Pub Date : 2025-10-24DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106785
Kai Wen Zhou , Adam Baimel , Cindel J.M. White
Punishment and the threat thereof can help enforce social norms, but enacting punishment is often costly. To avoid these costs, individuals may prefer to offload the responsibility of punishment to others or to cultural institutions. We propose that shared beliefs about supernatural punishment contribute to minimizing the costs of interpersonal punishment by allowing people to offload punishment to supernatural entities. In a Third Party Punishment Game, we specifically test in a pre-registered experiment (N = 1603 Americans and Singaporeans adults, recruited through Qualtrics' online panels) whether thinking about karma (a supernatural force that punishes misdeeds) reduces punishment. Results confirm that being prompted to consider karma reduces inclinations to punish selfishness in a Third Party Punishment Game. A second pre-registered study using a subtler prime of karma replicated this effect. These findings suggest that karma beliefs may have played a role in the cultural evolution of human cooperation by reducing the costs of human norm enforcement while maintaining incentives for prosocial behaviour through the threat of supernatural punishment.
{"title":"Offloading punishment to karma: Thinking about karma reduces the punishment of transgressors","authors":"Kai Wen Zhou , Adam Baimel , Cindel J.M. White","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106785","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106785","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Punishment and the threat thereof can help enforce social norms, but enacting punishment is often costly. To avoid these costs, individuals may prefer to offload the responsibility of punishment to others or to cultural institutions. We propose that shared beliefs about supernatural punishment contribute to minimizing the costs of interpersonal punishment by allowing people to offload punishment to supernatural entities. In a Third Party Punishment Game, we specifically test in a pre-registered experiment (<em>N</em> = 1603 Americans and Singaporeans adults, recruited through Qualtrics' online panels) whether thinking about karma (a supernatural force that punishes misdeeds) reduces punishment. Results confirm that being prompted to consider karma reduces inclinations to punish selfishness in a Third Party Punishment Game. A second pre-registered study using a subtler prime of karma replicated this effect. These findings suggest that karma beliefs may have played a role in the cultural evolution of human cooperation by reducing the costs of human norm enforcement while maintaining incentives for prosocial behaviour through the threat of supernatural punishment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"46 6","pages":"Article 106785"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145361885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-23DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106758
Marius Stavang, Mons Bendixen, Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair
Men overestimate women's sexual interest and women underestimate men's. Error Management Theory conceptualizes these sexual over- and underperception biases as adaptations. While the presence of these biases is well documented in adults, no previous research has explored their emergence and development during adolescence. We examined whether sexual over- and underperception biases were already present at age 16, whether they emerged later, and how they developed from ages 16 to 19. Given that adolescents face similar reproductive challenges as adults, we predicted these adaptations would already be activated by age 16. Following Haselton's (2003) procedure, a high-school community sample (males = 551, females = 739) from the Norwegian Health, Sexual Harassment, and Experiences Study (2013) reported if they had experienced being sexually over- and underperception during the previous 12 months.
Unexpectedly, females were first 17 years of age when they reported that males had an overperception bias, and it was not until age 19 that females were more frequently overperceived than males. This pattern resulted from females becoming increasingly overperceived from age 16 (7 %) to 19 (25 %). More males (13 %) than females (3 %) were underperceived at all ages. Since the proportion of overperceived males dropped to 3 % at age 19, 19-year-old males consequently reported that females had an underperception bias. Sociosexuality increased the risk of being overperceived for both sexes and additionally increased males' risk of being underperceived. Singlehood and sexual debut did not influence risk of being misperceived. Mate value strongly increased males' likelihood of being overperceived.
Developmentally, reports of sexual overperception undergo sex differentiation from mid- to late adolescence, while reports of sexual underperception are already sex-differentiated by age 16. Thus, males' overperception bias appears to emerge in middle adolescence, whereas females' greater tendency to underperceive males is likely present before mid-adolescence. Limitations regarding the timing of these biases and future directions for studying their developmental trajectories are discussed.
