The 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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