Psychology
Evolution of Human Aggression
The evolution of human aggression refers to the historical development and adaptive significance of aggressive behavior in humans. It encompasses the study of how aggression has been shaped by natural selection and influenced by social, environmental, and cultural factors over time. Understanding the evolution of human aggression can provide insights into its underlying mechanisms and potential strategies for its management.
Written by Perlego with AI-assistance
Related key terms
1 of 5
9 Key excerpts on "Evolution of Human Aggression"
eBook - PDF- Martin A. Nettleship, Dale Givens, Martin A. Nettleship, Dale Givens(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
An Evolutionary Paradigm for the Study of Human Aggression PETER A. CORNING One of the most significant aspects of the renewal in recent years of the dialogue between life scientists and social scientists is the fact that it has provided a stimulus for rethinking the research paradigms within which we seek to understand human behavior. And nowhere has this stimulus been more in evidence than with respect to human aggression. Until very recently, behavioral scientists generally have taken sides on one of three alternative theories of human aggression: the so-called bio-logical-instinctual, the social-learning, and the frustration-aggres-sion models. These had been posited as mutually exclusive explanations, and while there is evidence that biological factors, social learning and frustrations do constitute significant sets of variables in human aggression (reviewed in Corning and Corning 1971,1972), at the same time it is also becoming apparent that none of these alternatives is, in itself, a SUFFICIENT explanation. Advances in the life sciences — notably in physiological psy-chology, neurophysiology, biochemistry and endocrinology, behavior ge-netics, and ethology — as well as our increasingly sophisticated under-standing of the processes of biological evolution, make such simplistic theoretical constructs no longer tenable. A fully adequate theory of aggression must, first of all, provide a satis-factory explanation of the origins, genetic bases, and survival conse-quences of aggressive behaviors. It must be consistent with the principles of evolution and with observational and experimental evidence. It must permit systematic cross-species comparisons and contrasts (in accordance with a basic axiom of evolutionary theory that all species are variations I am indebted to my wife, Constance Hellyer Corning, for her contributions to portions of this article. 360 PETER A. CORNING upon evolutionary themes). Also, it must satisfactorily link individual and group behaviors.
Available until 4 Dec |Learn moreThe Social Psychology of Aggression
3rd Edition
- Barbara Krahé(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Chapter 12 of this volume). Given that there is little support for Lorenz’s ethological model as an explanation of human aggression, you may wonder why it has been presented here at all. The reason is that it still remains widely popular in everyday discourse when people suggest explanations, and indeed cures, for aggression. Enabling readers to participate in this discourse well-equipped with critical arguments to challenge popular myths about aggression is one of the goals of the present volume.The sociobiological view: Aggression as a product of natural selection
Sociobiology is concerned with analysing the biological foundation of social behaviour on the basis of the evolutionary principle of natural selection . This approach also offers an explanation of aggression in both humans and animals, focusing on the long-term, “ultimate” mechanisms that shape and promote aggression through the generations. Rooted in Darwin’s (1859) theory on “the origin of species”, evolutionary theory is based on the idea that in order for a behaviour to be genetically transmitted within a species, it has to be adaptive . Behaviours are adaptive to the extent that they increase the chances of survival of the species as a whole in the environment in which it lives.sociobiology: discipline devoted to the study of the evolutionary basis of social behaviour.Concise presentations of the evolutionary thinking about social behaviour have been provided by Daly and Wilson (1994) and Buss and Shackelford (1997). Applying the principle of evolution through natural selection to the study of aggression, aggressive behaviour directed at fighting off attackers as well as rivals in mate selection is seen as adaptive in the sense of enhancing the reproductive success of the aggressor (Archer, 1995). Because they are better able to control access to female mating partners, the more aggressive members of a species are more successful in passing their genes on to the next generation, thus favouring the natural selection of aggressive behaviour. Their genetic make-up slowly spreads at the expense of less aggressive, and therefore less reproductively successful, members. However, aggression may be a potentially costly and maladaptive behaviour in certain cases. For example, attacking an opponent of superior fighting power entails the risk of being killed. Therefore, the functional mechanism seen as driving the evolution of aggressive behaviour is a cost–benefit calculus (Archer, 2009; Georgiev, Klimczuk, Traficonte, & Maestripieri, 2013). As it would be maladaptive to engage in aggressive behaviour when the risk of being overpowered and potentially killed by the opponent is high, it is functional from the point of view of reproductive success to withdraw from confrontations that involve an opponent of superior strength and fighting power.
