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Homicide: Foundations of Human Behavior
The human race spends a disproportionate amount of attention, money, and expertise in solving, trying, and reporting homicides, as compared to other social problems. The public avidly consumes accounts of real-life homicide cases, and murder fiction is more popular still. Nevertheless, we have only the most rudimentary scientific understanding of who is likely to kill whom and why. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson apply contemporary evolutionary theory to analysis of human motives and perceptions of self-interest, considering where and why individual interests conflict, using well-documented murder cases. This book attempts to understand normal social motives in murder as products of the process of evolution by natural selection. They note that the implications for psychology are many and profound, touching on such matters as parental affection and rejection, sibling rivalry, sex differences in interests and inclinations, social comparison and achievement motives, our sense of justice, lifespan developmental changes in attitudes, and the phenomenology of the self. This is the first volume of its kind to analyze homicides in the light of a theory of interpersonal conflict. Before this study, no one had compared an observed distribution of victim-killer relationships to "expected" distribution, nor asked about the patterns of killer-victim age disparities in familial killings. This evolutionary psychological approach affords a deeper view and understanding of homicidal violence.
342 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1988
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November 23, 2018
Every field of research consists of sets of essential writings that constitute a referential framework and provide a basis for other scientists' future inquiry. For evolutionary psychology, one such writing is Homicide (1988) by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, in which the authors administer selection thinking (interchangeable with a term 'evolutionary psychology') to study matters like
In essence, every chapter in the book tackles different subtopic, although they are all interconnected with one another. The authors focus on such matters as applicability of criminological records to studying of evolutionary bases of killing, infanticide, parricide, altercations as sources of violence in so-called cultures of honor, sexual selection, causes of same-sex conflicts, bloodfeuds, responsibility of killers and cultural variance in homicide.
The authors acknowledge social scientists' explanations why people kill one another, such as envy engendered in social inequities, abuse in childhood, brain tumors, alcohol-induced psychoses, the violence on TV etc., but instead of focusing on particulars, they try to create a cohesive perspective
Next, they proceed to explain that an often-demonized word determinism does not limit humans to mindlessly-driven genetic automata and is not exclusive to biological sciences. Instead, they logically remark that
In a chapter dedicated to a practice of infanticide, Daly and Wilson interestingly examine cross-cultural similarities between foraging groups, agricultural tribes and modern societies. In every control group for which a valid record exists, women, in overall, tend to perceive killing their child as a taboo, and are reluctant to talk about this. Also, they are more often unmarried and lack support from their relatives (For an extensive study of mother-child relationships see: Mother Nature) Moreover, the authors suggest,
The most interesting point (although, not the only interesting) the authors make on parent-offspring conflict is that in a situation with siblings, a conflict might arise simply because the parent values the two equally. Evolutionarily, a child values itself above its sibling and the nonidentity of fitness (the fact that we are not the same) interests suggests that selection will incline offspring to exaggerate their need, often at the expense of the sibling (vide: The Biology of Moral Systems).
Further analysis of parent-offspring conflict leads Daly and Wilson to examine the famous Freudian Oedipal Conflict. In Freud's own words,
Chapter that deserves a proper level of attention facilitates sexual selection, in essence, a process that occurs whenever some attribute contributes to success either in wooing the opposite sex or in vanquishing members of one's own sex in competition for mates. They treat a subject of sex differences in parental investment with great care, although it is a shame they chose not to mention The Handicap Principle, proposed in 1970s by Israeli biologist Amotz Zehavi. The principle states that animals (humans, too) have characteristics that do not necessarily help them survive but can contribute to their overall reproductive success. For instance, a peacock's tail is a costly and potentially risky sexual ornament. Therefore, every peacock with a big and colorful tail is considered by a peahen to be strong enough to expose itself to hazardous situations with predators.
