# behav: spreading conflicts through monkey societies

<< How does conflict spread through a society? One way to think of conflict spreading is to picture an epidemic, with aggressive individuals "infecting" others and causing them to join the fight >>

<< It appears that it is not individuals who control the length of fights, but the relationships between pairs of individuals >>

AA << found evidence for a more complicated structure behind >>

AA << found evidence that conflict duration is strongly affected by the first interaction, which sets the tone for the fight. If the first interaction is brief, then following episodes are likely to be just as brief. A long drawn out initial brawl, however, will be followed by similarly difficult episodes. This, Flack [Jessica Flack] says, "is a signature of collective memory," meaning "the duration of the conflict is not just determined by individuals independently deciding whether to continue fighting or drop out, but through their joint memory for the past and subsequent collective decision-making." >>

How conflicts spread through monkey societies. Sep 7, 2017

https://m.phys.org/news/2017-09-conflicts-monkey-societies.html

Edward D. Lee, Bryan C. Daniels, et al.  Collective memory in primate conflict implied by temporal scaling collapse. Journal of the Royal Society Interface. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2017.0223 Sep 6 2017.

http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/14/134/20170223