HomicideThe human race spends a disproportionate amount of attention, money, and expertise in solving, trying, and reporting homicides, as compared to other social problems. The public avidly consumes accounts of real-life homicide cases, and murder fiction is more popular still. Nevertheless, we have only the most rudimentary scientific understanding of who is likely to kill whom and why. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson apply contemporary evolutionary theory to analysis of human motives and perceptions of self-interest, considering where and why individual interests conflict, using well-documented murder cases. This book attempts to understand normal social motives in murder as products of the process of evolution by natural selection. They note that the implications for psychology are many and profound, touching on such matters as parental affection and rejection, sibling rivalry, sex differences in interests and inclinations, social comparison and achievement motives, our sense of justice, lifespan developmental changes in attitudes, and the phenomenology of the self. This is the first volume of its kind to analyze homicides in the light of a theory of interpersonal conflict. Before this study, no one had compared an observed distribution of victim-killer relationships to "expected" distribution, nor asked about the patterns of killer-victim age disparities in familial killings. This evolutionary psychological approach affords a deeper view and understanding of homicidal violence. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 28
... Evolutionary psychology xi 1 2 6 Self - interest and conflict Why homicide ? What's a homicide ? 10 11 13 -2- Killing Kinfolks Who kills whom ? Some American data 17 18 Do relatives pose a lesser risk ? 20 Collaborative killing in 13th ...
... evolutionary psychology " : the attempt to understand normal social motives as products of the process of evolu- tion by natural selection . There is simply no question that this is the process that created the human psyche , and yet ...
... psychology and behavior in an evolutionary perspective have been influenced by many friends and colleagues ... evolution group . Don Symons , Leda Cosmides , and John Tooby have impressed upon us the need to focus upon the evolution of ...
... psychology and anthropology table " at North House , for lively critical discussion of evolutionary psychology , in general , and of many of the ideas and analyses in this book , in particular . Thanks , too , to the librarians at ...
... Evolutionary Psychology A Darwinian view of life suggests that the Introduction to " Selection Thinking " 5.
Contents
10 | |
17 | |
Kinship and collaborative homicide revisited | 34 |
Femaleselective infanticide | 53 |
II Parental Homicide in the Modern | 61 |
Stepparents and offspring | 90 |
Oedipal conflict and the primal parricide | 107 |
Conflict over what? | 114 |
7 Why Men and Not Women? | 137 |
8 The Logic of SameSex Conflict | 163 |
9 Till Death Us Do Part | 187 |
10 Retaliation and Revenge | 221 |
11 Calling the Killers to Account | 253 |
12 On Cultural Variation | 275 |
Summary and Concluding Comments | 293 |
References | 299 |
6 | 120 |
Index | 323 |