Publication year: 2011
Source: Aggression and Violent Behavior, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 25 March 2011
Catharine P., Cross , Anne, Campbell
Although men and women both have incentives to aggress, women’s use of aggression is consistently lower than men’s except within intimate partnerships. We propose that women’s aggression is best understood by considering the role of fear as an adaptive mechanism which reduces exposure to physical danger. We review evidence that men and women faced qualitatively different adaptive challenges over evolutionary time and that this resulted in a sex difference in direct aggression mediated by greater female fear. We suggest that the absence of a sex difference in intimate partner aggression results partly from a reduction in female fear mediated by…
Research Highlights: ►Men and women both compete intrasexually but women tend to use low-risk strategies ►Sex-specific selection pressures lower women’s aggression with fear as a mechanism ►Women’s aggression is higher towards intimate partners than towards other targets ►Oxytocin has a possible role in women’s intimate partner aggression