ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Two types of aggression in human evolution.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 100 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
100 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Genetics of child aggression, a systematic review.Translational psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- An overlapping pattern of cerebral cortical thinning is associated with both positive symptoms and aggression in schizophrenia via the ENIGMA consortium.Psychological medicine · 2020Pooled it
- Androstadienone modulates human aggression in a sex-dependent manner.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2023Trial
- Autoantibodies reactive to adrenocorticotropic hormone can alter cortisol secretion in both aggressive and nonaggressive humans.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Trial
- Cell type-specific expression and subcellular localization of the human insulin upstream open reading frame (INSU) protein in pancreatic β-cells.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2026Article
- Intentions poorly explain how and why people engage in offensive and defensive forms of violence.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Dopamine modulation of aggression.Psychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Homo sapiens, industrialisation and the environmental mismatch hypothesis.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Origins of violence: evolutionary decoupling between mild and lethal conspecific aggression in primates.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- The psychology of offensive and defensive intergroup violence: Preregistered insights from 58 countries.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Chimpanzees are not more aggressive than bonobos but target sexes differently.Science advances · 2026Article
- Survival of the wittiest (not friendliest): The art and science behind human linguistic and cognitive evolution.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- The (In)Congruence of Individual and Classroom Bullying Victimization: Implications for Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Problems and the Moderating Role of Moral Disengagement.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2026Article
- On the topical issue of assisted dying: the insurmountable challenges of human existence, and the right to exit.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Positive Selection in Aggression-Linked Genes and Their Protein Interaction Networks.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Prolonged Aggressive Experience Accelerates Resolution of Inflammation in Blood and Microglia After Repeated LPS Treatment.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Review: Suicide and its relationship to aggression and impulsivity.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Review
- Evidence for an Evolutionary Continuity in Social Dominance: Insights from Nonhuman Primate Tractography.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Reciprocity evolves more readily in competitive than cooperative socio-ecologies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Investigating Changes in Social Networks Following Conflict in Zoo-Housed Bonobos (Pan paniscus).American journal of primatology · 2025Article
40 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Abstract
Two major types of aggression, proactive and reactive, are associated with contrasting expression, eliciting factors, neural pathways, development, and function. The distinction is useful for understanding the nature and evolution of human aggression. Compared with many primates, humans have a high propensity for proactive aggression, a trait shared with chimpanzees but not bonobos. By contrast, humans have a low propensity for reactive aggression compared with chimpanzees, and in this respect humans are more bonobo-like. The bimodal classification of human aggression helps solve two important puzzles. First, a long-standing debate about the significance of aggression in human nature is misconceived, because both positions are partly correct. The Hobbes-Huxley position rightly recognizes the high potential for proactive violence, while the Rousseau-Kropotkin position correctly notes the low frequency of reactive aggression. Second, the occurrence of two major types of human aggression solves the execution paradox, concerned with the hypothesized effects of capital punishment on self-domestication in the Pleistocene. The puzzle is that the propensity for aggressive behavior was supposedly reduced as a result of being selected against by capital punishment, but capital punishment is itself an aggressive behavior. Since the aggression used by executioners is proactive, the execution paradox is solved to the extent that the aggressive behavior of which victims were accused was frequently reactive, as has been reported. Both types of killing are important in humans, although proactive killing appears to be typically more frequent in war. The biology of proactive aggression is less well known and merits increased attention.
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