A few good men: Evolutionary psychology and female adolescent aggression

doi:10.1016/0162-3095(94)00072-F

Ethology and Sociobiology

Volume 16, Issue 2, March 1995, Pages 99-123

https://doi.org/10.1016/0162-3095(94)00072-F Get rights and content

Abstract

Criminologists have drawn attention to the fact that crime peaks in the teens and early 20s and that this pattern shows invariance over culture, history, offense, and sex. Wilson and Daly (1985) have proposed that among young, disadvantaged males, the age-crime curve reflects risky tactics aimed at averting “reproductive death.” Though young women's rate of involvement in violent crime is much lower than men's, they also show a similar age-violence curve for assault. This paper proposes that this may be the result of aggressive mate selection among young women and that, under certain specified circumstances, women may engage in low-key intrasexual strategies in addition to epigamic strategies. This paper reviews material on sex differences in violent crime and in mate selection strategies, and offers predictions about the likely circumstances under which females will use intrasexual strategies. The scant available data on female adolescent fighting suggest that female-female assaults are more common than official statistical estimates and that they are frequently triggered by three key issues related to reproductive fitness: management of sexual reputation, competition over access to resource-rich young men, and protecting heterosexual relationships from takeover by rival women.

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We propose that one function of competitive information sharing is success in intrasexual competition. We posit that the decision to share potentially damaging information about a competitor is sensitive to the probability of that information diminishing a competitor's mate value. According to Sexual Strategies Theory (Buss & Schmitt, 1993), men and women have evolved different psychological mechanisms underlying short-term and long-term mating strategies, and display somewhat different (although partially overlapping) preferences for long-term and short-term mate choice. In two experiments, we utilized a 2 × 2 factorial within-subjects design to manipulate a potential mate's mating strategy (long-term vs. short-term) and characteristics of a rival indicative of the rival's mating strategy (long-term vs. short-term). We predicted that participants would be more likely to share information about a competitor when that information mismatched the potential mate's preferences, thereby decreasing the perceived mate value of the competitor. Using Linear Mixed Effects Modeling, Study 1 found that men and women reported that they would be more likely to share that a competitor was promiscuous when the potential mate was interested in a long-term mate than when the potential mate was interested in a short-term mate. Study 2 demonstrated similar findings for ratings of effectiveness of sharing the information. Taken together, the two studies support the central hypothesis about the role of negative information sharing in intrasexual competition and the context-specificity of its deployment depending on mating strategy pursued.
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Citation Excerpt :
Due to their good looks, they draw more attention from members of the opposite sex, which can be a source of grievance and envy among their intrasexual competitors (McAndrew, 2018). Evolutionary psychologists have documented that disputes over boys is major precursor of violence between adolescent girls (Campbell, 1995; Gallup, O'Brien, & Wilson, 2011). Vaillancourt and Sharma (2011) examined the effect of sex appeal on indirect aggression in an experimental study that randomly assigned all-female participants into two treatment conditions, each featuring the same confederate dressed either conservatively or provocatively.
This research considered physical attractiveness as a potentially victimogenic individual characteristic. Based on target congruence, the theoretical model predicts direct effects of physical attractiveness on violent victimization and, based on routine activities theory, indirect effects on both violent and non-violent victimization.
Using data from the 2013 wave of the Finnish Youth Victimization Survey (n = 5095) we estimated a structural equation model to examine the hypothesized associations. Physical attractiveness was measured using a novel self-report instrument asking respondents to report how other people react to their physical appearance.
We found consistent support for the theoretically expected pathways. The direct and indirect associations of physical attractiveness on sexual victimization were particularly strong. For example, highly attractive boys were five times more likely than other boys to have experienced child sexual abuse.
Scholars and practitioners should consider physical attractiveness as an individual characteristic that may substantially increase the risk of interpersonal victimization, both directly and through its impact on routine activities. More research is needed to understand the mechanisms producing the observed associations.
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Original articleA few good men: Evolutionary psychology and female adolescent aggression

Abstract

Animal Behaviour

Journal of Biological Structures

Journal of Theoretical Biology

Trends in Ecology and Evolution

Ethology and Sociobiology

Ethology and Sociobiology

Ethology and Sociobiology

Violent Criminal Acts and Actors

Darwin, Sex and Status: Biological Approaches to Mind and Culture

Intra-sexual selection in drosophila

Heredity

Do girls manipulate and boys fight? Developmental trends regarding direct and indirect aggression

Aggressive Behavior

Puberty: Physical change and its significance in early adolescence

Theory into Practice

When Battered Women Kill

The psychology of violent female offenders: A sex-role perspective

The Prison Journal

Female aggression in cross-cultural perspective

Behavioural Science Research

Sex differences in human mate selection criteria: An evolutionary perspective

The evolution of human intrasexual competition

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating

Psychological Review

Female aggression

Girls' talk: The social representation of aggression by female gang members

Criminal Justice and Behavior

Self-report of fighting by females

British Journal of Criminology

The Girls in the Gang

Men, Women and Aggression

Implications of sex differences in the prevalences of antisocial personality, alcoholism, and criminality for familiar transmission

Archives of General Psychiatry

Sex, Evolution and Behavior

Homicide

Killing the competition: Female/female and male/male homicide

Human Nature

Evolutionary psychology of male violence

The Selfish Gene

The incentive value of physical attractiveness for young children

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Personality, gender and the phenomonology of romantic love

A sociobiological perspective on the development of human reproductive strategies

Conditional Mate Choice Strategies in Humans

Genes, Culture and Personality: An Empirical Approach

Self-reported violent offending: A descriptive analysis of juvenile violent offenders and their offending careers

Journal of Interpersonal Violence

Age trends in the development of aggression, sex typing and related television habits

Developmental Psychology

Contributions of victimization to delinquency in inner cities

The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Developmental maturity as a determinant of prestige in adolescent girls

Child Development

Gender differences in effects of physical attractiveness on romantic attraction: A comparison across five research paradigms

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Aggression as impression management

Social Psychology

Original article
A few good men: Evolutionary psychology and female adolescent aggression