“I never thought of losing, but now that it's happened, the only thing is to do it right. That's my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life. ”

Muhammed Ali

You might have noticed that the Europeans have been quite excited about soccer in the last few weeks? Sunday’s final of Euro 2020 was a bit of a nail-biter, with England eventually losing to Italy in a penalty shootout after extra time (1).

That some of the penalties were taken by BAME English players, has resulted in some especially shameful displays of racist abuse, online and in the streets. I won’t link to them here, suffice to say you will not find them hard to discover, or edifying if you succeed. Alas, English football has always provided a cover for a minority (I hope?) of people who enjoyed airing their bigotry and other people, naturally enough, ask what can be done about this.

One response to overt racism in sport has seen many teams ‘taking the knee’, kneeling together before the match, in solidarity against bigotry. This sort of ritual annoys others with, for example, Tory MP Lee Anderson even threatening to boycott matches over such ritual kneeling.

What can psychology (and neuroscience) offer in terms of insights about abhorrent aggressive behaviors, and symbolic responses to them? More than you might think…

Aggressive is as Aggressive Does?

In the 1960s, pioneering Spanish neuroscientist Jose Delgado offered some fascinating insights into the nature of aggression. Anecdotes about him abound, but possibly my favorite is that he regretted having to flee Spain because he believed he could have cured Franco of his aggression by science. What sort of science, you ask? Delgado (3: especially in his book Physical Control of the Mind. Toward a Psychocivilized Society,) envisaged a better world brought about by directly controlling brains—especially in terms of aggression, and pleasure.

One of his better known experiments was to implant remote controlled electrodes (called ‘stimoceivers ’) deep into the head of a bull (specifically in regions of the amygdala and the hypothalamus), so that he could turn its charge away at the last minute (he was Spanish, after all).

Impressive: But does that mean that aggression in us a simple on/off switch? Not so fast. Primates are social critters, humans the most social of all, and almost everything we do is mediated by the reality of this. Post-modernists who airily talk of this or that trait being ‘socially constructed’ are barely scratching the surface of the depth of social reality in a creature such as ourselves. But let’s start with what aggression means to a slightly simpler (yet also social) creature: The Rhesus macaque.

Rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) are highly social primates, with complex hierarchies of status, and dominance (these are not quite the same thing, but the details need not concern us for the moment). What happens where their brains were stimulated remotely by Delgado to generate aggression? Was some primal war of mindless red-misted all against all generated?

Not at all. In all cases the aggression generated (and it was immediate and often vicious) was mediated by social position and dominance rank. Simplifying somewhat, the ‘boss’ male (Delgado’s words) would attack the lower ranking males while those males would themselves take it out on the (even lower) ranked females and juveniles (4)

This was no mindless uncontrolled violence—it was geared towards reinforcing existing ranks. Alas, it is my sad duty to remind you that during football defeats, a certain kind of person is also more likely to take out their frustration on those less able to hit back—such as wives and partners.

As I’ve pointed out before, human social relations tend to fall into three types: Communal sharing—marked by an ethic of mutual sharing, based on shared genes for altruism. There is also equality matching—which draws upon our capacity for reciprocity. But today I want to talk about the ethic that draws on authority ranking. This is the domain that most closely links us to our primate cousins, because it is a set of relations based on dominance hierarchies—just like those of the macaques. (6)

You can take the humans out of the jungle, but not the jungle out of the humans

The (human) language of dominance hierarchies is all about size—height and mass. Your Highness. Your Majesty. You might find yourself looking up to someone in authority (who may look down on you). The admonition to pick on someone your own size is a reminder that, all things being equal, size equates to dominance in monkey people like ourselves. The effect where the tallest American presidential candidate tends to be elected, is strong enough that they correct for it in podiums with the presidential debates. So, what is the best way to stand up to bullies, to cut them down to size?

It’s well known (or should be) that a good way not to annoy people in wheelchairs is to squat (or sit) down to look them eye to eye when talking to them. Putting yourself on the same level as someone acts on an instinctive level to not imply that you think you have one over them.

In light of this, sportsfolk taking the knee takes on a rather different aspect, doesn’t it? It could be seen (among other things) as a hard to avoid signal that they are putting all of us—all of us on the team-- on the same level. No wonder that annoys some people. It could be interpreted as saying ‘we do not accept that some members of this team, whatever some onlookers may wish, are lesser than others’.

And that is a bitter message for some people, addicted as they may be to the heady feel of superiority that bigotry can bring, to try to accept.

Let us hope that they can get over themselves.