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 76
... risk ? 20 Collaborative killing in 13th - century England 24 Some other studies with higher proportions of blood kin Fraternal strife 26 Kinship and collaborative homicide revisited 20 30 34 —3— Killing Children : I. Infanticide in the ...
... risk of homicide at parental hands Mothers who kill older children -5- Fathers who kill Substitute parents 61 62 63 64 69 77 80 83 8 ≈ ≈ N 888 72 73 Risks to children living with stepparents 85 Stepparents and offspring age 90 ...
... risk of filicide , parricide and fratricide ? " or " Under what circumstances do men kill their wives ? " To our surprise , the answers simply weren't there . Gradually we came to realize that whereas aggregate homicide data have been ...
... risks . A stickleback fish guarding a nest full of eggs , for example , will stand his ground against an approaching predator longer and dart at the predator more bravely , the more eggs he has in the nest ( Pressley , 1981 ) . In ...
... risk incurred . Physiologists and psychologists routinely assume efficient design when they study thirst or respiration or the processing of sensory information , and yet they rarely give a thought to the details of the natural ...
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 |