Insofar as lethal retribution and blood feuds, the authors validly observe that
parental affection and rejection, sibling rivalry, sex differences in interests and inclinations, social comparison and achievement motives, our sense of justice, lifespan developmental changes in attitudes, and the phenomenology of the self.In other words, they apply evolutionary psychology, that is, the attempt to understand social motives as products of the process of evolution by natural selection (vide: The Adapted Mind and Human Evolutionary Psychology), to
generate new ideas about human social pychology and behavior.At first glance, it may seem like it is too much to cover in a book of less than 350 pages. Careful reading, though, proves the opposite, for Daly and Wilson managed to write a comprehensible and thorough study that is now essential to a field of evolutionary psychology.
In essence, every chapter in the book tackles different subtopic, although they are all interconnected with one another. The authors focus on such matters as applicability of criminological records to studying of evolutionary bases of killing, infanticide, parricide, altercations as sources of violence in so-called cultures of honor, sexual selection, causes of same-sex conflicts, bloodfeuds, responsibility of killers and cultural variance in homicide.
The authors acknowledge social scientists' explanations why people kill one another, such as envy engendered in social inequities, abuse in childhood, brain tumors, alcohol-induced psychoses, the violence on TV etc., but instead of focusing on particulars, they try to create a cohesive perspective
that will account for violence within the framework of a well-founded general theory of human nature.In the study, Daly and Wilson comply with a methodological rigour of any scientific research and consider existing alternative theories within a subject they tackle. For instance, they mention, still prevalent these days, creationism, which describes that organisms are adaptively contructed because someone made them that way, be it God or other supernatural entity. In a cool-headed manner, the authors simply remark that
the problem it that creationism is simply devoid of empirical implications. Whatever turns up must be the will of the creator(s). Implications for the practical investigation of the natural world are nil.They are quick to notice that creationism strips its followers of natural curiosity (which, needless to say, is a cause of development), and therefore deem it worthless.
Next, they proceed to explain that an often-demonized word determinism does not limit humans to mindlessly-driven genetic automata and is not exclusive to biological sciences. Instead, they logically remark that
biologist and sociologist alike are commited to the belief that the phenomena under study have knowable causes. We chip away at 'unexplained variance' within our various paradigms, trying to better understand what makes the creatures we study do what they do. The entire enterprise is predicated upon 'determinism'.The authors also explain probably one of the most commonly misunderstood terms: survival of the fittest. Counterintuitively, personal survival is not the expected end on the natural selective ledger. What really matters, are successful traits that depend not only upon the longevity of individuals carrying the trait, but also upon the abundance of their progeny. Likewise,
it is reproductive success, not bodily condition, that the evolutionist refers to as 'fitness'.Daly and Wilson employ selection thinking to put forth several interesting hypotheses and provide sometimes startling well-documented facts, each and every one of them assisted with available statistical data and historical records. Their suggestion that wife-murder is the tip of the iceberg of the coercive violence that men employ to control the most reproductively valuable women has already been proven by other studies (vide: Natural Selection and Social Theory and Sexual Nature/Sexual Culture). The authors give an answer to a somewhat puzzling question:
If the motivational mechanisms of all creatures have evolved to generate behavior that is effectively nepotistic, then what on earth are we doing killing relatives?This is, indeed, confusing, considering that the end goal of the evolved psychological mechanisms of any creature should be the enhancement of the individual's inclusive fitness (vide: Adaptation and Natural Selection), that is, the proliferation of copies of his/her genes, which can be promoted both by personal reproduction or that of genetic relatives'.
In a chapter dedicated to a practice of infanticide, Daly and Wilson interestingly examine cross-cultural similarities between foraging groups, agricultural tribes and modern societies. In every control group for which a valid record exists, women, in overall, tend to perceive killing their child as a taboo, and are reluctant to talk about this. Also, they are more often unmarried and lack support from their relatives (For an extensive study of mother-child relationships see: Mother Nature) Moreover, the authors suggest,
Infanticide can be the desperate decision of a rational strategist allocating scarce resources. There is no reason to suppose that an evolved parental psychology should be such as to value every offspring equally and indiscriminately.The reason behind this is,
every child that is reared represents a significant fraction of its mother's life span and labor [...]. The 'predictors' of a child's eventual fitness that might influence a mother could be characteristics of the child - whether robust or sickly, for example - but they might also be characteristics of the circumstance, such as the season.As for infanticidal males, their potential actions against a child might be caused by child's illegitimacy and the risk of cuckoldry, when they cannot be sure who is the parent of child (vide: Infanticide by Males and Its Implications).
