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Revenge: An adaptive system for maximizing fitness, or a proximate calculation arising from personality and social-psychological processes?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2012

Michael Potegal
Michael Potegal*
Affiliation:
Division of Pediatric Clinical Neuroscience, Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN 55455. poteg001@umn.edu
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Abstract

Revenge appears among a “suite” of social interactions that includes competition, alliance building (a prerequisite for tribal revenge raids), and so forth. Rather than a modular “system” directly reflecting evolutionary fitness constraints, revenge may be (another) social cost-benefit calculation involving potential or actual aggression and proximately controlled by individual personality characteristics and beliefs that can work against fitness.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , February 2013 , pp. 33 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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