Evolution, Natural Selection & Aggression in Humans Flashcards
What is aggression?
Feelings of anger that result in hostile or violent behaviour.
What is the opposite of aggression?
Living together peacefully.
Both aggression & its opposite are…
… human traits.
How can the theory of natural selection be applied to the traits we have as humans now?
According to the theory of natural selection, traits that humans have evolved over generations would be useful for survival. So the traits we still have are useful for survival.
Humans have emotions.
What does the theory of natural selection suggest about emotions?
That they are useful for survival.
How can aggression be explained using the theory of natural selection?
Aggression might be something that led to survival in certain environments, such as aggression against threat in order to protect offspring, or aggression of a male to protect a female (mate) or their child.
How does aggression towards another person threatening a male-female pair make sense in terms of evolution?
If someone is jealous of another male talking to ‘their’ female, that jealousy - which can take the form of aggression - makes sense in terms of natural selection. The male needs to reproduce to pass on his genes so another male competing for a female’s attention would threaten his situation. It makes sense that an evolved response to such a threat is aggression. The male who aggressively defended ‘his’ female would have been the one who reproduced, and whose genes survived.
Jealousy & resulting aggression can be seen as?
A survival trait.
Buss & Shackleton (1997) gathered evidence to?
To see what men do in response to feeling threatened in a relationship in order to see if there is evidence there for the idea of natural selection.
What did Buss & Shackleton (1997) find?
They found that men tended to give in to the female, giving her everything she wanted (debasement), and they were threatening to any other males around (intersexual threat).
Both the strategies (debasement & intersexual threat) would aid?
Survival of the male’s genes.
What else did Buss & Shackleton (1997) look at?
They also looked at women, and how they maintained their own male-female relationships.
Buss & Shackleton (1997) concluded that women use different strategies to maintain their relationship. For example?
They tend to threaten to leave the man if he is unfaithful, and they use verbal threats like ‘he’s taken’.
Why is this maintenance of these male-female relationships different for men and women?
The woman knows that her baby is carrying on her genes, whereas the man needs to ensure any offspring is his.
What did Dobash & Dobash (1984) find when studying violence against women?
They found that it often came from partner jealousy.
