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Background: Previous human ethology studies have demonstrated that the interpersonal interactions displayed in therapy by both patients and therapists influences a patient's depression improvement. Pairing novel statistical techniques such as the hidden Markov model (HMM), interpersonal interaction dynamics can be uncovered by partitioning time into empirically-derived nonverbal behavioral states. This approach allows for better patient-therapist behavioral dynamics distinctions in predicting depression improvement and, subsequently, for the processes behind depression improvement. Methods: For the 39 participating patients, the first 15 min of the first or second therapy session was recorded on video to examine the interpersonal interaction behaviors of patients and therapists. The video recordings were encoded for vocalization, looking and leg movement behavior events at a 1 s frequency. A Bayesian multivariate multilevel HMM was fitted on the behavioral event data. Results: It is demonstrated that patients that show improvement in the depression score are characterized by interpersonal interaction dynamics of hyperfocus when listening to their therapist in psychotherapy when compared to non-improving patients. The data supports evidence for the emergence of differences in interpersonal interaction dynamics through changed durations of the patient hyper focused listening states, but not through changed state-switching dynamics over time. Limitations: Due to our relatively small sample size we could not fit multilevel HMMs composed of more than three hidden states. Conclusions: We suggest that applying HMMs will aid human ethological behavior studies in uncovering interpersonal interaction dynamics that occur in therapy and be able to use these dynamics to predict patient depression symptom improvement.

During the 1970s, ethologists at the German Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen started a series of research projects at several regional kindergartens in search of natural predispositions in human behavior. This so‐called "Kindergarten Project" became one of the pillars of research activity at the newly founded Forschungsstelle für Humanethologie (Research Center for Human Ethology) where Irenäus Eibl‐Eibesfeldt and a team of researchers set out to explore new fields of research for the discipline of ethology. Taking the research project conducted by biologist Barbara Hold on ranking behavior among kindergarten children as a vantage point, this paper explores the shift in ethology from animal to human behavior which occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. It analyzes how human ethologists coped with the methodological, conceptual, and ethico‐political challenges which arose from crossing the human‐animal divide. This article thus sheds light on the hitherto unwritten history of human ethology as it was developed at the MPI since the late 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay aims to examine the nature of global conceptual models of human behaviour and their contribution to the advancement of scientific knowledge in the health and social sciences. Our perspective revisits the role that the researcher exerts in the face of theoretical models: should the researcher be an ambassador for a given model, or rather act as an independent examiner who challenges the model with his own ideas and methods, checks up its workings and strives to better understand behavioural processes? Is it the duty of the researcher to again exemplify the approximate descriptive pertinence of a well-known model? To the question: ''Do the global or generalist conceptual models facilitate or rather jeopardize the understanding of data and scientific progress?'' responses are given by focusing on the limitations of the methodologies intended to empirically validate global theoretical models and on the risk of ossifying the practice of research under the authority of consecrated paradigms. Alternative approaches are propounded to revalue strict ethological observation, introduce ad hoc instead of global models and explore definite hypotheses in current research.

