Dr. Martin Daly is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University, Canada. His areas of interest are human violence (especially homicide), family relations, and evolutionary psychology. He is a founding member and past-president (1991-1993) of the Human Behavior & Evolution Society (HBES), and with his late wife Margo Wilson, he served as co-editor-in-chief of the society's journal Evolution & Human Behaviour for its first decade. In 1998, Dr. Daly was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. They also co-authored three books: Sex, Evolution and Behavior (1978, 1983), Homicide (1988), and The Truth about Cinderella (1998). Dr. Daly’s latest book (July, 2016) is entitled Killing the Competition: Economic Inequality and Homicide.

In this episode, the conversation revolves around violence and homicide, and the main topics of the books Homicide and Killing the Competition. First, we talk about the evolutionary bases of violent behavior, as a means of controlling other people’s behavior and regulating relationships. We also go through the evolved sex differences in aggressiveness, as a result of intrasexual and intersexual competition. Then, we talk specifically about homicide, and why it might also happen in familial conflicts, even though it is quite rare. We also refer to the potential problems with having an approach that favors pathologizing all types of violent and deviant behavior. Finally, we talk about the relationship between economic inequality and homicide, as explored in Killing the Competition, and how it affects primarily young men, and the environmental and social circumstances that trigger it. Toward the end, we also refer to the importance of the State having the monopoly over violence and its relationship with social stability, and the benefits that we get from economic redistribution.

Time Links:

02:03 The evolved function of violence

07:28 The evolutionary costs and benefits of violence

12:42 Sex differences in aggressiveness and violent behavior

15:50 Intrasexual and intersexual competition

24:21 About homicide

28:25 Familial violence and homicide

34:04 Is the best approach to pathologize violent behavior?

44:47 Killing the Competition, and the relationship between economic inequality and homicide

54:49 Inequality, disadvantaged young men, violence and reproductive success

1:01:19 Killing and waging war to gain access to sexual resources

1:11:34 Violence in criminal gangs

1:15:42 Hobbes, the Leviathan, and State monopoly over violence

1:17:51 Could education on th

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