{"title":"Adolescent development of sexual misperception biases: females increasingly overperceived, males consistently underperceived","authors":"Marius Stavang, Mons Bendixen, Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106758","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106758","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Men overestimate women's sexual interest and women underestimate men's. Error Management Theory conceptualizes these sexual over- and underperception biases as adaptations. While the presence of these biases is well documented in adults, no previous research has explored their emergence and development during adolescence. We examined whether sexual over- and underperception biases were already present at age 16, whether they emerged later, and how they developed from ages 16 to 19. Given that adolescents face similar reproductive challenges as adults, we predicted these adaptations would already be activated by age 16. Following <span><span>Haselton's (2003)</span></span> procedure, a high-school community sample (males = 551, females = 739) from the Norwegian Health, Sexual Harassment, and Experiences Study (2013) reported if they had experienced being sexually over- and underperception during the previous 12 months.</div><div>Unexpectedly, females were first 17 years of age when they reported that males had an overperception bias, and it was not until age 19 that females were more frequently overperceived than males. This pattern resulted from females becoming increasingly overperceived from age 16 (7 %) to 19 (25 %). More males (13 %) than females (3 %) were underperceived at all ages. Since the proportion of overperceived males dropped to 3 % at age 19, 19-year-old males consequently reported that females had an underperception bias. Sociosexuality increased the risk of being overperceived for both sexes and additionally increased males' risk of being underperceived. Singlehood and sexual debut did not influence risk of being misperceived. Mate value strongly increased males' likelihood of being overperceived.</div><div>Developmentally, reports of sexual overperception undergo sex differentiation from mid- to late adolescence, while reports of sexual underperception are already sex-differentiated by age 16. Thus, males' overperception bias appears to emerge in middle adolescence, whereas females' greater tendency to underperceive males is likely present before mid-adolescence. Limitations regarding the timing of these biases and future directions for studying their developmental trajectories are discussed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"46 6","pages":"Article 106758"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145361884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-23DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106791
Peter Carruthers
This article proposes a solution to a puzzle: why is it that, across a wide range of domains, evaluative beliefs are apt to immediately shift our evaluative experience in both short-term and long-term ways? And why are these top-down influences on affective valuation so powerful? For there is no evidence of such influences in other animals, where evaluative learning is typically slow and experience-based. The proposal is that it was a vitally-important adaptive problem for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to swiftly acquire the values of the tribe, including not just tastes in food, fear of local predators and dangers, and so on, but also a whole suite of local norms, as well as a default positive valuation of co-tribal members themselves. The argument for content-generality then turns on the fact that some of these top-down influences appear to be by-products of a more general mechanism rather than adaptive in their own right.
{"title":"A content-general adaptation for tribal value-acquisition","authors":"Peter Carruthers","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106791","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106791","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article proposes a solution to a puzzle: why is it that, across a wide range of domains, evaluative beliefs are apt to immediately shift our evaluative experience in both short-term and long-term ways? And why are these top-down influences on affective valuation so powerful? For there is no evidence of such influences in other animals, where evaluative learning is typically slow and experience-based. The proposal is that it was a vitally-important adaptive problem for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to swiftly acquire the values of the tribe, including not just tastes in food, fear of local predators and dangers, and so on, but also a whole suite of local norms, as well as a default positive valuation of co-tribal members themselves. The argument for content-generality then turns on the fact that some of these top-down influences appear to be by-products of a more general mechanism rather than adaptive in their own right.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"46 6","pages":"Article 106791"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145362031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-18DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106778
Troels P. Arbøll
This article examines the earliest historical evidence for kissing in societies of the ancient Middle East and surrounding regions, from the mid-3rd to the early 1st millennium BCE. Drawing on linguistic, textual, visual, and archaeological sources, the study explores the cultural roles of romantic-sexual and familial-friendly kissing in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and Syria). The paper demonstrates that early written references to kissing range from mythological narratives of divine intimacy to legal texts regulating social behavior. The work employs translations of cuneiform sources, and all materials are available in previously published works referenced throughout the article. By situating these practices within broader debates on the origins and cultural contexts of especially romantic-sexual kissing, the article considers whether the earliest evidence reflects not only acts of intimacy, but also social practices that, in the 3rd millennium BCE, could have been associated with elite behavior. The analysis contributes to ongoing discussions in anthropology, by reconsidering whether romantic-sexual kissing originated as an elite practice or was more widely embedded in everyday life, while highlighting the methodological challenges of interpreting ancient sources.
