Customer Reviews

The Murderer Next Door : Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I wanted to like this book. I just returned from the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference in Austin, effectively hosted by Buss's department at UT Austin.

Buss spoke at the conference, and I had some big problems with what he said, but I thought I would give benefit of the doubt until I had the book in my hands.

My first big problem is the conflation of murder and war. While we can of course say that both entail violence, and that both seem to be behaviors selected for by evolution, that is all we can say. In most other aspects these behaviors are widely divergent in motivations and psychologies. Sure, sometimes men kill over women on the individual level and sometimes they take women as the spoils of war, but they also often kill all the women along with the men. While leaders may gloat about taking enemy women (as he notes), the rank and file have little choice about going to war. It is that or be exiled from the group, or see the group overrun and die with your family. Certainly over evolutionary time the choices in war were often win or die, and so women are not exactly central to the matter. One also should note that there is a huge psychological difference between killing over a woman one is, or has been, close to and killing with the hope of capturing women from an enemy group. Most critically, men go to war most often out of pro-social altruistic motives and group commitments, while many murders are anti-social selfish acts. One might just as well conflate love and lust too, if we are after confusion instead of insight.

And if Buss wants to use the term "murder" in the all-inclusive way he does throughout the book, then he must be consistent in that usage. He is not. On page 27 he states that "...the evolutionary war theory does not explain...the majority of murders..." Hmmm, do we have any evidence offered or cited that more people are murdered by individuals than die in wars? None, and I strongly doubt that it is even close to true. Certainly there is no evidence from archeology; one cannot determine if an arrowhead in a skeleton came from an external or internal foe. Again, I fail to see how conflating murder and war does anything but confuse and muddy the water, and it certainly does not help when one seems to be confused already, as Buss is.

Where else is he confused? Well, he seems to have also confused himself with someone who knows history and world events. His assertions about Saddam and Pol Pot are just wrong; Saddam was effectively in charge well before 1979, and he killed his friends, as well as enemies, in order to instil fear (inspired by Stalin's example), not to rise to power. Pol Pot never killed to rise in the ranks either, as he asserts, but was the Khemer leader from quite early on. And he did not kill to maintain control, but rather from a horribly misguided desire to create a peasant utopia (see the excellent Phillip Short effort, "Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare").

But that is a minor issue compared to his assertion on page 63, "This is one good explanation for why, throughout human history, warriors, adventurers, and explorers come disproportionately from the ranks of men who had few alternative strategies for acquiring the perquisites of status and resources." Buss cites Daly and Wilson 2001 here, which is almost correct, except that the only Daly and Wilson 2001 he includes in his bibliography is the paper about nepotism, not the one that includes this assertion, and the real source does not go nearly as far as Buss claims. Daly and Wilson merely assert that history provides evidence that the above is true, and they say "often" where Buss claims "disproportionate." It is quite different to claim "throughout" and "disproportionate," and given that the original claims by Daly and Wilson are hardly supported, just a few historical examples given and no empirical evidence at all, it is beyond sloppy to extend this very little, literally two examples, to make such a large claim. Worse still is the fact that this assertion is just plain wrong, and in evolutionary terms it is gibberish. During the course of our evolution nearly all men must have been warriors, not just those lacking good prospects, and the book claims to be concerned with how our behaviors evolved, not with what happened in Spain in the 1500's (which is the main example Daly and Wilson give). Never mind that high status are universally expected to lead in war in band and tribal societies, and that there is a mountain of evidence from complex societies of high status being warriors throughout history. "Often" is a true statement, but we can also say that high status were "often" in these roles. "Disproportionately" "throughout" history is just plain false and baseless.

