Frans de Waal

Franciscus Bernardus Maria "Frans" de Waal (born October 29, 1948) is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist. He is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory,[1] and author of numerous books including Chimpanzee Politics (1982) and Our Inner Ape (2005). His research centers on primate social behavior, including conflict resolution, cooperation, inequity aversion, and food-sharing. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Frans de Waal
Frans de Waal in 2006
Born
Franciscus Bernardus Maria de Waal

(1948-10-29) October 29, 1948
's-Hertogenbosch, North Brabant, Netherlands
Scientific career
FieldsPrimatologist, Ethologist
InstitutionsEmory University
Doctoral advisorJan van Hooff
InfluencesNikolaas Tinbergen, Jan van Hooff

Early life and education

De Waal was born in 's-Hertogenbosch on October 29, 1948.[2] He studied at the Dutch universities of Radboud University Nijmegen, University of Groningen, and Utrecht. In 1977, De Waal received his doctorate in biology from Utrecht University after training as a zoologist and ethologist with professor Jan van Hooff, a well-known expert of emotional facial expressions in primates. His dissertation titled: "Agonistic interactions and relations among Java-monkeys" concerned aggressive behavior and alliance formation in macaques.[2][3] De Waal has said many times that he has been inspired by fellow Dutch ethologist Niko Tinbergen.[4]

Career
Atheism will need to be combined with something else, something more constructive than its opposition to religion, to be relevant to our lives. The only possibility is to embrace morality as natural to our species.

 — from The Bonobo and the Atheist, (2013)

In 1975, De Waal began a six-year project on the world's largest captive colony of chimpanzees at the Arnhem Zoo. The study resulted in many scientific papers, and resulted in publication of his first book, Chimpanzee Politics, in 1982. This book offered the first description of primate behavior explicitly in terms of planned social strategies. De Waal was first to introduce the thinking of Machiavelli to primatology, leading to the label "Machiavellian Intelligence" that later became associated with it. In his writings, De Waal has never shied away from attributing emotions and intentions to his primates, and as such his work inspired the field of primate cognition that, three decades later, flourishes around themes of cooperation, altruism, and fairness.

His early work also drew attention to deception and conflict resolution, nowadays two major areas of research. Initially, all of this was highly controversial. Thus, the label of "reconciliation", which De Waal introduced for reunions after fights, was questioned at first, but is now fully accepted with respect to animal behavior. Recently, De Waal's work has emphasized non-human animal empathy and even the origins of morality. His most widely cited paper,[5] written with his former student Stephanie Preston, concerns the evolutionary origin and neuroscience of empathy, not just in primates, but in mammals in general.

De Waal's name is also associated with Bonobo, the "make love – not war" primate that he has made popular. But even his Bonobo studies are secondary to the larger goal of understanding what binds primate societies together rather than how competition structures them.

Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathic than bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral.

 — Frans de Waal[6]

Competition is not ignored in his work: the original focus of de Waal's research, before he was well known, was aggressive behavior and social dominance. Whereas his science focuses on the behavior of nonhuman primates (mostly chimpanzees, bonobos, macaques, and capuchin monkeys), his popular books have given de Waal worldwide visibility by relating the insights he has gained from monkey and ape behavior to human society. With his students, he has also worked on elephants, which are increasingly featured in his writings.

His research into the innate capacity for empathy among primates has led De Waal to the conclusion that non-human great apes and humans are simply different types of apes, and that empathic and cooperative tendencies are continuous between these species. His belief is illustrated in the following quote from The Age of Empathy: "We start out postulating sharp boundaries, such as between humans and apes, or between apes and monkeys, but are in fact dealing with sand castles that lose much of their structure when the sea of knowledge washes over them. They turn into hills, leveled ever more, until we are back to where evolutionary theory always leads us: a gently sloping beach."

This is quite opposite to the view of some economists and anthropologists, who postulate the differences between humans and other animals. However, recent work on prosocial tendencies in apes and monkeys supports de Waal's position. See, for example, the research of Felix Warneken,[7] a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. In 2011, de Waal and his co-workers were the first to report that chimpanzees given a free choice between helping only themselves or helping themselves plus a partner, prefer the latter. In fact, de Waal does not believe these tendencies to be restricted to humans and apes, but views empathy and sympathy as universal mammalian characteristics, a view that over the past decade has gained support from studies on rodents and other mammals, such as dogs. He and his students have also extensively worked on cooperation and fairness in animals, the latter leading to a video that went viral on inequity aversion among capuchin monkeys. The most recent work in this area was the first demonstration that given a chance to play the Ultimatum game, chimpanzees respond in the same way as children and human adults by preferring the equitable outcome.[8]

In 1981, de Waal moved to the United States for a position at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, and in 1991 took a position at Emory University, in Atlanta, GA. He is currently C.H. Candler professor in the Psychology Department at Emory University and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory. He became an American citizen in 2008.

The possibility that empathy resides in parts of the brain so ancient that we share them with rats should give pause to anyone comparing politicians with those poor, underestimated creatures.

