evolutionary explanation

• Aggressive may be adaptive because it helps people to:

  •Compete for resources

  •Compete for mates

  •Ensure exclusive sexual access
• Aggression allows individuals to compete for what?

  Scarce resources such as food and for a female mate
• How are aggressive individuals able to compete for food?

  Aggressive individuals are more able to fight off predators and competing animals
• How is competing for food adaptive?

  By having access to more food or higher quality food, this ensures their own survival which increases their likelihood of passing their genes on
• How is competing for mates adaptive?

  By winning the competition for a mate, they would then be more likely to pass their genes on
• What happens when aggressive males are able to successfully compete for a mate and pass their genes on?


  Resulting in the more aggressive genes being passed on as these are the individuals that were more likely to have won the competition for a mate
• What are some features of females' sex cells (eggs)?

  Take a lot of energy to produce and are created in limited numbers during specific time intervals and production only lasts for a limited number of fertile years
• The process of reproducing for females can be described as what?

  An energetically expensive process
• Because reproduction is an energetically expensive process, this means that females require what?

  A partner who provide resources for her and the child, ensuring the child's survival
• Therefore, women have adapted to do what?

  Look for the signs of male's ability to provide resources and protect themselves and a child.
• How is aggression in the context of reproduction being energetically expensive adaptive?

  As women are looking for resources, they are more likely to choose to mate with men who are aggressive as these are the men who were most likely to have fought off other individuals for access to resources such as food.
• Why else do women want aggressive men?

  Women also look for men who can protect them and their child, these would be aggressive men who can guard and defend their mates and their children to ensure the survival of their offspring and increasing the chances of their genes being passed on.
• How do evolutionary psychologists explain the link between jealousy and aggression?

  By suggesting that males threaten use violence to achieve exclusive sexual access to their female partner.
• Buss (1995) noticed what difference between men and women?

  A difference in jealousy between males and females: males tend to be more jealous of their partner's sexual infidelity
• How does Buss (1995) explain the difference in jealousy between males and females: males tend to be more jealous of their partner's sexual infidelity?

  Males have much less certainty than females that the child they are raising is theirs. Males tend to be more jealous of their partner's sexual infidelity, because this could result in raising someone else's child
• How is sexual jealousy and aggression adaptive?

  Therefore, men who are more jealous have a greater chance of raising their own offspring and their own genes being passed on.
• What is a strength of the evolutionary explanation of aggression?

  The evolutionary explanation of aggression has explanatory power.
• What can the evolutionary explanation of aggression explain?

  The differences in the body size and physical appearance between males and females
• What are the differences in the body size and physical appearance between males and females known as?

  Physical dimorphism
• How can the evolutionary explanation of aggression explain physical dimorphism?

  As males need to compete with other males for an access to a fertile mate, sexual selection favours physically strong and aggressive males. However, females don't need to physically compete for a mate, meaning that physical strength and aggression will hold no evolutionary advantage for them.
• In what way is the evolutionary explanation of aggression not scientific?

  It is not falsifiable
• Why is the evolutionary explanation of aggression not falsifiable?

  Its hypotheses are difficult or impossible to test.
• Critics argue that many hypotheses put forward to explain the adaptive nature of aggression are what?

  "just-so stories"
• What are "just-so stories"?

  Neat adaptive explanations for the evolution that do not rest in any evidence beyond their own logic
• Some feminist critics have argued what?

  That evolutionary views of sexual violence serve to 'legitimise' behaviours like partner violence and rape
• How do evolutionary views of sexual violence serve to 'legitimise' behaviours like partner violence and rape?

  By casting them as 'natural' and 'inevitable' and therefore as acceptable behaviours
• Why is the feminist critique a problem for the evolutionary explanation of aggression?


  This makes the evolutionary explanation of aggression less desirable as an explanation of aggression.