Evaluation- One sentence on eachSexual jealousy and the evolutionary approach to

aggression

1.Research methods- Correlations/ self reports 2.Applications/Usefulness- Mate-Retention strategies3.Validity- Face validity4.Individual differences5.Cultural Differences 6.Post Hoc- Outdated7.Determinist8.Reductionist9.Gender Bias

Face validity• The concept of validity was formulated by Kelly (1927, p.

14) who stated that a test or theory is valid if it measures or explains what it claims to

GROUP DISPLAYhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7XuXi3mqYM

Evolutionary explanations for group display: war and sport

• Group display = Group display is when a group of people act in a certain way in public, using bodily gestures and sound, to intimidate. They often involve the threat of aggression rather than actual aggression

• War = the formation of groups to attack others within the same species

• How does this relate to sport?

WAR – what is it good for? –

• More resources (e.g. food) from a bigger territory

• More females and more offspring = more of your genes in to the next generation (the main principle of Darwinian Evolution)

• Men evolved as hunter gatherers and women needed protection and therefore women needed to ‘choose’ their mates carefully.

• This would suggest that there was at least some advantageous reasoning behind acts of high cost heroic bravery for it to be a characteristic chosen of men by females.

Evolutionary explanations of war• While aggressive display can cost a person their life, by joining a

group and taking part in a war there is a greater chance of survival compared to the individual acting alone.

• Groups are more powerful and afford more protection, hence war is adaptive.

• Success in war can give better access to resources, higher status and ultimately a greater chance of reproducing.

• Mass rape as a weapon of war can be accounted for by the evolutionary approach to war: the threat of rape makes people flee their territory, and rape itself may result in the victim becoming pregnant, so the aggressors genes are continuing.

• Since those who win wars are the most aggressive, these are the people who have passed on their genes, leading to a species who have had aggression selected into their behaviour

Notes away- Recap Q’s 1. Why, in terms of evolutionary theory, is it better to join

a group and take part in war rather than acting alone?

2. What evolutionary advantages come from taking part in group displays such as war?

3. What evolutionary explanations are there for mass rape as a weapon of war?

Evaluation of research

Evolutionary explanation of sporting events

• In modern society, tribal warfare has been replaced by sporting events in which different teams represent their tribes.

Millwall vs West Ham incidents - YouTube

• What does this show?

• What doesn’t this show?

• How does this link to Group Display?

• Read your packs

Xenophobia• Xenophobia appears to be the key to explaining the

adaptive response to aggression during sporting events, at least in football crowds

• Xenophobia is a dislike and/or fear of that which is unknown or different from oneself. It comes from the Greek words ξένος (xenos), meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος (phobos), meaning "fear."

• The term is typically used to describe a fear or dislike of foreigners or of people significantly different from oneself, usually in the context of visibly differentiated minorities.

Theory Continued• Xenophobia has been documented in “…virtually every group of animals displaying higher forms of social organization” (Wilson, 1975).

• Natural selection has favoured those humans that have been altruistic towards people of their own group but hostile to outsiders.

• If people avoided outsiders, or are hostile to their possible threat, then they were more likely to be able to pass on their genes. The over-perception of threat from strangers is safer than under-perception of threat, so we have evolved this hostility towards people not in our group.

How does this link to football crowds?• It explains racism on the terraces quite obviously, but how

does this explain violence between clubs?

• The rivalry between football fans in the UK has existed for 130 years or more.

• The fans identify with their group and are hostile to the other fans because they are perceived as a possible threat.

Supporting evidence

• There is more violence reported between fans when the national teams are playing (for example England vs Germany) compared with when club sides play each other

• In a study of violence at football matches in Hungary, those clubs that had a racist element at it’s core of extremists also had the more violent fans in general, tenuously supporting the xenophobia theory

My brother

Why is Keiran behaving this way?

• Group display/other explanations?

Evaluation

• This is far from strong supporting evidence. Much of it is not testable and therefore unscientific. There is a lot of speculation

• Other causes may include de-individuation, in-groups and out-groups, protecting territory etc.

• IDA: issues with reductionism and determinism, gender bias and socially sensitive research

Starter• Design a flow diagram demonstrating the Evolutionary

approach to aggression

Application• Write a scenario

• Create a “real life” scenario or case study based on the theory of the evolutionary approach and aggression

• Sexual Jealousy

• Group Display War

• Group display Sport

Pick out a case study1. How could the evolutionary approach explain this

scenario?

2. What limitations are there in the Evolutionary approaches explanation

3. What other theories of aggression could explain this scenario?

Essay cut and stick

Evaluation of Aggression Topic