Dr. Clara B. Jones, Ph.D.
Fayetteville, North Carolina
U.S.A.
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EDUCATION and TRAINING: Clara B. Jones was educated at Cornell University (B.A., Ph.D., Biopsychology) and Harvard University (Postdoctoral Fellow in Population Genetics) and received additional training in Costa Rica (partially under the direction of OTS); on Isla San Andres, Colombia; in Germany (Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology, Munich: Dr. Dr. I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt; Deutsches Primatenzentrum, Frankfurt); in France; at the University of Maryland; from Japan; at Harvard University, MCZ; at AMNH; at Montclair State University (EM); and, in Belize.
In graduate school, Dr. Jones targeted the subjects of sex and aggression, especially as these evolve via sexual selection. During the turn of the decade from the 1990s to 2000s Dr. Jones worked in collaboration with a police department in NC to code and to analyze homicide data. Out of these efforts was developed a simple mathematical model describing in a novel manner the etiology, spread, and expression of homicide (submitted for publication to Acta Sinica Zoologica). Aggressive behavior is relatively uncommon in animal (including human) societies, probably because the costs of said behavior(s) generally outweigh the benefits. Parker (1974) has shown that damaging responses are most likely to be exhibited when actor has little to lose or much to gain.
Related to her interest in damaging and non-damaging aggression (Parker, 1974), Dr. Jones has developed a course, The Psychology of Terrorism, emphasizing the necessary and sufficient conditions for violent acts classified as "terrorism" as well as the precursors to and/or inducers of terroristic events that she has labeled "incipient terrorism" (IT). IT may devolve from some types of homicide (e.g., "impulsive homicide": IH) whereby IH may lead to copycat and/or cascade emotional, cognitive, and/or behavioral responses (IT) spread by mechanisms of cognition and/or social learning which, if reinforced or rewarded by endogenous or exogenous events, may proliferate in frequency, rate, intensity, duration, and, sometimes, quality. Certain manifestations of these latter events may generate and/or correspond to what are termed terrorist acts. For example, suicidal ideations and/or tendencies may morph into IT and/or suicidal terrorism if combined with resentful and/or aggressive or other potentially damaging emotions. Recent technical reports have documented a rise in rates of suicide in some population centers of the USA; thus, the potential for this disturbing manifestation of anomie (?) to develop into actions dangerous to others should be cause for concern. Ultimately, emotional states such as anomie and/or depression are expected to result from unconscious and/or conscious assessment by brain structures associated with the reward-punishment center(s) of differential costs and/or benefits to fitness of behaviors available to actor. Where options are unavailable and/or where options are suboptimal and/or where options are limited for one or another reason, nervous system dynamics will result in differential genetic and biochemical outputs yielding alternative emotional states.
A complication for the empirical investigation, interpretation, and control of IH is that the act(s) may be both "justified" and "unjustified"; however, this binary applies to all cases of violence, a determination generally made in the court system. Related to these suggestions is the discussion, fundamental to the literature on "terrorism", concerning the extent to which acts considered to constitute "terrorism" represent emotional, cognitive, and/or behavioral pathology [citation(s) available upon request]. Notwithstanding this debate, because violent ("damaging" as per Parker, 1974) emotions, cognitions, and acts do sometimes occur, it will be particularly significant to identify the local and global factors inducing said responses. Because the expression of aggressive acts is likely to be very costly, unexpected conformations of interindividual associations ("relationships") may prove beneficial to individuals, even those with extremely different situational optima. Parker (1974) has pointed out that damaging aggression, often characteristic of the male biostate, is generally costly in energy; non-damaging aggression, often characterizing the female biostate, generally costly in time. In analyzing IH and IT, these differential energetic strategies need to be assessed.
