Outline and Evaluate Murder as an Adaptive Response Murder is defined as in UK law as taking a life with the intention to kill

or to do serious damage. Murder occurs in all societies of the world, though more frequently in some areas such as in South Africa than in the less risky countries like the UK. Evolutionary psychologists offer an explanation for the presence of murder in society that it is in fact an adapted component of natural selection used to ensure greater reproductive success. Buss and Duntley (2006) proposed that there are four factors that determine the activation of murder as an adaptive response: the degree of genetic relatedness between killer and the victim; the relative status of the killer and the victim; the sex of killer and victim; the size and the strength of the killers and victims families and social allies. For murder to have been adapted there must have been in points in human evolutionary history whereby the benefits of murder outweigh the costs of it. Buss and Duntley (2006) claim that for our ancestors murder was a functional adaptive response for solving adaptive problems including: preventing harm; maintaining reputation and management in your social group and for protecting resources. In these circumstances the benefits of murder would have outweighed the costs of it meaning that murder as an adaptive response to these threats has been passed on to us and is therefore still prominent in our society. In support of the evolutionary explanation of murder as an adaptive response are Daly and Wilson (1988) that found that the most common types of murder were male-male murders. This would support evolutionary hypotheses because males have evolved to be aggressive than women through their more muscular physique than women and their fight or flight nature compared to females tend and befriend nature. They also found that men are most likely to kill sexual rivals or those who challenge their position in the dominance hierarchy. This again adds support for evolution as an adaptive response because it shows that murder is being used to increase reproductive success by granting themselves exclusive access to a mate by being high in the social hierarchy and by getting rid of competitors. Non-human animal studies have given evidence that supports that murder is an adaptive response. For example male lions have been reported of committing conspecific killings, this killing has been used by the lion to increase his reproductive fitness as he then has access to the victims mate to impregnate himself for his own offspring, sped up by her faster appearance of oestrus due to losing her offspring. Other explanations have also been used to describe why murder occurs. The Evolved Goal Hypothesis says that humans have adapted motivations for specific goals (such as to acquire a mate), these goals were linked with greater reproductive success and certain systems are employed to decide the best way to achieve this goal. Hrdy (1999) said that a human may calculate, using a cost/benefit analysis that murder is the best route of action to achieve their ultimate goal and therefore to increase their reproductive success. This research may however be limited because evolutionary explanations are un-falsifiable which therefore limits the extent to which they can be proven. Furthermore animal studies have been used in proving murder as an adaptive response, animals act upon instinct more so than humans because they do not have to face the social norms that humans are subject to, therefore it is invalid to describe non-human animal and human murders under the same explanation because different reasoning and constraints are held on each group.