Theory men are wired to kill straying mates is offensive and wrong

If Rudyard Kipling had had another "Just So Story" in him, he might have followed "How the Elephant Got His Trunk" and "How the Leopard Got His Spots" with "How the Man Got His Wife-Killing Streak." It would have gone something like this:

In the High and Far-Off Times, oh Best Beloved, the Man lived harmoniously with others. Although his heart ached when his Mate fell in love with another, and he raged and cursed love's cruelty, the thought of vengeance never crossed his mind. Seeing his Doormat tendencies, Women scorned his advances, and he never had children. His line ended, Best Beloved.

But the Man lived to see the birth of a New Man. When the New Man grew up and his Mate was unfaithful, he killed her. When his next Mate merely glanced at another Man, he killed her, too. His third Mate, he beat up to keep her too submissive to even dream of looking at another. Women became smitten with his power and status, and his line grew plenteous. His sons inherited his mate-killing instincts, and soon only they -- not the Doormats -- mated and begot children. And ever since then, oh Best Beloved, all Men have a mind designed to kill unfaithful Wives.

Kipling never got around to explaining how men's minds got wired for uxoricide, but fear not: David Buss, professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, has. In "The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill," he explains that the male mind "has developed adaptations for killing." (An "adaptation" is a trait that conferred an evolutionary edge; those with it left more descendants than those without it.)

Killing, according to his Kipling-esque reasoning, offered so many "advantages to our early ancestors in the competition for survival and reproduction" that, today, "all men have an evolved psychology of mate killing that lies latent in their brains." Men with the genetically based mental circuit for uxoricide had such an edge over their pacifist peers, in other words, that all men living today -- their descendants -- have this murder circuit, too.

For proof, Prof. Buss cites homicide statistics showing that more men than women kill, that over a five-year period in Dayton, Ohio, 52% of the women murdered were killed by a husband, lover or ex, and that women age 15 to 24 are killed by their mates or ex-mates more than over-the-reproductive-hill women are. His explanation: Only the former have evolutionary value, so men are wired to kill them if they stray but not to bother with unfaithful old bags. Also, unemployed men are more likely to kill women who dump them than are gainfully-employed men. Such low-status men, explains Prof. Buss, have the toughest time replacing their lost access to a uterus, so they're wired to raise their attractiveness to women ("you're so strong and powerful!") by murdering a cheating mate.

As a parsimonious explanation of data, the "evolution made me do it" explanation pales beside alternatives. Yes, murdered women skew young. But twenty-something men are more impulsive than fifty-something men and more likely to have a 23-year-old than a 57-year-old as a mate. And yes, unemployed men are more likely to kill or try to kill when dumped. But traits that make getting a job tough (being poorly educated, stupid, impulsive, psychotic ...) can also incline a man to murder.

The claim that men are wired to kill their mate also flies in the face of fossil and primate data showing that early humans were prey, not predators, notes anthropologist Robert Sussman of Washington University, St. Louis, co-author of the new book "Man the Hunted." "As prey, early humans survived only if they cooperated," he told me. "This, not murder, is what evolution selected for." He calls Prof. Buss's claim "bad science" for ignoring what a lousy strategy wife-killing is. "Not only would the man have all those angry male in-laws, but the next 'Jane,' seeing he killed his first wife, would say, 'Not me,' " and keep her eggs well away from his sperm.

The claim that works like "Murderer Next Door" are merely following data objectively in a search for truth is getting tiresome. The very decision to seek a "scientific" validation for killing women represents a value judgment. The fact that the claim makes no sense scientifically is almost secondary to that.

•	Theory men are wired to kill straying mates is offensive and wrong Wall Street Journal, Friday, May 20, 2005 Byline: Sharon Begley