Evolutionary Perspectives on Death

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. The Role of Death in Life: Exploring the Interface Between Terror Management Theory and Evolutionary Psychology

   • Tom Pyszczynski

   Pages 1-24

3. Evolutionary Perspectives on the Loss of a Twin

   • Nancy L. Segal

   Pages 25-36

4. Beyond the Search for Suigiston: How Evolution Offers Oxygen for Suicidology

   • C. A. Soper

   Pages 37-61

5. Animacy and Mortality Salience: New Directions for the Adaptive Memory Literature

   • Jeanette Altarriba, Stephanie A. Kazanas

   Pages 63-76

6. Nonhuman Primate Responses to Death

   • Sarah F. Brosnan, Jennifer Vonk

   Pages 77-107

7. Did Human Reality Denial Breach the Evolutionary Psychological Barrier of Mortality Salience? A Theory that Can Explain Unusual Features of the Origin and Fate of Our Species

   • Ajit Varki

   Pages 109-135Open Access

8. Death in Literature

   • Joseph Carroll

   Pages 137-159

9. Last Moments: Witnessing and Representing the Death of Pets

   • Jessica Pierce, Ross Taylor

   Pages 161-176

10. The Evolution of American Perspectives Concerning Treatment of the Dead and the Role of Human Decomposition Facilities

    • Katie Zejdlik, Sarah E. Burke

    Pages 177-197

11. Back Matter

    Pages 199-205

    PDF

The latest volume in this multidisciplinary series on key topics in evolutionary studies, Evolutionary Perspectives on Death provides an evolutionary analysis of mortality and the consideration of death. Bringing together noted experts from a variety of fields, the books emanate from conferences held at Oakland University, and are dedicated to providing wide ranging and occasionally provocative views of human evolution. The volume on death covers topics from biology, anthropology, psychology, sociology and philosophy, with contributors addressing how evolution informs the process of comprehending, grieving, depicting, celebrating, and accepting death.

Among the topics covered:

• Evolutionary perspectives on the loss of a twin
• Nonhuman primate responses to death
• Death in literature
• Witnessing and representing the death of pets
• The role of human decomposition facilities in shaping American perspectives on death

This insightful volume showcases groundbreaking empirical and theoretical research addressing death and mortality from an evolutionary perspective, demonstrating the intellectual value of an interdisciplinary approach to understanding psychological processes and behavior.

Chapter 6 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

• death studies
• philosophical views of death
• death and evolution
• primate's understanding of death
• death in literature
• murder suicide
• evolutionary psychology
• reality denial
• mortality salience
• American perspectives on death
• death of pets
• human decomposition facilities

• Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, USA

  Todd K. Shackelford

• Oakland University, Rochester, USA

  Virgil Zeigler-Hill

Todd K. Shackelford received his Ph.D. in evolutionary psychology in 1997 from the University of Texas–Austin. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, where he is Co-Director of the Evolutionary Psychology Lab. He led the founding of new Ph.D. and M.S. programs, which launched in 2012. Shackelford has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and has edited 10 volumes, and his work has been cited over 7,000 times. Much of Shackelford’s research addresses sexual conflict between men and women, with a special focus on testing hypotheses derived from sperm competition theory. Since 2006, Shackelford has served as editor of Evolutionary Psychology.