Evolution and Human BehaviourThis is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader, such as GoogleReader, or to display this data on your own website or blog. Subscribe to this data using MyMedWorm.Subscribe to this data using GoogleReader.Subscribe to this data using Bloglines.Subscribe to this data using MyYahoo.

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With 2,400 years of hindsight, it seems unlikely that Plato's eternal, immutable Forms actually exist. No one believes, for example, that all chairs are merely shadows cast by a literal, eternal Chair, apprehensible only to the intellect. When it comes to living organisms, however, including Homo sapiens, Plato's concept of Forms still has some traction. Genes, like Forms, are more or less immutable and only indirectly perceptible, yet they appear to encode the essence of what it means to be a human. Because genes vary, they also raise the unsettling specter of distinct African, Asian, and European essences, or natures, a ...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - October 12, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Edward H. Hagen Tags: Book Review Source Type: journals

Control tactics and partner violence in heterosexual relationshipsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study investigated sex-specific predictors of violent and nonviolent mate guarding used by men (n=399) and women (n=951) in heterosexual relationships, using both self-reports and reports on partners. We found, contrary to some previous evolutionary assumptions, that men and women showed similar degrees of controlling behavior, and that this predicted physical aggression to partners in both sexes. We also predicted from evolutionarily based studies that men's and women's control and aggression would vary as a function of female fecundity and mate value (relative to peer group and to partner). Fecundity was associated ...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - September 6, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Nicola Graham-Kevan, John Archer Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Does women's greater fear of snakes and spiders originate in infancy?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Previous studies with adult humans and nonhuman animals revealed more rapid fear learning for spiders and snakes than for mushrooms and flowers. The current experiments tested whether 11-month-olds show a similar effect in learning associative pairings between facial emotions and fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant stimuli. Consistent with the greater incidence of snake and spider phobias in women, results show that female but not male infants learn rapidly to associate negative facial emotions with fear-relevant stimuli. No difference was found between the sexes for fear-irrelevant stimuli. The results are discuss...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - August 16, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: David H. Rakison Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

