In late stage pregnancy babies in the womb can hear voices, and can often identify their father after birth by their voice immediately after birth. Violence often includes a lot of shouting, and physiological stress on the victim which would affect the baby. I’m guessing the baby learned to associate these.

n=1, but I sang to both my daughters in the womb (different songs) and after they were born singing "their" song would calm them down a lot faster. I don't think this is as much "instincts" as it is "very early experiences".

Make it n=2.

Babies develop a preference for their primary caregiver, who is usually the mother.

Young children generally are more cautious around men than women, which is probably good risk management. Instinctive? Possibly.

> probably good risk management

Is it, though? This data [0] says otherwise.

[0]: http://www.breakingthescience.org/SimplifiedDataFromDHHS.php

This is an extraordinarily important point to make, especially in light of the GP comment and the perception that it reflects.

Did they start collecting data 100k years ago? Cause that is the timescale for this stuff no?

That’s one very specific type of risk, and a thankfully rare one. (That also appears to be a men’s rights activist site with an axe to grind on this subject).

A more neutral source:

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

… which suggests the opposite (but there’s not much in it).

In terms of broader risks, males commit a clear majority of violent offences and a vast majority of sexual offences.

This isn’t even just a human thing. Male primates (and mammals generally) exhibit more aggressive behavior than females. It’s probably a deep consequence of anisogamous sexual differentiation:

https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169...