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Exploring evolutionary explanations for aggression, mate retention strategies, warfare advantages, and xenophobia in group dynamics, linking behaviors to survival and reproduction.
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Evaluation- One sentence on each Sexual jealousy and the evolutionary approach to aggression • Research methods- Correlations/ self reports • Applications/Usefulness- Mate-Retention strategies • Validity- Face validity • Individual differences • Cultural Differences • Post Hoc- Outdated • Determinist • Reductionist • Gender Bias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 Display https://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 • Why, in terms of evolutionary theory, is it better to join a group and take part in war rather than acting alone? • What evolutionary advantages come from taking part in group displays such as war? • What evolutionary explanations are there for mass rape as a weapon of war?
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
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 study • How could the evolutionary approach explain this scenario? • What limitations are there in the Evolutionary approaches explanation • What other theories of aggression could explain this scenario?
