An introduction to evolutionary psychology and its application to suicide terrorism

Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression

Volumn 3, Issue 3, 2011, Pages 176-197

  Liddle, James R ^a   Bush, Lance S ^a   Shackelford, Todd K ^b  

^a FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b OAKLAND UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Evolutionary psychology; Kin selection; Religion; Suicide terrorism

Indexed keywords

EID: 84874581609     PISSN: 19434472     EISSN: 19434480     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/19434472.2010.512157     Document Type: Article

References (102)

1. Alcorta, C.S., & Sosis, R. (2004). Ritual, emotion, and sacred symbols. Human Nature, 16, 323-359.
2. Atran, S. (2002). In gods we trust: The evolutionary landscape of religion. New York: Oxford University Press.
3. Atran, S. (2003). Genesis of suicide terrorism. Science, 299, 1534-1539.
4. Aunger, R. (Ed.) (2001). Darwinizing culture: The status of memetics as a science. New York: Oxford University Press.
5. Barrett, J.L. (2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 29-34.
6. Barrett, J.L. (2004). Why would anyone believe in God? Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
7. Barrett, J.L., & Nyhof, M. (2001). Spreading nonnatural concepts. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 1, 69-100.
8. Benton, T. (2000). Social causes and natural relations. In H. Rose & S. Rose (Eds.), Alas poor Darwin: Arguments against evolutionary psychology (pp. 249-270). New York: Harmony Books.
9. Bering, J.M. (2005). The evolutionary history of an illusion: Religious causal beliefs in children and adults. In B.J. Ellis & D.F. Bjorklund (Eds.), Origins of the social mind (pp. 411-437). New York: The Guilford Press.
10. Bering, J.M., McLeod, K., & Shackelford, T.K. (2004). Reasoning about dead agents reveals possible adaptive trends. Human Nature, 16, 360-381.
11. Berry, D., Misovich, P., Keen, R., & Baron, S. (1992). Effects of disruption of structure and motion on perceptions of social causality. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 237-244.
12. Blackmore, S. (1999). The meme machine. New York: Oxford University Press.
13. Blackwell, A.D. (2005, June). Terrorism, heroism, and altruism: Kin selection and socioreligious cost-benefit scaling in Palestinian suicide attack. Poster session presented at the 17th annual Human Behavior and Evolution Society Conference, Austin, TX.
14. Bongar, B., Brown, L.M., Beutler, L.E., Breckenridge, J.N., & Zimbardo, P.G. (Eds.) (2007). Psychology of terrorism. New York: Oxford University Press.
15. Borum, R. (2004). Psychology of terrorism. Tampa, FL: University of South Florida.
16. Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. New York: Basic Books.
17. Boyer, P., & Ramble, C. (2001). Cognitive templates for religious concepts: Cross-cultural evidence for recall of counter-intuitive representations. Cognitive Science, 25, 535-564.
18. Brodie, R. (2009). Virus of the mind: The new science of the meme. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.
19. Bulbulia, J. (2004). The cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion. Biology and Philosophy, 19, 655-686.
20. Buss, D.M. (2004). Evolutionary psychology: The new science of the mind (2nd edn). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
21. Buss, D.M. (Ed.) (2005). The handbook of evolutionary psychology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
22. Buss, D.M., Haselton, M.G., Shackelford, T.K., Bleske, A., & Wakefield, J.C. (1998). Adaptations, exaptations, and spandrels. American Psychologist, 53, 533-548.
23. Buss, D.M., Larsen, R.J., Westen, D., & Semmelroth, J. (1992). Sex differences in jealousy: Evolution, physiology, and psychology. Psychological Science, 3, 251-255.
24. Buss, D.M., Shackelford, T.K., Kirkpatrick, L.A., Choe, J.C., Lim, H.K., Hasegawa, M., Hasegawa, T., & Bennett, K. (1999). Jealousy and the nature of beliefs about infidelity: Tests of competing hypotheses about sex differences in the United States, Korea, and Japan. Personal Relationships, 6, 125-150.
25. Camilleri, J.A., & Quinsey, V.L. (2009). Testing the cuckoldry risk hypothesis of partner sexual coercion in community and forensic samples. Evolutionary Psychology, 7, 164-178.
26. Coyne, J.A. (2009). Why evolution is true. New York: Viking.
27. Cosmides, L. (1989). The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task. Cognition 31, 187-276.
28. Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1994). Origins of domain specificity: The evolution of functional organization. In L.A. Hirschfield & S.A. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture (pp. 85-116). New York: Cambridge University Press.
29. Daly, M., & Wilson, M.I. (1999). Human evolutionary psychology and animal behavior. Animal Behavior, 57, 509-519.
30. Daly, M., Wilson, M., & Weghorst, S.J. (1982). Male sexual jealousy. Ethology and Sociobiology, 3, 11-27.
31. Darwin, C. (2006 [1859]). On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (1st edn). In E.O. Wilson (Ed.), From so simple a beginning: The four great books of Charles Darwin (pp. 441-760). New York: Norton.
32. Darwin, C. (2006 [1871]). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex (1st edn). In E.O. Wilson (Ed.), From so simple a beginning: The four great books of Charles Darwin (pp. 767-1248). New York: Norton.
33. Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
34. Dawkins, R. (2006). The god delusion. London: Bantam Press.
35. Dawkins, R. (2009). The greatest show on earth: The evidence for evolution. New York: Free Press.
36. Dennett, D.C. (1995). Darwin's dangerous idea: Evolution and the meanings of life. New York: Simon & Schuster.
37. Dennett, D.C. (2006). Breaking the spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon. New York: Penguin Books.
38. Fincher, C.L., & Thornhill, R. (2008). Assortative sociality, limited dispersal, infectious disease and the genesis of the global pattern of religion diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 275, 2587-2594.
39. Fodor, J.A., (1983). The modularity of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
40. Gaulin, S.J.C., & McBurney, D.H. (2001) Psychology: An evolutionary approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
41. Gaulin, S.J.C., & McBurney, D.H. (2008). Evolutionary psychology (2nd edn). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
42. Geher, G. (2006). Evolutionary psychology is not evil! (. And here's why.). Psihologijske Teme, 15, 181-202.
43. Gergely, G., & Csibra, G. (2003). Teleological reasoning in infancy: The naive theory of rational action. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 287-292.
44. Ginges, J., Hansen, I., & Norenzayan, A. (2009). Religion and support for suicide attacks. Psychological Science, 20, 224-230.
45. Goetz, A.T., & Causey, K. (2009). Sex differences in perceptions of infidelity: Men often assume the worst. Evolutionary Psychology, 7, 253-263.
46. Goetze, D.B., & James, P. (2004). Evolutionary psychology and the explanation of ethnic phenomena. Evolutionary Psychology, 2, 142-159.
47. Gould, S.J. (1991). Exaptation: A crucial tool for evolutionary psychology. Journal of Social Issues, 47, 43-65.
48. Gould, S.J. (2000). More things in heaven and earth. In H. Rose and S. Rose (Eds.), Alas poor Darwin: Arguments against evolutionary psychology (pp. 101-126). New York: Harmony Books.
49. Guthrie, S.E. (1993). Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion. New York: Oxford University Press.
50. Hagen, E.H. (2005). Controversial issues in evolutionary psychology. In D.M. Buss (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 145-173). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
51. Hagen, L.K. (2008). The bilingual brain: Human evolution and second language acquisition. Evolutionary Psychology, 6, 43-63.
52. Hamilton, W.D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behavior, I and II. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, 1-52.
53. Hamlin, J.K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2007). Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature, 450, 557-559.
54. Harris, S. (2004). The end of faith. New York: Norton.
55. Hoffman, B. (1999). The mind of the terrorist: Perspectives of social psychology. Psychiatric Annals, 29, 337-340.
56. Hronick, M.S. (2006). Analyzing terror: Researchers study the perpetrators and the effects of suicide terrorism. National Institute of Justice Journal, 254, 8-11.
57. Hughes, S.M., Harrison, M.A., & Gallup Jr., G.G. (2004). Sex differences in mating strategies: Mate guarding, infidelity and multiple concurrent sex partners. Sexualities, Evolution and Gender, 6, 3-13.
58. James, W. (1902) The varieties of religious experience. A study in human nature. New York: The Modern Library.
59. Koenig, H.G., Hays, J.C., Larson, D.B., George, L.K., Cohen, H.J., McCullough, M.E., et al. (1999). Does religious attendance prolong survival? A six-year follow-up study of 3,968 older adults. The Journals of Gerontology, 54A, M370-M376.
60. Koenig, L.B., & Vaillant, G.E. (2009). A prospective study of church attendance and health over the lifespan. Health Psychology, 28, 117-124.
61. Kurzban, R. (2002). Alas poor evolutionary psychology: Unfairly accused, unjustly condemned. Human Nature Review, 2, 99-109.
62. Liddle, J.R., & Shackelford, T.K. (2009). Why evolutionary psychology is 'true.' A review of Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True. Evolutionary Psychology, 7, 288-294.
63. Liddle, J.R., Machluf, K., & Shackelford, T.K. (2010). Understanding suicide terrorism: Premature dismissal of the Religious-Belief Hypothesis. Evolutionary Psychology 8, 343-345.
64. MacDonald, K.B. (1991). A perspective on Darwinian psychology: The importance of domain-general mechanisms, plasticity, and individual differences. Ethology and Sociobiology, 12, 449-480.
65. MacDonald, K.B. (2007). Cross-cultural comparison of learning in human hunting: Implications for life-history evolution. Human Nature, 18, 386-402.
66. Mayr, E. (2001). What evolution is. New York: Basic Books.
67. McBurney, D.H., Gaulin, S.J.C., Devineni, T., & Adams, C. (1997). Superior spatial memory of women: Stronger evidence for the gathering hypothesis. Evolution and Human Behavior, 18, 165-174.
68. McCullough, M.E., & Larson, D.B. (1999). Religion and depression: A review of the literature. Twin Research, 2, 126-136.
69. McCullough, M.E., Larson, D.B., Hoyt, W.T., Koenig, H.G., & Thoresen, C. (2000). Religious involvement and mortality: A meta-analytic review. Health Psychology, 19, 211-222.
