Editing Evolutionary psychology (section)

===Antisocial and criminal behavior===
{{Main|Biosocial criminology#Evolutionary psychology}}
Evolutionary psychology has been applied to explain [[criminal]] or otherwise immoral behavior as being adaptive or related to adaptive behaviors. Males are generally more aggressive than females, who are more selective of their partners because of the far greater effort they have to contribute to pregnancy and child-rearing. Males being more aggressive is hypothesized to stem from the more intense reproductive competition faced by them. Males of low status may be especially vulnerable to being childless. It may have been evolutionary advantageous to engage in highly risky and violently aggressive behavior to increase their status and therefore reproductive success. This may explain why males are generally involved in more crimes, and why low status and being unmarried are associated with criminality. Furthermore, competition over females is argued to have been particularly intensive in late adolescence and young adulthood, which is theorized to explain why crime rates are particularly high during this period.<ref name=AEP>Aurelio José Figueredo, Paul Robert Gladden, Zachary Hohman. The evolutionary psychology of criminal behaviour. In {{Cite book | last1 = Roberts | first1 = S. C. | editor1-last = Roberts | doi = 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199586073.001.0001 | editor1-first = S. Craig | title = Applied Evolutionary Psychology | year = 2011 | publisher = Oxford University Press| isbn = 9780199586073 }}</ref> Some sociologists have underlined differential exposure to androgens as the cause of these behaviors, notably Lee Ellis in his [[Evolutionary neuroandrogenic theory|evolutionary neuroandrogenic (ENA) theory]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Ellis|first=Lee|date=2005|title=A Theory Explaining Biological Correlates of Criminality|journal=European Journal of Criminology|language=en-US|volume=2|issue=3|pages=287–315|doi=10.1177/1477370805054098|s2cid=53587552|issn=1477-3708}}</ref>

Many conflicts that result in harm and death involve status, reputation, and seemingly trivial insults.<ref name=AEP/> [[Steven Pinker]] in his book ''[[The Better Angels of Our Nature]]'' argues that in non-state societies without a police it was very important to have a credible [[deterrence theory|deterrence]] against aggression. Therefore, it was important to be perceived as having a credible reputation for retaliation, resulting in humans developing instincts for [[revenge]] as well as for protecting reputation ("[[honor]]"). Pinker argues that the development of the state and the police have dramatically reduced the level of violence compared to the ancestral environment. Whenever the state breaks down, which can be very locally such as in poor areas of a city, humans again organize in groups for protection and aggression and concepts such as violent revenge and protecting honor again become extremely important.<ref name=AEP/>

Rape is theorized to be a reproductive strategy that facilitates the propagation of the rapist's progeny. Such a strategy may be adopted by men who otherwise are unlikely to be appealing to women and therefore cannot form legitimate relationships, or by high-status men on socially vulnerable women who are unlikely to retaliate to increase their reproductive success even further.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Hagen|first1=Edward H.|title=Evolutionary Psychology FAQ|url=http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/evpsychfaq.html|website=anth.ucsb.edu|access-date=16 May 2016}}</ref> The [[sociobiological theories of rape]] are highly controversial, as traditional theories typically do not consider rape to be a behavioral adaptation, and objections to this theory are made on ethical, religious, political, as well as scientific grounds.