Description:
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Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, and ranks higher in many other countries. It may, at first, seem that the existence of suicide contradicts the logic of the process of selection. The focus of our research is to identify contexts in which such contradictions likely would not have existed for our ancestors, and use them as a basis for predicting contextual patterns that are likely to increase the likelihood of suicide. Our research will examine patterns of suicidal thoughts as a window into evolved psychological mechanisms for suicide. We hypothesize that this evolved suicide psychology will be sensitive to contexts in which an individual’s overall inclusive fitness will benefit more from their death than their continued life in the foreseeable future based on evolved decision rules shaped in the past.
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