ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the social primates are social, evolution must have favored sociality and deals with the proximal cause by saying that primates are social because they like one another. Social living demands a degree of accommodation to the needs and desires of others. The management of aggression, stimulated by social living, is essential to every society. The mechanisms that control aggression are an integral part of sociality. Being social means that learning is likely to take place in a social setting and that joint action on the environment is possible. Despotic societies are said to show severe forms of aggression at relatively high frequencies, aggression is invariably unidirectional, and reconciliations are rare following agonistic interactions. If animals are smart, then the assessment process can involve memories of past assessments—a learned component. If competition and conflict stimulate aggression to impose a solution on others, then there will be definite costs to social living.
