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Michelle

Lee

Spousal Conflicts & Spousal Homicides

Homicide cases are prevalent in many societies and often stem from non-violent spousal

conflicts. Particularly, in a Caribbean village, Dataset 1A shows that men compete more intensely with

members of the same sex over mating opportunities. This happens from an evolutionary explanation that

men want to maximize their chances of creating more of their genetic offspring by mating with women.

Dataset 1B supports this with the percentage of men with fecund mates having the highest agonistic

interactions. Since their intimate partners could get pregnant, a competitor male could possibly mate with

her as well, and thus causing conflicts between the competing males.

As for conflicts between spouses, the act of being sexually unfaithful causes ordinary conflicts

between men and women. In Dataset 2A, sexually non-exclusive co-resident couples have higher

agonistic interaction because sleeping with other people means it would be more likely for the woman to

bear a child that is not her spouses. Furthermore, Dataset 2B shows that men spend more time with their

mates and are more likely to argue with her when the woman is fecund. These behaviors could be a mans

overall strategy to increases his confidence that his mate will produce offspring of his own genetics. This

would explain why they spend more time with their mates when they are fecund, making sure they are

sexually faithful. However, this overprotective behavior could lead to suspicion, creating more agonistic

interactions between the couple.

Some extreme spousal conflicts lead to homicide, and many of these violent conflicts are similar

to the issues that cause ordinary non-violent conflicts. According to Dataset 3B, 29 out of 34 spouses said

the source of conflict was sexual matters, whether the wife was having extra-pair sex, or refusing to have

sex with her husband. In these cases, men typically initiate violent conflicts, as men initiated 71% of cases

where women killed their husbands and 90% of cases where men killed their wives (Dataset 3A). As

mentioned for the non-violent conflicts, most conflicts were caused by sexual matters, so men may have

impulsively instigated the crime out of fear that his spouse had a higher chance of producing a

competitors offspring, rather than his own.

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Michelle Lee

Even with the high rate of men initiating violent conflicts, most of the crimes were not intended,

but rather, a strategy intended to accomplish something else. From the quote in Dataset 4A, men seem to

regret their actions and had not intended to go so far. In addition, the graph in Dataset 4B shows that

out of spousal homicides in Chicago, 10-25% of spouse killers who committed suicide afterwards were

men. Perhaps, some men were trying to force sexual intercourse with their spouse, leading to unforeseen

tragedies. The mens emotional state afterwards indicate that they were in disbelief, and realized that the

main source of producing their offspring was now gone.

From cross-cultural studies, it is evident that industrialized societies have higher rates of

homicides perpetrated by women. Dataset 5 clearly shows this with a higher SROK ratio of 75 in the U.S,

while the ratio is 0 for traditional societies in India. Despite the U.S being an industrialized society, some

women in impoverished parts of the country live with children not fathered by their husbands. On the

other hand, women in traditional societies leave their genetic kin to live with their husbands families and

often have stronger social alliances, thus reducing spousal violence. Learning from these traditional

societies, our policy makers should increase funding for support services and help women become more

economically independent to improve the outcome for women.

To further explore the observations from Dataset 6, I think it would be interesting to explore

further into spousal homicides in a lower income city within our country. In an impoverished city within

the U.S., is the rate of woman perpetuating the homicide higher when she lives with her genetic kin? In

African and Indian cultures, women are isolated from their genetic kin to live with their husbands family,

but women almost never perpetuated the homicide, so I think it would be the same for impoverished cities

within the U.S. Since the SROK is the highest in Detroit, Michigan (Dataset 5), it would make sense to

collect homicide data in Detroit within the past 10 years. If my hypothesis is correct, women who live

with their genetic kin would have a significantly higher percentage of women being the killer (Figure 1).

However, if the null hypothesis is correct, it wouldn't matter whether the woman lives with her genetic

kin or not, and the percentage for both would roughly be the same (Figure 2).

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Michelle Lee

Figure 1: Expected Data Under Proposed Hypothesis

Figure 2: Expected Data Under Null Hypothesis

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