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Individuals that Impose Costs

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

Synonyms

Aggression; Dominance; Formidability; Power

Definition

In humans, individuals that impose costs are those who signal both an ability and a willingness to inflict harm upon others.

Introduction

Traits that successfully signal an ability and willingness to impose costs comprise a dominance profile. Attaining social rank through dominance is reliant on an individual’s propensity to induce fear of psychological, material, and physical costs that the individual may impose upon their conspecifics (Buss and Duntley 2006; Chance 1967). Dominance has a deep phylogenetic legacy and likely persisted due to the prevalence of intergroup conflict throughout human prehistory that created a selection pressure for both physical and behavioral formidability (Manson and Wrangham 1991; Wrangham and Peterson 1996).

Physical Formidability, Resource Control, and the Ability to Impose Costs

Given the importance of discerning who is most able to inflict harm upon others, it seems that humans have...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of human behavior, ecology and culture, Max Planck institute for evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany

    Daniel Redhead

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

    Daniel Redhead & Rick O’Gorman

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, USA

    Joey Cheng

Authors
  1. Daniel Redhead
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  2. Joey Cheng
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  3. Rick O’Gorman
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel Redhead .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  2. Rochester, MI, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Kevin Kniffin

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Redhead, D., Cheng, J., O’Gorman, R. (2019). Individuals that Impose Costs. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3572-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3572-1

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