Related to this, it has been suggested that social behavior evolves as an energy-maximizing and/or energy-savings strategy. The expression of social relations (e.g., IH and IT) dependent upon selfish, cooperative, spiteful, and/or altruistic conformations between and among individuals should be investigated with these suggestions in mind. As noted, IT may be characterized by emotional, cognitive, and/or behavioral features, and, like most behavioral responses, is most likely condition-dependent. This treatment implies that IT and, by implication, other manifestations of "terroristic" acts, are not deterministic. This preliminary model awaits theoretical and empirical support as well as streamlining (minimizing recurrence of components). For theoreticians investigating terroristic pulses, it is important to keep in mind that (1) the expression of terroristic (however defined) acts will be FD and (2) damaging and potentially damaging (including threats of damage) acts and events will be a function of the options available to the perpetrator/actor. Thus, for example, terroristic (sic) acts may be most likely to occur where other options (e.g., sophisticated, modern warfare) are unavailable to perpetrators/actors. Terroristic (sic) acts are expected to be displayed under the previous conditions and where energetic and, perhaps, particularly, temporal maximizing and/or savings are beneficial proximately and ultimately. Terroristic events are expected to be condition- and/or situation-dependent and may be inevitable events where population densities (PD) and/or M&M increase above some threshold value(s) and/or where resource distribution is variable [again, above some threshold value(s)]. Both PD and M&M should be functions of BS; thus, E= mc2 should apply where m represents some BS function. It seems possible that T is a function of E--a treatment that can be applied to evaluations of all social behavior (see Schoener, 1971). Authorities will need to assess whether the costs of making "sophisticated" policing techniques available to marginal groups (MG) are outweighed by the costs of not making these policing techniques legally accessible to MG. Benefits, also, need to be evaluated relative to temporal and energetic effects.
In her studies of IT, Dr. Jones has specialized on the region of Latin America, including the FARC movement that has emerged in Colombia and is spreading to neighboring countries. Perhaps the first FARC-like event occurred in 1967 when Jim Thompson disappeared in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia without explanation, ostensibly during a walk on Easter Sunday. Studying this phenomenon theoretically and empirically requires knowledge of conserved sociocultural elements permitting mechanisms of social and/or observational learning to disseminate this and other "terrorist" movements. Such dissemination should be analyzeable with epidemiological models incorporating threshold effects. Since FARC-like events have begun to occur in the United States, America may represent a natural experiment for the etiology, dissemination, and long-term consequences of IT and its trajectories. Of particular interest will be attempts to understand similarities and differences between events in North America, events in Latin America, and events in the Middle East. Appropriate data from other geographical regions should, also enter any databases resulting from the accumulation of information within and between sites/regions.
Recently, it appears that extreme religous sects have responded with extreme acts, themselves, possibly leading to IT events. Another route to IT might be an emerging property of change in events and/or variables over time yielding a condition in which, on average, benefits outweigh costs, for example, when rapid social transitions yield radically different belief or learning sets (e.g., atheism rather than Christianity in Northern and Western Europe) interacting with traditional and/or conventional attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs--regionally or globally. Information about networks and, consequently, network models will permit evaluation of possible connections and/or contacts between, for example, elements of FARC and elements of, for example, Hamas and/or Fatah. Such information will permit modelling of individual and social (e.g., cultural) spread of FARC-like events or events of suicide terrorism characteristic (currently) of the Middle East and, possibly, other global interests. A systematic classification of manifestations of terrorism and related events is required before systematic theoretical and empirical analyses can yield robust results.
Mitigation of these potentially perturbing conditions will require further investigation(s) such as those being conducted by Jared Cohen (US Department of State). This young researcher differentiates between "social" and "recreational" rebellion by youth in the Middle East. According to Cohen, these types of rebellion create diversions away from the process of recruitment into violent activities such as suicide terrorism. Social and recreational activities among young persons should be studied in Latin America, as well, as possible precursors to or diversions away from violent activities. I tentatively suggest that violent acts (e.g., suicide terrorism) may be controlled by higher-order [e.g., "policing" (legitimized and/or state persuasion/coercion/force) or war] and/or lower-order [e.g., reputation, exclusion (as the "politics of exclusion"), or ostracism] factors, and each potential response is expected to be induced by particular regimes [environment(s)] and to be amenable to control differentially by regime and the individual characteristics of actors and recipients. These topics require further study as well as empirical advancement on the identification, measurement, evaluation, manipulation, and control of individual character states and traits (see G. Wagner for a discussion of the latter).
BACKGROUND: After beginning graduate school, I came to understand that every individual "state" is a tradeoff. Life-span development can be viewed, on average, as a sequence of genetic, synaptic, and/or behavioral events influencing survival and (inclusive) reproductive success (SRS). At any given "decision" node, three possibilities obtain: one increasing SRS (SRS+); one decreasing SRS (SRS-); or, one neither increasing nor decreasing SRS (SRS0 or SRS-+). Induction of these events may be endogenous (e.g., genetic, hormonal), exogenous (e.g., abiotic or biotic, including social, stimuli), or epigenomic. For social mammals, including humans, these optimized and/or "best-of-a-bad-job" decisions will be density- and/or frequency-dependent, strategic, a function of both phenotypic and genotypic tradeoffs, influenced by short-term and long-term projections, a partial result of individual state, stochasticity, local coefficients of r, and environmental options (e.g., reproductive and/or dispersal costs), and limited by conspecifics' selfishness (e.g., exploitation) or spite.