The most interesting point (although, not the only interesting) the authors make on parent-offspring conflict is that in a situation with siblings, a conflict might arise simply because the parent values the two equally. Evolutionarily, a child values itself above its sibling and the nonidentity of fitness (the fact that we are not the same) interests suggests that selection will incline offspring to exaggerate their need, often at the expense of the sibling (vide: The Biology of Moral Systems).
Further analysis of parent-offspring conflict leads Daly and Wilson to examine the famous Freudian Oedipal Conflict. In Freud's own words,
It is the fate of all of us to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father.Later, the father of psychoanalysis elaborated on his theory and added that the urge to kill one's father and copulate with one's mother had retained well into adulthood, and was ucted upon. Daly and Wilson discarded methodological foundations of psychoanalysis, saying that
One consequence of this failure [misunderstanding of the natural selection] was a miconception of the adaptive functions of evolved psychological mechanisms: Freud supposed that they had evolved merely to achieve 'mental relief'. Now, such relief might well be the proximal goal in an evolved motivational mechanism but such mechanism could not arise by natural selection unless the means of achieving mental relief happened also to be means to the end of fitness.As for altercations as sources of violence, the authors rightly observe that a man's reputation depends in part upon the maintenance of a credible threat of violence. Several recent studies confirm that (vide: Becoming Evil and Culture of Honor). Daly and Wilson make a convincing point when they hypothesize that in a game of reproductive success even the lethal exercise of violence does not have to be disadvantageous to the killer.
Chapter that deserves a proper level of attention facilitates sexual selection, in essence, a process that occurs whenever some attribute contributes to success either in wooing the opposite sex or in vanquishing members of one's own sex in competition for mates. They treat a subject of sex differences in parental investment with great care, although it is a shame they chose not to mention The Handicap Principle, proposed in 1970s by Israeli biologist Amotz Zehavi. The principle states that animals (humans, too) have characteristics that do not necessarily help them survive but can contribute to their overall reproductive success. For instance, a peacock's tail is a costly and potentially risky sexual ornament. Therefore, every peacock with a big and colorful tail is considered by a peahen to be strong enough to expose itself to hazardous situations with predators.
Insofar as lethal retribution and blood feuds, the authors validly observe that
they have evidently increased in likelihood and in intensity since the invention of agriculture.What is more, blood revenge assumes the status of a sacred obligation. A killer cannot just take a trip and expect other people to forget about his doings. Tempers eventually cool, but duty and hatred remains (vide: Blood Revenge). In the end, feuds ultimately have to do with material and reproductive rivalry.
The constant specter confronting each fraternal interest group is defeat or extermination by rivals: the theft of one's women, the loss of one's lands, the end of one's line.Contrary to what it may seem with a book entirely dedicated to a subject of killig, at the end of it, Daly and Wilson point out that the rates of homicides, in fact, have declined throughout the centuries (vide: The Better Angels of Our Nature). And even though there has always been a market in declamations of social disintegration and doom,
twentieth-century, industrial man may well have a better chance of dyin peacefully in his bed than any of his predecessors.
January 4, 2021
Although I have some reservations around the field, this book is evolutionary psychology done pretty well by two sober and clear thinkers.
Martin Daly and Margo Wilson were a power couple that helped set up the feild of evo psych in the 70s and 80s. Interestingly, another couple, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, were the other major pioneers of evo psych. Finally, two of the most well-known contemporary evolutionary psychologists are the couple Geoffrey Miller and Diana Fleischman.
