Synonyms
Definition
Variability of aggression: human aggressive behavior varies on a number of dimensions. This variability is best understood through an interdisciplinary evolutionary approach.
Introduction
In one of the first assessments of the potential contributions of evolutionary psychology to the study of aggression, David Buss and Todd Shackelford (1997) propose an account of human aggression arising as the result of adaptive mechanisms that evolved in response to various challenges of social living. Buss and Shackelford point out that the perspective of evolutionary psychology reveals aggression to be multifaceted and to involve several underlying mechanisms responsive in varying contexts. As they say, their account predicts variability in aggression. There are several dimensions to this predicted variability. There is sexual dimorphism in human aggression, some populations are more aggressive than others, and there is variation in types of...
References
Archer, J. (2004). Sex differences in aggression in real world settings: A meta-analytic review. Review of General Psychology, 8, 291–322.
Archer, J. (2006). Cross-cultural differences in physical aggression between partners: A social-role analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 133–153.
Bjorkqvist, K., Lagerspetz, K. M. J., & Kaukiainen, A. (1992). Do girls manipulate and boys fight? Developmental trends in regard to direct and indirect aggression. Aggressive Behavior, 18, 117–127.
Brown, G. R., Dickins, T. E., Sear, R., & Laland, K. N. (2011). Evolutionary accounts of human behavioural diversity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 366, 313–324.
Buss, D. M., & Duntley, J. D. (2011). The evolution of intimate partner violence. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 16, 411–419.
Buss, D. M., & Shackelford, T. K. (1997). Human aggression in evolutionary psychological perspective. Clinical Psychology Review, 17(6), 605–619.
Buss, D. M., Larsen, R. J., Westen, D., & Semmelroth, J. (1992). Sex differences in jealousy: Evolution, physiology, and psychology. Psychological Science, 3, 251–255.
Campbell, A. (1999). Staying alive: Evolution, culture, and women’s intrasexual aggression. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 203–252.
Campbell, A. (2005). Aggression. In D. Buss (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 628–652). Hoboken: Wiley.
Campbell, A. (2013). The evolutionary psychology of women’s aggression. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 368, 1–11.
Cashdan, E. (2008). Waist-to-hip ratio across cultures: Trade-offs between androgen- and estrogen-dependent traits. Current Anthropology, 49(6), 1099–1107.
Cohen, D., Nisbett, R. E., Bowdle, B. F., & Schwarz, N. (1996). Insult, aggression, and the southern culture of honor: An “experimental ethnography”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 945–960.
Confer, J. C., Easton, J. A., Fleischman, D. S., Goetz, C. D., Lewis, D. M. G., Perilloux, C., et al. (2010). Evolutionary psychology: Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations. American Psychologist, 65, 110–126.
Craig, I. W., & Halton, K. E. (2009). Genetics of human aggressive behaviour. Human Genetics, 126, 101–113.
Daly, M., & Wilson, M. (1988). Homicide. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Downes, S. M. (2001). Some recent developments in evolutionary approaches to the study of human behavior and cognition. Biology and Philosophy, 16, 575–595.
Kaighobadi, F., Shackelford, T. K., & Goetz, A. T. (2009). From mate retention to murder: Evolutionary psychological perspectives on men’s partner-directed violence. Review of General Psychology, 13, 327–334.
Kaplan, H. S., & Gangestad, S. W. (2005). Life history theory and evolutionary psychology. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 68–95). Hoboken: Wiley.
Linquist, S. (2016). Which evolutionary model best explains the culture of honour? Biology and Philosophy, 31, 213–235.
Longino, H. E. (2013). Studying human behavior: How scientists investigate aggression and sexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Maynard Smith, J., & Harper, D. G. C. (1988). The evolution of aggression: Can selection generate variability? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 319, 557–570.
Owens, L., Shute, R., & Slee, P. (2000). “Guess what i just heard!”: Indirect aggression among teenage girls in Australia. Aggressive Behavior, 26, 67–83.
Pavlicev, M., Cheverud, J. M., & Wagner, G. P. (2011). Evolution of adaptive phenotypic variation patterns by direct selection for evolvability. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 278, 1903–1912.
Shackelford, T. K. (2005). An evolutionary psychological perspective on cultures of honor. Evolutionary Psychology, 3, 381–391.
Tabery, J. (2014). Beyond versus: The struggle to define the interaction of nature and nurture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Taylor, S. E., Cousino Klein, L., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T. L., Gurung, R. A. R., & Updegraff, J. A. (2000). Behavioral responses to stress in females: Tend-and-befriend, not fight or flight. Psychological Review, 107(3), 411–429.
Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2005). Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology. In D. Buss (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 5–67). Hoboken: Wiley.
Vandello, J. A., & Cohen, D. (2003). Male honor and female fidelity: Implicit cultural scripts that perpetuate domestic violence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(5), 997–1010.
Wilson, M., & Daly, M. I. (1996). Male sexual proprietariness and violence against wives. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 5, 2–7.
World Health Organization. (2012). Understanding and addressing violence against women: Intimate partner violence. Geneva: World Health Organization.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Downes, S.M., Tabery, J. (2017). Variability of Aggression. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1668-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1668-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences