Emotions in Command: A Naturalistic Study of Institutional Dominance

by Frank K. Salter

Segments are functional units which include attention-getting and information transfer. In face-to-face interactions they are performed by species-typical behaviors. But in formal organizations they are institutionalized by being performed by specialist staff or whole agencies. In offering a
unique observational analysis of institutional dominance, this book presents important new data on actual command behavior (in both superiors and subordinates), associated emotional expressions, and the techniques used to secure compliance. The author argues that there is no other way to control
humans than to stimulate segments of face-to-face commands. He develops a "dominance infrastructure" theory of social power and describes institutional techniques by which a person's emotional and behavioral repertoire is marshaled to produce routine obedience to commands. Throughout, the author
illuminates the microprocesses of social control and links these to higher order institutional structures. Provocative and well-written, Emotions in Command will appeal to students and researchers in sociology, anthropology, and social and organizational/industrial psychology.

560 pages, Hardcover

First published September 14, 1995

About the author

Frank Kemp Salter is an Australian academic and researcher at the former Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology, Andechs, Germany, best known for his writings on ethnicity and ethnic interests. He is a political ethologist, studying political phenomena using the methods and theories of behavioral biology in addition to conventional methods. Those phenomena include hierarchy (Emotions in Command, 1995), indoctrination (Ethnic Conflict and Indoctrination, 1998, edited with I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt), ethnic altruism and conflict (Welfare, Ethnicity and Altruism, 2002, Risky Transactions: Trust, Kinship and Ethnicity, 2004 ), and genetic interests (On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration, 2003).