RESEARCH INTERESTS: My research specialization is the evolution and development of social mammals (including humans) in heterogeneous regimes, including mechanisms of genotypic and phenotypic "buffering" ("robustness"). As a Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Richard C. Lewontin (MCZ, Harvard University) during the 1981-1982 academic year, I continued my studies on the reproductive behavior and genetic segregation of mammals. My research has been conducted with humans in the laboratory and in natural settings and with several animal taxa in the field, lab, and zoo. My work has been characterized by an attempt to apply theoretical and empirical treatments common in studies of invertebrates to social mammals (e.g., Jones, 2005, Mastozool. Neotrop.).
A corollary of studying "extremely selfish" behavior is that there are, indeed, severe constraints on the individual's abilities to be selfish. Proximately and ultimately, what one wants is generally different from what one needs which is, in turn, usually different from what one can have, conditions potentially creating multiple interacting networks with consequent increases in complexity, stochasticity, and error. This view (also see Bascompte et al., 2006, Science) may be applied to all networks (e.g., genomes, whole organisms, "relationships", societies), leaving potential for exploitation. In addition, conflict may arise in the form(s) of multiple competing optima where networks interact consisting of different transition probabilities (timing at nodes such as synapses), different spatial conformations, and different strategic commands (rules varying in frequency, rate, intensity, duration, and/or quality : see Gross, 1996, TREE). Phenotypes themselves, then, may be viewed as adaptive landscapes ("ethology, neuroethology, and evolvability": Jones, forthcoming), and a consequence of endogenous and exogenous heterogeneity will be that decisions are rarely optimal and often not rational (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974, Science; Jones, 2006, Springer; see, especially, Schall, 2004)--because decision-making is often automatic and/or unconscious and/or designed for deception (as per Trivers) and/or for other reasons. Similar, then, to early stages of economics, a fallacy of cognitive psychology is to assume a direct relationship between so-called mental events and behavior. Behavior in the context of environmental stochasticity may have significant consequences for phenogroups and populations and their likelihoods of differentiation (Kingsolver & Pfennig, 2007, BioScience).
Current interests include: (1) "impulsive homicide" exhibited by black and white males; (2) the relationship between "impulsive homicide" and "incipient terrorism"; (3) cheating, deception, and manipulation as fitness optimizing and spite as a possible consequence of these strategies for actor and recipient; (4) application of parasite/host models to male (usually parasites) - female (usually hosts) relationships or other interactions characterized by intimacy, asymmetry, and/or differential access to resources (e.g., female counterstrategies to male alternative reproductive behaviors). Females, energy-maximizers, may be viewed as an energetic resource for which males, time-minimizers, compete for opportunities to parasitize female metabolic resources, including their young (e.g., infanticide by males). The social biostate of males, then, may be viewed as a parasite of conspecifics', especially females', energy budgets for the maximization of lifetime reproductive success and beyond; (5) application of "handicap" models to female social and/or reproductive behavior; (6) the ability of behavioral flexibility to compensate for lack of morphological differentiation (MD) and/or role and task specialization (RTS) (e.g., totipotency) for the expression of "complex" sociality (e.g., superalliances); (7) brief refractory periods and response latency as signature characteristics of the female orgasm--their cause(s), consequence(s), mechanism(s), and function(s); (8) sex differences in self-restraint in selfish, altruistic, cooperative, and spiteful interactions; (9) cooperation and altruism as self-interested tactics and strategies; (10) aggression as a response to extreme social behavior [i.e., extreme (e) selfishness, e cooperation, e altruism, and/or e spite]; (11) spite as a form of aggression; (12) differential energy-expenditure and energy-savings in social (all genetically-interested selfish, altruistic, cooperative, and spiteful interactions) and reproductive (genetically-interested selfish, altruistic, cooperative, and spiteful interactions with a same- or opposite-sex mate) interactions x sex and x habitat; (13) social behavior as (adaptive) communication between and among conspecifics; (14) the advantages and disadvantages of serial vs. consecutive MM by females in stable and heterogeneous regimes; (15) the individual and group causes and consequences of overestimating "power" in stable and heterogeneous regimes; (16) ululation-like chorusing by female mantled howler monkeys during intergroup conflicts; (17) "strategic handicapping" as a behavioral strategy employed, especially, by females and other social subordinates; (18) the causes and consequences of intrasexual and intersexual mechanisms of population differentiation and their possible relationship to benefits of asexual and/or homosexual biostates; (19) "stealth" tactics and strategies as indirect responses characteristic of immaures, females, and subordinate males; (20) cognitive similarities and differences and differential costs and benefits of social compartmentalization by the sexes; (21) defining "rank" and "status" within and between species and their differential manifestations in stable and heterogeneous regimes; (22) virtual and real-time modelling of theoretical and empirical results (e.g., applications of rational theory to existing socioeconomic structures); and, (23) interference competition as a behavioural strategy employed, especially, by females and other social subordinates.
