Page 287 - The Social Animal

Human Aggression 269

creases in the incidence of violent crimes committed by women rel-
ative to those committed by men. At the same time, when we look
at the comparative data between men and women involving nonvio-
lent crimes, women have shown a far greater increase relative to that
shown by men. 42
The near universality of gender differences is bolstered by the re-
sults of a cross-cultural study by Dane Archer and Patricia Mc-
43
Daniel, who asked teenagers from 11 countries to read stories
involving interpersonal conflict.The stories were interrupted prior to
their resolution, and the teenagers were instructed to complete the
stories on their own. Archer and McDaniel found that, within each
of the countries, young men showed a greater tendency toward vio-
lent solutions to conflict than young women did.
The near universality of these differences makes it reasonably clear
that biochemical differences between men and women are involved in
these findings. At the same time, it is also apparent that these findings
are not due solely to biochemical differences. Archer and McDaniel
found that, although within a given culture men showed evidence of
consistently higher levels of tendencies toward physical aggression
than women, culture also played a major role. For example, women
from Australia and New Zealand showed greater evidence of physical
aggressiveness than did men from Sweden and Korea.

Alcohol One chemical that many people throughout the world
happily ingest is alcohol. As most socially active college students
know, alcohol tends to lower our inhibitions against committing acts
sometimes frowned on by society, including acts of aggression. Ca-
44
sual observation suggests that fistfights frequently break out in bars
and nightclubs and that family violence is often associated with the
abuse of alcohol. A wealth of hard data supports these casual obser-
vations. For example, crime statistics reveal that 75 percent of indi-
viduals arrested for murder, assault, and other crimes of violence were
45
legally drunk at the time of their arrests. In addition, controlled lab-
oratory experiments demonstrate that when individuals ingest
enough alcohol to make them legally drunk, they tend to respond
more violently to provocations than those who have ingested little or
no alcohol. 46
This does not mean that alcohol automatically increases aggres-
sion; people who have ingested alcohol are not necessarily driven to