Frank Salter - Research History

Research History

Salter’s field of research can best be described as political ethology or urban anthropology, applying the concepts and methods of behavioral biology (ethology, evolutionary psychology, and evolutionary anthropology) to the analysis of sociopolitical phenomena, such as power, hierarchy, social control, ethnicity and nationalism.

Frank Salter matriculated (undergraduate) at the University of Sydney (1979–1982) where he majored in government and public administration, specializing in organization theory under the mentorship of Ross Curnow. These studies emphasized the sociological approach of Max Weber; later, Salter, dissatisfied with this purely sociological approach, became interested in integrating the conventional social sciences with human biology.

Salter then studied for a master's and a doctorate, at Griffith University in Brisbane (1984–1990), focusing on biological perspectives of social and political studies. Salter’s graduate school mentor was Dr. Hiram Caton, who had worked with Edward O. Wilson at Harvard and Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt at Germany’s Max Planck Institute. This area of research resulted in Salter’s first book, Emotions in Command (OUP, 1995), consultancies with government and business organizations, and in an invitation to conduct postdoctoral research in Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s Centre for Human Ethology. Salter began his postdoctoral work under Dr. Eibl-Eibesfeldt in 1991.

In the mid-1990s, Salter began applying behavioral biology to other social and political phenomena that involve interpersonal relationships and manipulative strategies, including interpersonal attractiveness, crowds and riots, indoctrination, begging, Edward Westermarck’s naturalistic ethics, training suicide terrorists, the connection between class mobility and reproductive strategies, and ethnic solidarity. These diversity studies resulted in three books: Risky Transactions (2002) on the interpersonal bonds and trust that facilitate high-risk enterprises; On Genetic Interests on the implications of ethnic kinship for political theory; and Welfare, Ethnicity, & Altruism (2004) on the impact of ethnic similarity on public altruism. Salter’s most recent (unpublished) research connects the themes of hierarchy and ethnicity by developing a method for comparing ethnic group power.