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Choosing Death Over Survival: A Need to Identify Evolutionary Mechanisms Underlying Human Suicide

The act of killing self contradicts the central purpose of human evolution, that is, survival and propagation of one’s genetic material. Yet, it continues to be one of the leading causes of human death. A handful of theories in the realm of evolutionary psychology have attempted to explain human sui...

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Autores principales: Chatterjee, Diya, Rai, Rishabh
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8595259/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34803791
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689022
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author Chatterjee, Diya
Rai, Rishabh
author_facet Chatterjee, Diya
Rai, Rishabh
author_sort Chatterjee, Diya
collection PubMed
description The act of killing self contradicts the central purpose of human evolution, that is, survival and propagation of one’s genetic material. Yet, it continues to be one of the leading causes of human death. A handful of theories in the realm of evolutionary psychology have attempted to explain human suicide. The current article analyses the major components of certain prominent viewpoints, namely, Inclusive fitness, Bargaining model, Pain-Brain model, Psychological aposematism, and few other perspectives. The article argues that relatively more weightage has been given to understanding ultimate (the “why”) rather than proximate (the “how”) functionality of suicidal acts. Evolutionary theorists have consistently pointed out that to comprehensively understand a trait or behavior, one needs to delineate not only how it supports survival but also the evolution of the mechanisms underlying the trait or behavior. Existing theories on suicide have primarily focused on its fitness benefits on surviving kin instead of providing evolutionary explanations of the more complex mechanisms leading up to such self-destructive motivations. Thus, the current paper attempts to highlight this gap in theorizing while suggesting probable proximate explanations of suicide which stresses the need to diffuse attention paid to fitness consequences of the act alone. We speculate that such explorations are needed in order to build a robust and comprehensive evolutionary theory of human suicide.
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spelling pubmed-85952592021-11-18 Choosing Death Over Survival: A Need to Identify Evolutionary Mechanisms Underlying Human Suicide Chatterjee, Diya Rai, Rishabh Front Psychol Psychology The act of killing self contradicts the central purpose of human evolution, that is, survival and propagation of one’s genetic material. Yet, it continues to be one of the leading causes of human death. A handful of theories in the realm of evolutionary psychology have attempted to explain human suicide. The current article analyses the major components of certain prominent viewpoints, namely, Inclusive fitness, Bargaining model, Pain-Brain model, Psychological aposematism, and few other perspectives. The article argues that relatively more weightage has been given to understanding ultimate (the “why”) rather than proximate (the “how”) functionality of suicidal acts. Evolutionary theorists have consistently pointed out that to comprehensively understand a trait or behavior, one needs to delineate not only how it supports survival but also the evolution of the mechanisms underlying the trait or behavior. Existing theories on suicide have primarily focused on its fitness benefits on surviving kin instead of providing evolutionary explanations of the more complex mechanisms leading up to such self-destructive motivations. Thus, the current paper attempts to highlight this gap in theorizing while suggesting probable proximate explanations of suicide which stresses the need to diffuse attention paid to fitness consequences of the act alone. We speculate that such explorations are needed in order to build a robust and comprehensive evolutionary theory of human suicide. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-11-03 /pmc/articles/PMC8595259/ /pubmed/34803791 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689022 Text en Copyright © 2021 Chatterjee and Rai. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Chatterjee, Diya
Rai, Rishabh
Choosing Death Over Survival: A Need to Identify Evolutionary Mechanisms Underlying Human Suicide
title Choosing Death Over Survival: A Need to Identify Evolutionary Mechanisms Underlying Human Suicide
title_full Choosing Death Over Survival: A Need to Identify Evolutionary Mechanisms Underlying Human Suicide
title_fullStr Choosing Death Over Survival: A Need to Identify Evolutionary Mechanisms Underlying Human Suicide
title_full_unstemmed Choosing Death Over Survival: A Need to Identify Evolutionary Mechanisms Underlying Human Suicide
title_short Choosing Death Over Survival: A Need to Identify Evolutionary Mechanisms Underlying Human Suicide
title_sort choosing death over survival: a need to identify evolutionary mechanisms underlying human suicide
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8595259/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34803791
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689022
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