Elsevier

Clinical Psychology Review

Volume 17, Issue 6, September 1997, Pages 605-619
Clinical Psychology Review

Human aggression in evolutionary psychological perspective

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0272-7358(97)00037-8Get rights and content

Abstract

This article proposes an evolutionary psychological account of human aggression. The psychological mechanisms underlying aggression are hypothesized to be context-sensitive solutions to particular adaptive problems of social living. Seven adaptive problems are proposed for which aggression might have evolved as a solution — co-opting the resources of others, defending against attack, inflicting costs on same-sex rivals, negotiating status and power hierarchies, deterring rivals from future aggression, deterring mates from sexual infidelity, and reducing resources expended on genetically unrelated children. We outline several of the contexts in which humans confront these adaptive problems and the evolutionary logic of why men are cross-culturally more violently aggressive than women in particular contexts. The article con-cludes with a limited review of the empirical evidence surrounding each of the seven hypothesized functions of aggression and discusses the status and limitations of the current evolutionary psychological account.

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    This article was prepared while Todd K. Shackelford was a Jacob K. Javits Graduate Research Fellow.

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