By gathering data on people during their ordinary daily activities, we tested if looking at, but not manipulating, smartphones led to a mimicry response in the observer. Manipulating and looking at the device (experimental condition), more than its mere manipulation (control condition), was critical to elicit a mimicry response in the observer. Sex, age and relationship quality between the experimenter and the observer had no effect on the smartphone mimicry response that tended to decrease during social meals. Due to the role of food as a tool in increasing social affiliation, it is possible that during communal eating, people engage in other forms of mimicry involving facial expressions and postures rather than the use of objects. Understanding the ethological mechanisms of the use of smartphones at everyday-social scale could unveil the processes at the basis of the widespread/increasing use of these devices at a large scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given its growing influence on the image and reputation of organizations, the customer experience is now one of management's main responsibilities. The private sector has been aware of this for many years. Public administrations must also take an interest in it. This is particularly the case for the Geneva social institution we studied, which, with its public and social role and its duty to guarantee total equality of treatment to its various users, seeks to offer them a customer experience that is as personalized, meaningful, and as complete as possible. The primary objective of this research is to define the main elements of perceived value of the welfare office "queuing experience" such as equality and dignity. The focus here is on homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a view to prepare human groups for long international and interplanetary missions, Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station (SIRIUS) program develops confinement campaigns whose SIRIUS-19 was 4-month duration. The goal was to simulate four phases of a mission including traveling to the Moon, orbiting the Moon, landing on the Moon, and returning to Earth. The Russian-American crew (n=6) consisted in 3 females and 3 males subjects. The ethological method for non-verbal and verbal behaviors analysis was based on observation, description and quantification of spontaneous actions, interactions, expressions and positions at meal time twice a month, and during group discussion, once a month. Results show expressive and communicative behaviors in female subjects, and less active but more interactive behaviors in male subjects, with specific adaptive strategies built by each ones. Crew cohesion follows a temporal dynamics. Discussion is on personal value and diversity value that contribute to the heterogeneous quality of a mixed gender and culture group in a positive way for space exploration success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • New tourism use of human ethology. • Categories of solo photographic poses presented. • Frequency of the poses recorded. • Gender differences in poses established. • Ethological concepts used to explain the poses. Abstract In this study the ideas and approaches of human ethology are applied to the topic of individual tourists posing for a photograph at iconic tourism sites. The emphasis in the study is on tourists' postures and, using both researcher collected examples and internet materials, the work outlines an original category scheme for the kinds of poses observed. An eight part coding scheme was built on a careful analysis of the position of the tourists' head, trunk, arms, legs and gestures. The labels assigned to the five most common poses were composed, cute, bland, model, and interacting with the tourist attraction. There was substantial agreement among two coders who applied the eight part system to 325 images. Explanations for these posture styles were pursued through considering concepts from human ethology. The potential applications of this style of work were briefly noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have shown that emotion recognition is impaired in individuals with a history of violent offenses, especially in those diagnosed with psychopathy. However, in criminological contexts, there is insufficient research regarding the role of empathy and facial emotion recognition abilities of personnel employed in correction centers. Accordingly, we sought to explore facial emotion recognition abilities and empathy in administrative officers and security guards at a center for institutionalized juvenile offenders. One hundred twenty-two Mexican subjects, including both men and women, were recruited for the study. Sixty-three subjects were administrative officers, and 59 subjects were security guards at a juvenile detention center. Tasks included "Pictures of Facial Affect" and the "Cambridge Behavior Scale." The results showed that group and gender had an independent effect on emotion recognition abilities, with no significant interaction between the two variables. Specifically, administrative officers showed higher empathy than security guards. Moreover, women in general exhibited more empathy than men. This study provides initial evidence of the need to study emotion recognition and empathy among professionals working in forensic settings or criminological contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Este texto recolle unha proposta de aplicación da Etoloxía Humana ao estudo das fórmulas rutineiras. De forma concreta, pártese dun concepto específico, o de gramática universal do comportamento social humano (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1979a, 1979b, 1993) e búscase relacionar as diferentes nocións teóricas que apoian este concepto con algunhas das cuestións que fundamentan as reflexións sobre as fórmulas. Deste xeito, considéranse algúns tipos de fórmulas rutineiras, como, por exemplo, as fórmulas de consentimento ou as de agradecemento, a partir da súa posible relación con determinadas estratexias de interacción ou cos mecanismos de ritualización estudados pola Etoloxía Humana. Deféndese a idea de que os estudos etolóxicos propician diferentes vías de reflexión que poden ser útiles para a investigación fraseolóxica. // In this paper This paper proposes an application of Human Ethology to the study of routine formulae. Concretely, the study starts from a specific concept: the Universal Grammar of the Human Social Behavior (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1979a, 1979b, 1993), and relates the different theoretical notions that support this concept with some of the points underlying the reflections on the formulae. Therefore, some types of routine formulae, such as approval and gratitude formulae, are taken into account, considering the possible connection with some interaction strategies or the ritualization mechanism studied in Human Ethology. This work defends the idea that ethological studies offer different paths that may prove useful for phraseological research, especially in unravelling the innate and cultural bases ruling the construction and use of formulae.

