Are humans innately violent or peaceful?
Studying human aggression from an evolutionary perspective by no means implies that humans are innately violent. Cooperation is just as much a part of human social interactions as competition, and may also be approached from an evolutionary perspective (Fuentes 2004). For example, reciprocal altruism is ubiquitous among human societies and is also subject to evolutionary theory (Trivers 1971). As stated in this chapter, aggression must meet certain conditions before it is considered adaptive to the individual, which stated differently, means that there are conditions in which peaceful behavior is the adaptive strategy. Rather than thinking of human nature as inherently violent or inherently peaceful, it is perhaps more accurate to consider the situations and environmental stimuli that favor aggressive or cooperative behavior.
