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Definition
Evolved psychological mechanisms to facilitate killing other humans.
Introduction
Violence has been a recurrent and persistent occurrence throughout the expanse of human history (Daly and Wilson 1988; Pinker 2011). An evolutionary psychological perspective proposes that violence is inherently and inextricably entrenched in human psychology. Accordingly, this perspective suggests that over deep evolutionary history, humans have evolved adaptations for aggressive behavior as means of solving a variety of adaptive problems (Buss and Shackelford 1997). Thus, the capacity for violence disposed by modern humans may be the result of selection favoring aggressive tendencies. In particular, aggressive behavior may have emerged as a pattern of solutions to the many problems presented by group living.
Buss and Shackelford (1997) proposed seven domains for which aggression may serve effective means: (1) co-opting resources from others, such as...
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References
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Holub, A.M., Barbaro, N. (2021). Homicide Adaptation Theory. In: Shackelford, T.K., Weekes-Shackelford, V.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_613
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_613
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