I'm sure there's an evolutionary psychologist out there that has a theory of why evolutionary psychologists are attracted to each other ;)
We are less likely to be killed by our blood relatives
The authors invoke kin selection to claim that we are less willing to kill people we are related to: We share our genes with our relatives so we have an evolutionary stake in them.
Their claim is largely borne out in the data. Their main source is Detroit Police stats which was a big detailed data-base that the commissioner gave them access to because he was sympathetic to open data for research purposes.
Accounting for potential confounds
The authors are robust and statistically literate. They consider potential confounders and find elegant ways to account for them and test their hypothesis.
For instance, people spend more time with their relatives so there are more opportunities for violence. A naive approach may conclude that our blood relatives pose a greater risk. This is similar to the effect that most crashes occur near your house. This, of course, is not because your neighborhood streets are more dangerous than other roads, but because you spend most of your time driving nearby. Alex Honnold pointed out a similar phenomenon in the documentary Free Solo where most accidents happen on easier climbs (because that's where most of the training is done).
To account for the confound, the authors compare different types of housemates like blood relatives vs non-blood relatives. They also compare homicide victim rates with homicide co-offending rates. If proximity explains high rates of homicide victims that are relatives, it should also apply to the rate of co-offenders, in the same vein.
Blood relatives are far more likely to be co-offenders than victims of homicide: Around 15% of co-offenders were blood relatives compared to around 3% of homicide victims.
What about the victims that are related?
However, the number of homicide victims that are related to the perpetrator is not zero. For instance, there are many cases of infanticide in hunter gatherer tribes.
Infanticide occurs in the animal kingdom, so it doesn't falsify the theory that kin selection influences homicide. However, it does require an explanation.
The authors founds that victims of infanticide in human hunter-gatherer tribes were either not the parent's offspring, deformed or ill, or born under circumstances that weren't favourable for child rearing.
Another interesting aspect was that child killings also follow an age curve. Child victims are far more likely to be very young when the perpetrator is their parent.
Even our intuitions in the west (that we find child killing morally abhorrent) align with the age curve. Namely, we aren't surprised that most child killing are infants rather than young children or teenagers. It even seems obvious to us that it would be far worse to kill your ten year old than your ten day old if you were doing so due to lack of resources.
The distribution above roughly aligns with the age distribution of reproductive value.
.
In contrast, the risk that a child will be killed by a non-relative increases with age. Teenagers are at a far higher risk of being killed by a non-relative.
The authors also touch on the Cinderella effect, the phenomenon where step-parents a guilty of higher instances of child abuse compared to biological parents, which they further explore in their later book.
What are there issues with evo psych?
Evolutionary psychology often gets criticised as merely providing "just-so stories". An accusation which sometimes has some merit. A just-so story is when you start with a statistical fact and then retroactively fit an explanation to it (rather than starting with a clearly stated hypothesis and testing it).
Stephen Jay Gould, a prominent critic of evo psych, went too far when he suggested that evo psych is inherently limited to just-so stories. We can create an evo psych hypothesis right now that can be tested in principle. For instance, a coherent (but not necessarily plausible) hypothesis may be that people who have less sex are more caring towards their nephews and neices. You could empically test this and throw if it's false.
Daly and Wilson's approach seems to be evo psych done well. Conjecturing hypotheses and rigourously testing them.
The other major criticism of evo psych is it counters the theory of universal computation. Namely, cultural memes can override or overwrite genetic influences. For instance, we can choose to fast, or abstain from sex, or be a pacifist, or go skydiving, or kill ourselves. I haven't seen Daly and Wilson directly engage with this criticism, but I suspect they would grant the fact that genetic influences can be overridden but they are often aren't (and it's likely difficult to be done). As Robert Plomin has said about behavioral genetics: it describes what is not what can be.
Martin Daly and Margo Wilson were a power couple that helped set up the feild of evo psych in the 70s and 80s. Interestingly, another couple, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, were the other major pioneers of evo psych. Finally, two of the most well-known contemporary evolutionary psychologists are the couple Geoffrey Miller and Diana Fleischman.