{"title":"Ancient kiss-tory: new perspectives on the evolution of early historical kissing","authors":"Troels P. Arbøll","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106778","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106778","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article examines the earliest historical evidence for kissing in societies of the ancient Middle East and surrounding regions, from the mid-3rd to the early 1st millennium BCE. Drawing on linguistic, textual, visual, and archaeological sources, the study explores the cultural roles of romantic-sexual and familial-friendly kissing in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and Syria). The paper demonstrates that early written references to kissing range from mythological narratives of divine intimacy to legal texts regulating social behavior. The work employs translations of cuneiform sources, and all materials are available in previously published works referenced throughout the article. By situating these practices within broader debates on the origins and cultural contexts of especially romantic-sexual kissing, the article considers whether the earliest evidence reflects not only acts of intimacy, but also social practices that, in the 3rd millennium BCE, could have been associated with elite behavior. The analysis contributes to ongoing discussions in anthropology, by reconsidering whether romantic-sexual kissing originated as an elite practice or was more widely embedded in everyday life, while highlighting the methodological challenges of interpreting ancient sources.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"46 6","pages":"Article 106778"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145320013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-14DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106775
William H. Gilbert
Throughout this paper ‘LL’ = lip-to-lip kissing, ‘LN’ = lip-to-non-lip, and ‘TK’ = tongue- kissing. This paper focuses on romantic/sexual (LL and TK) kissing. Romantic kissing is best analyzed not as an adaptation in itself but as part of a behaviorally-constructed niche common among humans that repeatedly brings two faces into high-sensory- bandwidth proximity. Selection cannot target the act itself, rather, it acts on heritable components recruited into this niche: lip features; chemosensory and touch-endocrine couplings; context-sensitive decision rules for approach, mutuality, escalation, and stopping; and social signaling to a larger community. Bovid head-butting and horns provide a useful analogy of trait–behavior coevolution from which we can derive concrete predictions, and then apply the framework to the evolutionary dimensionality of kissing.
{"title":"The evolution of human lip-to-lip kissing","authors":"William H. Gilbert","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106775","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106775","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Throughout this paper ‘LL’ = lip-to-lip kissing, ‘LN’ = lip-to-non-lip, and ‘TK’ = tongue- kissing. This paper focuses on romantic/sexual (LL and TK) kissing. Romantic kissing is best analyzed not as an adaptation in itself but as part of a behaviorally-constructed niche common among humans that repeatedly brings two faces into high-sensory- bandwidth proximity. Selection cannot target the act itself, rather, it acts on heritable components recruited into this niche: lip features; chemosensory and touch-endocrine couplings; context-sensitive decision rules for approach, mutuality, escalation, and stopping; and social signaling to a larger community. Bovid head-butting and horns provide a useful analogy of trait–behavior coevolution from which we can derive concrete predictions, and then apply the framework to the evolutionary dimensionality of kissing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"46 6","pages":"Article 106775"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145320010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The emotions of anger and hatred are implicated in both individual and intergroup conflict, aggression, violence, and war. Despite their significance, these emotions are often poorly defined and conflated. Following Sell, Scrivner, Landers, & Lopez, 2021, we provide theoretical groundwork for understanding anger and hatred from an adaptationist perspective, unpacking the evolved functional logic of each emotion that ultimately explains how and why each works the way it does. From this logic, we derive predictions about anger and hatred's behavioral and cognitive outputs and terminating conditions. Using a first person recall design, we then test these predictions across two countries (the United States and United Kingdom) in online participant pools (n = 725). In line with theoretically derived predictions, we find striking consistency in the distinctiveness of anger and hatred: Anger produces behaviors functionally designed to bargain for better treatment through recalibration, while hatred produces behaviors functionally designed to neutralize targets costly to the hater. Accurately distinguishing anger from hatred is crucial, as mistaking one for the other can derail conflict resolution and lead to misguided interventions. Viewing anger and hatred through an adaptationist lens not only explains their distinct evolutionary functions but can also guide interventions aimed at reducing conflict at both the individual and societal level.