70. Miller, S.L., & Maner, J.K. (2008). Coping with romantic betrayal: Sex differences in responses to partner infidelity. Evolutionary Psychology, 6, 413-426.
71. Murberg, T.A., & Bru, E. (2001). Social relationships and mortality in patients with congestive heart failure. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 51, 521-527.
72. Nelkin, D. (2000). Less selfish than sacred?: Genes and the religious impulse in evolutionary psychology. In H. Rose & S. Rose (Eds.), Alas poor Darwin: Arguments against evolutionary psychology (pp. 17-32). New York: Harmony Books.
73. Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A.F. (2008). The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science, 322, 58-62.
74. Öhman, A., & Mineka, S. (2001). Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning. Psychological Review, 108, 483-522.
75. Park, C.L., Fenster, J.R., Suresh, D.P., & Bliss, D.E. (2006). Social support, appraisals, and coping as predictors of depression in congestive heart failure patients. Psychology and Health, 21, 773-789.
76. Pedahzur, A., Perliger, A., & Weinberg, L. (2003). Altruism and fatalism: The characteristics of Palestinian suicide terrorists. Deviant Behavior, 24, 405-423.
77. Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct: How the mind creates language. New York: William Morrow.
78. Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York: Penguin Books.
79. Purzycki, B.J., & Sosis, R. (2009). The religious system as adaptive: Cognitive flexibility, public displays, and acceptance. In E. Voland & W. Schiefenhvel (Eds.), The biological evolution of religious mind and behavior (pp. 243-256). New York: Springer.
80. Rhodes, G. (2006). The evolutionary psychology of facial beauty. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 199-226.
81. Rose, H. (2000). Colonizing the social sciences. In H. Rose & S. Rose (Eds.), Alas poor Darwin: Arguments against evolutionary psychology (pp. 127-153). New York: Harmony Books.
82. Ross, J.I. (1996). A model of the psychological causes of oppositional political terrorism. Peace and Conflict, 2, 129-141.
83. Scholl, B.J., & Tremoulet, P.D. (2000). Perceptual causality and animacy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 299-308.
84. Sell, A., Hagen, E., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2003). Evolutionary psychology: Applications and criticisms. In Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (pp. 54-64). London: Macmillan.
85. Shakespeare, T., & Erikson, M. (2000). Different strokes: Beyond biological determinism and social construction. In H. Rose & S. Rose (Eds.), Alas poor Darwin: Arguments against evolutionary psychology (pp. 229-247). New York: Harmony Books.
86. Stern, J. (2003). Terror in the name of god: Why religious militants kill. New York: HarperCollins.
87. Stieger, S., Eichinger, T., & Honeder, B. (2009). Can mate choice strategies explain sex differences?: The deceived persons' feelings in reaction to revealed online deception of sex, age, and appearance. Social Psychology, 40, 16-25.
88. Stone, E.A., Goetz, A.T., & Shackelford, T.K. (2005). Sex differences and similarities in preferred mating arrangements. Sexualities, Evolution and Gender, 7, 269-276.
89. Symons, D. (1979). The evolution of human sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.
90. Symons, D. (1992). On the use and misuse of Darwinism in the study of human behavior. In J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 137-159). New York: Oxford University Press.
91. Thornhill, R., & Palmer, C.T. (2000). A natural history of rape: Biological bases of sexual coercion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
92. Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (1990). The past explains the present: Adaptations in the structure of ancestral environments. Ethology and Sociobiology, 11, 375-424.
93. Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 19-136). New York: Oxford University Press.
94. Victoroff, J. (2009). Suicide terrorism and the biology of significance. Political Psychology, 30, 397-400.
95. Weber, B.H., & Depew, D.J. (2003). Evolution and learning: The Baldwin Effect reconsidered. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
96. Wiederman, M.W., & Kendall, E. (1999). Evolution and sex differences in sexual jealousy: Investigation with a sample from Sweden. Evolution and Human Behavior, 20, 121-28.
97. Weinberg, L., Pedahzur, A., & Canetti-Nisim, D. (2003). The social and religious characteristics of suicide bombers and their victims. Terrorism and Political Violence, 15, 139-153.
98. White, P.A., & Milne, A. (1999). Impressions of enforced disintegration and bursting in the visual perception of collision events. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128, 499-516.
99. Williams, G.C. (1966). Adaptation and natural selection. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
100. Wilson, D.S. (2002). Darwin's cathedral: Evolution, religion, and the nature of society. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
101. Workman, L., & Reader, W. (2008). Evolutionary psychology: An introduction (2nd edn). New York: Cambridge University Press.
102. Zuckerman, P. (2008). Society without god. New York: New York University Press. Downloaded