AN EVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PAIN FOLLOWING RAPE .1. THE EFFECTS OF VICTIMS AGE AND MARITAL-STATUS

The typical approach used to identify and characterize adaptations is discussed briefly, and then it is applied to psychological changes associated with the psychological pain experienced by rape victims. It has been hypothesized that mental pain may reflect psychological adaptation that is designed to detect and cope with the occurence of social problems that reduce an individual's inclusive fitness in human evolutionary history. According to the hypothesis, mental pain is brought about by social tragedies in the lives of individuals and focuses the attention of individuals on the events surrounding the pain, promoting correction of the pain-causing events and their avoidance in the future. The hypothesis applied to rape victims proposes that in human evolutionary history raped females had increased fitness as a result of mental pain, because the pain forced them to focus attention on the fitness-reducing circumstances surrounding rape, which are discussed. Some of the hypothesis' predictions about the psychological pain of rape victims are examined using a data set of 790 rape victims in Philadelphia (USA) who were interviewed about their psychological traumatization within five days after the assault. The analyses indicate that, as predicted, a victim's age and marital status are proximate causes of the magnitude of psychological pain following rape. Reproductive-aged women appear to be more severely traumatized by rape than older women or girls and married women more than unmarried women. The results presented suggest that the psychology that regulates mental pain processes information about age and mateship status in the event of a women's rape. © 1990.