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    Prosocial Emotion, Adolescence, and Warfare : DNA Methylation Associates with Culturally Salient Combat Variables.

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    Date
    2019
    Author
    Straight, B
    Needham, BL
    Onicescu, G
    Barkman, T
    Root, C
    Farman, J
    Naugle, A
    Lalancette, C
    Olungah, C
    Lekalgitele, S
    Type
    Article
    Language
    en
    Metadata
    Show full item record

    Abstract
    Examining the costs and motivations of warfare is key to conundrums concerning the relevance of this troubling phenomenon to the evolution of social attachment and cooperation, particularly during adolescence and young adulthood-the developmental time period during which many participants are first recruited for warfare. The study focuses on Samburu, a pastoralist society of approximately 200,000 people occupying northern Kenya's semi-arid and arid lands, asking what role the emotionally sensitized, peer-driven adolescent life stage may have played in the cultural and genetic coevolution of coalitional lethal aggression. Research in small-scale societies provides unparalleled opportunities for sharply defined variables, particularly in age generation societies in which all young men are initiated into "warriorhood." Proposing an epigenetic and component behavior approach, we examine whether raiding activities such as number of raids, killing, and sparing enemy lives associate with DNA methylation in two candidate genes: MAOA, linked to mood and arousal, and NR3C1, linked to stress and immune response. We report statistically significant associations between the epigenetic variables and the combat (exposure) variables of overall raiding activity and reportedly showing mercy to enemies. In contrast, epigenetic variables did not associate with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom scores (a potential outcome measure), and the only combat variable associated with PTSD (but not DNA methylation) was losing one's own livestock in a raid. These findings raise important questions concerning the mechanisms driving warfare's paradoxical mix of violent and altruistic behaviors.
    URI
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30941597
    http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/handle/11295/106670
    Citation
    Hum Nat. 2019 Jun;30(2):192-216.
    Publisher
    University of Nairobi
    Subject
    Kenya; Warfare; adolescence; cooperation; epigenetics; prosocial emotion
    Collections
    • Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences (FoA&SS / FoL / FBM) [6704]

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