- David L. Hull, Michael Ruse(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
13 Varieties of Evolutionary Psychology introduction What is evolutionary psychology? The answer to this question is complicated by the fact that the term ‘‘evolutionary psychology’’ is commonly used in two distinct senses. In one sense, evolutionary psychology is simply the study of human behavior and psychology from an evolutionary perspective. In this sense, evolutionary psychology is a field of inquiry, a loose confederation of research programs that differ significantly in theoretical and methodological commitments. These diverse research programs attempt to explain a wide variety of phenomena, ranging from foraging and birth spacing in traditional hunter-gatherer societies to encephalization (the pro- gressive increase in brain size relative to body size in the human lineage) and the evolution of altruism and language. What unites these research programs is not a shared commitment to specific theories regarding the evolution of human behavior and psychology, but only a commitment to articulating questions about human behavior and psychology, and articulating answers to those questions, with conceptual and theoretical tools drawn from evolutionary theory. In this broad sense, evolutionary psychology dates back to Darwin’s The Descent of Man (published in 1871) and The Expres- sion of the Emotions in Man and Animals (published in 1872). But, despite Darwin’s early efforts, there was relatively little concerted study of human behavior and psychology from an evolutionary perspective until the latter half of the twentieth century, when several research programs emerged and attracted significant num- bers of researchers (Laland and Brown 2002). The earliest of these 255 david j. buller research programs was human ethology, exemplified by Konrad Lorenz’s 1963 book On Aggression.
eBook - PDF- Willard W. Hartup, Jan de Wit, Willard W. Hartup, Jan de Wit(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The development of aggression: Problems and perspectives W I L L A R D W. H A R T U P University of Minnesota J A N D E W I T Free University, Amsterdam The study of aggression has had a long and significant history in both biological and social science. The literature is large and diverse, de-riving from such fields as ethology, genetics, physiology, psychology, sociology and political science. Increasingly, the development of ag-gression (i.e., its emergence, maintenance and modification in the behavior of immature individuals) is regarded as a topic of major im-portance. Aggressive activity is visible in many species, including man, from early points in development, and effective socialization is im-possible without some regulation of aggressive behavior. Several hundred studies and speculative papers dealing with chil-dren's aggression have been published during the past 50 years (see Feshbach, 1970). Some of these investigations were designed simply to identify situations in which quarreling, fighting, ridicule, rebuke and rejection occur. Other studies have concerned the experiential deter-minants of children's aggression. There is a sizeable literature based on the hypothesis that frustration is closely linked to the elicitation of aggression (e.g., Otis & McCandless, 1955; Yarrow, 1948) and a number of investigations have dealt with non-frustrative influences that lead to such activity (e.g., Bandura, Ross & Ross, 1963; Friedrich & Stein, 1973; Patterson, Littman & Bricker, 1967.) Smaller literatures deal with such varied topics as the role of emotional factors (i.e., an-xiety and arousal) social motives (i.e., needs for approval and affec-tion), social evaluations (i.e., the individual's status or power in the peer group) and self-esteem, as these are involved in aggressive func-tioning.