The relative importance of the face and body in judgments of human physical attractivenessEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this study, we assessed the relative importance of the face and body in judgments of human physical attractiveness. One hundred twenty-seven men and 133 women were shown images of 10 individuals of the opposite sex. Participants rated the images for their attractiveness for either a short-term relationship or a long-term relationship. Images of the face and the body were rated independently before participants were shown and asked to rate the combined face and body images. Face ratings were found to be the best predictor of the ratings of combined images for both sexes and for both relationship types. Females showed no ...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - August 16, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Thomas E. Currie, Anthony C. Little Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Face and voice attractiveness judgments change during adolescenceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Attractiveness judgments are thought to underpin adaptive mate choice decisions. We investigated how these judgments change during adolescence when mate choice is becoming relevant. Adolescents aged 11–15 evaluated faces and voices manipulated along dimensions that affect adults' judgments of attractiveness and that are thought to cue mate value. Facial stimuli consisted of pairs of faces that were more or less average, more or less feminine, or more or less symmetric. The adolescents selected the more average, symmetric, and feminine faces as more attractive more often than chance, but judgments of some facial...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - August 16, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tamsin K. Saxton, Lisa M. Debruine, Benedict C. Jones, Anthony C. Little, S. Craig Roberts Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Attractiveness qualifies the effect of observation on trusting behavior in an economic gameEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Recent studies show that subtle cues of observation affect cooperation even when anonymity is explicitly assured. For instance, recent studies have shown that the presence of eyes increases cooperation on social economic tasks. Here, we tested the effects of cues of observation on trusting behavior in a two-player Trust game and the extent to which these effects are qualified by participants' own attractiveness. Although explicit cues of being observed (i.e., when participants were informed that the other player would see their face) tended to increase trusting behavior, this effect was qualified by the participa...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - August 16, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Finlay G. Smith, Lisa M. Debruine, Benedict C. Jones, Daniel Brian Krupp, Lisa L.M. Welling, Claire A. Conway Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Chimpanzees coordinate in a negotiation gameEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: A crucially important aspect of human cooperation is the ability to negotiate to cooperative outcomes when interests over resources conflict. Although chimpanzees and other social species may negotiate conflicting interests regarding travel direction or activity timing, very little is known about their ability to negotiate conflicting preferences over food. In the current study, we presented pairs of chimpanzees with a choice between two cooperative tasks—one with equal payoffs (e.g., 5-5) and one with unequal payoffs (higher and lower than in the equal option, e.g., 10-1). This created a conflict of interests ...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - August 6, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Alicia P. Melis, Brian Hare, Michael Tomasello Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Symmetric faces are a sign of successful cognitive agingEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: It has been proposed that a common cause underlies individual differences in bodily and cognitive decline in old age. No good marker for this common cause has been identified to date. Here, fluctuating asymmetry (FA), an indicator of developmental stability that relates to intelligence differences in young adults, was measured from facial photographs of 216 surviving members of the Lothian Birth Cohort 1921 at age 83 and related to their intelligence at ages 11, 79 and 83 years. FA at age 83 was unrelated to intelligence at ages 11 and 79 and to cognitive change between 11 and 79 years. It was, however, associate...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - August 5, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Lars Penke, Timothy C. Bates, Alan J. Gow, Alison Pattie, John M. Starr, Benedict C. Jones, David I. Perrett, Ian J. Deary Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Patterns of eye movements when male and female observers judge female attractiveness, body fat and waist-to-hip ratioEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Behavioural studies of the perceptual cues for female physical attractiveness have suggested two potentially important features: body fat distribution [the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR)] and overall body fat [often estimated by the body mass index (BMI)]. However, none of these studies tell us directly which regions of the stimulus images inform observers' judgments. Therefore, we recorded the eye movements of three groups of 10 male observers and three groups of 10 female observers, when they rated a set of 46 photographs of female bodies. The first sets of observers rated the images for attractiveness, the second se...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - June 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Piers L. Cornelissen, Peter J.B. Hancock, Vesa Kiviniemi, Hannah R. George, Martin J. Tovée Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Implicit associations with social status: the effects of relationship involvementEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: The study tested the proposition that relationship involvement influences the implicit responses of women to high- and low-status professions. It was hypothesized that when a high-involvement context was primed, women would have more positive implicit associations with high-status occupations than when a low-involvement context was primed. In contrast, when a high-involvement context was primed, women would have more negative associations with low-status occupations than when a low-involvement context was primed. To test the hypothesis, 123 female participants received a high or low relationship involvement prime...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - June 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Murray G. Millar Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

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Forensic psychology is generally defined as the application of psychology to the law. The term refers to the testimony a psychologist may give in open court, together with case-specific preparations for such testimony. Evolutionary psychologists will naturally expect Darwinian foundations to improve forensic psychology, and the book is meant to be the first step toward that end. (Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour)
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - June 14, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Roger Koppl Tags: Book Review Source Type: journals

Costs and benefits of fat-free muscle mass in men: relationship to mating success, dietary requirements, and native immunityEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: On average, men have 61% more muscle mass than women (d=3), a sex difference which is developmentally related to their much higher levels of testosterone. Potential benefits of greater male muscle mass include increased mating opportunities, while potential costs include increased dietary requirements and decreased immune function. Using data on males aged 18–59 years from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and including other relevant variables, fat-free mass (FFM) and/or limb muscle volume (LMV) are significant predictors of the numbers of total and past-year self-reported sex partners...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - May 24, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: William D. Lassek, Steven J.C. Gaulin Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Analyzing evolutionary social science and its popularizations—A review of The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates Over Sex, Violence, and ScienceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In The Caveman Mystique (TCM), Martha McCaughey examines how evolutionary accounts of human sexuality circulate in popular culture and influence the ways that men form their ideas of how men should think and act. She goes on to critique evolutionary perspectives on human sexuality. After briefly reviewing the major claims of the book, we clarify misunderstandings of evolutionary perspectives presented and address what we see as valid criticisms of the ways that evolutionary research is sometimes generated and disseminated into popular culture. (Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour)
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - May 12, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: David A. Frederick, Elizabeth G. Pillsworth, Andrew Galperin, Kelly A. Gildersleeve, Yael R. Filossof, Melissa R. Fales, Christy R. Lopez, Felix S. Lurye, Melissa E. Phuphanich, Josephine B. Snider Tags: Book Review Source Type: journals

