Violence is an issue that is growing every year more and more. One of the most common reasons of violence is based on evolutionary and genetic causes.
Crimes of violence are overwhelmingly committed by men. In United States in 2002,there were 9,015 men arrested for murder compared to 1,092 women.In summarize,for violent crimes in the United States in 2002,men were almost five times more arrested than women.
One of the evolutionary causes is, as Darwin referred, the sexual selection.This theory says that males and females can select for characteristics of the other sex in population. This means for example that as females choose males to mate with,they are choosing the genetically influenced characteristics of those males,because those characteristics thus become more common in the population. Robert Trivers,also noted that "in the vas majority of species,the male's only contribution to the survival of his offspring is his sex cells.In these species,female contribution clearly exceeds male and by a large targio". This means that the sex that invests the least in offspring (males) will compete more intensely. Because in nature ( in this case animals) are males having a competition against each other and that's hoe the aggresion,risk taking and violence started.In this case,won the quantity over the quality. Comparing this case to nowadays situation is very similar. There are two types of men. Dads and cads. Dads are the type of men who a female wants to see as the father of their children,because they want to invest heavily in parenthood. Cads are the men who are not inclined to make this investment beyond the donation of sperm. So guess whom does the females choose? Of course the dads. And who will have more conflicts and do more crimes? The cads...
The second cause of males being more violent and aggressive, is that they are often being jealous towards women. Males are jealous and they often start a fight with either other men or the exact woman.
The last cause I will introduce you are the genes. There are 4 examples of genes that does have an effect on violence. The first one is an unusual version of gene controlling an enzyme called monoamine oxidase,that helps break down important neurotransmitters.So this activity is implicated as a contribution to criminal behavior. The second is called dopamine,it's associated with pleasurable that people gain from having sex to using drugs.This means that people with increased amount of dopamine are often showing violence and are aggressive because of disability to handle alcohol and drugs. The third type of genes that influence neurotransmitter is serotonin.Low levels of of serotonin activity in brain is causing to irritability,gloom and violence.The last one is called Y-chromosome.It's producing testosterone and that's a hormone that is contributing physical aggression.
So as we could see, males are more prone to violence than are females and characteristics like violence and aggression can only be fully understood by considering genes and environment in their production.
