Applying evolutionary theory to human behaviour psychology and cultural evolution for a more detailed discussion, see laland and brown 2011. Saying that suicide is adaptive may also sound odd to you from an evolutionary perspective, because on the surface it seems to fly in the face of. The rate of uxoricide wife killing in the united states, for. The claim that uxoricide is an epiphe nomenon rather than an adaptation in no way detracts from the relevance of evolutionary psychological reasoning for. I then revisited and republished the post in august 2012 when i was writing a section on human nature. The term evolutionary psychology was probably coined by michael ghiselin in his 1973 article in science.
An evolutionary psychological analysis of filicide in norway vibeke k. William shakespeare addressed uxoricide in multiple plays. Of the 2340 deaths at the hands of intimate partners in america in 2007, female victims made up 70%. Evolutionary psychology is the label for the pursuit of psychological science with explicit attention to contemporary theory and knowledge in evolutionary biology. Although burdensomeness to kin may provide a plausible explanation for some suicides among the elderly, it could be more difficult to accept that suicide may enhance the fitness of relatives in the case of a healthy adolescent. Canadian evolutionary psychologists martin daly and margo wilson, who specialize in studying the homicide phenomenon, have analyzed 35 homicide. The killing of spouse and children margo wilson, martin daly, and antonietta daniele department of psychologx mcmaster university, hamilton, ontario, canada a familicide is a multiplevictim homicide incident in which the killers spouse and one. The circumstances in which men and women kill and are killed tend to be quite different, as are the demographic patterns of risk and the apparent motivating factors. According to evolutionary psychology, all human behavior, criminal or otherwise, is a product of psychological mechanisms instantiated in the brain combined.
For its time, this post got quite a few views and comments. In so doing, it appears to offer the best hope for providing a coherent and unified deductive framework for. Department of psychology oakland university graduate education in psychology leading to the degrees of m. Hitchcock revisited the theme in dial m for murder, which in turn was remade in 1998 as a perfect murder. The concise essays and critical exchanges are great fun and a feast for the mind. Chapter 11 evolutionary psychology and the challenge of. Buss university of texas at austin evolutionary psychologists such as wilson and daly 1993b hypothesize that one goal of. Overall, rates of uxoricide are much higher than rates of mariticide. Canadian evolutionary psychologists martin daly and margo wilson, who specialize in studying the homicide phenomenon, have analyzed 35 homicide data sets from 14 countries, including some from. An evolutionary psychological perspective springerlink. Evolutionary psychology employs functional thinking, that is, the modern rigorous understanding of adaptive strategies, to discover, sort out, and map the proximate mechanisms that incarnate these strategies.
An evolutionary explanation for sex differences in nonmarital. Uxoricide from latin uxor meaning wife and cide, from caedere meaning to cut, to kill is the murder of ones wife or girlfriend. The theory parsimoniously accounts for paleontological, archeological, ethnographic, psychological, and behavioral evidence that remains inexplicable on alternative theories. Foundations of evolutionary psychology charles crawford. This is a controversial field of science that assumes that the psychology of the mind has been shaped by evolution. Buss, department of psychology, university of texas, austin, texas 78712. May 25, 2005 although evolutionary psychology is well outside my area of study aristotle, i did once t. Applications of evolutionary psychology to other disciplines.
Evolutionary psychology explains suicide in the following way. Pdf the evolutionary psychology of violence researchgate. Understanding the adaptive significance of painful and pleasur able aspects of the emotions is an. Looking at psychopathology through the lens of evolution is the only way to understand the deeper nature of mental disorders and turn a mass of behavioral, genetic, and neurobiological findings into a coherent, theoretically. The conception of ontogenetic development presented here follows the perspective of a psychology oriented by the biology of evolution, which represents a recent tendency in the area, the perspective of the evolutionary psychology ep, and specifically, the evolutionary developmental psychology. Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. Dunley hypothesize that aggression is a trait inherent in humans that dates back to the prehistoric era. An evolutionary psychological analysis of filicide in norway.
This paper contributes to the quest for a shared interpretative framework between the humanities and the sciences by applying evolutionary theories to the study of sexual violence in ancient greece. Evolutionary biologists and physicians have traditionally been concerned with different problems and have developed different ways of approaching and understanding biological phenomena. John hawks blogpost adapting evolutionary psychology points the way to an article by bolhuis et al. The evolutionary psychology of emotions and behavior. People abuse drugs mainly to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. Hard to say, perhaps, but one might well imagine that it would be great fun to listen in. An evolutionary explanation for sex differences in. Foundations of evolutionary psychology charles crawford, dennis krebs this is a great book for those who have read some steven pinker, richard dawkins andor edward o. The evolutionary puzzle of suicide pubmed central pmc. People used to commit suicide to enable the survival of their offspringclan members. Wilson and want to get an idea of what the academic writings behind the scene of popular introductions to darwinian evolution and evolutionary psychology might look like. First, i examine evidence suggesting that humans have experienced an evolutionary history of violence.
Uxoricide in pregnancy evolutionary psychology issn 14747049 volume 115. Primate behavior and the culture of sexual coercion. This is the evolutionary reason why females live longer on average in most animal species hazzard, 1990. The evolutionary psychological perspective on war, conquest, and alien rule evolutionary psychology ep has revolutionized many fields in the social sciences in the last couple of decades. Its influence extends, not only to the core fields of psychology and anthropology, but also to the neighboring fields of.
