Fred Fuller
Moderator Emeritus
Comments, anyone?
lpl/nc
Edited to add: ran across the link here- http://www.jamesakeating.com/maajak1.html
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http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050703/LIVING/507030340/1007
July 3, 2005
Murder part of human nature
New book points out that most killing isn't done by so-called hardened criminals.
Rage: Diane Zamora (above) and David Graham (above right) are spending their lives in prison for the 1995 murder of Adrianne Jones. Zamora and Graham were Texas high school seniors at the time, and Jones was a sophomore who had a fling with Graham. -- Associated Press file photos
By Marina Pisano
San Antonio Express-News
SAN ANTONIO -- They were young, good-looking high-achievers, sweethearts looking ahead to marriage and promising military careers, but first they coolly decided they had to kill the one person standing in the way of their happiness.
In December 1995, in Mansfield, Texas, high school seniors Diane Zamora and David Graham bludgeoned and shot sophomore Adrianne Jones.
Graham had admitted to fiancee Zamora that he had sex with Jones, and Zamora convinced him the killing was necessary to purify their love after the stain of infidelity. She was a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy when she told roommates about the murder, and they reported it. He was a cadet at the Air Force Academy. The two, after confessing and recanting, were convicted in 1998 and sentenced to life.
How could two seemingly nice, normal people commit such a cold-blooded, gruesome crime? Evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss explores just that question and other murder cases in his provocative, sometimes disturbing new book, "The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill," (Penguin Press, $24.95).
It could happen to any of us, argues Buss, who studies the psychological mechanisms that, like bodily organs, have evolved to solve adaptive problems. Based on his research, he theorizes that murder is an adaptive part of human nature that has evolved over thousands of years, much as predator avoidance or fear of darkness are evolved adaptations.
Unnerving as it sounds, his research reveals the great majority of men and women have had at least one vivid fantasy about killing someone. The theory doesn't hold up for some sociologists and psychologists who say that, while violence and killing are part of human nature through history and people might kill to survive, social experiences and pathology are major factors in murder. And having fantasies about killing a sexual rival doesn't mean you hide in the hatchback of a car, as Zamora did, and emerge to bash in your rival's skull with a dumbbell.
=====SNIP===== follow link for remainder of article==========
lpl/nc
Edited to add: ran across the link here- http://www.jamesakeating.com/maajak1.html
=====
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050703/LIVING/507030340/1007
July 3, 2005
Murder part of human nature
New book points out that most killing isn't done by so-called hardened criminals.
Rage: Diane Zamora (above) and David Graham (above right) are spending their lives in prison for the 1995 murder of Adrianne Jones. Zamora and Graham were Texas high school seniors at the time, and Jones was a sophomore who had a fling with Graham. -- Associated Press file photos
By Marina Pisano
San Antonio Express-News
SAN ANTONIO -- They were young, good-looking high-achievers, sweethearts looking ahead to marriage and promising military careers, but first they coolly decided they had to kill the one person standing in the way of their happiness.
In December 1995, in Mansfield, Texas, high school seniors Diane Zamora and David Graham bludgeoned and shot sophomore Adrianne Jones.
Graham had admitted to fiancee Zamora that he had sex with Jones, and Zamora convinced him the killing was necessary to purify their love after the stain of infidelity. She was a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy when she told roommates about the murder, and they reported it. He was a cadet at the Air Force Academy. The two, after confessing and recanting, were convicted in 1998 and sentenced to life.
How could two seemingly nice, normal people commit such a cold-blooded, gruesome crime? Evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss explores just that question and other murder cases in his provocative, sometimes disturbing new book, "The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill," (Penguin Press, $24.95).
It could happen to any of us, argues Buss, who studies the psychological mechanisms that, like bodily organs, have evolved to solve adaptive problems. Based on his research, he theorizes that murder is an adaptive part of human nature that has evolved over thousands of years, much as predator avoidance or fear of darkness are evolved adaptations.
Unnerving as it sounds, his research reveals the great majority of men and women have had at least one vivid fantasy about killing someone. The theory doesn't hold up for some sociologists and psychologists who say that, while violence and killing are part of human nature through history and people might kill to survive, social experiences and pathology are major factors in murder. And having fantasies about killing a sexual rival doesn't mean you hide in the hatchback of a car, as Zamora did, and emerge to bash in your rival's skull with a dumbbell.
=====SNIP===== follow link for remainder of article==========
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