1The Male Flash of Anger: Violent Response to Transgression as an Example of the Intersection of Evolved Psychology and Culture

A great deal of scholarly attention has been devoted to three questions: why, in general, are men more violent than women, why are some individuals more violent than others, and why are some societies more violent than others. Traditionally, these questions have constituted contested turf in the struggle between explanations focusing on nature and those emphasizing nurture. However, like the other authors in this volume, I believe that evolutionary psychology can constitute the foundation for vertically integrated analyses which take account of multiple levels of causality (Barkow 1989). In the following essay I will attempt to demonstrate that central questions in the study of violence are usefully addressed using multiple, mutually complementary forms of explanation. At first glance, broad questions as to the causes of violence seem to be unanswerable, since specific instances can plausibly be explained by reference to factors as disparate as, say, the presence of attractive women in a bar or the rising price of crude oil. However, this wide variation is reduced if we adopt the position that, (contrary to some popular portrayals), there are critical differences between spontaneous, face-to-face aggression and calculated, organized combat, particularly at the level of the nation-state. While in some instances powerful leader