Dominance and Aggression in Humans and Other Animals: The Great Game of Life

Dominance and Aggression in Humans and Other Animals: The Great Game of Life examines human nature and the influence of evolution, genetics, chemistry, nurture, and the sociopolitical environment as a way of understanding how and why humans behave in aggressive and dominant ways. The book walks us through aggression in other social species, compares and contrasts human behavior to other animals, and then explores specific human behaviors like bullying, abuse, territoriality murder, and war. The book examines both individual and group aggression in different environments including work, school, and the home. It explores common stressors triggering aggressive behaviors, and how individual personalities can be vulnerable to, or resistant to, these stressors. The book closes with an exploration of the cumulative impact of human aggression and dominance on the natural world.- Reviews the influence of evolution, genetics, biochemistry, and nurture on aggression- Explores aggression in multiple species, including insects, fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals- Compares human and animal aggressive and dominant behavior- Examines bullying, abuse, territoriality, murder, and war- Includes nonaggressive behavior in displays of respect and tolerance- Highlights aggression triggers from drugs to stress- Discusses individual and group behavior, including organizations and nations- Probes dominance and aggression in religion and politics- Translates the impact of human behavior over time on the natural world

About the Author

H. R. Hermann has been a biological researcher and university professor for over 50 years, focusing primarily on the fields of behavior, morphology and evolution. He has numerous publications, including over 20 books and nine book chapters on a wide variety of subjects. As editor and author of four Academic Press books on social insects between 1979 and 1982 and a book on insect defenses by Praeger Scientific, he played an important role in facilitating an understanding of animalistic social behavior and opening the door for further investigation in that field. He has studied social interactions in organisms from ants and wasps to humans and has published on human behavior with several papers and a historical and behavioral account of Native American music in Making the Wind Sing, Native American Music and the Connected Breath. Undergraduate studies were at New Orleans University and graduate school was completed at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. As a professor and researcher of defensive systems in social species, he spent 30 years in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Georgia where he taught a wide variety of courses, including evolution, medical biology, social behavior, histology and comparative morphology. He currently teaches human anatomy and physiology at Florida SouthWestern State College in Ft. Myers, FL, and is carrying out research on social species in that area.