Buss's very next sentence on pg 63 is also a big problem, "And it explains why men occupying the bottom rungs of the reproductive ladder more often resort to violence." Here he cites Daly and Wilson again, this time their book "Homicide" from 1988. The problem is that this is very much not what the book says at all. In their section on status, pg 126-131, they in fact make the opposite case, showing that those who are least violent become the lowest status because of it, and are likely not to have wives, in band and tribal societies, which we commonly assume to be similar enough to how we lived during much of our evolution that we can usefully extrapolate. We do know empirically that low status are more prone to violence in highly stratified societies where the difference in incomes is great, but again the question is an evolutionary one and we know from Boehm (Hierarchy in the Forest, 1999) that it is likely we evolved in egalitarian societies and not stratified ones. Richard Wrangham has shown that the very lowest status chimps can be prone to lashing out randomly, but also that higher status chimps make them frequent objects of their aggression. If Buss's argument is that violence can increase ones status, and that this is partly why it evolved (and that is his argument), then how can it be that the lowest status are most violent? If his assertion is true, it contradicts his main hypothesis. And again, since he wants to lump war in there too, when do low status ever lead a group or nation to war? It is true that low status men are cheated on more frequently, and that men who are cheated on often become violent, but when we put all types of violence in the pot I strongly doubt that anyone has the empirical data to support this assertion, or that if the data were compiled the assertion would prove to be true. For one thing it can be quite difficult to assertain status and ones place on the reproductive ladder, a person can easily be high status within a sub-group and low status in a larger context (for example, gang leaders). And such men usually have greater reproductive success than even doctors and lawyers, at least in our society. Does that mean that doctors and lawyers are more likely to be violent than gang leaders? I would like to see that case made...

He also makes a series of wrong assertions on page 61 which I will skip going into most of. Let me just note that recent studies showed women in fact are not more attracted to men who take pointless risks, and that other empirical work has shown some of the biological reasons why men die earlier, which is unrelated to risk taking. It is absolutely not a "...cumulative consequence of dangerous competitive activities originally engaged in to show off their physical prowess." And that assertion makes no evolutionary sense; we would have plenty of opportunities to take risks for very good reasons, like getting food and going to war and so on, so the need for showing off seems to be lacking. I suggest that in fact what is happening is ritualized dominance contests between men, and the evidence is that men are the ones impressed by such actions, and they are more likely to want to be around those who engage in them.

To summarize, Buss seems not to know what he does not know. And he does not know a lot. He shows a lack of critical thinking, which is his most important task, and sloppy scholarship at best. At worst he might be making stuff up, but I tend to think that he is just getting it wrong and does not think things through very well. His basic hypothesis might be correct, it probably is, but in order to make this case convincingly we will have to continue to wait for someone with a more precise mind and a greater grasp of the material. I see absolutely no profit in tossing war in with murder, and the confusion it has caused Buss is quite visible. If this is not your field, take his assertions with a huge grain of salt. Some are right, others simply are not.

This book is definitely worth reading. It really makes you think about how much domestic violence comes down to simple Darwinian competition.

I just find myself wondering about some of the claims made in it:

1. that as many as 12% of children in middle class families are fathered by men who are engaging in "mate poaching" (that seems terribly high)

2. that extramarital affairs for both men and women are motivated by the desire to either pass on genes or have a child with "good" as opposed to "bad" genes. I can't help but think this is really unlikely (that there are many other cues to unfaithful behavior)

3. that man and woman are more or less slaves to their reproductive instincts. If this was the case, how does this explain sexual behavior where the production of children is out of the question (oral sex)?

4. Here's another thought. If all male behavior boils down to the imperative of passing one's genes to as many women possible and deterring rivals from doing the same to one's "own" women, what about the phenomenon of males acting as pimps?

5. Here's yet another thought. I was really surprised to read that the author considered Diane Downs, the woman who shot her three children --killing one and crippling another-- as fitting the profile of a "perfectly normal next-door [neighbor] with no apparent evidence of psychological abnormalities."

If the author had carefully read Ann Rule's book about Downs ("Small Sacrifices"), he would have seen that Downs was a VERY strange woman and not somebody I would ever describe as the stuff of "perfectly normal next-door neighbors."

6. The author cites the Dorothy Stratten case (the Playboy Playmate who got murdered by her estranged husband back in the 1980s) to illustrate his theory that murder comes down things like the desire to "guard one's mate" or place her beyond the reach of other men. I accept the fact that Stratten's murderer apparently thought, "If I can't have her, no one will." But what about his deliberate effort to get Stratten to become a playmate and a sexual super-star? That hardly seems like a smart strategy for a male focused on retaining exclusive control of his woman.

7. If sowing one's "seed" far and wide is a good thing (as it is with lower animals in Darwinian terms), why is it that illegitimacy has caused such havoc in lower class economic communities (i.e. female children without male parents tend to have their own illegitimate kids and male children get in trouble and wind up in jail or dead)?

I just think that the author very well may be on to something with this "evolutionary" approach to murder, but I think that he is calling on his theory to explain far too much. Murder is a complicated problem, and like most complicated problems, I really doubt that things are quite as simple as the author's theory.

