
Popularity isn't proof. Anyway it's the EP premise
that I have the problem with, not the analysis.
> If you can see any holes in the argument for the origin of
> SS/capture-bonding psychological trait I would love to see them.
It's not that I see holes in it as a top-down description, but it
implies so much more than that -- it's the 'evolved psychological trait'
bit I have a prob with because given your EP background, presumably you
mean some sort of attitudinal program, evolved and maintained in some
bit of the brain, as opposed to short-term evolved (i.e. interplay of
meme-like things in an internal exploration of the situation) behaviour.
I'd conjecture that the hostage/hostage-taker relationship can be
explained without recourse to such complex innate thingies. Point one -
if they don't like you, they'll kill you (especially in the cliche where
victims are selected arbitrarily for death); point two - even really bad
people have nice bits to them sometimes. There's a stick and a carrot to
be going on with. Sorry I don't have time to read the article fully at
the moment (honest I'm snowed under) but hopefully that doesn't preclude
my discussion of the principles...
I get your point, and it's entirely consistent with what you and other
EPers see, I just think the finality of the statement with the 'is' in
it required examination.
> Thanks for the name suggestion,
Anything to avoid the bloody code support nonsense I'm stuck with at the
mo :)
Cheers, Chris.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
MIAPE Project -- psidev.sf.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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