Saloni
All of us had been angry at one point or another, obviously it happens to be a part of our nature. Today let me introduce aggression and how it is a requirement from the perspective of evolution.
Aggression is defined as any behaviour that is not intended to harm another individual who does not wish to be harmed, of all the species that exist, two species kill their own kind and these are chimps and humans, both of the species form a group and attack victims
Why do we need aggression?
Evolutionary psychology gives a roadmap to why a species so intelligent requires to be aggressive. Evolution is focused on survival and anything that helps us in surviving is essential and same is with aggression as it does help us to survive . First of all, it helps in capturing resources that are available, we humans like any other species need to stockpile resources which aid in our survival and this access of resources is gained through aggression. Victims too need to be aggressive so as to save themselves from attackers, this prevents attackers from taking resources forcefully and the loss of status and honour. Another need of aggression is to ward off intersexual rivals.
Sexual variation in aggression
Men happen to be much more aggressive than women the theory of parental investment and sexual selection states that women as compared to men are more invested in offspring, females are more valuable than men. Men can impregnate many women at a time and hence are favoured.
Here it is to be noted that generally anger is always context specific and is triggered in scenarios which are similar to the ones where our ancestors fought for survival.
On a general note, men tend to be more aggressive than women, examples include homicides and bullying and in both the cases men dominate the scenario, and however name calling is more prevalent in women than men, specific to high school showing intersexual mate competition which leads to accumulation of sexual resources
The young men syndrome
It is generally seen that the level of homicide is high specifically in late adolescent and early adulthood group, after which the number of homicide generally decreases. It is to be noted that this is the time when men had to compete for sexual resources, in such a case, men had to show their prowess, ability to fight and the ability to defend. This helps in attracting the right sexual mate, and to ward off competitors, hence a higher level of aggression is seen in this age group.
This is not only limited to humans, but in other mammals too, but in humans comes the need of reputation, hence any kind of fight occurring in broad daylight is a show, hinting men to beware and showing prowess to attract sexual mate.
Women too show aggressive behavior towards women, this competition is intense due to the fact that women have to compete for sexual mate as well as loyalty. Women, instead of extreme aggression opt for social exclusion to get rid of competitors, and the weapon used is verbal agression, generally based upon physical appearance and sexual promiscuity. This becomes very effective if the women attacking is herself sexually attractive.
Generally men attack women who are their spouses, mates or girlfriends and this is due to the inability to control women and jealousy, these include cases such as termination of relationship, sexual infidelity etc. Women on other hand rarely attack mean, if they do attack this is for defense against an attack
While this is how we have evolved with anger, we cannot deny that anger does disrupt our daily works and relationship, hence there is a major need to prevent and control anger. It must be noted that anger is not inevitable or unalterable, a whole set of ways are used to deal with anger, which includes
Punishment
The process of delivery of aversive consequences is punishment, the ones who punish think that the one punished deserves to be punished, and must suffer to amend, this is also carried out to deter from future actions, but this has lower level of effectiveness
Self-regulation
Our own capacity to regulate our own behaviour is self-regulation, this however requires a lot of cognitive effort and is not possible in a general scenario.
Catharsis
The process of venting out anger in non-harmful ways is catharsis, however in long run it can increase the level of aggression and may create hostile situations, however it helps in improving emotional health.
Waiting before showing aggression
During the time one feels angry, one can just wait or count up, so that other feeling s such as compassion could take over, in this case there is a shift of focus and the method is very effective.
Reference
this is such a wonderful article!! thanks for writing 🙂
🙂
Great article!!
Very informative and interesting…
A very informative article!! Well done :))
Looking forward to more of your work!!
This was Awesome
Keep Writing
Amazing work! Keep writing