Anthropologist examines the motivating factors behind hazing

[cronus]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 102313.php


UCSB anthropologist examines the motivating factors behind hazing


(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– It happens in military units, street gangs and even among athletes on sports teams. In some cultures, the rituals mark the transition from adolescence to adulthood. And in fraternities and sororities, it's practically a given.
With a long history of seemingly universal acceptance, the practice of hazing is an enduring anthropological puzzle. Why have so many cultures incorporated it into their group behavior? Aldo Cimino, a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at UC Santa Barbara, seeks to answer that question. His work is highlighted in the online edition of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

"Hazing exists in radically different cultures around the world, and the ethnographic record is replete with examples of initiation rites that include hazing," said Cimino. "It is a practice that cultures continually rediscover and invest themselves in. The primary goal of my research is to understand why."

One hypothesis Cimino is exploring involves evolved psychology. "The human mind may be designed to respond to new group members in a variety of ways, and one of those ways may be something other than a hug," he said. "I'm not claiming that hazing is inevitable in human life, that everyone will haze, or that nothing will reduce hazing. But I am suggesting that the persistence of hazing across different social, demographic and ecological environments suggests that our shared, evolved psychology may be playing a role."

Hazing and bullying have a lot in common –– individuals who possess some kind of power abuse those who don't –– but what makes hazing strange, according to Cimino, is that it's directed at future allies. "It's very rare for bullies to say, 'I'm going to bully you for three months, but after that we're going to be bros,' but that's the sort of thing that happens with hazing."

Cimino suggested that in some human ancestral environments, aspects of hazing might have served to protect veteran members from threats posed by newcomers. "It's almost as though the period of time around group entry was deeply problematic," he said. "This may have been a time during which coalitions were exploited by newcomers. Our intuitions about how to treat newcomers may reflect this regularity of the past. Abusing newcomers –– hazing –– may have served to temporarily alter their behavior, as well as select out uncommitted newcomers when membership was non-obligatory."

(continued)

[Audley Strange]

Hmm. Seems to me like its easy enough to figure out. They are initiations. That is the person is given a task which would normally be unacceptable, taboo, transgressive or dangerous to bind them to the group.

Is this sort of thing hard to figure out?

[laklak]

Doesn't seem that hard to me, but it keeps anthropologists in grant money.

[cronus]

Doesn't seem that hard to me, but it keeps anthropologists in grant money.

Anthropologists know the right buttons to press. Hazing is a hot topic in the popular imagination.

[Audley Strange]

Doesn't seem that hard to me, but it keeps anthropologists in grant money.

Anthropologists know the right buttons to press. Hazing is a hot topic in the popular imagination.

but the basis is so ubiquitous and universal that it would surprise me that most people did not know the motivation behind it. It's like saying the motivation behind speaking is to communicate thoughts or ideas, so obvious as to need go unstated.

[JimC]

Doesn't seem that hard to me, but it keeps anthropologists in grant money.

Anthropologists know the right buttons to press. Hazing is a hot topic in the popular imagination.

but the basis is so ubiquitous and universal that it would surprise me that most people did not know the motivation behind it. It's like saying the motivation behind speaking is to communicate thoughts or ideas, so obvious as to need go unstated.

But it's extent will vary greatly from one institution to another. Schools can develop a hazing "culture", but they don't have to. We have developed "big brother" type programs involving older students mentoring and helping the newly arriving students find their feet. We have a certain amount of the usual aggro, but it is usually confined to squabbles within peer groups, now...

[Audley Strange]

Doesn't seem that hard to me, but it keeps anthropologists in grant money.

Anthropologists know the right buttons to press. Hazing is a hot topic in the popular imagination.

but the basis is so ubiquitous and universal that it would surprise me that most people did not know the motivation behind it. It's like saying the motivation behind speaking is to communicate thoughts or ideas, so obvious as to need go unstated.

But it's extent will vary greatly from one institution to another. Schools can develop a hazing "culture", but they don't have to. We have developed "big brother" type programs involving older students mentoring and helping the newly arriving students find their feet. We have a certain amount of the usual aggro, but it is usually confined to squabbles within peer groups, now...

Those Big Brother programmes will have their own form of hazing once established. Granted "Hazing" tends to relate to dangerous and injurious behaviour and I think initiation should be used. It is part of the normal in-group behaviour of our species.

I proposed a long time ago that one of the biggest problems is lack of recognition that we al pretty much behave the same way. That's the same whether it is some prostitute getting tramp stamped with some producers stable logo, whether it be some daft apprentice looking for tartan paint or sky hooks, whether it be introductions to a new school by getting eggs thrown at you or whatever.

With kids the hazing thing seems to me to be an escalation of it, but still the basis is so obvious and non-controversial that I don't see the reason for the study. The more interesting study would be the difference in treatment between initiates non initiates and those who failed.