Capture-bonding
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Capture-bonding is a descriptive evolutionary psychology term for the evolved psychological mechanism behind Stockholm syndrome. John Tooby (then a graduate student) originated the concept and its ramifications in the early 1980s, though he did not publish. (source: Leda Cosmides.) Keith Henson reached the same conclusions independently 15 years later about the evolutionary origin and widespread effects of this psychological mechanism on humans and human societies.
In the view of evolutionary psychology "the mind is a set of information-processing machines that were designed by natural selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors." [1]
One of the "adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors," particularly our female ancestors, was being abducted by another band. If life in those times was similar to that of some of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies, then being captured and having their dependent children killed might have been fairly common.
"The killing of unrelated young occurs in other species, such as lions and langur monkeys. Once a male langur has succeeded in the struggle for a sexual monopoly of the females in a troop, he will dispatch the existing infants." [2]
"Elena Valero, a Brazilian woman, was kidnapped by Yanomamo warriors when she was eleven years old . . . . But none were so horrifying as the second [raid]: ‘They killed so many.’ . . . The man then took the baby by his feet and bashed him against the rocks . . . ." (Hrdy quoted in [3])
"The percentage of females in the lowland villages who have been abducted is significantly higher: 17% compared to 11.7% in the highland villages." (Napoleon Chagnon quoted at [4])
"The Shaur and Achuar Jivaros, once deadly enemies . . . . A significant goal of these wars was geared toward the annihilation of the enemy tribe, including women and children. . . . . There were however, many instances where the women and children were taken as prisoners . . . . A woman who fights, or a woman who refuses to accompany the victorious war-party to their homes and serve a new master, exposes herself to the risk of suffering the same fate as her men-folk." (Up de Graff also in [5])
There are strong biological reasons to expect that war and abductions (capture) were typical of human pre history at least back to the time our ancestors escaped predation (at least to the taming of fire and perhaps as far back as chipped rocks). An extreme selective genetic filter was applied to a significant fraction of each generation. If this is correct, then the psychological traits behind capture bonding should be expected to be nearly universal.
In 2002, Keith Henson used capture-bonding as an illustrative example of selected-in-the-stone age psychological traits in "Sex, Drugs, and Cults:" [6]
"An evolutionary psychology explanation starts by asking why such a trait would have improved the reproductive success of people during the millions of years we lived as social primates in bands or tribes? One thing that stands out from our records of the historical North American tribes, the South American tribes such as the Yanomamö, and some African tribes is that being captured was a relatively common event. If you go back a few generations, almost everyone in some of these tribes has at least one ancestor (usually a woman) who was violently captured from another tribe."
"Natural selection has left us with psychological responses to capture seen in the Stockholm Syndrome and the Patty Hearst kidnapping. Capture-bonding or social reorientation when captured from one warring tribe to another was an essential survival tool for a million years or more."
"Fighting hard to protect yourself and your relatives is good for your genes, but when captured and escape is not possible, giving up short of dying and making the best you can of the new situation is also good for your genes. In particular it would be good for genes that built minds able to dump previous emotional attachments under conditions of being captured and build new social bonds to the people who have captured you. The process should neither be too fast (because you may be rescued) nor too slow (because you don't want to excessively try the patience of those who have captured you...")
"An EP explanation stresses the fact that we have lots of ancestors who gave up and joined the tribe that had captured them (and sometimes had killed most of their relatives). This selection of our ancestors accounts for the extreme forms of capture-bonding exemplified by Patty Hearst and the 'Stockholm Syndrome.' ...It accounts for battered wife syndrome, (Battered person syndrome) where beatings and abuse are observed to strengthen the bond between the victim and the abuser--at least up to a point."
Henson has proposed that the partial activation of this psychological trait accounts for other mysterious human traits such as Basic training "a mildly traumatic experience intended to produce a bond" and fraternity hazing (perhaps also other similar initiation rites). The difficulty colleges have had in stamping out injurious hazing may stem from instinctual knowledge of how to induce bonding in captives. He also makes a case that the intense reward from sexual practices such as BDSM derives from activation of the capture-bonding psychological mechanisms.
