Psychological Perspective

Spend some time perusing an archive of homicide cases and you are likely to find that certain conflict typologies, characteristic of particular victim-killer relationship categories are common. Barroom interactions among unrelated men became heated contests concerning dominance, deference, and face, and escalated to lethality. Women seeking to exercise autonomy were slain by proprietary ex-partners. Thieves killed victims they feared might cause them trouble later. Children were fatally assaulted by angry caretakers. How are we to understand why certain recurring types of conflicts of interest engender passions that are sometimes so intense as to motivate these prototypical sorts of homicides? A satisfactory answer to this question seems to require an understanding of what interpersonal conflicts of interest are fundamentally about, and such an understanding must itself be predicated on a basic theory of the sources and substance of individual self-interests. Fortunately, scientists have been developing, testing, and refining the requisite body of theory for decades, with the result that it is now...