Evolutionary Explanations for Human Aggression
Another way to try and understand why humans are aggressive is to look at our evolutionary past and look at the possible adoptions of displaying aggressive behaviour such as to increase reproductive fitness for example. A major concern for our male ancestors was not to find a mate and even when having one was to maintain influence over her. In this way it could be seen that aggressive behaviour was adaptive to prevent the female from leaving, this is why males today may experience sexual jealousy...
Aggression and leg length
Carrier (2007) suggested that our ape-like human ancestors maintain short legs for a long period of time because the short squat position made it easier for them to fight over females for example. He looked at the influence of leg length in terms of creating aggressive behaviour by comparing aborigines to eight primate species, he concluded that males who had a heavy body weight and longer canine teeth in comparison to the females generally had shorter legs. Carrier argues that in order to prevent aggressive behaviour we must first understand why we are aggressive and this means looking at:-
The conditions under which aggressive behaviour developed in the first place
The adaptive problems it was designed to solve
Infidelity and Jealousy
Daly and Watson (1988) state that over time men have developed a series of mate retention techniques to keep “hold” of the partners from being with other men. This can come in the form of snooping through their possessions, preventing them from talking to other men or emotionally/physically abusing their partner.
Cuckoldry and Sexual Jealousy
Cuckoldry is the process by which a female tricks a male into thinking that the child she is bearing or has conceived is his when it actually belongs to another man. While cuckoldry is dangerous for women it is equally as dangerous for males, as they can lose their chance to produce an offspring...