Human Violence and Evolutionary Consciousness (original) (raw)

Resource Acquisition, Violence, and Evolutionary Consciousness

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2012

The evolution and development of adaptations result from the gradual selection and inheritance of traits and behaviors that better enable organisms to acquire and maintain resources needed for survival and reproduction. We argue that instances of individual, regional, and global violence are rooted in our adaptations to seek, acquire, maintain, and utilize limited resources, regardless of whether such adaptations are currently successful at doing so. However, violence is not the only strategy employed by organisms to acquire resources; cooperation, reciprocity, and social bonding are behaviors that may likewise prove useful in this endeavor. We speculate about how individual adaptations and their by-products may interact with the adaptations of other individuals and with societal and cultural phenomena, both violently and nonviolently. Finally, we discuss how individual decisions can affect higher level regional and global violence. Individual decisions carry moral weight for the in...

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Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence, Homicide, and War

The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence, Homicide, and War, 2012

We review and discuss the evolutionary psychological literature on violence, homicide, and war in humans and nonhumans, and in doing so we argue that an evolutionary perspective can substantially enhance our understanding of these behaviors. We provide a brief primer on evolutionary psychology, describing basic tenets of the field. The theories of sexual selection and parental investment are explained and subsequently used to highlight the evolutionary logic underlying the use of violence by humans and other animals. Our ...

Why can't we all just get along? Evolutionary perspectives on violence, homicide, and war

2012

We review and discuss the evolutionary psychological literature on violence, homicide, and war in humans and non-humans, and in doing so argue that an evolutionary perspective can substantially enhance our understanding of these behaviors. We provide a brief primer on evolutionary psychology, describing the basic tenets of the field. The theories of sexual selection and parental investment are explained and subsequently used to highlight the evolutionary logic underlying the use of violence by humans and other animals. Our examination of violent behavior begins with a focus on non-human animals, reviewing the different contexts in which violence occurs and discussing how an evolutionary perspective can explain why it occurs in these contexts. We then examine violence in humans and illustrate the similarities and differences between human and non-human violence. Finally, we summarize what an evolutionary perspective can offer in terms of understanding violence, homicide, and war, and...

The Evolutionary Psychology of Violence

This paper reviews theory and research on the evolutionary psychology of violence. First, I examine evidence suggesting that humans have experienced an evolutionary history of violence. Next, I discuss violence as a context-sensitive strategy that might have provided benefits to our ancestors under certain circumstances. I then focus on the two most common forms of violence that plague humans —violence over status contests and intimate partner violence— outlining psychological mechanisms involved in each. Finally, I suggest that greater progress will be made by shifting the study from contexts to mechanisms.

Expanding Evolutionary Psychology: toward a Better Understanding of Violence and Aggression

Social Science Information, 2003

The “mainstream” evolutionary psychology model is currently under criticism from scientists of other persuasions wanting to expand the model or to make it more realistic in various ways. We argue that focusing on the environment as if it consisted only of social (or sociocultural) factors gives too limited a perspective if evolutionary approaches are to understand the behavior of modern humans. Taking the case of violence, we argue that numerous novel environmental factors of nutritional and physical-chemical origin should be considered as relevant proximate factors. The common thesis presented here is that several aspects of the biotic or abiotic environment are able to change brain chemistry, thus predisposing individuals to violence and aggression in given contexts. In the past, aggressive behavior has had a number of useful functions that were of particular importance to our ancestors' survival and reproduction. However, some of the conditions in our novel environment, which...

A Change of Perspective: Integrating Evolutionary Psychology into the Historiography of Violence

British Journal of Criminology (2011) 51 (3): 479-498., 2011

Despite lively debates in many related fields about whether biological and evolutionary approaches can contribute to social and cultural investigations of human behaviour, historians have rarely confronted this issue directly. The historiography of violence is a partial exception, but there has been relatively little interdisciplinary exchange on topics central to both historical and natural-science analyses. Nevertheless, historians of violence have relied upon two concepts—‘social roles’ and ‘social construction’—that have been subject to constructive critique and revision from Darwinian perspectives. This article concludes by arguing that greater incorporation of evolutionary psychological perspectives and approaches into social and cultural analyses of violence (whether historical or contemporary) has much to contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon of physical aggression.

FLOURISH PROJECT - UNDERSTANDING HUMAN VIOLENCE

Flourish Project - Understanding Human Violence, 2021

Human beings are social animals. We are shaped by our relationships to others and to our environments and we are biologically wired to reach out and learn from these interactions. The debate around whether we have a built-in predilection for violence, however, has raged among scholars for centuries, and the answer is far from a foregone conclusion. It seems that we all carry forward the evolutionary possibility for violence, but that whether or not this is fulfilled, or evolves instead into contribution and cooperation, depends upon our unique genetic dispositions and environmental experiences. Fundamentally, it is about the quality of our relationships – to our Selves, Others and the Natural World.