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 31
... variable in their frequency ? 284 " Subcultures " of violence 286 On the legitimacy of killing 288 Violent times ? 291 Summary and Concluding Comments 293 References 299 Index 323 Killing one's antagonist is the ultimate conflict ...
... variable rates , and individual homicide cases have been studied by psychiatrists seeking syndromes , hardly anyone had yet approached the analysis of homicides in the light of any sort of theory of interpersonal conflict , evolutionary ...
... variable conditions . The evidence that these functions are indeed correctly identified is diverse , but the most essential point is evident design for the function in question ( Wil- liams , 1966 ) . The lens must be transparent , the ...
... variables , and there is impressive evidence , as we shall see in Chapters 3 and 4 , that this theory of maternal motivation , inspired by evolution- ary theory , is correct . Several critics of " sociobiology " have complained that the ...
... variables . This sort of exercise in no way depends upon sexual jealousy homicides enhancing their perpetrators ' fitness , or indeed having ever done so . It does depend upon sexual jealousy and , as the argument is here stated , an ...
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 |