Evolutionary Explanations of Human Aggression (AQA A Level Psychology): Revision Note

Evolutionary explanation of sexual jealousy

• Sexual jealousy refers to the emotions and behaviours involved in the perception (real or imagined) that one’s partner is engaging in infidelity or may be attracted to other males/females

  • Anecdotal and research evidence suggest that males are more prone to sexual jealousy than females, but females are more concerned about emotional infidelity (Kato, 2022) 

• An evolutionary explanation for heightened male sexual jealousy is paternity uncertainty; a woman can always be sure the child she carries is hers, but her male partner can never share that certainty, creating the threat of cuckoldry

  • Any investment in offspring that do not share the male's genes is a waste of resources, contributing to the survival of a rival's genes and leaving the 'father' with fewer resources to invest in his own future offspring

• Men in our evolutionary past who could avoid cuckoldry were more reproductively successful, so psychological mechanisms may have evolved to increase anti-cuckoldry behaviours in males, driving the mate retention strategies that were adaptive in our evolutionary history

• Wilson & Daly (1996) identify several mate retention strategies which involve aggression and even physical violence:

  • Direct guarding: checking or even tracking her phone, watching for signs of interest in other men, asking her where she’s been, coming home at unusual times to see if she can be ‘caught’ engaging in suspicious behaviour

  • Negative inducements: issuing threats of dire consequences for infidelity, e.g., 'I'll kill myself if you leave me', which may lead to physical violence (intimate partner violence, or IPV)

Research which investigates evolutionary explanations of sexual jealousy

• Buss (2013) – a review article in which the author concludes that sexual jealousy is a basic emotion which has evolved because it solves adaptive problems of mating

• Larsen et al. (2021) – a survey of 1,266 high school students aged 16–19, which found that adolescent males found the sexual aspect of imagined infidelity more distressing than adolescent females did

• Schutzwohl (2006) – two experiments which revealed that men are more occupied with thoughts about a mate’s sexual infidelity, whereas women are more occupied with thoughts about a mate’s emotional infidelity

Evolutionary explanations of bullying

• Bullying is a set of behaviours which are designed to intimidate, humiliate, control and torment another (usually more vulnerable) person

• A bully generally seeks power, and it is this aspect of bullying that has led evolutionary psychologists to suggest that bullying is adaptive and brings with it evolutionary advantages for the bully

• Some research argues that bullying is universal and that it brings with it enhanced reproductive success

  • It is an outward display of strength, social status, success and resources, both material and in terms of attractive traits

• The ultimate evolutionary drive behind (male) bullying is to attract females and, ultimately, to reproduce

• Female bullying is less likely to be openly direct and violent than that of males; it may include

  • exclusion of the victim

  • spreading lies about the victim

  • verbal abuse

  • use of cyberbullying 

• The evolutionary advantages of female bullying may be to secure resources by warding off competition for a male with resources

  • This in turn, ensures that any future offspring will be secure and will carry superior genetic material

Research which investigates evolutionary explanations of bullying

• Volk et al. (2012) – a review article which concludes that bullying may be an adaptive strategy that offers some benefits to those who engage in bullying behaviour

• Kolbert & Crothers (2003) – childhood bullying is used to establish dominance hierarchies in schools

• Campbell (1999) – a review article which suggests that females place a high value on enhancing their reproductive success, citing aggression as a form of ensuring this success

Evaluation of evolutionary explanations of human aggression

Strengths

• Shackelford et al. (2005) studied 107 married couples who completed questionnaires, and found a strong positive correlation between men's reports of their mate retention behaviours and women's reports of their partners' physical violence

  • Men who used direct guarding or negative inducements were more likely to use physical violence against their partners, and mate retention behaviours reliably predicted husbands' use of violence against their wives

• The understanding that bullying brings with it evolutionary benefits could be used to inform anti-bullying interventions, i.e., by encouraging competitiveness in bullies so that they can display their positive qualities to potential mates without causing harm to others

Limitations

• Research has shown that IPV is not confined to male-on-female violence

  • IPV can be and is perpetrated by women for a variety of reasons, which could include sexual jealousy

• It is extremely difficult to test hypotheses about the evolution of behaviours to solve problems of adaptation in our evolutionary past, so most research is correlational, e.g., finding associations between mate retention behaviours and aggression

  • This method does not allow us to draw cause-and-effect conclusions, which undermines the validity of the evolutionary explanation

Issues & Debates

• The evolutionary explanation of male sexual jealousy and intimate partner violence (IPV) can be seen as socially sensitive, as it may appear to justify controlling or violent behaviour as biologically determined

  • This has ethical implications, especially when applied to real-world situations like domestic abuse, and care must be taken not to excuse harmful actions using evolutionary reasoning

• Evolutionary theories suggest that aggressive behaviours like sexual jealousy or bullying are biologically predetermined survival strategies

  • This supports a biological determinist view, implying individuals may have limited free will in controlling such behaviours

  • This is controversial when discussing morally and legally serious actions like IPV