According to John Steinbeck, ‘All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal’. This may indeed be the case if the thesis of a new book by David Barash and Judith Lipton is to be believed. Entitled Payback: Why We Retaliate, Redirect Aggression and Take Revenge, the book explores the theme of aggression in an effort to uncover what it is that makes us all so inclined to fight with one another.

From the outset, it is clear that Barash and Lipton are no strangers to writing both academic textbooks and mainstream non-fiction. Dr Barash, an evolutionary biologist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington, already has some 29 books to his name. Dr Lipton is a psychiatrist and a specialist in the biology of human behaviour. The book is well written, accessible and entertaining, with neither the haughty verbosity nor the obsessional bean-counting so often seen in academic writing. The authors appear to be husband and wife, and it is evident from the outset that the book has an endearingly personal quality to it. The authors open with reminiscences of the early 1980s, inviting the reader into their own household with its dynamic imperfections, bereavement and sense of foreboding. The book, it seems, is a culmination of a very personal journey.

In Chapter 1, the authors explain our tendency to pass pain along, ‘like a hot potato’ as they suggest the philosopher Thich Nhat Hanh would put it. The authors tease out the difference between the ‘three Rs’, namely, retaliation, revenge and redirected aggression. Although retaliation is immediate and revenge is delayed, both are directed at the primary cause of offence. But it is principally with redirected aggression that the authors are concerned. Here, the victim will typically channel their pain towards someone other than the initial perpetrator, thus ‘passing the pain along’. The authors cite numerous fictional and historical examples, from Sweeney Todd (the homicidal hairdresser) to Geronimo (an Apache warrior whose family was slaughtered by the Mexicans). Indeed, redirected aggression is everywhere, it seems – Hamas suicide bombers in Israel, Serbs bombing Bosnians over Croatian transgressions during World War II and George Bush invading Iraq because of what happened on 11 September 2001. The common denominator is the use of a scapegoat, a term originally coined in the Old Testament book of Leviticus.

So, why does this happen? The authors cite a mixture of genetics and behaviour and begin by making reference to the work of ethologists such as Konrad Lorenz. Although revenge is uncommon in the animal kingdom, retaliation and redirected aggression are not. Indeed, the latter may have an evolutionary purpose, according to Barash and Lipton; animals engaging in redirected aggression declare clearly that they are not to be trifled with, hence reducing their likelihood of future attack. Chapter 2 gives us dozens of detailed examples from the animal kingdom, from rainbow trout to African cichlid fish, African impalas, spotted hyenas, rhesus monkeys, mice, domestic cats and dogs and a host of other kindred fauna.

In Chapter 3, the authors take a look at individual psychology, building their thesis on research into, for example, the physiology of adrenal hormone secretion and atherosclerosis. They make reference to Aaron Beck and the manner in which we are primed to experience both physical and psychological pain. It is stressful living in society, where frustration, irritability, proneness to criticism and wounded self-esteem abound. All are associated with aggression. The authors cite Freud's defence mechanisms, not least sublimation, in which aggressive and sexual desires are channelled into socially acceptable activities. We are guided through the poems of William Blake to arrive at Alice Miller's philosophy that everyone is essentially mistreated as a child, thus perpetuating a chain of intergenerational abuse. Look no further than Stalin and Hitler, both of whom – according to Erich Fromm – were badly mistreated as children.

The authors examine social psychology in Chapter 4 and ask why revenge is often a dish best served cold. More importantly, why do entire societies wait – sometimes for centuries – before redirecting their aggression? One reason, according to the authors, is rumination on a societal level in the form of stories, songs, poems and plays. Again, numerous examples are provided, from Orangemen marching down the Queen's highway to the tribal feuds of the former Yugoslavia. The authors discuss terrorism, examining the tactical atrocities of fundamentalist groups as they attempt to incite retaliation by governments, thus stirring in ordinary people more support for the revolutionary cause. The authors discuss ETA, the IRA, the Tamil Tigers and Hamas, and even make reference to Shakespeare's Henry IV.

In Chapter 5, the authors examine revenge and redirected aggression in mythology, fiction, poetry and plays. Strangely, perhaps, there is little retaliation in fiction, perhaps because it is so commonplace that it rarely makes for interesting reading. Whereas Chapter 6 is an exploration of the differences between justice and revenge, Chapter 7 brings us to the crux of the issue: what should we be doing about the ‘three Rs’? The authors discuss a number of approaches one by one, namely the Jewish, Christian and Islamic ways, and those of Hindus, Buddhists, psychologists, psychiatrists, game theorists, economists and others. As the authors point out, the legitimacy of war was only really questioned in the 20th century, and therefore perhaps we have not yet had time to agree upon a unified approach.

The authors conclude with a simple statement of personal intent. ‘When evaluating alternative actions’, they declare, ‘I will ask myself whether each is likely to increase or decrease the total amount of pain in the world, and I will always choose the latter’. Never has it been more important to understand the nature of aggression, and this book is a relevant and informative piece of the jigsaw. Well worth reading.