Humans Crave Violence

We crave violence just like we crave sex or food.

New research on mice shows the brain processes aggressive behavior as it does other rewards. Mice sought violence for no apparent reason other than the rewarding feeling.

This could shed light on our fascination with brutal sports as well as our own penchant for the classic bar brawl.

"Aggression occurs among virtually all vertebrates and is necessary to get and keep important resources such as mates, territory and food," said study team member Craig Kennedy, professor of special education and pediatrics at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. "We have found that the reward pathway in the brain becomes engaged in response to an aggressive event and that dopamine is involved."

"We learned from these experiments that an individual will intentionally seek out an aggressive encounter solely because they experience a rewarding sensation from it... Aggression is highly conserved in vertebrates in general and particularly in mammals. Almost all mammals are aggressive in some way or another. It serves a really useful evolutionary role probably, which is you defend territory; you defend your mate; if you're a female, you defend your offspring," Kennedy said.