This book is a dumbed down version of many other evolutionary psychological accounts of homicide. Theoretically there is nothing new. However, for the neophyte, it does provide a usefull overview of how evolutionary theory can help explain who kills whom, why, and when.

The reader should be a little leary of the "killing module" idea. It is not necessary to posit a murder module to account for homicide. Also, Buss is less than clear about the specific 'darwinian algorithims' operating this circuitry. Is there circuitry for each different kind of homicide- as most hardcore modularists would insist? Or, is there a general circuit for murder? Buss vacilates and doesn't clarify this issue at all.

Either way, the murder module idea is fairly vapid. Why, as another reviewer pointed out, posit such a device if it seldom works? Suicide levels are everywhere much higher than homicide. What does this say about the adaptiveness of such modules? I am not sure.

The best thing about the book is the inclusion of many case studies. Buss had individuals write about their homicidal fantasies. Who did they want to kill? Why? What stopped them? Many of these vivid accounts are highly graphic and disturbing. Anyone who has ever thought about killing someone will enjoy these accounts! They also make for easy, maliciously fun reading.

If you are a tyroe, by all means enjoy this book. If you are seasoned in the field, stick to the more academically rigorous material.

(see other reviewers for more technical critisims. There are many that can be made, but that takes me beyond my reviews purpose.)

David Buss has done it again. Using several sources of evidence-- hundreds of cases files of murders, thousands of detailed homicidal fantasies, studies of murder prevention defenses that correspond to conditions under which people are actually murdered, scenerio studies, interviews with law enforcement, statistical analysis using the FBI database, and cross cultural anthropological evidence-- Dr. Buss supports his conclusion, derived primarily from the logic of natural selection, that the human mind is wired to kill. Say it ain't so!

But this logic is based on the premise that at one time in our evolutionary history (a time long enough for the brain to have developed a `module'), murder would have served us well in terms of intraspecies competition. In fact, it must have been very beneficial (assuming Buss is correct); because, on the flip side, it should be obvious to anyone how beneficial it would be to NOT be murdered.

Buss goes through all of the most popular explanations (e.g., sociological, social-environment, pathology) for murder and shows why they all fail.

Then, while rejecting the dichotomy between passion and reason, he explains some of the evolutionary benefits our ancestors would've attained through killing:

1) preventing injury, rape, or death to oneself, spouse, or kin.

2) Elminating a crucial antagonist.

3) Acquiring a rival's resources or territory.

4) Securing sexual access to a competitor's mate.

5) Preventing an interloper from approaching one's own mate.

6) Cultivating a fierce reputation to deter enemies.

7) Avoiding investment in genetically unrelated children (stepchildren).

8) Protecting resources needed for reproduction.

9) Eliminating an entire lineage of reproductive competitors.

Buss proceeds to explain why each of these benefits result from killing your enemy, and he uses the empirical evidence to show that these are in fact reasons why people murder today. Is it a coincidence that the context in which people most often kill are also contexts that would have served us well in our ancestral environment? Hardly, says Buss. It is precisely because it served us so well that this act is triggered in certain circumstances.

We also learn why men tend to murder more compared to women. Men, more often than not, have more at stake. They have the potential to produce virtually unlimited offspring, yet they can get shut out of the game all together. The difference between `winning' and `losing', therefore, was large enough to promote certain high-risk behaviors, where the lottery winners pass on their audacious genes to their many, many sons. Lucky us, guys!

The book goes on to explain the different contexts where killing most often happens, and why these contexts trigger us to kill. He explains when men are prone to kill their lovers (EVERY WOMEN MUST READ THIS!), why women or men sometimes kill their kids, why men kill men, etc. My biggest problem with this book is Buss put too many anecdotal stories in it. He has page after page of the responses of college kids answering questions like: Have you ever wanted to kill someone? What stopped you? Now this is all well and good, and there is something to be learned form it, but after awhile I began to wonder if Dr. Buss was just filling in pages to stretch the book an extra 50 pages. Aside from that, this book is just what I expected: well researched, intuitively evident given an understanding of natural selection, insightful, and nicely written. It may help some readers who aren't familiar with evolutionary psychology to read Dr. Buss's textbook _Evolutionay Psychology: The New Science of the Mind_ or Robert Wright's book _The Moral Animal_. I highly recommend both books.

