Are selective pressures breeding aggression out of first-world populations?
I was reading about the genetic component of aggression, specifically the so-called “warrior gene”. This gene has to do with producing an enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters. Males (the effect doesn’t seem to hold for women) who possess certain alleles of this gene tend to respond more aggressively when provoked or in stressful situations and exhibit riskier behavior.
Some populations have a relatively low incidence of the implicated alleles. About a third of Western males have it. In other populations it can be twice as frequent. The Maori tribes of New Zealand are an example of a high-incidence population. Evidence indicates that environmental factors play a big role in whether having the allele triggers actual aggressive behavior.
It seems possible then that how different cultures view aggression might tend to select for or against the genetic factors. Getting into more fights and taking more risks might increase your chances of getting killed, but it also might do wonders for your social status and increase your appeal as a mate in some cultures. Maori culture honors the warrior spirit, ritualizing it in their haka chants.
Could it be that having that gene variant has become more a liability than an asset in our culture, mating-wise? Is the sex-appeal of aggressive men wearing thin here, overall? I can certainly think of counter-evidence, but what about the general trend? Is there a general cultural disenchantment with aggression? Will that make us less genetically disposed to aggression in the future?
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I haven’t the knowledge to answer, but it’s an interesting idea. I guess I hope it works that way and that, in time, we’ll find peace. (if it isn’t too late.)
Evolutionary explanations of human behavior and society are red-herrings, especially when they refer to the gene pool. Natural selection for gene pools, especially in a non-catastrophic environment, takes a massive amount of time.
Sociological theories like those are a fad pedestal for selling books.
The recent history of the West which includes invasions, mass murders, napalming, carpet bombing, and the use of poison gas and nuclear weapons gives me no confidence that this will happen any time soon. We are apes with technology.
Selective breeding takes many, many generations. What you might be referring to is probably social behaviorism.
@Zaku Just to be clear, I’m not aware of any books to this effect. What I was reading was articles like this.
I was also thinking about the work on selective breeding of foxes for non-aggression begun by Dmitry Belyaev in 1959. In relatively few generations, his team was able to produce pronounced behavioral changes. Here’s a study looking at the nature of the changes.
The fox study was deliberate selection for a particular trait, so it’s not analogous to survival benefits conferred by the shape of a finch’s bill. But if human culture shifts so that individuals with a genetically-linked behavior trait get chosen as mates more frequently, isn’t that also a form of deliberate selection for a trait?
@flutherother Yes, I think we do still favor political leaders who demonstrate an aggressive stance. The world is perceived to be a dangerous place, and we want a big tough guy to protect us. I just wonder if maybe on the more local scale of our relatively secure first-world lives, women may be looking less for a bodyguard figure than for a sympathizer. That shift probably began a lot earlier in societies where the government took on the role of protector and enforcer of order.
@thorninmud In our day to day lives we have never been more secure. That is true, but I think the sex appeal of the dominant male remains as strong as ever, not with every woman but with many. The overtly aggressive male is not popular but the career driven testosterone filled male who can race up the corporate ladder like a monkey running up a tree still is still the most desired by beautiful women. I think our culture is a very macho one. Just look at the world of big business.
@thorninmud Selective breeding of captives by captors can of course get relatively quick results for some genetic traits.
Selection done by non-captive humans for themselves is something completely different. Where is a study showing that humans adjust their mating based on estimations of survival traits adapted to their current culture? Where is a study showing any significant part of humans are even capable of knowing what an actual survival trait for their current culture is? This is one of the major areas where sloppy conjecture by “evolutionary” pop-sociology turns off its brain so that it can come up with entertaining but unprovable/silly assertions about survival of the fittest as it applies to current culture.
And as you said, individual traits that can be bred for, such as pigments or even, apparently, some aspects of fox “tameness”, is also something completely different from the unprovable hypothesis that any particular trait is more or less likely to have someone (or someone’s genes) survive in modern culture.
At the level of your question, “Could it be that having that gene variant has become more a liability than an asset in our culture, mating-wise?”, yes, it could be, but we are in no position to do more than speculate. It may be fun to think about, but it seems to me that it’s a kind of speculation whose popularity is vastly out of proportion to the time scale of evolutionary change, as well as to the degree to which anyone understands reproduction trends in the whole of modern cultures enough to ever do more than entertain themselves with speculations.
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