 —Frans de Waal[9]

His 2013 book The Bonobo and the Atheist examines human behavior through the eyes of a primatologist, and explores to what extent God and religion are needed for human morality. The main conclusion is that morality comes from within, and is part of human nature. The role of religion is secondary.[10]

De Waal also writes a column for Psychologie, a popular Dutch monthly magazine.[11]

Since September 1, 2013, de Waal is a Distinguished Professor (Universiteitshoogleraar) at the University of Utrecht. This is a part-time appointment—he remains in his position at Emory University, in Atlanta.[2][12]

In October 2016, de Waal was the guest on the BBC Radio Four programme The Life Scientific.[13]

In June 2018, de Waal was awarded the NAT Award, recently established by the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona. The award, which goes to people or institutions "that are referents for their way of viewing and explaining nature, whether because they have encouraged professional engagement in natural history disciplines or because they have contributed significantly to nature conservation", was awarded to de Waal "for his vision regarding the evolution of animal behaviour in establishing a parallel between primate and human behaviour in aspects such as politics, empathy, morality and justice." Alongside de Waal, broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough was awarded an Extraordinary Award for a Professional Career, and biologist and former director of the Barcelona Zoology Museum Roser Nos Ronchera was awarded a Honorable Mention.[14]

Awards

Selected bibliography

Books

Articles

See also

References
  1. Andrea Thompson (August 9, 2007). "How did we go from ape to airplane? Scientists turn to chimpanzees to solve the mystery of our cultural roots". NBC News. Retrieved August 20, 2007.
  2. "Prof.dr. F.B.M. de Waal (1948 - )" (in Dutch). Utrecht University. Archived from the original on November 7, 2020.
  3. Living Links Bio Page Archived November 13, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  4. Johnson, Eric Michael. "Frans de Waal on Political Apes, Science Communication, and Building a Cooperative Society". Scientific American. Retrieved October 4, 2016.
  5. Preston, Stephanie D.; de Waal, Frans B. M. (February 2002). "Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases". Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 25 (1): 1–20. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.120.7176. doi:10.1017/S0140525X02000018. PMID 12625087. ProQuest 212324365.
  6. Frans de Waal (1997-07). "Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are". Science Shelf. Retrieved 2013-11-21.
  7. "Login". timesonline.co.uk. Retrieved October 4, 2016.
  8. Proctor, Darby; Williamson, Rebecca A.; de Waal, Frans B. M.; Brosnan, Sarah F. (2013). "Chimpanzees play the ultimatum game". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 110 (6): 2070–2075. doi:10.1073/pnas.1220806110. JSTOR 41992181. PMC 3568338. PMID 23319633.
  9. Frans de Waal (October 26, 2001). "Do Humans Alone 'Feel Your Pain'?". The Chronicle. Retrieved July 20, 2008.
  10. "Atheism In search of the ungodly". Economist. April 6, 2013. Retrieved April 7, 2013.
  11. "Frans de Waal - Psychologie Magazine". Psychologiemagazine.nl. Retrieved July 21, 2013.
  12. "Frans de Waal hoogleraar Utrecht" (in Dutch). nos.nl. August 30, 2013. Archived from the original on February 12, 2019.
  13. "Frans de Waal, The Life Scientific - BBC Radio 4". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved October 4, 2016.
  14. "NAT Award". museuciencies.cat. Retrieved June 12, 2018.
  15. "Frans de Waal's "Mama's Last Hug" Receives the 2020 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award". EO Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. March 11, 2020.
  16. "Yale awards honorary degrees to 10 individuals for their achievements". Yale University. May 20, 2018. Archived from the original on August 19, 2019.
  17. "Eredoctoraat voor bioloog Frans de Waal en econoom Avner Greif" (in Dutch). Utrecht University. February 20, 2013. Archived from the original on July 9, 2013.
  18. "The 2012 Ig Nobel Prize Winners". Improbable.com. Retrieved July 21, 2013.
  19. "Leeuw voor apenonderzoeker" (in Dutch). Trouw. April 29, 2010. Retrieved November 7, 2020.
  20. "Frans B.M. de Waal". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on November 7, 2020.
  21. "The 2007 TIME 100". TIME. Archived from the original on November 1, 2020.
  22. "Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal". American Philosophical Society. Archived from the original on November 7, 2020.
  23. "Frans B.M. de Waal". National Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on March 24, 2019.
  24. "Frans de Waal". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on September 24, 2020.
  25. Boehm, Christopher (2013). ""Primatology: A wild empathy." (review of The Bonobo and the Atheist)". Nature. 495 (7441): 312. doi:10.1038/495312a.
  26. Hubbeling, Dieneke (2013). ""Taming the beast." (review of The Bonobo and the Atheist)". Journal of Evolutionary Psychology. 11 (4): 189–192. doi:10.1556/JEP.11.2013.4.4.
  27. Grandin, T. (October 9, 2005). "Review of Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal". New York Times. p. 23.
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