This paper compares various explanatory concepts of food sharing in humans. In many animal species, parents share food with their offspring, thus investing into the 50% of their own genes present in each child. Even in modern families of industrialised societies, there is a very significant flow of material goods from the parent to the offspring generation. Sharing food between reproductive partners is also easily explainable in evolutionary terms: „food for sex“ as male strategy is observed in some primate species. Sharing within one’s group in small-scale societies can be explained also as consequence of its members being actually rather closely related to each other; this, among others, gives credit to the concept of group selection which gains attention again after having been discarded by classic sociobiology. The ethos of individual and group sharing can quite readily be transferred to larger groups, i.e. a whole nation or, especially in the case of unusually devastating natural disasters, to members of other societies. Food sharing beyond genetic relationship or reproductive interest has been explained as „tit for tat“ and „reciprocal altruism“. Events of give and take, however, are, how the last example demonstrates, quite often non-symmetrical, i.e. one partner shares much more than the other. „Tolerated theft“, a behavioural trait in non-human primate species thought to be a stepping stone for the typical preparedness of humans to share, does not play a big role in traditional societies, which provide an important base to discuss the topic. The Trobriand Islanders, e.g., have a very complex system of sharing. In the years of competitive harvest, their yield of yam is distributed to close relatives, especially to fathers and elder brothers. The donors keep almost nothing for themselves, are however given as well, so that everybody has enough to live. High rank men receive a partly enormous surplus, by which their status is increased. Western farmers would find this generosity quite strange. It is one outcome of the human tendency to create bonds through food gifts. It is interesting, that Marcel Mauss has well described the power of the gift which generates a counter gift, but did not inquire evolutionary nor ontogenetic building blocks of the often very complex acts and rituals of giving and receiving one finds in all cultures. It seems reasonable to take an evolutionary position and argue that those of our ancestors who were generous and socially competent with a well-developed emphronesis (Theory of Mind) were preferred interaction and marriage partners and that this sexual selection was the ultimate mechanism spreading the motivations and behaviours involved in sharing. To counteract cheaters humans have a rather sharp perception to detect those who don’t play by the rules and a very strong motivation to punish them, even accepting, in doing so, high costs for themselves. This strongly disproves the idea that humans mainly act on rationale choice. Rather, we are endowed, one must conclude, with a very powerful, archaic sense of balanced social interaction, of fairness and justice. This raises the interesting question whether the laws governing social conduct, made by all cultures of the world, are contra or secundum naturam. For quite some time, in the wave of sociobiological thinking, the common stand was that humans are dangerously egoistic beings and that their antisocial instincts must be kept in check by powerful laws. As Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, the founder of human ethology as a discipline, has stated and as recent primatological and anthropological research has corroborated, humans are much more social than postulated by some authors. The Ten Commandments are built on not against basic human tendencies. Konrad Lorenz spoke of animals having “morally analogous” behaviours and was criticised for this. Modern research is rehabilitating him. The joy of sharing, a proximate behavioural set of motivation, is typical for our species. Notwithstanding expectations of economic and status gain this biopsychologically rooted tendency most likely is the engine driving the systems of do ut des, so marvellously developed in our species.

The article introduces the problem of autonomy of law. The paper examines the medieval origins of legal positivism from a historical approach, sketching the main theories concerning the emergence of law, and phrasing some preliminary consideration for a historical and philosophical view of the problem of the birth of law. As a result of reasoning the article suggests some legal historical and human ethological ideas relating to the phenomena of crystallization of the law.

Future interplanetary crewmembers will be micro-societies like autonomous and auto-organized systems far from the Earth. They will have to live and work together in small habitat units as it is simulated at Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Utah, USA. Missions become longer and the multi-national heterogeneity of the crews becomes new characteristics to emphasize. The purpose of this study is to combine ethological and anthropological methods for quantitative and qualitative descriptions of the crew's non-verbal and verbal behavior during a 15-day period, characterized by a multicultural background (French, Danish, Australian and American). The results show global high occurrences of visual interactions compared to both facial, body and object interactions. Differences of language skill have an impact on communication abilities. Subjects using no-native languages compensate with interaction abilities. With the evolving of common working and living habits, some will actively interact, others will actively communicate and the whole will be involved in dynamic process of adaptation with cultural diversity as salutogenic factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

O objetivo deste estudo é apresentar, de maneira didática, a perspectiva evolucionária no estudo do comportamento humano. Para isso, apresenta-se a etologia, apontando algumas variações nas perspectivas de estudo da área. A etologia surgiu com o objetivo de estudar os comportamentos inatos nas diversas espécies em ambiente natural. Atualmente pode-se falar em duas tendências: a etologia tradicional e a ecologia comportamental, preocupadas, respectivamente, com as causas imediatas e evolutivas do comportamento. Superando concepções dualistas como inato-aprendido e natureza-cultura, a etologia tem contribuído para a compreensão do comportamento humano. Neste artigo, apresenta-se como exemplo o desenvolvimento do apego, relacionando pressões seletivas, neotenia, cuidados parentais e o surgimento da instituição familiar.The purpose of this paper is to present, in a didactic manner an evolutionary perspective concerning the study of human behavior. In order to do this, an ethological perspective is given, indicating a number of variations in the study of the subject. Ethology first arose as the scientific study of innate behavior of different species that occurs in a natural environment. Currently we consider that there are two tendencies: a traditional ethology and a behavior ecology addressing immediate and evolutionary causes of behavior, respectively. Beyond the dualist concepts, innate-learned and nature-culture, ethology has contributed to the understanding of human behavior. In this paper, we have included the examples of the development of attachment and its relation with selective pressures, neoteny, parental care and the emergence of the family institution.