When a 2007-May 2008 Visiting Faculty Member at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), Duke University (Durham, NC), I initiated a program on comparative behavioral ecology and sociobiology, emphasizing insects, fish, birds, and mammals. I am particularly interested in the potential for pathways sensitive to energy-maximization and/or energy-savings to be implicated across taxa in the evolution of complex sociality (project statement available upon request). An additional component of the future project will involve the estimation of character transition probabilities with re: transitions of behavioral states (see Jones, 1983). This topic is relevant to higher order levels of analysis such as transition probabilities of individuals within "groups" or populations or reproductive units within populations, taxa within niches, species within communities, and so on (i.e., ecosystem-level analyses). Applications would be transition probabilities of individuals within "relationships" and regimes within nation- states, etc. Such studies derive from network theory and, with sufficient N of branching lengths, including measurement of precursors to and consequences of changes in network architecture over time, dynamic and, most likely, general modelling of networks should be possible. Such modelling should, theoretically, be possible @any level of biological organization. Related, functional (e.g., phenotypic) conformations and outputs should be derivable from knowledge of network architecture since permutations of biological factors should be limited by physical (abiotic) and non-physical (biotic, including social) constraints (e.g., cellular composition or products of regulatory genes). Considering the notion of individuals within "relationships", there is a small literature on this topic, and it is clear that a robust definition of "relationships" (as per connections, nodes) requires consideration of differential optima between/among interacting individuals (social behavior) and thresholds of response whereby it benefits interactants to remain "connected". Generally speaking, it is expected that the capacity for differentiated social relations will be limited in taxa with little task or role specialization, such as most mammals for whom individual phenotypes are relatively generalized. Bernie Crespi (Simon Frazier University) will serve as Advisor to my comparative sociobiology and behavioral ecology project.
OUTREACH: I teach @a HMI, am a member of the Human Diversity Committee of the American Society of Mammalogists (ASM), have a serious interest in promoting theoretical (formal logical and mathematical) careers by females interested in animal (including human) social behavior (Jones, Science, 2006a), participate in the Chancellor's PP project, and conduct research and publish with students (see resume "humans"). My mentoring philosophy emphasizes self-empowerment via the guided transfer, acquisition, and modeling of skills that a student can convert into self-directed programs of study and research and/or into employment. An additional, and very important, component of my advisement plan is the gradual exposure of minority students to progressively challenging assignments designed to prepare them for competitive conditions in the real world. The rationale for this treatment is that, in my guarded opinion, underrepresented (including female) biostates (e.g., students) are generally shielded from negative outcomes and negative consequences; thus, these individuals are ill-trained to cope with and to respond to many if not most "events in the world" and/or challenges. Judicious training in compromise, negotiation, conflict resolution,problem-solving, time management, etc. (beginning at birth: see Jones & Palmer, 2004) are needed to render significant numbers of underrepresented students, including women, capable of a secure future in modern industrialized society. My daughter, Julie, has said to me: "Hope is not a plan." I hope to facilitate the likelihood that underrepresented students can prepare a workable and socially-acceptable "plan" for their futures. In addition to the previous posture, I prefer to mentor students willing to make scholarship a priority in their lives. I, also, have an interest in facilitating the progress of students in underrepresented groups (women, ethnic and racial minorities, etc.) (Jones, Science, 2006b). A component of my teaching philosophy is that individuals are constrained more by what they do not know than by their character states/traits (as per G. Wagner: phenotypic traits such as skin color, morphology, etc.). Individuals interested in any of the areas listed on this page under "Courses Taught" are invited to contact me, and I am particularly committed to facilitating the careers of students likely to persist over the long term as scientists conducting basic research in the academic mainstream [see link for Scientific Researcher Inventory (SRI)].
