The evolution of intimate partner violence ☆ David M. Buss a, ⁎, Joshua D. Duntley b a University of Texas, Austin, United States b The Richard Stockton College, United States abstract article info Article history: Received 14 March 2011 Received in revised form 14 April 2011 Accepted 16 April 2011 Available online 21 April 2011 Keywords: Evolution Intimate partner violence Infidelity Mate value Pregnancy Stepchildren An evolutionary perspective anticipates predictable forms of sexual conflict in human mating relationships. Humans have evolved a psychology of tactical deployment designed to influence a partner's behavior to be closer to the actor's own optimum. Tactics are diverse, ranging from benefit-bestowing to cost-inflicting. We discuss adaptive problems toward which cost-inflicting violent tactics are utilized: mate poachers, sexual infidelity, mate pregnancy by an intrasexual rival, resource infidelity, resource scarcity, mate value discrepancies, stepchildren, relationship termination, and mate reacquisition. Discussion focuses on the context-dependence of intimate partner violence, the costs of perpetrating violent tactics, the underlying psychology of aggressors, the manipulated psychology of victims, and co-evolved defenses to prevent intimate partner violence and to minimize its costs when it occurs. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 2. The evolution of sexual conflict in mating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 3. An evolutionary perspective on intimate partner violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 4. Adaptive problems toward which partner violence is directed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 4.1. Mate poachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 4.2. Sexual infidelity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 4.3. Pregnancy with another man's child—suspicions of genetic cuckoldry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 4.4. Resource infidelity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 4.5. Resource scarcity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 4.6. Mate value discrepancies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 4.7. Stepchildren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416 4.8. Terminating the mateship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416 4.9. Mate reacquisition and preventing a former partner from remating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416 5. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417 6. The context-dependence of intimate partner violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417 7. Violent perpetrator psychology: the costs of aggressive tactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417 8. The psychology of victims of intimate partner violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417 9. Summary and practical implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418 1. Introduction Humans possess a range of tactics to influence other humans to obtain reproductively-relevant resources (Buss, Gomes, Higgins, & Lauterbach, 1987). Within intimate relationships, these include benefit-bestowing tactics, such as pleasure induction, monetary reward, and reciprocity (Buss, 1992). They also include exploitative Aggression and Violent Behavior 16 (2011) 411–419 ☆ The authors thank Laith Al-Shawaf, Jaime Confer, Dan Conroy-Beam, Judy Easton, Irene Frieze, Aaron Goetz, Cari Goetz, David Lewis, Vibeke Ottesen, and Carin Perilloux for insightful comments on a previous draft of this article. ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712, United States. E-mail address: dbuss@psy.utexas.edu (D.M. Buss). 1359-1789/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.avb.2011.04.015 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Aggression and Violent Behavior