From Ben Dattner 960701.1600 dattner@msn.com
I'm a Ph.D. student in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and I'm
interested in whether the phenomenon of menstrual synchrony poses a challenge
to PCT insofar as individuals influence one another.
The menstrual cycles of women who live or work in close proximity tend to
synchronize, and this phenomenon is known as "menstrual synchrony". Menstrual
synchrony is also known as "the McClintock effect", named after Martha
McClintock who has extensively researched the subject. Turke (1988) gives
an evolutionary explanation for this phenomenon: it helped limit the capacity
of a single male to monopolize multiple females, while at the same time giving
males greater confidence of paternity. Therefore, menstrual synchrony assures
greater genetic diversity while at the same time increasing male parental
investment in offspring. McClintock (1983) outlines another advantage that can
be gained when females coordinate conception: collective care for the young.
McClintock (1983) describes the mechanism by which women influence one
another's menstrual cycle: pheromones convey information between women, and
these pheromones influences hormones, which in turn influence follicular,
ovulatory and luteal development. Pheromones can impact the menstrual cycles
of women in three ways: "A) The time for follicular development can either be
lengthened or shortened, B) Once the follicles are mature, the time of
ovulation itself can be delayed or advanced, C) The life span of the corpus
luteum can be lengthened or shortened." (p. 115)
This paper will examine ways in which the phenomenon of menstrual synchrony
challenges the assumptions made by Perceptual Control Theory about the
mechanisms by which people or systems are able to influence one another. The
traditional PCT approach to interpersonal influence is that most often
influence involves blocking the other party's outputs, sometimes it is
possible to control the other party's inputs, but that it is never possible to
directly influence the reference signal of any other system. I will argue that
as in menstrual synchrony, dyadic social influence can involve direct control
over another person's reference signal, or if not control over the reference
signal, then the substitution of a reference signal provided by the
"influencer" for the reference signal of the "influencee".
McClelland (1993) articulates the traditional PCT approach when he writes:
"one person cannot physically reach into another's brain and start resetting
reference signals." (p. 9) He writes that the only way to impact someone
else's behavior is to "act upon the common environment and thus to present
disturbances to the other's perceptual apparatus." (p.9). However, it seems
that in the case of menstrual synchrony, women affect one another not by
disturbing the environment or each other's perceptual apparatus, but by
providing a pheromonal reference signal to the hormonal system.
McClelland also states that "control of a person's perceptions always remain
with that person, and thus no person can achieve direct control of another's
behavior." (p. 13) This is another place where PCT can be challenged. It would
be hard for McClelland to deny that through use of drugs or electric shock one
person can directly impact a limited repertoire of another person's behavior.
In menstrual synchrony, there is again direct control of one agent's behavior
by another, although it is not conscious or willful control. However, it seems
that once it has been conceded that reference signals can be provided by and
behavior elicited from other parties in social interaction, the question
arises, where can the line be drawn after which reference signals can no
longer be provided, and influence is thereby limited to control of the
environment, perceptual inputs, or behavioral outputs?
Perhaps another challenge that menstrual synchrony provides to control theory
is the idea that influence can derive between systems as well as within
systems. Perhaps the mechanism by which menstrual synchrony occurs is that the
pheromonal system "fools" the hormonal system into believing that some
higher-level system from within the system has signaled to begin follicular
development.
Given that the evolutionary explanation for menstrual synchrony concerns the
fitness of the group, so too the control system might have developed at a
group level, rather than at an individual level. Perhaps evolution favored
females who were interconnected at the pheromonal and hormonal level. Can
control theory account for a system that evolved to seek its reference signal
from another individual?
If a reference signal can be provided by the physiological mechanism of
pheromones and hormones, might not it also be possible for interpersonal
influence at the symbolic level to also involve reference signals rather than
environmental disturbances or blocked outputs? If the evolutionary explanation
for menstrual synchrony applies at the group level, might it not also be the
case that symbolic processes eveolved at the group level, and therefore, that
it is not meaningful to use the individual as the unit of analysis in the
control system?
References
McClelland, K. (1983) Perceptual control and social power. Sociological
Perspectives.
McClintock, M.K. (1983) Pheromonal regulation of the ovarian cycle. In J.G.
Vandenburgh (Ed.) Pheromones and reproduction in mammals. USA: Academic Press.
Turke, P.W. (1988) Concealed ovulation, menstrual synchrony, and paternal
investment. In E.E. Filsinger (Ed.) Biosocial perspectives on the family. USA:
Sage.
Weller, A. & Weller, L. (1995) The impact of social interaction factors on
menstrual synchrony in the workplace. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 20 (1), 21-31.
Weller, L. & Weller, A. (1995) Menstrual Synchrony: agenda for future
research. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 20 (4), 377-383.