I'm sure there's an evolutionary psychologist out there that has a theory of why evolutionary psychologists are attracted to each other ;)
We are less likely to be killed by our blood relatives
The authors invoke kin selection to claim that we are less willing to kill people we are related to: We share our genes with our relatives so we have an evolutionary stake in them.
Their claim is largely borne out in the data. Their main source is Detroit Police stats which was a big detailed data-base that the commissioner gave them access to because he was sympathetic to open data for research purposes.
Accounting for potential confounds
The authors are robust and statistically literate. They consider potential confounders and find elegant ways to account for them and test their hypothesis.
For instance, people spend more time with their relatives so there are more opportunities for violence. A naive approach may conclude that our blood relatives pose a greater risk. This is similar to the effect that most crashes occur near your house. This, of course, is not because your neighborhood streets are more dangerous than other roads, but because you spend most of your time driving nearby. Alex Honnold pointed out a similar phenomenon in the documentary Free Solo where most accidents happen on easier climbs (because that's where most of the training is done).
To account for the confound, the authors compare different types of housemates like blood relatives vs non-blood relatives. They also compare homicide victim rates with homicide co-offending rates. If proximity explains high rates of homicide victims that are relatives, it should also apply to the rate of co-offenders, in the same vein.
Blood relatives are far more likely to be co-offenders than victims of homicide: Around 15% of co-offenders were blood relatives compared to around 3% of homicide victims.
What about the victims that are related?
However, the number of homicide victims that are related to the perpetrator is not zero. For instance, there are many cases of infanticide in hunter gatherer tribes.
Infanticide occurs in the animal kingdom, so it doesn't falsify the theory that kin selection influences homicide. However, it does require an explanation.
The authors founds that victims of infanticide in human hunter-gatherer tribes were either not the parent's offspring, deformed or ill, or born under circumstances that weren't favourable for child rearing.
Another interesting aspect was that child killings also follow an age curve. Child victims are far more likely to be very young when the perpetrator is their parent.
Even our intuitions in the west (that we find child killing morally abhorrent) align with the age curve. Namely, we aren't surprised that most child killing are infants rather than young children or teenagers. It even seems obvious to us that it would be far worse to kill your ten year old than your ten day old if you were doing so due to lack of resources.
The distribution above roughly aligns with the age distribution of reproductive value.
.In contrast, the risk that a child will be killed by a non-relative increases with age. Teenagers are at a far higher risk of being killed by a non-relative.
The authors also touch on the Cinderella effect, the phenomenon where step-parents a guilty of higher instances of child abuse compared to biological parents, which they further explore in their later book.
What are there issues with evo psych?
Evolutionary psychology often gets criticised as merely providing "just-so stories". An accusation which sometimes has some merit. A just-so story is when you start with a statistical fact and then retroactively fit an explanation to it (rather than starting with a clearly stated hypothesis and testing it).
Stephen Jay Gould, a prominent critic of evo psych, went too far when he suggested that evo psych is inherently limited to just-so stories. We can create an evo psych hypothesis right now that can be tested in principle. For instance, a coherent (but not necessarily plausible) hypothesis may be that people who have less sex are more caring towards their nephews and neices. You could empically test this and throw if it's false.
Daly and Wilson's approach seems to be evo psych done well. Conjecturing hypotheses and rigourously testing them.
The other major criticism of evo psych is it counters the theory of universal computation. Namely, cultural memes can override or overwrite genetic influences. For instance, we can choose to fast, or abstain from sex, or be a pacifist, or go skydiving, or kill ourselves. I haven't seen Daly and Wilson directly engage with this criticism, but I suspect they would grant the fact that genetic influences can be overridden but they are often aren't (and it's likely difficult to be done). As Robert Plomin has said about behavioral genetics: it describes what is not what can be.
