Evolutionary Perspectives on Violence, Homicide, and War (original) (raw)

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...

Human aggression in evolutionary psychological perspective

Clinical Psychology Review, 1997

This article proposes an evolutionary psychological account of human aggression. The psychological mechanisms underlying aggression are hypothesized to he context-sensitive solutions to particular adaptive problems of social living. Seven adaptive problems are prqbosed for which aggression might have evolved as a solution -co-opting the resources of others, defending against attack, inflicting costs on same-sex rivals, negotiating status and power hierarchies, deterring rivals from future aggression, deterring mates from sexual infidelity, and reducing resources expended on genetically unrelated children. We outline several of the con texts in which humans confront these adaptive problems and the evolutionary logic of why men are cross-culturally more violently aggressive than women in particular contexts. The article con eludes with a limited review of the empirical evidence surrounding each of the seven hypothesized functions of aggression and discusses the status and limitations of the current evolutionary psychological account. 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd ANCIENT HOMINID skeletal remains have been discovered that contain cranial and rib fractures that appear inexplicable except by the force of clubs and weapons that stab (Trinkaus & Zimmerman, 1982). Fragments from the weapons are occasionally found lodged in skeletal rib cages. As paleontological detective work has become increasingly sophisticated, evidence of violence among our ancestors has mush-

Human Violence and Evolutionary Consciousness

2012

Abstract The evolution and development of adaptations results from the gradual selection of traits that 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.

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.

Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Aggression : Introduction to the Special Issue

Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.), 2012

The papers in this volume present varying approaches to human aggression, each from an evolutionary perspective. The evolutionary studies of aggression collected here all pursue aspects of patterns of response to environmental circumstances and consider explicitly how those circumstances shape the costs and benefits of behaving aggressively. All the authors understand various aspects of aggression as evolved adaptations but none believe that this implies we are doomed to continued violence, but rather that variation in aggression has evolutionary roots. These papers reveal several similarities between human and nonhuman aggression, including our response to physical strength as an indicator of fighting ability, testosterone response to competition, a sensitivity to paternity, and baseline features of intergroup aggression in foragers and chimps. There is also one paper tackling the phylogeny of these traits. The many differences between human and nonhuman aggression are also pursued...

Evolutionary Self-Selection of Humans by Intellect-Driven and Weapon-Enabled Homicide: A Hypothesis

2022

This paper argues that intellect (here defined as the ability to imagine, conceptualize, foresee, and act creatively) and subjective interest, which came to human beings along with mental sophistication, played a fundamental role in human evolution. As soon as individual hominids began making weapons with stone tools, homicide with weapons became a primary conflict resolution practice among conspecifics and hominin groups. In each generation, the development of more sophisticated weaponry capabilities drove humans to more adventures and conflicts to gain higher privileged positions and more personal/group resources. By physically eliminating less sophisticated individuals, homicide, enabled by invented weapons and driven by intellect and subjective interest, acted as a dominant selective evolutionary mechanism that sped up the evolution of humans, steering the progress towards more intelligent individuals and society. As a result of this multi millennia-long self-selective process, we, the humans, exterminated other, weaker hominids and progressed to utterly sophisticated creatures- Homo sapiens sapiens.