Around the kernel of legitimate inquiry into evolutionary behavior, Buss has wrapped sensational accounts, a skewed class perspective, and utter absence of institutional modes of slaughter. Through these warped avenues, Buss does not break new ground in understanding murder, but demonstrates acceptance of popular societal responses to it. As noted at length elsewhere, Buss' research and scholarship is quite sloppy in places, and short comments are difficult to make.

Alert readers will note that in discussing the dynamics of mating and murder, he fails to discuss the Puritanical values underneath his argument. In quoting Gore Vidal, one of the most insightful commentators on sex and society, Buss chose poorly; few are more opposed to the narrow, possessive view of mating and sex that Buss presents (which is sustained by cultural and evolutionary ignorance on a wide scale).

Another gaping hole in the book is the discussion of status inequality contributing to murder. It has been demonstrated that for each percentage point rise in the US unemployment rate (despite serious flaws in that figure), a certain number of murders, suicides, cases of drug, alcohol, spousal, and child abuse will occur. While this is not a book about social inequality, Buss' failure to even mention once that the United States is an outrageously unequal society and that this must be a factor in the cases that he professes such shock in studying. Instead, he takes the superficial posture of warning against symptoms rather than addressing the disease. Similarly, if the motives he discusses are universal, what status and advancement is Buss trying to achieve in this work?

Lastly, Buss studiously avoids Western European and American practitioners of violence on a grand scale when commenting on societal leaders' use of murder. Might Andrew Jackson's campaigns against Native Americans have qualified for examination? The Enclosures and enforced famine in Ireland? The use of technology and hierarchy to produce murderous behavior in persons otherwise unprovoked by sex, mating, family, or competition would seem to be worthy of discussion. Instead, Buss keeps his perspective focused backward (in time) and downward (in class).

The book earns a charitable two stars and a warning to readers. Evolutionary behavior happens at all levels and groupings of society, and encompasses much more than murder in narrow social settings. Failure to note, and preferably stress, other adaptations to conflict between human beings creates the two false assumptions at the core of this work: first, that people do not change (i.e. evolve), and second, that primitive responses to primitive behaviors is appropriate and desirable.

Ever since reading The Evolution of Desire I've been hooked on David Buss' material. I take from the negative reviews that David Buss' hypothesis for the evolutionary case for a murdering mind may seem a tad sensational or lacking hard evidence. However as news reports would indicate David Buss' hypothesis of the murdering mind is conservative at best.

I think David Buss is correct in correlating sex as the top reason for a murdering mind being possible. This key assumption is taken from surveys and written accounts by subjects (which David and his team conducted and interviewed) along with reported accounts that highlight sex in most homicidal fantasies. What was also found in the survey was how these fantasies differed from male and female. Males tended to fantasized about cold-blooded murder, while females tended to fantasy about softer means of murder such as poisoning and are usually not well thought-out.

A recent example of the female murder mind at work is found in the story of Catherine Kieu Becker, who "drugged" her ex-husband and cut off his penis after he asked for a divorce. Though initial news reports claim Catherine drugged her ex-husband, it can easily have been that Catherine's attempted to murder her husband by poisoning him. Perhaps she fantasized about killing him this way? I suspect this because she cut off her ex-husbands penis only after he began to awake from the effects of the drugs (poison?). Yet if you've read the book (as I have) you would not find such a story sensational or far-fetched.

A clear example of the murdering mind is also supported by evidence found in the data of raped females and the overwhelmingly likelihood of the rape occurring during fertile age. Another example of the murdering mind posed by David Buss is the likelihood of homicides in males taking place during the years of adolescence and young adulthood which marks an increase in sexual competition and reputation building.

Make no mistake for those of you who've read a few chapters of the book and concluded that David Buss is justifying murder you are mistaken. As David Buss has stated numerous times in the book he is not trying to justify murder, just merely trying to show the existence the murdering mind.

