Evolutionary Psychological Science最新文献

Two studies advance the understanding of phenotypic mimicry in consumer products. Product features mimicking more prominent male secondary sexual characteristics are associated with men’s behavioral strategies which are higher in mating effort and lower in paternal investment in offspring, in parallel with reproductive strategies across species and within the human population. The first study demonstrated a continuous relationship between the sizes of luxury brand logos and perceptions of the owners’ life histories. Two partial replications reproduced Study 1 results. Study 2 demonstrated that a manipulation of coloration, another fundamental dimension of variation in secondary sex characteristics, generates a similar pattern of results. In both studies, men owning shirts with more prominent sensory characteristics were believed to use authority and intimidation as strategies for advancing social status, whereas men owning shirts with less showy characteristics were believed to demonstrate useful abilities and foster cooperative alliances. Participants also recognized the strategic use of luxury display properties across social contexts.

Psychosocial acceleration theory postulates that human females have an evolved reaction norm that accelerates reproductive timing in response to childhood adversity, such as low socioeconomic status (SES). While this theory has garnered widespread acceptance in psychology, the extant evidence suggests that such a reaction norm was not adaptive in pre-industrialised human populations (and in a wild baboon population). However, there has been no study examining whether such psychosocial acceleration is adaptive in contemporary societies. Therefore, this study, conducted in Japan and the US, tests the hypothesis that early fertility is associated with higher lifetime reproductive success (LRS) among women from low SES families, while it is associated with lower LRS among women from high SES families. Participants were women aged 45–50 years (480 Japanese women in Study 1 and 780 American women in Study 2). Participants reported their childhood SES, early adulthood SES, and number of children. The results were not supportive of the hypothesis. In both the Japanese and American samples, early fertility was associated with higher LRS regardless of childhood SES. In other words, accelerated reproductive timing did not selectively confer fitness advantages on women from low-SES families. The results of this study are generally in line with previous findings in pre-industrialised societies.

Recurring threats of physical aggression throughout human evolutionary history presented selection pressures that favored the ability to perceive threats accurately. One heuristic from which perceivers estimate the potential threat is men’s formidability. Despite the functionality of these inferences in self-protection domains, such responses could bias perceivers in domains wherein evaluations based on physical features may be inappropriate. The demands of a modern legal system could be mismatched with these ancestrally informed motives. This study considered how self-protection motives foster biases against formidable men in legal decision-making, particularly as it relates to sentencing decisions. Mock jurors reported dispositional dangerous world beliefs and provided sentencing recommendations for a male target convicted of aggravated assault who was either physically strong or weak. Women recommended less lenient sentences toward strong men when they believed the world was dangerous. Men’s punitive decisions were not associated with such beliefs. These findings provide evidence for how self-protection motives may inform modern legal decision-making, particularly as it relates to women’s navigation of prospective physical threats.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by symptoms that include inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Recent research suggests that individuals with ADHD might exhibit higher levels of curiosity, which may be linked to their tendencies toward distractibility and impulsivity. This paper proposes an evolutionary mismatch hypothesis for high trait curiosity in ADHD, positing that ‘hypercuriosity’, which may have been adaptive in ancestral environments characterized by scarce resources and unpredictable risks, has become mismatched in industrialized societies where environments are more stable and information rich. The theory predicts that individuals with ADHD will demonstrate heightened levels of novelty-seeking and exploratory behaviors, manifesting as symptoms labeled as distractibility and impulsivity in modern environments. The paper explores the potential evolutionary benefits of high trait curiosity, the consequences of an evolutionary mismatch, and the implications for research and practice. The limitations of the theory are addressed, such as the need for more targeted research on curiosity in ADHD and potential differences among ADHD subtypes. Future research directions are proposed to refine and test the hypothesis, ultimately contributing to a more nuanced understanding of ADHD and informing the development of strength-based interventions. This theoretical framework offers a novel perspective on the adaptive value of ADHD traits and their manifestation in modern societies.

Pairs of friends wrote autobiographical narratives and completed surveys about events of reciprocity in their relationship. Each participant wrote about returning a favor to their friend (reciprocator essay) and about an event in which their friend returned a favor (recipient-of-reciprocity essay). The pairs independently reflected on the same events. Reciprocators rated their returned favors as having less impact, in terms of costs and benefits, than the recipients. Reciprocators’ ratings of the degree to which the recipient deserved the reciprocity were higher than recipients’ ratings of the degree to which they deserved the reciprocity. These reciprocator-recipient asymmetries may facilitate the establishment and retention of reciprocally altruistic relationships. Overall, participants rated the benefits of the reciprocity as greater than the costs (i.e., the interactions were nonzero sum). Nonzero-sum interactions are a necessary condition for mutually beneficial, reciprocal relationships.

From the erosion of mental well-being through incessant comparison, unrealistic portrayals, and addiction, the negative effects of social media are well-documented. However, it is necessary to move beyond the simplistic characterizations of social media as inherently either beneficial or detrimental and, instead, underscore the nuanced mechanisms that underlie its adverse outcomes. To this end, this paper delineates a conceptual framework grounded in evolutionary psychology, designed to explain the prevalent negative repercussions often linked to the utilization of social media. Specifically, we argue that these “social media ills” are manifestations of evolutionary mismatches between social media features and our evolved mechanism designed for social living. We start by reviewing how our psychological mechanisms—sociometer, social monitoring system, and social comparison—facilitate living within complex social situations and fulfill our fundamental need to belong. We then identify features of social media that may hijack these processes to produce the consequences we observe today. We have also recommended several evolutionarily informed directions policymakers and social media companies can undertake to treat social media ills at their root cause. This article concludes by discussing the theoretical implications and interventions the evolutionary mismatch hypothesis provides.

Intimate relationships are not characterized only by advantages as they have also a darker side. Accordingly, the current research aimed to identify the disadvantages of being in an intimate relationship in the Greek cultural context. More specifically, Study 1 employed qualitative research methods with a sample of 202 Greek-speaking participants, identifying 94 possible disadvantages. Study 2 employed quantitative research methods with a sample of 525 Greek-speaking participants and classified these disadvantages into 11 broader factors or major disadvantages and three broader domains or primary disadvantages. Participants indicated "Conflicts" as the most important primary disadvantage, followed by the "Emotional burden" and the "Compromises" primary disadvantages. Furthermore, we found that women indicated abusive behaviors, economic dependency, and less freedom factors as more important major disadvantages than men. Additionally, older participants reported making compromises as a more important major disadvantage than younger participants. Moreover, single participants rated several major disadvantages as more important than participants in an intimate relationship. Overall, our study sheds light on the less favorable aspects of intimate relationships and highlights important sex, age, and relationship status differences in perceiving these disadvantages.

The aim of this paper is to provide a brief overview of trypophobia, or in other words the fear of "clusters of holes". The first peer-reviewed paper on this curious phenomenon only appeared in the scientific literature about a decade ago, i.e., Cole and Wilkins (Psychological Science 24(10) 1980–1985, 2013), even though it negatively affects a relatively large portion of the general population. After briefly describing the theoretical framework within which most studies of trypophobia are conducted—namely ‘evolutionary psychology’—, we will characterize this phobia and then outline the two main hypotheses likely to explain the disorder: the ‘dangerous animal’ and the ‘skin disease-avoidance’ hypotheses, respectively. As trypophobia is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), we will discuss the issue of categorizing this phobia among other specific phobias. The aim of this brief review is therefore to describe the (rare) scientific work that has been done on this a priori innocuous and strange condition, most of which agrees with the idea that the fear of clusters of holes is related to our evolutionary history.