{"title":"The evolutionary logic of anger and hatred: an empirical test","authors":"Mitchell Landers , Aaron Sell , Coltan Scrivner , Anthony Lopez","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106776","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106776","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The emotions of anger and hatred are implicated in both individual and intergroup conflict, aggression, violence, and war. Despite their significance, these emotions are often poorly defined and conflated. Following <span><span>Sell, Scrivner, Landers, & Lopez, 2021</span></span>, we provide theoretical groundwork for understanding anger and hatred from an adaptationist perspective, unpacking the evolved functional logic of each emotion that ultimately explains how and why each works the way it does. From this logic, we derive predictions about anger and hatred's behavioral and cognitive outputs and terminating conditions. Using a first person recall design, we then test these predictions across two countries (the United States and United Kingdom) in online participant pools (<em>n</em> = 725). In line with theoretically derived predictions, we find striking consistency in the distinctiveness of anger and hatred: Anger produces behaviors functionally designed to bargain for better treatment through recalibration, while hatred produces behaviors functionally designed to neutralize targets costly to the hater. Accurately distinguishing anger from hatred is crucial, as mistaking one for the other can derail conflict resolution and lead to misguided interventions. Viewing anger and hatred through an adaptationist lens not only explains their distinct evolutionary functions but can also guide interventions aimed at reducing conflict at both the individual and societal level.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"46 6","pages":"Article 106776"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145320012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-14DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106774
Tania Reynolds , Roy Baumeister , Bill von Hippel
If people often mate assortatively by traits, individuals will be more likely to attract mates with desirable attributes if they also possess those same attributes. Thus, individuals should value and advertise attributes in themselves to appeal to potential mates' preferences (intersexual motivations) and to attract mates with attributes they desire (assortative motivations). Because these two motivations are often conflated, extant research might underestimate sex differences in trait preferences. Across three pre-registered online studies (NS1 = 196, NS2 = 179, NS3 = 831 MTurkers), we applied a novel technique— self-versus-mate tradeoffs—to disentangle these competing motivations for six traits: attractiveness, intelligence, ambition, wealth, humor, and kindness. When forced to trade off possessing a trait oneself against having mates with that trait, larger sex differences emerged. Men more strongly valued partner (versus own) attractiveness and own (versus partner) intelligence, wealth, and ambition. Women more strongly valued partner (versus own) humor. Tradeoffs did not reveal sex differences in kindness, perhaps because women more strongly valued their own and partner kindness. Tradeoff items enhanced prediction of participant sex, beyond isolated motivations, revealing incremental explanatory value. These results suggest assortative motivations might inflate the apparent similarity between the sexes in desires to be attractive, ambitious, wealthy, intelligent, and humorous.
{"title":"Tradeoffs between self and mates reveal larger sex differences in trait preferences","authors":"Tania Reynolds , Roy Baumeister , Bill von Hippel","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106774","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106774","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>If people often mate assortatively by traits, individuals will be more likely to attract mates with desirable attributes if they also possess those same attributes. Thus, individuals should value and advertise attributes in themselves to appeal to potential mates' preferences (<em>intersexual motivations</em>) and to attract mates with attributes they desire (<em>assortative motivations</em>). Because these two motivations are often conflated, extant research might underestimate sex differences in trait preferences. Across three pre-registered online studies (<em>N</em><sub><em>S1</em></sub> = 196, <em>N</em><sub><em>S2</em></sub> = 179, <em>N</em><sub><em>S3</em></sub> = 831 MTurkers), we applied a novel technique— self-versus-mate tradeoffs—to disentangle these competing motivations for six traits: attractiveness, intelligence, ambition, wealth, humor, and kindness. When forced to trade off possessing a trait oneself against having mates with that trait, larger sex differences emerged. Men more strongly valued partner (versus own) attractiveness and own (versus partner) intelligence, wealth, and ambition. Women more strongly valued partner (versus own) humor. Tradeoffs did not reveal sex differences in kindness, perhaps because women more strongly valued their own and partner kindness. Tradeoff items enhanced prediction of participant sex, beyond isolated motivations, revealing incremental explanatory value. These results suggest <em>assortative motivations</em> might inflate the apparent similarity between the sexes in desires to be attractive, ambitious, wealthy, intelligent, and humorous.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"46 6","pages":"Article 106774"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145320011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-13DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106780
Peter K. Jonason , Dritjon Gruda , Mark van Vugt
Personality is shaped not only by individual and social experiences but also by the broader ecological contexts in which populations develop. This exploratory study integrates trait activation, life history, and sexual selection theories into an ecological model to explain cross-national variation in narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy as measured with the ultra-brief, Dirty Dozen measure. Using standardized data from 48 countries (N = 11,504) and six ecological indicators (i.e., population density, operational sex ratio, life expectancy, natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and income inequality) across three developmental windows, we apply spatial autoregressive models to estimate both direct and spillover effects. We found that harsh or unpredictable ecologies (e.g., male-biased sex ratios, lower survival rates, disaster exposure) were associated with elevated Dark Triad personality traits and these same conditions magnify sex differences, while pathogen prevalence attenuates them. Moreover, neighboring countries' environments influenced focal nations' trait profiles. This work highlights the evolutionary and functional roots of antisocial tendencies at the macro-level by situating the Dark Triad traits within a multi-layered socio-ecological framework.