Undoubtedly evolution has much to teach us about human behavior. Yet there are better and worse uses of the theory, and this is not one of the better ones. It is written in the lurid language of a potboiler: the 'shocking', 'chilling', 'disturbing', 'alarming' truths about the murderer next door; "there is no safe place on earth," Buss tells us. Yet much of the book simply asserts truisms about human nature as if they were exciting new discoveries. Do we really need evolutionary theory to explain why rape is so traumatic to women (123), or why men are careful to defend their wives against potential poachers, especially when their wife is young and beautiful(146), or why children might be afraid when their stepfather begins viciously beating their mother, or why we have homicidal fantasies about our enemies? Buss thinks we have evidence that the brain is hardwired with what he variously calls homicidal mechanisms, impulses, inclinations, adaptations, instincts, processes, motivations, switches, or his favorite term, 'circuits.' One wonders if this is really science, or merely metaphor, especially the idea that nature has "installed" in us homicidal "switches" that "flip" on or off. Or consider this "finding": that "many, many murders can be explained by our evolved psychology" (61). What scientist uses the phrase "many, many"?? (Imagine Isaac Newton claiming that 'Many, many objects are subject to the Laws of Motion'!) Yet Buss trumpets his findings as part of a new "scientific revolution." He is a self-promoter rivalling PT Barnum, constantly informing us how 'fascinating' and 'groundbreaking' his work is, and how he has produced the "most comprehensive and penetrating theory." (What a bargain: the book provides its own rave reviews!).

But the biggest problem of all is with the book's central thesis: that we have "minds designed for murder". The obvious objection is that only a TINY percentage of people ever commit murder. One would have thought the more interesting evolutionary question is why humans are so peaceful despite living in such close quarters (Perhaps we have peaceloving 'circuits' not homicidal ones?) Of course, if Buss had titled the book The Peaceable Man Next Door, it wouldn't have sold too many copies! Indeed, it is striking that suicide is FAR more common than homicide in our society, by a factor of almost two -- is this evidence for a suicide circuit rather than a homicidal one? Yet Buss entirely ignores suicide in his book. Nor is it hard to see why: an evolutionary explanation of suicide is going to be very difficult, given that it is a disaster from the standpoint of the individual's reproductive success. Further, the idea that the mind is 'designed' to kill itself would be absurd; this makes one wonder about the whole project of speculating about what mechanisms are 'designed' into the mind. Still, a good scientist would not ignore the hard problems, such as explaining suicide. Buss however seems more interested in titillating and sensationalizing. Need we add that a book called "The Suicide Next Door," even though it is far more statistically likely than a murderer next door, would not get nearly as much attention as one about the "killers among us"? It wouldn't allow him to end his book with this line: "Murderers are waiting, they are watching, they are all around us"!

This book provides an excellent framework for thinking about murderous thoughts and deeds. A readiness to have murderous intentions may well be part of our human natures, rather than a sign of mental illness, antisocial attitudes, or evil.

The more we understand about our behavioral adaptations (prepared behavioral responses shaped by evolutionary forces), the more we can recognize them when they arise, stop and think, and choose among various alternative behaviors.

In my work as a forensic psychologist, I rely on evolutionary theory as one framework for understanding humans generally, and for appreciating differences among humans. Buss's work is useful for scientists and practitioners, and is accessible for ordinary folk as well.

Reading this book can help one think like a scientist.

This is an outstanding book: clearly written, without academic jargon; well argued; and well researched. David Buss advances an unpleasant thesis that we humans may well have been programmed by evolutionary reasons to kill other humans. More than that, murder actually conferred evolutionary advantages in our long history as a species.

Using this thesis, Buss is able to explain phenomena that the usual "theories" about why we murder cannot--that murder is cross-cultural; that tribal societies perhaps kill more than America with our violence-soaked movies, TV shows, & video games; that DNA evidence demonstrates the reproductive advantage of conquerers & victors of wars; and why (young) mothers kill their young....

At the same time, Buss is careful in his reasoning. His thesis neither excuses nor justifies murder. He also points out that if murder is part of human nature, our nature also has positive attributes of altruism, cooperation, and self-sacrifice.

I particularly find compelling his findings on why and when men kill women. Would that more women exercise caution with the men they spurn. Buss warns that the most dangerous time is within the six months AFTER a woman leaves a romantic relationship. Sadly, the news provide daily and ample confirmation of the murderous intent and behavior of jilted men.

David Buss does an excellent job combining evolutionary theory with empirical evidence to demonstrate how aggression leading to murder is potentially engrained in all of us. From data collected from files and personal interviews of thousands of murderers and would-be murderers Buss teases apart the motivation for murder and why some people carry through with it and others control their emotions short of murder. Murder has its roots ultimately in factors that relate to sex, status, and reproduction. Inhibition of killing someone a person would like to imagine dead is fear of retaliation from the judicial system, i.e. getting caught and going to jail. Buss leaves us wondering what life would be like on this planet without law enforcement. Perhaps something we don't want to imagine! Highly recommended for everyone, especially those working in the criminal justice system.