March 20, 2021
القتل داخل الأسرة
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في أساطير العديد من الثقافات ، كان القتل البدائي هو قتل الأخوة. غالبًا ما يتم تصوير الخصوم على أنهم أول زوج من الإخوة في تاريخ العالم. وفقًا لإحدى هذه الحكايات ، التي لا يزال يتم سردها والاستمتاع بها في مجتمعنا ، فإن القاتل قابيل استاء من نجاح أخيه الأصغر هابيل فقتله .
يتم تصوير نزاعهم على أنه صراع بين الرعاة والمزارعين . في قصص مماثلة من ثقافات أخرى ، يتعلق الخلاف بالميراث أو النساء أو الحسد على مهارات الأخ.
لا يهم حقًا ما إذا كانت حكايات العنف الأخوي هذه لها أساس واقعي ، ومهما كانت أصولهم ، فإن جاذبيتهم المستمرة هي لأنهم يضربون على وتر حساس من التجربة الإنسانية. يمكن للأخوة أن يكونوا بالفعل منافسين شرسين ، وإذا كانوا رجالًا مهمين ، فقد تؤدي صراعاتهم إلى عواقب وخيمة للآخرين في مجالهم الاجتماعي.
تمتد نزاعات القتل المحتملة داخل الأسرة إلى ما هو أبعد من التنافس بين الأشقاء. وفقًا لنظرية فرويد المؤثرة بشكل كبير حول عقدة أوديب ، فإن الرغبة في قتل والد المرء هي عنصر طبيعي ، وربما عالمي ، في نفسية الذكور. لا داعي لأن تشعر النساء بالإهانة: أصر العديد من الكتاب على أن الفتيات العاديات أيضا حريصات بنفس القدر على قتل أمهاتهن. وبالطبع ، يُزعم على نطاق واسع أن الآباء يتعاملون مع ميول قاتلة خاصة بهم. لا عجب إذن أن "الشغل الشاغل للطفولة" ، وفقًا للمحللة النفسية للأطفال دوروثي بلوخ (1978) ، تبين أنه خوفنا من أن يقرر آباؤنا أن يقتلونا!
إذا كنا سنصدق علماء الاجتماع ، فإن هذه الدوافع القاتلة داخل الأسرة ليست مجرد مادة لأوهامنا ، ولكنها تتجلى في الواقع أيضًا. وفقًا لريتشارد جيلز وموراي ستراوس (1979) «المحققون الأكثر شهرة في العنف الأسري في أمريكا المعاصرة» :
الأسرة هي المكان الوحيد الأكثر شيوعًا لجميع أنواع العنف بدءًا من الصفعات إلى الضرب إلى التعذيب إلى القتل. يدرك طلاب جرائم القتل جيدًا أن الكثير من ضحايا القتل هم أفراد من نفس العائلة أكثر من أي فئة أخرى .
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Martin Daly
Homicide
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
.
.
في أساطير العديد من الثقافات ، كان القتل البدائي هو قتل الأخوة. غالبًا ما يتم تصوير الخصوم على أنهم أول زوج من الإخوة في تاريخ العالم. وفقًا لإحدى هذه الحكايات ، التي لا يزال يتم سردها والاستمتاع بها في مجتمعنا ، فإن القاتل قابيل استاء من نجاح أخيه الأصغر هابيل فقتله .
يتم تصوير نزاعهم على أنه صراع بين الرعاة والمزارعين . في قصص مماثلة من ثقافات أخرى ، يتعلق الخلاف بالميراث أو النساء أو الحسد على مهارات الأخ.
لا يهم حقًا ما إذا كانت حكايات العنف الأخوي هذه لها أساس واقعي ، ومهما كانت أصولهم ، فإن جاذبيتهم المستمرة هي لأنهم يضربون على وتر حساس من التجربة الإنسانية. يمكن للأخوة أن يكونوا بالفعل منافسين شرسين ، وإذا كانوا رجالًا مهمين ، فقد تؤدي صراعاتهم إلى عواقب وخيمة للآخرين في مجالهم الاجتماعي.
