Social Facilitation, Psychology of Cultural Dimensions

Action, Theories of Social
R. Boudon, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001
Social action has become an important topic in sociological theory under the influence of Max Weber. Weber and methodological individualists generally, endorse two postulates: a social phenomenon is the effect of individual actions; the causes of any action lie in the meaning to the actor of his action. To Parsons, roles rather than individuals should be considered as the atoms of sociological analysis. Merton insisted on the ambiguities generated by the various roles an individual is embedded in. In the sixties, some sociologists proposed to identify the homo sociologicus with the homo oeconomicus. G Becker maintains that the model of man proposed by neo-classical economists is the only theory able to unify the social sciences. But many social phenomena appear as resistant to this ‘rational choice’ model. The theory of action characteristic of neo classical economics was made more flexible by H. Simon. Experimental cognitive psychology has also contributed to the sociological theory of action. A full-fledged rational theory of action should follow Durkheim and Weber's lead: analyse action as grounded on rational normative and descriptive beliefs.

Hymenoptera

Norman F. Johnson, in Encyclopedia of Biodiversity (Second Edition), 2013

Social Behavior

Social behavior is most simply defined as that of groups of individuals of the same species that cooperate with one another. Simple aggregations of individuals may occur, for example, where some limiting resource is found, such as water or nesting sites. Evolutionarily important social behavior, however, involves some sort of cooperation among individuals leading to reproductive success of some or all of the participants. Among the insects, the extremes in development of social behavior primarily are found in the termites (order Isoptera) and within the Hymenoptera. Its most highly developed level, called eusociality, is characterized by cooperation among females in nesting, overlap in generations, and reproductive division of labor. This means that some individuals sacrifice production of their own offspring in order to facilitate reproduction by other individuals of the same colony. Eusociality has clearly evolved several times within the order Hymenoptera: once in the ants (Hölldobler and Wilson, 1990), which are primitively eusocial; once in the family Crabronidae; and several times among the bees and the social wasps (i.e., the paper wasps, yellowjackets, hornets, etc.).
Colonies of social insects can be extremely large, both physically and in terms of total numbers of individuals. The life cycle of a colony typically begins with the mating flight of a virgin queen. After mating with one to several males, the queen begins construction of a nest in the soil, a natural cavity, or in some cases in the open. Colony founding is sometimes cooperative (e.g., in some paper wasps), and the determination of which individual will become the primary reproductive one is established through behavioral interactions among the founderesses. Males do not participate in colony founding and only serve to inseminate the new queens, after which they soon perish. The eggs produced by the queen develop into the first worker generation: These are all daughters of the queen and typically do not reproduce. Workers forage for food and nest materials, care for the developing brood, defend and care for the nest, and care for the queen. This range of behaviors is sometimes divided among the workers. In some species, individuals are morphologically specialized into recognizable castes for certain functions such as defense in the case of soldiers. Morphological differentiation into castes results from allometric growth of the individual workers. Individuals of overall larger body size have disproportionately large mandibles, spines, and head capsules. In other cases, individuals may not be morphologically distinguishable but specialize in particular sets of behaviors at different periods of their adult life, usually ending as foragers outside the nest. Once well established, the collective efforts of the individuals of the colony result in the production of a new generation of males and reproductive females. Some social species reproduce by swarming: In the case of the honeybee, the old queen leaves the existing nest, taking with her a portion of the worker force, and reestablishes in a new site. Then one of the newly emerging queens takes over the remainder of the colony.
Communication among individuals is critical to social behavior. Chemical communication is probably of primary importance. Many exocrine glands have been identified on social Hymenoptera from all major parts of the body. These chemicals include alarm and defense pheromones, mating pheromones, trail pheromones, and signals from the queen that suppress the reproduction of workers. Trophallaxis, the exchange of food between individuals, may serve as the medium of exchange of some chemical signals. Tactile behavior is also important, principally involving antennal contact between individuals. The classic example of tactile communication is the waggle dance of honeybees. The location of food sources, including direction and to some extent distance, is transmitted to nestmates by a stylized reenactment within the darkness of the hive of the foraging flight. The direction of the resource in relation to the sun is indicated by the angle formed by the waggle portion of the dance in relation to the vertical axis within the hive.
Eusocial behavior is a fairly rare phenomenon in the animal world. The repeated evolution of such complex behavior within the single order Hymenoptera has led to a great deal of work in search of an explanation. One suggestion is that the asymmetric relationship among siblings and parents may be an important underlying feature that predisposes this group to the evolution of the characteristics of sociality. However, within the group at least two separate paths leading to eusociality have been identified. The parasocial route first envisions communal nesting among related females, followed by cooperative brood care and eventually reproductive division of labor. The subsocial route to eusociality posits first the development of overlap of generations followed by continued reproduction of the parent female in the company of her own daughters.
These characterizations of social behavior are often more simplified than the real situation found in nature. Colonies may be founded by more than one queen; sometimes these are closely related. Queens are probably usually inseminated by several or even many males, thus reducing the relevance of the asymmetry of relationships associated with arrhenotokous parthenogenesis. It is also clear that eusociality, although a highly evolved trait, is not the end point of evolution in Hymenoptera. Local environmental factors are undoubtedly important in the development of eusocial traits and in their subsequent loss. Several cases have been identified in which these behavioral repertoires and both the morphological and physiological features associated with them have been lost. Some of the most extreme cases are social parasitism in which reproductive females of one species live within the nest of another social species. The workers of the host species feed and care for the parasite, and the latter contributes nothing to the welfare of the colony. Social parasites are widely found among the ants, bees, and wasps.