Is Aggression Adaptative? Yes: Some Kinds are and in Some Ways

In a 2003 panel discussion at the peer pre-conference of the Society for Research in Child Development entitled, “Is Aggression Maladaptive?” most of the participants took a measured approach and answered the question, correctly I think: It depends. It depends on what you mean by aggression and what you mean by adaptive. In the course of the paper presentations and discussion, the issue of the different types of aggression was explicitly and thoroughly addressed whereas discussion of the meaning of “adaptation” was strikingly absent. The use of aggression to defend one’s self (i.e., protective aggression) was almost universally endorsed as beneficial.