تمتد نزاعات القتل المحتملة داخل الأسرة إلى ما هو أبعد من التنافس بين الأشقاء. وفقًا لنظرية فرويد المؤثرة بشكل كبير حول عقدة أوديب ، فإن الرغبة في قتل والد المرء هي عنصر طبيعي ، وربما عالمي ، في نفسية الذكور. لا داعي لأن تشعر النساء بالإهانة: أصر العديد من الكتاب على أن الفتيات العاديات أيضا حريصات بنفس القدر على قتل أمهاتهن. وبالطبع ، يُزعم على نطاق واسع أن الآباء يتعاملون مع ميول قاتلة خاصة بهم. لا عجب إذن أن "الشغل الشاغل للطفولة" ، وفقًا للمحللة النفسية للأطفال دوروثي بلوخ (1978) ، تبين أنه خوفنا من أن يقرر آباؤنا أن يقتلونا!
إذا كنا سنصدق علماء الاجتماع ، فإن هذه الدوافع القاتلة داخل الأسرة ليست مجرد مادة لأوهامنا ، ولكنها تتجلى في الواقع أيضًا. وفقًا لريتشارد جيلز وموراي ستراوس (1979) «المحققون الأكثر شهرة في العنف الأسري في أمريكا المعاصرة» :
الأسرة هي المكان الوحيد الأكثر شيوعًا لجميع أنواع العنف بدءًا من الصفعات إلى الضرب إلى التعذيب إلى القتل. يدرك طلاب جرائم القتل جيدًا أن الكثير من ضحايا القتل هم أفراد من نفس العائلة أكثر من أي فئة أخرى .
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Martin Daly
Homicide
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
April 22, 2008
This seems to be the book about homicide. It is full of interesting data. I am glad I read it. But part of me really, really hates this book.
Here is a sentence that I hate: Our theoretical approach in this book is to use Darwin's discovery that the properties of organisms have been shaped by a history of selection as an heuristic for the generation of models and hypotheses about the sorts of psychological mechanisms that an animal like Homo sapiens might be expected to have evolved.
Does this make any sense? I can't figure out if the authors' theory isn't really much of a theory at all, or if I am just really stupid.
Here is a sentence that I hate: Our theoretical approach in this book is to use Darwin's discovery that the properties of organisms have been shaped by a history of selection as an heuristic for the generation of models and hypotheses about the sorts of psychological mechanisms that an animal like Homo sapiens might be expected to have evolved.
Does this make any sense? I can't figure out if the authors' theory isn't really much of a theory at all, or if I am just really stupid.
to-keep-reference
August 16, 2018datos estadísticos, antropológicos e históricos para demostrar que los hombres jóvenes se esfuerzan en conseguir y mantener un estatus social lo más alto posible porque de ellos depende en gran parte su éxito en la competición sexual.
Desigualdad Pág.156-157
Desigualdad Pág.156-157
December 15, 2014
This has some very interesting insights into human behavior. While it specifically discusses evolutionary psychology as it relates to homicide, the authors show that the same evolutionary conflicts of interest that lead to homicide shape day-to-day conflicts that all humans experience. For its age this book is still very relevant to anyone to who wants to better understand evolution, psychology, social science, criminology, or human nature.
June 12, 2007
Applied sociobiology — in this case, applied to the problem of homicide. Why do people kill other people? Well, there are many reasons, and if you look at the statistics, most of them conform to some degree at least with predictions that would be made from applying sociobiological concepts to the problem.
December 4, 2024
One of the most insightful books I've ever read. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves to learn about human behaviour.
November 5, 2009
A look at interpersonal violence (specifically murder) among humans and its evolutionary history. Interesting, but I think as a theory, their ideas can be expanded on. "Demonic Males" is a more recent address of the same issues which I think does a better job of covering the incredibly complex issues of human agency and biological evolution.
August 22, 2008
good book but wouldnt read it again.
June 29, 2010
Absolutely fascinating.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews