To understand aggression we have to look at our evolutionary past to see displays of aggressive behaviour such as increased reproductive fitness. Trait passed through genes showing trait ensured reproductive success.
Concern for male ancestors was not getting a mate & maintaining influence over her, this could be seen as aggressive behave adapt to stop females from leaving (why males get sexual jealousy)
Humans have emotion: which are useful for survival – aggression was an emotion of survival in certain environments – to protect mate & offspring to pass on genes.
Competition: for mates, competition means rivalry & lead to feelings of jealousy & jealous behaviour which is seen as genetic found in all human cultures suggesting bio predispositions. In natural world sex leads to babies & continuation of the family.
A woman can be certain a child is biologically hers but a man doesn’t have parental certainty, it would be based on trust she didn’t cheat. Women have parental certainty as she gives physical resources (pregnancy & birth) having a man provide for her & child essentials in terms of survival, food, production & survival of child.
A woman will be jealous if her man is with another women & sexually unfaithful – her child & her survival at risk as the man might give his resources to the other women. Women might be aggressive to drive off rival women enhancing her & her child’s chance of survival.
Male jealousy translates to aggression because he doesn’t want to devote time or resources on another man’s child. Very jealous if he suspected his wife cheated meaning may get pregnant by another male so lead to aggression to women & other man.
Limited resources: fight over resources may be seen as cause for aggression (food, shelter) those who successfully defend food & shelter survive longer & reproduce. Behaviour can be inherited as genes lead to aggressive survival.
Stronger: aggressive humans seen as stronger in social group, would be ones more likely to survive. They had ‘higher’ status in group or not attacked because seen as stronger, put them in stronger position to pass on genes
Rape as aggression: Seen in all cultures, seen as ‘last resort’ of a jealous person. Rapists likely to be unmarries, resource poor men who unsuccessful in attracting a mate. Jealous of sexual rivals but aggressive emotion directed at women – the victims of good reproductive fitness – so would be possible to become pregnant to pass on genes.
| Success | Weakness |
| Daly & Watson – over time men developed retention techniques to keep gold of a partner e.g forms of snooping through possessions, prevent talking to other men or emotion/physical abuse – support natural selection as aggression traits maintain a partner
Buss – used sample of 37 different cultures & found males favour females chastity while women favoured faithfulness – supports males want parental certainty whilst females wants resources for her only. Lorenze – observed animals in natural world & wrote about aggression being evolved trait especially males to fight over limited resources – supports idea aggression is successful trait to ensure reproductive success Darwin’s scientific methods – reduces behaviour to genetic influences as he found evidence from fossils which matched photos of animals – careful observation to form ideas reducing them to observational features & using it to prove individual genotypes. |
Lorenze – studied animals who don’t share same sophisticated cerebral cortex layers of the brain that humans do – harder to generalise animal research to humans
Harris –identified & found no gender diff; both men & women focused on emotional infidelity as more unacceptable – showing men as well get jealous over emotional infidelity Reductionist – aggression is result of dispositional factors ignoring role of situational factors or environmental – more holistic theory needed explaining aggression.
|