The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion: credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolutionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: This paper lays out an evolutionary theory for the cognitive foundations and cultural emergence of the extravagant displays (e.g., ritual mutilation, animal sacrifice and martyrdom) that have so tantalized social scientists, as well as more mundane actions that influence cultural learning and historical processes. In Part I, I use the logic of natural selection to build a theory for how and why seemingly costly displays influence the cognitive processes associated with cultural learning — why do “actions speak louder than words?” The core idea is that cultural learners can both avoid being manipulated by th...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - May 12, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Joseph Henrich Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Social exchange and solidarity: in-group love or out-group hate?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We examined whether this male-specific “coalitional psychology” represents in-group love or out-group hate. One hundred thirty-three college freshmen played a prisoner's dilemma game with a member of their own group and a member of another group. Both groups consisted of same-sex participants. An in-group bias (cooperation with the in-group at a level higher than cooperation with the out-group) based on expectations of cooperation from the in-group was observed for both men and women. When such expectations were experimentally eliminated, women did not show any in-group bias, whereas men still exhibited an in-group bia...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - May 12, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Toshio Yamagishi, Nobuhiro Mifune Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Right handedness of Homo heidelbergensis from Sima de los Huesos (Atapuerca, Spain) 500,000 years agoEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Handedness is a product of brain specialization, which in turn seems to be responsible for the higher cognitive capabilities of humans, such as language and technology. Handedness in living humans is well established and shows the highest degree of manual specialization. Studies on hand laterality in nonhuman primates, particularly in chimpanzees, remain a matter of controversy as results tend to vary depending on factors such as the tasks performed and the environment in which the individuals live. Studies in several disciplines have attempted to determine where in the course of human evolution handedness establ...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - May 11, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Marina Lozano, Marina Mosquera, José María Bermúdez de Castro, Juan Luis Arsuaga, Eudald Carbonell Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Physical attractiveness and reproductive success in humans: evidence from the late 20th century United StatesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Physical attractiveness has been associated with mating behavior, but its role in reproductive success of contemporary humans has received surprisingly little attention. In the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (1244 women, 997 men born between 1937 and 1940), we examined whether attractiveness assessed from photographs taken at age ∼18 years predicted the number of biological children at age 53–56 years. In women, attractiveness predicted higher reproductive success in a nonlinear fashion, so that attractive (second highest quartile) women had 16% and very attractive (highest quartile) women 6% more children than...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - May 11, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Markus Jokela Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Social and biological determinants of reproductive success in Swedish males and females born 1915–1929Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Studying biological and social determinants of mortality and fertility provides insight into selective pressures in a population and the possibility of trade-offs between short- and long-term reproductive success. Limited data is available from post-demographic transition populations. We studied determinants of reproductive success using multi-generational data from a large, population-based cohort of 13,666 individuals born in Sweden between 1915 and 1929. We studied the effects of birthweight for gestational age, preterm birth, birth multiplicity, birth order, mother's age, mother's marital status and family so...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - May 11, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Anna Goodman, Ilona Koupil Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Menstrual cycle phases and female receptivity to a courtship solicitation: an evaluation in a nightclubEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Previous research has demonstrated that female behaviors toward men or sexual interest are different across the menstrual cycle. However, women's receptivity to an explicit courtship solicitation still remained in question. In a field experiment, 20-year-old women were approached by 20-year-old male confederates in nightclubs and solicited to dance during the period when slow songs were played. A survey was administered to the women in order to obtain information about the number of days since the onset of previous menses. It was found that women in their fertile phase agreed more favorably to the dance request t...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Nicolas Guéguen Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

The relation between mate value, entitlement, physical aggression, size and strength among a sample of young Indian menEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study extends previous ones showing a link between direct aggression and size and strength among young men, which were informed by the evolutionary concept of resource holding power (RHP), using measures of size, strength, flexed bicep circumference and hand grip strength among a sample of young men from the Indian state of Mizoram. The study also examined the relation of these variables to reactive and proactive aggression, to entitlement to resources (related to the threatened egotism theory of aggression) and mate value (central to a modular theory of self-esteem and more broadly to sexual selection). The findings ...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: John Archer, Vanlal Thanzami Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

