Developmental stability and human violence (original) (raw)
1998, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Developmental stability (the precision with which genotypes are translated into phenotypes under physically stressful developmental conditions), is a major source of phenotypic and behavioural variation, yet researchers have largely ignored its potential role in the ontogeny of individual propensities toward human aggression and violence. In this study, we measured £uctuating asymmetry of the body and administered aggression and ¢ghting history questionnaires to 229 college students (139 female and 90 male undergraduates). Among males, but not females, £uctuating asymmetry correlated negatively and signi¢cantly with the participants' number of ¢ghts and propensity to escalate agonistic encounters to physical violence. Principal components analyses and scree tests suggested that two psychometric factors underlie observed correlations between self-report measures of aggressive tendencies. The ¢rst factor,`aggressive negative a¡ect', re£ected verbal aggression and hostility toward others, while the second factor,`selfassessed ¢ghting ability', re£ected physical violence and a tendency to win ¢ghts. The two factors correlated minimally. For both males and females, the second factor correlated with number of ¢ghts while the ¢rst factor did not. Fluctuating asymmetry did not signi¢cantly correlate with either factor for either sex, but for both sexes, psychometric intelligence (IQ) correlated positively with the ¢rst factor.
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