Background Psychotherapeutic diagnosis is largely based on verbal explorations and/or psychological tests. In contrast, the relevance of non-verbal communication is often disregarded. Here, we aim to provide a tool to measure and assess non-verbal behavior in clinical interviews, based on the Ethological Coding System for Interviews (ECSI), developed by Troisi (1999), which was translated and validated in Spanish. An ethogram is a catalogue of behaviours or patterns of behaviour, which are operationalized and grouped in categories such as affiliation, flight, assertiveness, relaxation and so forth. Method Study1. The ECSI was translated into Spanish. Three “blind" observers registered the frequencies of the behavioral patterns of the patient. The recordings were made in 15 seconds intervals during the first and the last 10 minutes of a clinical interview. An inter-observer reliability of r=0.989, p<0.001 was obtained. Study 2. Based on the first study, it was considered pertinent to add behavioural patterns, as well as rearranging and redefining the proposed categories. The three “blind" observers performed the same task as in study 1 with a second video-recording. Aside from the frequency of the observed behaviours, the duration of the behavior was measured. An inter-observer reliability of r=0.993, p<0.001 was obtained. Results and discussion The ECSI has proven a reliable and valid tool for the examination of patients' nonverbal behaviour during interviews. It is hoped that the ECSI can be added to the diagnostic process during psychotherapeutic sessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facial emotion recognition in mental health professionals may be influenced by their psychological state of mind and attachment experiences. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between current psychological symptoms and attachment styles, and the ability of psychiatry residents to correctly identify the facial expressions of emotions throughout their three-year period of psychiatry training. Sixteen psychiatry residents were recruited in a highly specialized mental health center. In order to evaluate the subjects' psychiatric symptoms, the Checklist (SCL-90) and Attachment Styles Questionnaire (ASQ). Likewise, were used to examine the ability to recognize facial expressions of emotion, we chose the Picture of Facial Affect (POFA). During the psychiatric residency, the severity of psychiatric symptoms was minimal in all participants. Fear was the least-well recognized emotion, both initially and in the third year of residency, while neutral emotion was recognized best at both times. Significant changes in time were observed in the recognition of sadness and disgust. No significant associations were found between attachment styles and the changes in time observed in depressive and anxiety symptoms in psychiatry residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Subject's behavior is recorded during a testing session under ecological settings. • Data is obtained by behavioral coding from 7-minute video footage with an ethogram. • We propose a temporal classification method for time series behavior analysis. • BvFTD apathetic patients were stratified according to their behavioral kinetics. • The classification method can be extended to any behavioral study encoding time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to introduce the readers of psychology to some important concepts about male and female specificities presented in seminal works of human ethology, sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. The classical critiques of social sciences on the biological determinism of these disciplines do not resonate in current biological theories about behavior. These later emphasize the interaction between genetic, ecological and socio-cultural factors, as well as the statistical nature of empirical observations. Nevertheless, the conclusion stresses the risk that these disciplines may reduce the distance between the ultimate causes and the proximate factors of motivation, thus avoiding the innovative effects of current socialization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to present some ethological perspectives on early peer relationships. Firstly we discuss the research work of the 1970s about the dominance hierarchies in preschool-age children. Then we discussed the concept of affiliation and in particular the studies on how to identify affiliative structures in groups of children in preschool. Given the difficulties presented by the interpretation of behavioral sociograms an alternative method is presented to identify subgroups of children with affiliation profiles: the evolution of this methodology is described. Finally, we discuss the possible links between the concepts of dominance and affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article emphasizes the various characters of legal phenomena, which are discoverable just from different aspects. The article approaches the problem of multidisciplinarity on the basis of some considerations of a concrete research. After that, it introduces the necessity of multidisciplinary tendencies as indirect consequences of Western analytical thinking. It outlines that evolution of legal philosophy results in a special plurality within jurisprudence. The article attempts to sketch the structure of multidisciplinary legal inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. From