HUMAN-AGGRESSION IN EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

This article proposes an evolutionary psychological account of human a ggression. The psychological mechanisms underlying aggression are hypo thesized to be context-sensitive solutions to particular adaptive prob lems 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 riva ls, negotiating status and power hierarchies, deterring rivals from fu ture aggression, deterring mates from sexual infidelity, and reducing resources expended on genetically unrelated children. We outline sever al of the contexts in which humans confront these adaptive problems an d the evolutionary logic of why men are cross-culturally more violentl y aggressive than women in particular contexts. The article concludes with a limited review of the empirical evidence surrounding each of th e seven hypothesized functions of aggression and discusses the status and limitations of the current evolutionary psychological account. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.