eBook - PDF- Robert Plutchik, Henry Kellerman, Robert Plutchik, Henry Kellerman(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
Behavioral Brain Science, 2, 201-241. Averill, J. R. (1979). Anger. In Nebraska Symposium on Motivaton, 1978 (Vol. 26, pp. 1-80). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Averill, J. R. (1982). Anger and aggression—An essay on emotion. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1982. 2. ANGER: AN EVOLUTIONARY VIEW 57 Blanchard D. C., & Blanchard, R. J. (1984). Affect and aggression: An animal model applied to human behavior. Advances in the Study of Aggression, 1, 1-67. Bowlby, J. (1980). Attachment and loss: Vol. 3. Loss: Sadness and depression. London: Hogarth Press. Brain, P. F. (1984). Biological explanations of human aggression and the resulting therapies offered by such approaches: A critical evaulation. Advances in the Study of Aggression, 1, 63-102. Craig, T. J. (1982). An epidemiologic study of problems associated with violence among psychiatric inpatients. American Journal of Psychiatry, 139, 1262-1266. Kummer, H. (1968). Social organization of Hamadryas baboons. Bibliotheca Primatologie a, 6. MacKay, D. M. (1972). A formal analysis of communicative processes. In R. A. Hinde (Ed.), Nonverbal communication (pp. 3-25). London & New York: Cambridge University Press. Maynard Smith, J., & Price, G. R. (1973). The logic of animal conflict. Nature, (London) 246, 15-18. McGuire, M. T., & Troisi, A. (1987). Regulation-deregulation theory and psychiatric disorders. Ethology ad Sociobiology, 8, 95-255. McKenna, J. J. (1983). Primate aggression and evolution: An overview of sociobiological and anthropological perspectives. Bulletin of the American Academy of Law, 11, 105-130. Moyer, Κ. E. (1968). Kinds of aggression and their physiological basis. Communications in Behav-ioral Biology, Part A, 1, 65-87. Plutchik, R. (1980). A general psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. In R. Plutchik & S. Kellerman (Eds.), Emotion: Theory, research, and experience: Vol. 1. Theories of emotion (pp. 3-33). New York: Academic Press. Plutchik, R. (1984). Emotions: A general psychoevolutionary throry.
eBook - PDFAggression in Humans and Other Primates
Biology, Psychology, Sociology
- Hans-Henning Kortüm, Jürgen Heinze, Hans-Henning Kortüm, Jürgen Heinze(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
Part III: Conclusion Conflict is pervasive in the natural world, so consequently, natural selection has found many ways to resolve it. As intensely social animals, humans are exposed to many conflict scenarios, so evolutionary biology has a great deal to offer those interested in studying aggression. By understanding how we were shaped by the environment we evolved in, we can understand why we rely upon particular rules-of-thumb, why the balance between aggression and peaceful resolution of conflicts has been set as it has, and broadly, why we experience the emotions that we do, when we do. However, given how hard it is to test model predictions in humans (for very obvious reasons, we are not as easy to experiment on as bacteria, insects or birds), there is the risk that ulti-mate explanations become little more than ‘adaptationist storytelling’. To avoid this trap, we must use our understanding of evolutionary theory to ask the right questions: what are the direct and indirect costs and benefits of the prox-imate behavior? Who performs it? Is it abnormal? Is this behavior closely linked to a more general class of behavior? Does it concern a decision with real fitness consequences? Does it occur in familiar environments? What am I as-suming the person is maximizing? Is this a good proxy for fitness? Ultimate explanations make us take a step back from the action and think about big un-derlying questions that influence our everyday behaviour and when used ap-propriately, the benefits of an evolutionary approach are immense. Explaining Aggression: The Ultimate-Proximate Problem 97 References Alcock, J. (2009). Animal Behavior. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates. Barash, D. (1977). Sociobiology of Rape in Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos): Responses of the Mated Male. Science , 197 (4305), 788-789. Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (1985). Culture and the Evolutionary Process . Chicago: Chicago University Press.