In their chapter on evolutionary psychology as it relates to homicide in the book evolutionary psychology and violence, david m. In the region of southeast asia, 55% of all murdered women died at the hands of their partner, followed by 40% in the african region and 38% in the americas. These lawful relations constitute the basis for a new discipline, evolutionary psychology, which involves the exploration of the naturally selected design features of the mechanisms that control behavior. Ancient greek domestic violence in evolutionary perspective. This article uses evolutionary analyses of violence during pregnancy to argue that the themes of sexual jealousy and. Michelle sugiyama has published several articles that use darwinian anthro pology and evolutionary psychology to illuminate important issues in literary theory and especially in narrative. In this book, buss applies the principles of his discipline to the phenomenon of murder.
It illustrates how natural and sexual selection tend to. Pdf the evolutionary psychology of violence aaron goetz. Uxoricide is a central plot point in alfred hitchcocks rear window. Evolutionary psychology encyclopedia article citizendium. Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain certain mental and psychological traits such as memory, perception, or language as evolved adaptations, i. Killing an expartner could have functioned to exert fitness costs on rival males buss, 2005.
Wife killings committed in the context of a lovers triangle. Female mortality ratio researchers have described how sex differences in mortality are explained by traits shaped by sexual selection interacting with cultural and environmental factors e. Evolutionary psychology is ripe with examples from the animal world. Previous studies of ancient greek examples of uxoricide in pregnancy have concluded that the theme is used to suggest tyrannical abuse of power and that the violence is a product of the patriarchal. A lack in food and resources might lead someone to selflessly end their lives as a means to fur. The circumstances in which men and women kill and are killed tend to be quite different, as are the demographic patterns of risk and the. This synthesis between evolution and psychology has been. Richerson keywords human behavioural ecology evolutionary psychology cooperation geneculture coevolution cultural group selection 1 applying evolutionary theory to human behaviour the application of evolutionary theory to the study of. I first posted these reflections on evolutionary psychology and anthropology in july 2011 using the article darwin in mind. Mental disorders arise from neural and psychological mechanisms that have been built and shaped by natural selection across our evolutionary history. The proposed theories seem very similar in their explanations and reasoning fro uxoricide, further explanation of what makes them different would be interesting and a nice addition to the article.
Jerome barkow, leda cosmides and john tooby popularized the term evolutionary psychology in their highly influential 1992 book the adapted mind. Pick up evolutionary origins of morality and find out how moral psychology is being picked apart by evolutionists. Razib khan on gene expression calls it the end of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychopathology marco del giudice oxford. The theme is also present in many episodes of alfred hitchcock presents. Others have proposed an alternative hypothesis for such data. Previous studies of ancient greek examples of uxoricide in pregnancy have concluded that the theme is used to suggest tyrannical abuse of power and that the violence is a product of the. Ancient greek domestic violence in evolutionary perspective, susan deacy and fiona mchardy explore numerous examples of uxoricide, or a man attacking and killing his intimate partner while she is pregnant, in ancient greece by analyzing literary sources.
Lethal and nonlethal violence against wives and the evolutionary. Next, i discuss violence as a contextsensitive strategy that. A read is counted each time someone views a publication summary such as the title, abstract, and list of authors, clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the fulltext. Using evolutionary psychology to extend the feminist functional analysis jay peters university of maine todd k. Previous studies of ancient greek examples of uxoricide in pregnancy have concluded that the theme is used to suggest tyrannical abuse of power and that the violence is a product of the patriarchal nature of ancient society. It can refer to the act itself or the person who carries it out. Ancient greek domestic violence in evolutionary perspective article pdf available in evolutionary psychology 115. The killing of a husband is called mariticide rates of uxoricide. It shows how previous classical research, which has. Evolutionary psychology ep is a nativist approach to cognition that views the human mind as a collection of modules design by natural selection to solve the problems faced by our pleistocene ancestors. Ottesen centre for ecological and evolutionary synthesis cees, department of biosciences, university of oslo submitted for the degree of phd at the department of psychology, faculty of social science, university of oslo. This article presents an evolutionary perspective to the study of human development.
The evolutionary psychology of emotions and behavior martie g. The following section then examines some of the key debates between the sub. Usually, a number of species, many of them quite distant to we humans, are used with each species illustrating a basic principle e. Specifically that homicide isnt a rare pathology, or the product of social forces, of culture, poverty or poor parenting but.
A series dedicated to applied evolutionary psychology and the human condition ironically, the most promising future in the psychological sciences is the. The notable evolutionary psychologist david buss thinks that murder is in our blood. Some general assumptions for the study of development are discussed and the principal building blocks of evolutionary psychology are presented. I came away very sceptical about large parts of the project of extrapolative evolutionary psychology, and also about busss work in particular. Affective influences on social cognition and behavior. An evolutionary perspective on substance abuse 341 threats and losses induce pain. Suicide risk factors in light of evolutionary psychology. The evolutionary psychology of violence psicothema. This article uses evolutionary analyses of violence during pregnancy to argue that the themes of sexual jealousy and uncertainty over paternity are as crucial as the theme of power to an understanding of these examples and that the examples can be seen as typical instances of spousal abuse as it occurs in all types of society.
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