A study found that children are more likely to be the ones who gossip about friends and acquaintances or try to tarnish their reputation.
Generally, gossiping about someone or tarnishing the reputation of someone you dislike to exclude them from a group is considered undesirable behavior. However, a new study has shown that people who exhibit this kind of 'indirect aggression' are more likely to be in romantic relationships or have more children.
Relational Aggression and Lifetime Offspring: A Preliminary Study in a Large Community-Based Sample of Polish Adults | Evolutionary Psychological Science | Springer Nature Link
Gossiping and manipulation linked to higher fertility in new psychology study
https://www.psypost.org/covert-hostility-may-offer-reproductive-benefits-in-modern-humans/
Human aggression can be broadly divided into two categories based on its method. One is 'direct aggression,' which refers to physical and verbal attacks such as punching or shouting, and the other is 'indirect aggression,' which uses subtle methods to damage the victim's social standing or relationships.
Indirect methods of attack include spreading rumors to damage someone's reputation, ending friendships, and manipulating others to isolate them. From an evolutionary perspective, direct attacks carry the risk of harm to the attacker or social ostracism, while indirect attacks maximize the victim's suffering while allowing the attacker to relatively escape physical retaliation and condemnation.
Evolutionary psychology is a research approach that assumes many human psychological mechanisms have some kind of evolutionary advantage, and it investigates whether the various psychological characteristics of modern humans were actively shaped by natural selection. Some evolutionary psychologists argue that even aggressive human behavior has evolutionary advantages, such as protecting one's territory, securing limited resources, or increasing opportunities for mating.
In this study, Marcin Moron , a researcher at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Silesia in Poland, investigated whether indirect aggression in modern society provides quantifiable reproductive benefits.
Moron analyzed data from 1,497 participants who joined through an online survey platform. All participants were adult Poles, ranging in age from 18 to 81, with slightly more than half being women. Participants answered questions about their socioeconomic status, marital status, and number of children.
In addition, participants answered a series of questions to assess their tendencies toward indirect aggression. This study categorized indirect aggression into two types: 'aggression toward friends' and 'aggression toward romantic partners.' Aggression toward friends measured tendencies such as gossiping or threatening to cut off relationships in order to get one's own way, while aggression toward romantic partners measured tendencies such as intentionally trying to make one's spouse jealous.
Moron analyzed the relationship between participants' aggressive tendencies and the number of children they had, taking into account variables such as age, gender, socioeconomic status, and romantic relationships. His findings revealed that individuals with high levels of aggression towards friends were more likely to be in a romantic relationship than those with low levels of aggression.
Furthermore, even after adjusting for the age and socioeconomic factors of the subjects, it was found that those with higher levels of aggression towards friends had a higher number of biological children. The data shows a positive correlation between high levels of aggression towards friends and the birth rate in both men and women.
Psychology-focused media outlet PsyPost stated, 'Relationship attacks may function as an evolutionary strategy in same-sex competition. By lowering the social status of a romantic rival, one increases the likelihood of attracting the desired partner. This strategy is known in evolutionary psychology as 'rival derogation.' Increasing the success rate of mating through such tactics may ultimately lead to having more offspring throughout one's life.'
Furthermore, the impact of aggression on the number of children observed in this study was relatively small, with factors such as age and marital status having a far greater influence. It is also important to note that because the data was collected at a specific point in time, a causal relationship such as 'higher aggression towards friends leads to an increase in the number of children' cannot be concluded.
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