eBook - PDFPsychology
Six Perspectives
- Dodge Fernald(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
Regularly prevalent in men, testosterone is recognized as influential in aggression. These substances appear in both genders—but in very different amounts. Turning to nonideological objections, critics state that evolutionary psy-chology engages in post hoc reasoning, the error of assuming that an event following another event was caused by that prior event. They point out the inability of evolutionary psychology to demonstrate that evolution caused any particular evolved mechanism, regarding post hoc reasoning as “story-telling.” A causal relationship may be present, but it is not verified merely by the sequence of events. The elephant’s trunk, a duck’s mode of swimming with webbed feet, and human facial expressions in emotion could not have been predicted as evolu-tionary outcomes, for there are countless ways to solve any adaptive problem (Buss, 1996a, 1996b). Without interests in child care and investment in children, men might have evolved as less brave than women, accomplishing the task of survival by fleeing from dangers rather than risking their lives in fight-ing (Cornell, 1997). On such bases, it can only be speculated that evolution has been the responsible agent. Evolutionary psychologists reply that they only assume evolution was the causal factor. This assumption stimulates hypotheses about human and ani-mal behaviors as adaptive responses, serving as a springboard for investiga-tions. The studies of gender differences in response to partner infidelity, for example, arose on this basis. But evolutionary theory exerted no influence on the research design or the merit of the research results. Critics also state that evolutionary psychology encounters the falsification issue. Evolutionary theory cannot be shown to be wrong. It cannot return to 298 —— Psychology: Six Perspectives earlier eons to examine directly the pressures and outcomes of natural selection. It is no more falsifiable than other views of our origins.
eBook - PDF- Edward Bittar(Author)
- 1999(Publication Date)
- Elsevier Science(Publisher)
Chapter 5 The Biology of Aggression PAUL F. BRAIN Introduction Aggression and Genes Aggression and Diet Aggression and Neural Systems Aggression and Hormones Aggression and Drugs Conclusions 103 104 106 107 108 110 111 INTRODUCTION The main problem with specifying the biology of aggression is knowing which phenomena the biological variables should be related to. Aggression is clearly a heterogeneous concept (Brain, 1984) in which biological variables, environmental factors, and social learning all play complex, intertwined roles. Violence is acom-Biological Psychiatry, pages 103-113. Copyright 9 2000by JAI Press Inc. All rightsof reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN: 1-55938-819-6 103 104 PAUL F. BRAIN plex phenomenon and one must specify the importance (and limitations) of genes, diet, neural systems, hormones, and drugs in its expression. Furthermore, as well as forming the basis of some clinical treatments, a knowledge of biological corre-lates may have some predictive value in assessing the risk of aggression in popu-lations of humans. It must also be maintained that individuals with greatly disor-dered biologies (e.g., brain tumors or endocrine disorders) cannot be regarded as wholly responsible for their actions, but the legitimate use of such claims in legal circles is often contentious. It should be self-evident that there are considerable dangers in seeking to equate all examples of human aggression to medical disor-ders. If a disordered biology has a role, it is only likely to be of relevance to some forms of interpersonal behavior, not group activities such as riots and war, which clearly have a largely sociocultural basis. It should be admitted at the outset that even focusing on particular expressions of aggression, such as assault, homicide, or rape, does not lead to simple associations with biological factors.
eBook - PDF- Jeffrey H Goldstein(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
The United States had originally backed this proposal. There then followed no less than ten tension-reducing steps by both sides. From June to mid-October, each side responded to conciliatory gestures by the other. By late October, there was a marked slowdown in American initiatives. Etzioni notes several reasons for this: the administration felt that the psychological mood of optimism and rising expectations about Soviet-American relations were running too high; allies, particularly West Germany, objected bitterly; and in the pre-election year, the administration did not want to seem overly accommodating toward the Russians. This analysis of complex historical events after the fact is less than the ideal test of the theory. However, some laboratory simulations also provide support for the model (e.g., Pilisuk & Skolnik, 1968). Human aggression is behavior whose intent is the injury of another person. Three common arguments for the belief that aggression is an instinct in humans—from biology, physiology, and psychoanalytic theory—lead us to conclude that aggression in humans is most likely a learned set of behaviors. In laboratory research on aggression, electric shock is often used as the dependent measure, and it is less than ideal as a measure of human aggression. Studies of children's aggression tend to observe aggression during play. Frustration-aggression theory has been modified several times since its inception in 1939, first by some of its original authors, later by Berkowitz, and then by Zillmann's notions of arousal and attri-bution. Berkowitz believes that frustration as well as anger may lead to aggression only when appropriate environmental cues are present. Such cues are learned in humans and may include appropriate targets, places, and means of aggressing. The notion of an aggressive cue is analogous to the concept of a releaser cue in biology.
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
