Chapter 13: Aggression

Question 1

Hostile aggression

Answer 1

… refers to behavior motivated by feelings of anger and hostility, where the primary aim is to harm another, either physically or psychologically.

Question 2

Instrumental aggression

Answer 2

…, in contrast, refers to behavior that is intended to harm another in the service of motives other than pure hostility- People harm others, for example, to gain status, to attract attention, to acquire wealth, and to advance political and ideological causes.

Question 3

dehumanization

Answer 3

…, the attribution of nonhuman characteristics to other people. Studies of escalating conflict and genocide regularly find that dehumanization fuels extreme violence. Dehumanization can unleash aggression for the simple reason that it’s easier to harm people when they seem less human, less like ourselves. For example, dehumanization plays a role in bullying behavior and in condoning police violence against African American.

Question 4

culture of honor

Answer 4

In a …, which is prevalent in the U.S. South (see Chapter 2), men tend to be more concerned than people in other cultures about their reputation for toughness, machismo, and their willingness and ability to avenge a wrong or insult.

Question 5

rape-prone cultures

Answer 5

…, which made up 18 percent of the cultures studied. In these cultures, men used rape as an act of war against enemy women; as a ritual act, such as part of a wedding ceremony or an adolescent male’s rite of passage to adulthood; and as a threat against women to keep them subservient to men.

Question 6

inclusive fitness

Answer 6

Natural selection, Daly and Wilson maintain, rewards those parents who devote resources to their own offspring. All the behaviors related to parental care, from filial love to breast-feeding, assise the survival of our own offspring thereby increasing …—our own survival plus that of children carrying our genes. But parental care is costly.

Question 7

precarious manhood hypothesis

Answer 7

a man’s gender identity is significantly tied up in his physical strength, toughness, and fierceness. However, according to their …, many factors—competition, status contests, being the target of male violence, shifting economic conditions, the loss of a job—can render a man’s gender identity relatively uncertain. According to this hypothesis, male gender identity is more vulnerable than women´s gender identity, and as a result, men need to resort to risky and often aggressive actions to continually prove their manhood.