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. |
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... offspring age 90 Parricide : Killing Parents The logic of parent - offspring conflict Killing parents 5588 95 95 98 An asymmetry of valuation Factors associated with the risk of parricide Oedipal conflict and the primal parricide 99 103 ...
... offspring . ( The power of the idea that collateral as well as descendant kin are valued fitness vehicles was not grasped until 1964 , when W.D. Hamilton published his theory of " inclusive fitness , " launching a conceptual revolution ...
... offspring . We might then expect to find male sexual jealousy a prevalent motive in interpersonal violence , including homicide . Moreover , we might predict certain variations in the intensity of jealousy , and hence in the rates of ...
... Offspring " 0.4 " Parents " 1.0 Other " relatives " 8 ( 29 ) 0.27 9 ( 13 ) 0.69 5 ( 33 ) 0.15 " Risk of homicide by relationships , considering only those cases where victim and offender were cohabitants , for Detroit 1972. Risk ...
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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 |