{"title":"Towards an ecological model of the dark triad traits","authors":"Peter K. Jonason , Dritjon Gruda , Mark van Vugt","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106780","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106780","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Personality is shaped not only by individual and social experiences but also by the broader ecological contexts in which populations develop. This exploratory study integrates trait activation, life history, and sexual selection theories into an ecological model to explain cross-national variation in narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy as measured with the ultra-brief, Dirty Dozen measure. Using standardized data from 48 countries (<em>N</em> = 11,504) and six ecological indicators (i.e., population density, operational sex ratio, life expectancy, natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and income inequality) across three developmental windows, we apply spatial autoregressive models to estimate both direct and spillover effects. We found that harsh or unpredictable ecologies (e.g., male-biased sex ratios, lower survival rates, disaster exposure) were associated with elevated Dark Triad personality traits and these same conditions magnify sex differences, while pathogen prevalence attenuates them. Moreover, neighboring countries' environments influenced focal nations' trait profiles. This work highlights the evolutionary and functional roots of antisocial tendencies at the macro-level by situating the Dark Triad traits within a multi-layered socio-ecological framework.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"46 6","pages":"Article 106780"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145320009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-06DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106781
Alex L. Jones , Tobias L. Kordsmeyer , Robin S.S. Kramer , Julia Stern , Lars Penke
Facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) is an extensively studied morphological measure, which was presumably shaped by sexual selection and has been linked to a wide range of perceptual and physiological traits. Underpinning these associations is the premise that fWHR is larger in men, which empirically exhibits a mixed and equivocal pattern in the literature due to variation in measurement, large sample sizes revealing small but significant differences, and a lack of control of body size. In Study 1, in a sample of 1949 faces, we used a Bayesian hierarchical model that incorporates prior information to simultaneously estimate sexual dimorphism in fWHR, adjusted for body size, across five measurement types. While we found larger fWHR in women, comparing this effect to variability in fWHR due to image capture settings revealed no robust evidence of sex differences in fWHR. In Study 2, we investigated sex differences in facial width specifically (also adjusted for body size), again incorporating prior information, and confirmed men have greater face width than women. Advances in this area can be made by shifting focus away from arbitrary ratios like fWHR to direct measures like facial width – as well as carefully considering prior evidence of existing associations.
{"title":"Updating evidence on facial metrics: A Bayesian perspective on sexual dimorphism in facial width-to-height ratio and bizygomatic width","authors":"Alex L. Jones , Tobias L. Kordsmeyer , Robin S.S. Kramer , Julia Stern , Lars Penke","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106781","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106781","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) is an extensively studied morphological measure, which was presumably shaped by sexual selection and has been linked to a wide range of perceptual and physiological traits. Underpinning these associations is the premise that fWHR is larger in men, which empirically exhibits a mixed and equivocal pattern in the literature due to variation in measurement, large sample sizes revealing small but significant differences, and a lack of control of body size. In Study 1, in a sample of 1949 faces, we used a Bayesian hierarchical model that incorporates prior information to simultaneously estimate sexual dimorphism in fWHR, adjusted for body size, across five measurement types. While we found larger fWHR in women, comparing this effect to variability in fWHR due to image capture settings revealed no robust evidence of sex differences in fWHR. In Study 2, we investigated sex differences in facial width specifically (also adjusted for body size), again incorporating prior information, and confirmed men have greater face width than women. Advances in this area can be made by shifting focus away from arbitrary ratios like fWHR to direct measures like facial width – as well as carefully considering prior evidence of existing associations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"46 6","pages":"Article 106781"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2025-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145266023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-09-23DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106773
Thomas Felesina
Evolutionary social scientists propose adaptationist hypotheses that contribute significantly to our understanding of human traits. However, relatively little attention has been given to the constraints imposed by the largely shared genome of males and females, which results in substantial positive between-sex genetic correlations (rMF) for many complex traits. This oversight can lead researchers to propose sex-specific adaptive functions for traits that may instead persist in one sex primarily as a correlated genetic response to selection acting on the other (i.e., indirect selection via rMF). I briefly review the quantitative genetics literature underlying the logic of correlated responses, before turning to the implications of large and positive rMF for evolutionary hypothesizing in the social sciences. The implications are explored using human behavioral traits where rMF is likely high but remains unmeasured (paternal care, male choosiness, female aggression), as well as traits for which rMF has been estimated and found to range from high to low (risk taking, same-sex sexual behavior, extra-pair mating). I present genetic signatures for distinguishing between sex-specific selection and correlated responses to selection on the opposite sex and conclude by advocating for explicit consideration of high positive rMF and correlated responses in evolutionary social science, recommending that researchers state their assumptions about rMF.
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