On the relationship between interindividual cultural transmission and population-level cultural diversity: a case study of weaving in Iranian tribal populationsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: It is often assumed that parent-to-child cultural transmission leads to similarities and differences among groups evolving through descent with modification (“phylogenesis”). Similarly, cultural transmission between peers, and between adults and children who are not their offspring, is widely believed to result in groups exchanging cultural traits (“ethnogenesis”). However, neither of these assumptions has been examined empirically. Here, we test them using ethnographic data on craft learning in Iranian tribal populations and the cladistic method of phylogenetic analysis. We find that parent-to-child tran...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Jamshid J. Tehrani, Mark Collard Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

The evolution of conformist social learning can cause population collapse in realistically variable environmentsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Why do societies collapse? We use an individual-based evolutionary model to show that, in environmental conditions dominated by low-frequency variation (“red noise”), extirpation may be an outcome of the evolution of cultural capacity. Previous analytical models predicted an equilibrium between individual learners and social learners, or a contingent strategy in which individuals learn socially or individually depending on the circumstances. However, in red noise environments, whose main signature is that variation is concentrated in relatively large, relatively rare excursions, individual learning may be sel...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Hal Whitehead, Peter J. Richerson Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

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The idea that “religion” may have evolved through Darwinian selection has seen an explosion of interest recently, giving rise to numerous journal articles, dedicated conferences and books (for reviews, see ). The field offers a treasure trove for scholars of human evolution because it spans so many topics of interest to us. First of all, there are important theoretical and empirical questions at each of Tinbergen's four levels of analysis: What is its evolutionary function? What are the proximate mechanisms? What are its developmental features? What is its phylogeny in the human lineage? It also confronts other areas o...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Dominic Johnson Tags: Book Review Source Type: journals

No enhanced recognition memory, but better source memory for faces of cheatersEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Previous studies sought to test for the existence of a “cheater-detection module” by testing for enhanced memory for the faces of cheaters, but past results have been inconclusive. Here, we present four experiments showing that old–new discrimination was not affected by whether a face was associated with a history of cheating, trustworthy or irrelevant behavior. In contrast, source memory for faces associated with a history of cheating (i.e., memory for the cheating context in which the face was encountered) was consistently better than source memory for other types of faces. This pattern held under a varie...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Axel Buchner, Raoul Bell, Bettina Mehl, Jochen Musch Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Collective action in culturally similar and dissimilar groups: an experiment on parochialism, conditional cooperation, and their linkagesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study examines the effects of ingroup favoritism and outgroup hostility (“parochialism”), as well as of conditionally cooperative strategies, in explaining contributions to experimental public goods games. The experimental conditions vary group composition along two culturally inheritable traits (political party preference and religious affiliation) and one trivial, “minimal” trait (birth season). We contrast ingroup, outgroup, and random group conditions and investigate the relation between the own contribution to the public good and the expectations about other group members' behavior in each one of them. We...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Ruud Koopmans, Susanne Rebers Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Human prosociality from an evolutionary perspective: variation and correlations at a city-wide scaleEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Prosociality is a fundamental theme in all branches of the human behavioral sciences. Evolutionary theory sets an even broader stage by examining prosociality in all species, including the distinctive human capacity to cooperate in large groups of unrelated individuals. We use evolutionary theory to investigate human prosociality at the scale of a small city (Binghamton, NY), based on survey data and a direct measure of prosocial behavior. In a survey of public school students (Grades 6–12), individual prosociality correlates strongly with social support, which is a basic requirement for prosociality to succeed...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: David Sloan Wilson, Daniel Tumminelli O'Brien, Artura Sesma Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Differential parental investment in families with both adopted and genetic childrenEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Stepchildren are abused, neglected and murdered at higher rates than those who live with two genetically related parents. Daly and Wilson used kin selection theory to explain this finding and labeled the phenomenon “discriminative parental solicitude.” I examined discriminative parental solicitude in American households composed of both genetic and unrelated adopted children. In these families, kin selection predicts parents should favor their genetic children over adoptees. Rather than looking at cases of abuse, neglect, homicide and other antisocial behavior, I focused on the positive investments parents ma...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Kyle Gibson Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Trade-offs in modern parenting: a longitudinal study of sibling competition for parental careEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Evolutionary and economic models of the family propose that parents face a fundamental trade-off between fertility and investment per offspring. However, tests of this hypothesis have focused primarily on offspring outcomes rather than direct measures of parental investment. Existing studies of parenting also suffer a number of methodological problems now recognized as common sources of error in sociodemographic studies. Here, we present a more definitive picture of the effects of family structure on parental care by analyzing an extensive longitudinal dataset of contemporary British families (the Avon Longitudin...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: David W. Lawson, Ruth Mace Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

