Let’s start with an origin story:
Since the dawn of humanity, men were responsible for protecting the tribe. Because of this, male brains evolved to be more aggressive, competitive and assertive.
Unfortunately, despite living in more civilised times, the beast still lingers underneath the facade of humanity and some men are unable to control their savagery.
This romantic figure of the ‘macho caveman’ continues to be a source of male fantasies today. However, it obscures a more accurate picture of violence and aggression.
The tale seeks to tie the modern human experience not just to a primordial past, but also to all animal kind. Unfortunately, like most appealing tales, it reveals a human desire to be more interesting than we are.
Here’s why most narratives of the ‘naturalness’ of violence don’t withstand scrutiny, and why a more complex biopsychosocial model is preferred.
The Cucked Cave Man
Whilst violence certainly existed in early human societies, there’s no indication that they were as violent as is commonly depicted.
Early research which tried to use levels of violence in chimpanzee populations to infer high levels of aggression in early Homo sapiens have now been debunked.
Early humans were skittish and highly social creatures. In terms of adaptive pressures, researchers now speak of the feminisation of early man as the key to human nature.
Unlike our chimpanzee cousins, humans have a low propensity for reactive aggression - that is, we are more likely to flee when threatened or provoked than respond in kind.
Instead, our violence is much more likely to be instrumental and expressive, a reflection of our inherent tendency towards the social and symbolic. Humans are more accustomed to theatrical grandstanding than mindless brutality.
The fact that men commit the majority of violence in society compared to women often leads people to believe in deeply embedded biological causes. However, this simplifies things.
Whilst men are far more likely to be directly aggressive compared to women. Women - far from being saints - display disproportionate levels of indirect aggression: a focus on damaging social standing, spreading malicious rumours etc.
So when one speaks of a sex-difference in aggression, it’s certainly not the case of men and women existing on different planets in terms of a tendencies towards cruelty.
It’s also worth noting that violent men remain the minority within their gender.
Whilst men may like to boast about getting into bar fights and other grand displays of masculinity, crime statistics indicate that very few of them are actually doing it (and certainly not often).
Testosterone, long blamed as the hormone responsible for much male brutishness, doesn’t appear to live up to its reputation.
Testosterone spikes when men are in competitive or challenging situations with other men, however only amongst men with a history of violence do we see this boost in hormones result in violence.
The much maligned hormone appears to be more about gearing men up for conflict rather provoking a violent response.
Ultimately, we need a more nuanced model to understand violence in society than appealing to some mythical beast within.
The Socialness of Violence
To start in understanding the ‘socialness’ of violence, it’s first worth considering the cultural construction of ‘violence’ itself.
Whilst some forms of violence such as murder, have always been recognised throughout history they have also always had changing exceptions: for warfare, self-defence, provocation etc.
Other forms of violence, such as rape, have undergone many dramatic revisions over time. For example, the consideration of affirmative consent during sex would have been inconceivable to an average man 50 years ago, but is now crucial to our understanding of sexual violence today.
Refraining from acting violently therefore is really about successfully internalising social rules. To be violent is to violate a social taboo.
Baumeister and Vohs (2004) propose that there are four main reasons why taboos on violence are violated:
As a means to an end.
In response to threatened egotism.
In a misguided effort to do what is right.
As a means for achieving sadistic pleasure.
This brilliantly indicates the socially constructed nature of violence, demonstrating that it is highly reliant on individual desires, identities and values.
How do people internalise these rationales for violence? One prominent theory suggests the answer is simple: they learn them.
Criminal behaviour, including violent behaviour, is intergenerationally transmitted even when children are adopted. Moreover, there is extensive literature that, particularly amongst young people, the normalisation of violence amongst peers acts as a ‘contagion’ for violent behaviour.
In some instances, violence may appear a rational choice, given a number of constrained options. If somebody is economically deprived, they may see theft as a suitable goal and violence a justifiable means to achieve it.
In cases of intimate-partner violence, coercion and force are used to control partner behaviour - often in order to preserve a sense of masculine identity or self-esteem.
Sometimes violence is used to decrease negative feelings.
Cognitive Neoassociation Theory views aggression as an inability to sublimate negative emotions resulting from certain triggering stimuli: this could be everything from annoyingly loud noises to gay men kissing on the street provoking disgust.
Whilst this may seem like a reactive and spontaneous form of violence (“he just snapped”) it actually involves a number of higher order cognitive processes: evaluating the causes of distress and planning a targeted response.
Even Baumeister’s “achieving sadistic pleasure” motivation - which seems to indicate something deeply wrong in an individual - is a socially constructed phenomena.
As I’ve noted before, sadistic desires are incredibly common. Moreover, how these desires are formed likely relates to the symbolism of violating human autonomy.
Moreover, the process of translating sadistic fantasy into reality requires subverting a number of social taboos with only a tiny minority of sadistic fantasists acting violently. This is a much more complex process than simply satisfying the beast within.
In summary: violence requires the rejection of a social norm in favour of some preferable outcome, one linked to socially constructed desires, identities and values.
But does that mean there is no role for biology in violence? Not quite.
Born Bad?
As we saw, violence and aggression are the result of higher order cognitive processes related to internalising social taboos. Therefore it follows, dysfunctions and disorders that impact cognitive processes, likely also impact tendencies towards violence.
Indeed, this is what we see.
There is extensive literature correlating brain dysfunction with violent behaviour. For example, head injuries have been strongly linked to violent behaviour as has foetal alcohol syndrome and neurotoxic lead exposure.
Almost 1 in 3 Australian prisoners have had a serious head injury.
Generally, acquired brain injuries are said to correlate with violence because they lead to less self reflection and more impulsive patterns of behaviour.
However, most people who experience brain injuries or have a brain dysfunction do not commit crimes. So this is best situated as a risk factor amongst many other social factors which impact violence.
Similarly, there is a strong correlation between violence and autonomic under-arousal related to less emotional reactivity and a greater desire for stimulation-seeking behaviour. For example, violent offenders are more likely to have lower resting heart rates and abnormal EEGs compared to the generation population.
This fits with the cultural construct of ‘the psychopath’ an individual who is completely devoid of empathy or emotion.
Again, this is a bit too romantic.
The psychological construct of ‘antisocial personality disorder’ (the current variant on psychopathy) is designed to assist in therapeutic interventions and shouldn’t be construed as clearly delineating “types of people”.
Although there appear to be genetic correlates for antisocial personality, this “biological proneness” is heavily influenced by adverse social environments: including childhood abuse and neglect (fitting a social learning model).
Moreover, most people who exhibit traits of decreased empathy and autonomic under-arousal do not commit violent offences, further indicating that these are biological dispositions rather than strict causes of violence.
Overall, whilst there are certain factors indicating a biological proneness to violence - this still fits within a model which sees violence as largely a socially constructed phenomena.
—
Unfortunately whilst violence is clearly more socially influenced than is usually presumed, that doesn’t mean it’s likely to go away any time soon.
The desires, values and identities which lead to violence also reflect some of the most enjoyable aspects of the human condition: including gains in relative self-esteem, social status and pleasure.
It’s understandable for individuals to wish build themselves up in the eyes of society. As Jean-Paul Sartre quipped: hell is other people.
We may not be ferocious cave men underneath, but humans aren’t saints either.
Our darkness is less about out evolutionary lineage, and more the burden of an isolated subject in a world full of others.