Murderer Next Door

The Murderer Next Door: Why The Mind Is Designed to Kill by David M. Buss, is a novel written by Buss about his findings throughout his years as an evolutionary psychologist, as to why humans kill. Throughout his book, Buss discusses why humans murder who they do, what drives them to murder, and how evolution has played a key role in the murdering of humans. Buss uses research and his work in the field of evolutionary psychology to create what he believes to be multiple factors that create a theory as to why humans murder each other. Buss’s theory focuses on the evolutionary perspective. In his theory, Buss explains that over time humans have developed ways to perfect both how they murder and how to protect themselves from being murdered. He

In the Life-Course Persistent Theory, it is thought that neuropsychological deficits caused during pregnancy or outside of pregnancy, combined with parental neglect or abuse creates life-long criminals. According to Moffit, the creator of the Life-Course Persistent Theory, the neuropsychological deficits cause antisocial behavior, impulsiveness, and an unruly temperament. As Buss discusses in his novel, damage to the brain caused by these neuropsychological deficits, can cause a high range of emotions such as rage and jealously. The damage to the brain can also damage the frontal lobe which determines our sense of what is right and wrong (Buss, 26). According to Moffit, the brain damage and neglect, leads the person to become a life-long criminal. According to Buss, the Life-Course Persistent Theory does not explain why humans commit crimes because through his Michigan Murder study, Buss found that only a small percentage, about 4%, of the Michigan Murder cases were committed by a person with neuropsychological deficits (Buss, 15). Buss continues, saying that if a person with these deficits were to murder, the person would choose someone random most likely not someone they know, and the murder would be haphazard and aloof compared to a “normal” well thought out murder (Buss,

Through his research, Buss found that men tend to commit more murders and are more violent than women (Buss, 16). Although men are more likely to commit a murder than women, both men and women have high rates of having homicidal thoughts about killing partners who have cheated or wronged them (Buss, 6). According to Buss, the reason men murder more is because they have more at stake than women. Buss explains that throughout evolution men have evolved to murder because of honor, status, and reproduction. Buss explains that back in tribal times, a man’s status in the tribe gave him the opportunity to reproduce. If a man was of high status in the tribe, he would be able to reproduce with the healthiest woman in the tribe thus securing his reproductive lineage (Buss, 55). If the man did not have high status, then his lineage may be lost forever due to the fact that he was unappealing to the women in the tribe. A man’s lineage was also at stake if his wife was found to be cheating. If his wife was found cheating, his honor and status were diminished and the children that were supposed to be his were now his partner’s lover’s children since she would reproduce with her lover instead of her husband (Buss, 88). Thus once again, diminishing the man’s chance of having a successful lineage. These factors translated into today’s society as it