The Most Violent Age? Hint: If You're Socking Somebody To Steal Their Car, It's Probably A Plastic One Driven By Batman
No, according to Steven Pinker's talk today at the Northeast Evolutionary Psychology Society conference in Boston, the most violent ages aren't, oh, 16 to 25.
It turns out that the "terrible twos" really are pretty terrible. Pinker pointed out that this is the time that humans are most violent -- constantly kicking, punching, and biting.
If we gave all the 2-year-olds guns, Pinker noted, we'd really be in trouble.
The reasons Pinker points to for the substantial decline in violence over the centuries (and especially recently) include: The spread of democracy, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism. He contends they help us "increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, bargain rather than plunder, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence."
I asked Pinker a question I actually knew the answer to (via evolutionary psychologist Catherine Salmon) but wanted to get out there -- whether the spread of Internet access and, in turn, access to porn, seemed to decrease sexual violence. The answer is, it seems very possible.
Pinker didn't seem familiar with that research. He mentioned some papers by Owen Jones, a lawyer with an evolutionary orientation. But I think I found at least one of the papers Catherine (and somebody else I've read) probably referenced (the chapter she wrote on this is at home in LA). Via a Steve Chapman article at reason:
How can it be explained? Perhaps the most surprising and controversial account comes from Clemson University economist Todd Kendall, who suggests that adult fare on the Internet may essentially inoculate against sexual assaults.In a paper presented at Stanford Law School last year, he reported that, after adjusting for other differences, states where Internet access expanded the fastest saw rape decline the most. A 10 percent increase in Internet access, Kendall found, typically meant a 7.3 percent reduction in the number of reported rapes. For other types of crime, he found no correlation with Web use. What this research suggests is that sexual urges play a big role in the incidence of rape -- and that pornographic Web sites provide a harmless way for potential predators to satisfy those desires.
That, of course, is only a theory, and the evidence he cites is not conclusive. States that were quicker to adopt the Internet may be different in ways that also serve to prevent rape. It's not hard to think of other explanations why sexual assaults have diminished so rapidly -- such as DNA analysis, which has been an invaluable tool in catching and convicting offenders.
...But if expanding the availability of hard-core fare doesn't prevent rapes, we can be confident from the experience of recent years that it certainly doesn't cause such crimes.
More on Kendall's paper and crime drops from Slate's Steven E. Landsburg.
Pinker's book on the decline of violence: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
I'm too lazy to look it up exactly. But Sapolsky writes about how men from certain communities have a physiological response to perceived slights which causes them to be more aggresive and reactive than say men from other areas. This level of arousal is caused by how much you need to defend your property as a young man, even if defending it isn't actually needed due to technology.
So when you take these men out of their community and into more tame environments they still have that physical reaction (faster heart rate for example) than men who grew up in more peaceful and more gender equal areas.
Ppen at April 10, 2015 12:33 AM
Absolutely, Ppen -- this also makes sense out of "life history theory," which looks at how stable or risky an environment you grew up in. I just talked to Bruce J. Ellis, another evolutionary psychologist, about this at SPSP -- the last psych conference I went to (in Long Beach, in February). I asked him, are you really fucked for life if you grew up with a "fast" life history (meaning that you grew up in a risky environment -- like the 'hood, for example -- where life is cheap. This tends to lead a person to be more risk-taking and promiscuous -- which are adaptive behaviors in an environment that is risky, where you are possibly one of five children of a single mother and are more likely to die young than if you grow up an only child in Beverly Hills in a two-parent family.
I would think that this also leads to what Sapolsky talks about, that you mention above, PPen.
Anyway, Bruce mentioned that there's going to be imprinting on the brain from this (and the same from insecure attachment). So, though you can change yourself, the old patterns in your brain will still be there.
I'm working on my next book and writing about this for a section of it -- on both life history and attachment. My growing up a loser is something I've worked hard to transform from -- but I can feel it still being a part of me. (I had no friends till I was 15, for anyone who's a newcomer here or hasn't read Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck. I actually say I had no friends till I was 13 in that book, but looking back, I realize that was aspirational and it was 15. Sucked.
Amy Alkon at April 10, 2015 3:22 AM
Amy Alkon
https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2015/04/he-most-violent.html#comment-5954452">comment from Amy AlkonBruce sent me his book chapter on this, which I have yet to read (because I'm working on another section of the book), but here's a link:
http://bsb-lab.org/site/wp-content/uploads/Ellis_etal_2013_beyond_allostatic-load_chapter.pdf
Amy Alkon
at April 10, 2015 3:27 AM
"are you really fucked for life if you grew up with a "fast" life history"
Short answer, no. But as you say it leaves a mark and is always a part of you. It just doesn't have to be all of you.
Ben at April 10, 2015 5:51 AM
Dr. John Rosemond has said that the "Terrible Twos" are little more than the child's horrified realization that, unlike a few months earlier, the parents were no longer going to revolve around the baby's every little whim - and were even going to demand that the kid OBEY the PARENT!
According to him, this actually starts at 18 months or so - and can last for another 18 months.
From page 4 of "Making the Terrible Twos Terrific" (1993):
"Midway through the child's second year of life (or thereabouts) his parents initiate the process of "socialization"— the attempt to transform him from Cosmic Potentate into a responsible (and most uncosmic) member of society. Without warning, they begin refusing to cater to his every whim. They insist that he begin doing certain things for himself. They make him wait for things he wants, and even, on occasion, reject his demands completely and without explanation. In short order, they change the name of the game from 'You're in Charge' to 'We're in Charge.' This effectively yanks the rug of his egocentric-based sense of security out from under him, lands him on his regal butt, and makes him completely and ferociously furious. How dare they!"
I also have the impression that he agrees with one of his graduate school psychology professors, who "maintained that toddlers were psychotic."
lenona at April 10, 2015 8:20 AM
Just as an aside re the incidence of rape --
It is hard to reconcile the statistics cited in the Chapman article with the feminist theory that rape is all about power -- not sex. As feminist governance and economic decline have systematically dis-empowered men over the last 40 years, one would expect that rape rates would have soared, rather than plummeted, over that time.
Of course, it is hard to reconcile most of observable reality with feminist theory ...
Jay R at April 10, 2015 12:13 PM
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