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction."--probably not accurate for social phenomena. LSES
LIFERS: Cornell; Brooktondale, NY; STRI; Panama Canal; Rio Negro, Amazonas; Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica; Isla San Andres, Colombia; Palo Verde, Costa Rica; Peninsula de Osa, Costa Rica; Monteverde, Costa Rica (including, golden toads); Hacienda La Pacifica, Canas, Guanacaste, Costa Rica); Bluefields, Nicaragua; Puntarenas, CR; Managua, NIC; San Jose, Costa Rica; Trinidad & Tobago; Kingston, Jamaica; MCZ; Vienna; Max Planck (Seewiesen, De); Convent Station, NJ; Big Cove Tannery, PA; Paris; Westfield, NJ; Paradise Island, Bahamas; Zona Rosa; Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Veracruz, MX; Madison, WI.; Southern Pines, NC (>1: ao-0000; vi-00)
 Books:
 Hager, R., & Jones, C. B. (Eds.). (Forthcoming). Reproductive skew in vertebrates: Proximate and ultimate causes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (ISBN 0521864097).
- Jones, C. B. (Forthcoming). Ethology, neuroethology, and evolvability: New perspectives and directions. Book in preparation.
- Jones, C. B. (2008, May). Female counterstrategies to male alternative reproductive behaviors in primates and other mammals. Primate Report (Monograph: Special Issue).
- Jones, C. B. (2005). Behavioral flexibility in primates: Causes and consequences. New York: Springer (ISBN 0-387-23297-4).
- Jones, C. B. (Ed.). (2003). Sexual selection and reproductive competition in primates: New perspectives and directions. Norman, OK: American Society of Primatologists (ISBN 0-9658301-2-8; LOCCC# 2003102240).
- Jones, C. B., & Schwibbe, M. (Eds.). (2003, 2004). Primate dispersal: Proximate and ultimate causes and consequences (Special Issue, Part 1 and Part 2). Primate Report, 67, 1-98, 2003; 68, 1-95, 2004 (ISSN 0343-3528, DPZ, Federal Republic of Germany, Erich Goltze GmbH & Co. KG, 37079, Gottingen, FRG).
- Schwibbe, M., & Jones, C. B. (Eds.). (2001). Sampling Neotropical primates: Implications for conservation and socioecology. Primate Report, 61, 1-70 (Special Issue: ISSN 0343-3528, DPZ, Federal Republic of Germany, Erich Goltze GmbH & Co. KG, 37079, Gottingen, FRG).
Journal Articles:
- Bicca-Marques, J.C., Prates, H.M., Cunha de Aguiar, F.R., & Jones, C.B. Survey of Alouatta caraya, the black-and-gold howler monkey, and A. guariba clamitans, the brown howler monkey, in a contact zone, State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil: Evidence for hybridization (In revision, Ms. No. PRIM-D-08-00015, Primates).
- Jones, C. B. (2008, March). Ethology, neuroethology, and evolvability in vertebrates: a brief review and prospectus. Primate Report, 75.
- Jones, C. B., Milanov, V., & Hager, R. (2008). Predictors of male residence patterns in groups of black howler monkeys. Journal of Zoology: doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7998.2008.00412.x (published article online: 13 February 2008).
Other Publications:
- Jones, C. B. (forthcoming). The effects of heterogeneous regimes on reproductive skew in eutherian mammals. In R. Hager & C. B. Jones (Eds.), Reproductive skew in vertebrates: Proximate and ultimate causes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (ISBN 0521864097).
- Jones, C. B. (2007). Comparative mammalian life history: What have we learned from baboons? Book review of Reproduction and fitness in baboons: Behavioral, ecological, and life history perspectives, Springer (Larissa Swedell and Steven R. Leigh, Eds). ISBE Newsletter, 19(2), 10-12.
- Jones, C. B. (2007). Redefining developmental psychology: pattern formation from genes to behavior. Book review of Coming to life: How genes drive development, Kales Press (Christiane Nusslein-Volhard). American Journal of Psychology, 120(4), 157-161.
- Jones, C. B. (2006). An exploratory analysis of developmental plasticity in Costa Rican howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata palliata). In A. Estrada, P. A. Garber, M. Pavelka, & L. Luecke (Eds.), New perspectives in the study of Mesoamerican primates: Distribution, ecology, behavior, and conservation (pp. 265-285). New York: Springer.
- Jones, C. B. Comparative sociobiology and behavioral ecology of insects, fish, birds, and mammals. Monograph in preparation.
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