The hot hand phenomenon as a cognitive adaptation to clumped resourcesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: The hot hand phenomenon refers to the expectation of “streaks” in sequences of hits and misses whose probabilities are, in fact, independent (e.g., coin tosses, basketball shots). Here we propose that the hot hand phenomenon reflects an evolved psychological assumption that items in the world come in clumps, and that hot hand, not randomness, is our evolved psychological default. In two experiments, American undergraduates and Shuar hunter–horticulturalists participated in computer tasks in which they predicted hits and misses in foraging for fruits, coin tosses, and several other kinds of resources whose d...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Andreas Wilke, H. Clark Barrett Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Rethinking the Taiwanese minor marriage data: evidence the mind uses multiple kinship cues to regulate inbreeding avoidanceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Natural experiments such as the Israeli Kibbutzim and Taiwanese minor marriages provide unique opportunities for testing the effects of childhood association on adult sexual attraction. Within these populations, early childhood association leads to the development of a sexual aversion, an effect first proposed by Edward Westermarck. However, recent analysis of Taiwanese minor marriages indicates that only the age at first association (an inverse index of childhood association) of the younger partner predicts marital fertility rates; the age at first association of the older partner does not. Although considered a...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 21, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Debra Lieberman Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

The force of selection on the human life cycleEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: In this article, I present evidence for a robust and quite general force of selection on the human life cycle. The force of selection acts in remarkably invariant ways on human life histories, despite a great abundance of demographic diversity. Human life histories are highly structured, with mortality and fertility changing substantially through the life cycle. This structure necessitates the use of structured population models to understand human life history evolution. Using such structured models, I find that the vital rates to which fitness is most sensitive are prereproductive survival probabilities, partic...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 12, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: James Holland Jones Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Cultural transmission of ethnobotanical knowledge and skills: an empirical analysis from an Amerindian societyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: The modeling of cultural transmission is of great importance for understanding the maintenance, erosion, and spread of cultural traits and innovations. Researchers have hypothesized that, unlike biological transmission, cultural transmission occurs through at least three different, non-mutually exclusive paths: (1) from parents (vertical); (2) from age peers (horizontal); and (3) from older generations (oblique). We used data from 270 adults in a society in the Bolivian Amazon to estimate the association between a person's knowledge and skills and the knowledge and skills of the (1) same-sex parent, (2) age peers...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 12, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Victoria Reyes-García, James Broesch, Laura Calvet-Mir, Nuria Fuentes-Peláez, Thomas W. McDade, Sorush Parsa, Susan Tanner, Tomás Huanca, William R. Leonard, Maria R. Martínez-Rodríguez, TAPS Bolivian Study Team Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Sex differences in response to coalitional threatEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Abstract: Intergroup conflict poses a different kind of threat for men and women — a difference that can be expected to have implications for cognitive as well as behavioral processes. Participants were primed with a threat from a rival coalition vs. a control condition. Reaction times were measured on a lexical-decision task in response to ideation consistent with coalitions or with friendship/protective care. When primed for coalitional threat, men showed fast access to positive coalitional ideation (suggesting facilitation). In contrast, women showed exceptionally fast access to positive friendship/protective care ide...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 12, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Daphne Blunt Bugental, David A. Beaulieu Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals

Frequency and recency of infection and their relationship with disgust and contamination sensitivityEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this study, we examined whether more frequent or recent illness might act to reverse this process. To test this, we surveyed 616 adults, obtaining illness frequency and recency data, disgust and contamination sensitivity, and a variety of control measures. Heightened contamination sensitivity was associated with more frequent infectious illness, but not with recency of infection. We also found that participants who had heightened contamination sensitivity and who were also more disgust sensitive had significantly fewer recent infections. These findings suggest that frequent illness may up-regulate contamination sensitiv...
Source: Evolution and Human Behaviour - April 5, 2009 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Richard J. Stevenson, Trevor I. Case, Megan J. Oaten Tags: Original Articles Source Type: journals