PSY 544 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Seeking Refuge, Windsor, Ontario, Pseudorandom Binary Sequence
• (10) Problems of Group Living: Aggression
Living in groups opens the opportunity to be attacked/aggressed by someone
• Warfare is the dark side of cooperation
• Wagha ad Peteso’s 996 a lai ade i the ook Demonic Males: apes and the
origins of human violence:
There are
• 10 million animal species
• 4 thousand mammal species but yet there are only 2 species in which we have ever
observed coordinated coalitions of individuals who raid, attack and potentially kill
and steal things from their neighbors - we are a cooperative species but this is the
dark side of cooperation which is that groups of us can cooperate against other
groups of us humans - coordinated coalitions, usually males who attack their
neighbors
• 2 species in which male-initiated, coordinated coalitions of individuals raid their
neighbors and kill members of their own species. The only two species are:
• Chimpanzees and us - the only two species that engage in warfare in which one
group of individuals attacks another group of individuals of your own species
• Human aggression in context
• If we think about human history, it's a history played by violent confrontations b/w groups
of individuals - crusades, Palestine-Israeli conflict - human history is filled with examples of
groups of people attacking each other which makes it imp to understand the cause of
human aggression - is there any evo reason that predisposes us to aggression and in
particular, going bk to the title of the book, to predispose the males to aggression more
than females
• Human history suggests it is especially important to understand, and so hopefully
mitigate, the causes, of human aggression.
• Overview
• Which problems of adaptation might select for a tendency towards aggression?
• Acquiring and defending resources
• Intra-sexual rivalry and mate poaching
• Sexual jealousy and mate guarding
• Differences between men and women
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• Men are more physically aggressive. Why?
o Reproductive variance, intra-sexual competition, and risk taking
• Adaptations for physical aggression in men
o “eual diophis, eal oset of aggessio, ad oug ale sdoe
• Youg ale sdoe ad a
• Why would we evolve a tendency towards aggression?
• Are there problems of adaptation that violence helped us to solve in the past?
• Likely candidates:
• Aggessio as a eas of auiig the esoues of othes, o defedig oe’s o
resources. So humans have always been able to acquire resources: food, water, mates so
one possible solution to the problem of required resources instead of going out and
getting your own you can act aggressively to steal someone else's. there are all sorts of
complicated causes of warfare but a common theme of human warfare is attempting to
steal the resources of another group of people
Ex. Conflicts in middle east: over fuel but even at an individual level, conflicts be/w people
ex b/w children are over resources/over stuff ex. Stereotypical bully stealing someone's
lunch money or a possession
So it is possible that in our evo history, aggression was one means of solving the adaptive
prb of acquiring resources - other people have resources, I'll be aggressive and take from
them
• Why would we evolve a tendency towards aggression?
• Aggessio as a eas of auiig the esoues of othes, o defedig oe’s o.
In modern day indigenous societies, there are incidences where groups will attack other
groups and steal their resources - frequently observed where:
• Among the Yanomamö, male coalitions raid neighbouring tribes and forcibly take food and
abduct women of reproductive age (Chagnon, 1983). So some suggest that acquiring the
resources of others may have been a prb that predisposed us to aggression in our evo
history
• Why would we evolve a tendency towards aggression?
• Inflicting costs on intra-sexual rivals might be another one so competing with other people
for access to an attractive mate may also be something that predisposes or could
potentially have been due to the selection pressure
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
We have a study in which they asked men and women to generate a list of strategies by
which they could engage in intra-sexual competition. In other words, what could you do to
make members of your own sex undesirable to the members of the opp sex - are there
diff ways that men and women aggress towards individual rivals - there is something
about physically aggressing against intra-sexual rivals that's more typically present in
males than females
• Buss & Dedden (1990) asked men and women to generate a list of strategies by which
they could ake eers of our o se udesirale to eers of the opposite se.
• This study Generated 83 tactics, (e.g. say they cheat on partners, say they lack ambition,
say they are selfish, beat them up, say they never shower) classified into 28 types and they
looked to see if there were reliable differences between the types of tactics that men said
they were more likely to use and also the tactics that men and women said they felt would
be most effective
• Pay attention to various diff things
• They asked participants to rate all of these diff tactics on how likely males and females
said they used a tactic - on a scale of 1-7 how likely are you to use this tactic when you're
trying to put down a member of your sex in front of the other sex and then you have: if
that happened how effective you think you can be at diminishing the status of your same-
sex rival
• Highlight that one of the things that showed large diff b/w men and women was to be
psychical, so men said they were more likely to try to compete an intra-sexual rival
physically than women - men gave it 4/7 on likelihood of use and women only gave 2/7. it
was also rated as more likely to be effected if a man used it than if a woman used it - just
the idea that amongst women the ones that were rated to be used more likely were
different than the ones likely amongst men ex. Spreading gossip; talking about their sexual
promiscuity was a more used tactic amongst women than men and also more likely to be
used by women
• Some suggest that men are more likely than women to choose a psychically aggressive
strategy in order to engage in intra-sexual competition - data on the phenomenon of
mate-poaching to make the point that intra-sexual rivalry is for sure something that has
been a prb in our evo history - in other words competing with other members of your sex
or members of other sex is a prb of adaptation now and was a prb of adaptation in our
past too - people wanting to essentially take the partner that you have, this is called mate-
poaching
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Living in groups opens the opportunity to be attacked/aggressed by someone: warfare is the dark side of cooperation, w(cid:396)a(cid:374)gha(cid:373) a(cid:374)d pete(cid:396)so(cid:374)"s (cid:894)(cid:1005)996(cid:895) a (cid:272)lai(cid:373) (cid:373)ade i(cid:374) the (cid:271)ook demonic males: apes and the origins of human violence: The only two species are: chimpanzees and us - the only two species that engage in warfare in which one group of individuals attacks another group of individuals of your own species, human aggression in context. Intra-sexual rivalry and mate poaching: sexual jealousy and mate guarding, differences between men and women, men are more physically aggressive. Likely candidates: agg(cid:396)essio(cid:374) as a (cid:373)ea(cid:374)s of a(cid:272)(cid:395)ui(cid:396)i(cid:374)g the (cid:396)esou(cid:396)(cid:272)es of othe(cid:396)s, o(cid:396) defe(cid:374)di(cid:374)g o(cid:374)e"s o(cid:449)(cid:374) resources. Conflicts in middle east: over fuel but even at an individual level, conflicts be/w people ex b/w children are over resources/over stuff ex. Stereotypical bully stealing someone"s lunch money or a possession.
