Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Evolution, natural selection and aggression - Coggle Diagram
Evolution, natural selection and aggression
AO1
Natural Selection
-
-
Selection of genes done by environmental and genetic factors which enable the animal to survive and reproduce
Due to survival of genes the most useful genes are in a multiply within population and become more frequent.
Sexual Selection
Influenced of evolution acting on the success of reproduction and picking a partner preference based on genetics.
-
Attributes that increase reproductive success are passed on and may become exaggerated over succeeding generations of offspring.
Guarding your Partner
Mate retention strategies are often aggressive behaviours by males used to retain partners and prevent them from straying.
Wilson and Daly (1996) suggests that direct guarding involves male vigilance over a partners behaviour i.e. checking who they've been seeing, coming home from work early.
Guarding your Offspring
For example, human parents will direct aggressive behaviour against other people that threaten their children.
-
Aggression is a way for parents to protect their 'investment' , increasing the offspring's chance of reproduction later in life.
Steiner (2016) found out that protecting offspring is one of the very few situations in which females just as aggressively as males.
AO3
Strengths
Alternative Explanation- Gender differences in aggression. Daly and Wilson found men are 26X more likely to commit murder than women, across 14 different countries. This can indicate more physical aggression in males due to natural selection.
Practical Applications- The theory is supported by Brendgen' s study amongst 6 year old twins. She found MZ twins have more similar levels of aggression than DZ twins. This supports the idea that there is a gender basis for physical aggression as MZ twins share 100% of their DNA and DZ twins only share 50% like normal siblings.
Weakness
There is no evidence that aggression has evolved as we are unable to have records from the hunter- gatherer era and trace aggression to this day. Researchers are basing the evolution of aggression on subjective thoughts on the past.
Evidence is correlational and so cannot determine a direct cause and effect relationship between genders. For example it is unknown if genetics influences aggression or if aggression influences genetics. There could also be other factors such as biological factors like testosterone levels in men and how that may or may not influence aggression levels.