an interdisciplinary perspective, the goal of our research in human ethology is to investigate the adaptive dynamics of small groups in isolation and confinement with a particular emphasis on unexplored environments, from circumpolar missions on earth to interplanetary missions in space. Study design. The ethological observations were designed to monitor the polar teams on the Subantarctic islands, the Antarctic continent and the Arctic Ocean. The working hypothesis viewed the periodic changes in the groups' organization as optimal behavioural strategies in extreme living and working conditions. Methods. The general methodological feature is a quantitative description of observable events based on the motor activity of individuals, interactions and communications among individuals and spatial mapping in collective areas. Results. We observed group organization, group disorganization and group reorganization over extended time periods in the polar stations. Cultural grouping and gender-based individualities were observed as well. Focusing on the Tara Expedition in the Arctic, we observed variations in spatial indicators, including inter-individual positions, and in temporal indicators, like collective times, as behavioural strategies for preventing the monotony of social life. Conclusion. The ethological approach, using non-invasive techniques of observation, description and quantification of spontaneous human behaviour, offers an innovative and complementary tool for sociocultural approaches, enhancing the knowledge of contemporary circumpolar micro-societies. With the changing of environmental context, the Arctic natives would undertake changes in their group organization for maintaining their behavioural health. Such social adaptation could be investigated with this new approach in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the differentiation and adaptive significance of musical, particularly singing behaviour. We discuss the relationship of speech and song and define song as a musical mode of speech. We argue for a focus on singing as the primary form of musical expression and discuss universal functions of singing as a mode of human communication and their possible adaptive significance. Starting from these universal capacities, from a number of recently discussed candidates for adaptive functions, and from the record of various cultural gender and biological sex differentiations related to music, a categorization of musical (particularly singing) behaviour, primarily based on sex differentiation, is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Ethology has been traditionally defined as "the biological study of behavior". Although its initial studies go back to the second half of the nineteenth century, its acknowledgment as a scientific discipline dates only from 1973, when the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology is awarded to three of its most outstanding representatives: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. In this text, a journey that includes the main historical landmarks of ethology will be undertaken, making special emphasis on conceptual and theoretical aspects. A revision of the background that allows the establishment of ethology as a discipline will be made, as well as a view of its development and maturity. Finally, the birth of the subdivision known as Human Ethology together with its contemporary tendencies will be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple dimensions of facial expression research are reviewed with emphasis in the study of species’ homology in both facial action single components and patterns or gestalten. Research over the last 30 years has revealed human universal patterns and some cross-species gestalten that appear as homologies. Recently, researchers are looking into the importance of individuality markers in facial behavior, which can play an important role in the fitness of individuals living in complex social systems and thus might be traceable in their evolutionary path. Chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans were in the center of most of this research with research results pointing toward homologies within the Homo– Pan clade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1970s, ethologists at the German Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen started a series of research projects at several regional kindergartens in search of natural predispositions in human behavior. This so-called "Kindergarten Project" became one of the pillars of research activity at the newly founded Forschungsstelle für Humanethologie (Research Center for Human Ethology) where Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt and a team of researchers set out to explore new fields of research for the discipline of ethology. Taking the research project conducted by biologist Barbara Hold on ranking behavior among kindergarten children as a vantage point, this paper explores the shift in ethology from animal to human behavior which occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. It analyzes how human ethologists coped with the methodological, conceptual, and ethico-political challenges which arose from crossing the human-animal divide. This article thus sheds light on the hitherto unwritten history of human ethology as it was developed at the MPI since the late 1960s., (© 2022 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.)