Aaron Sell | Universität Heidelberg (original) (raw)
Papers by Aaron Sell
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2016
Evolution equips sexually reproducing species with mate choice mechanisms that function to evalua... more Evolution equips sexually reproducing species with mate choice mechanisms that function to evaluate the reproductive consequences of mating with different individuals. Indeed, evolutionary psychologists have shown that women's mate choice mechanisms track many cues of men's genetic quality and ability to invest resources in the woman and her offspring. One variable that predicted both a man's genetic quality and his ability to invest is the man's formidability (i.e. fighting ability or resource holding power/potential). Modern women, therefore, should have mate choice mechanisms that respond to ancestral cues of a man's fighting ability. One crucial component of a man's ability to fight was his upper body strength. Here, we test how important physical strength is to men's bodily attractiveness. Three sets of photographs of men's bodies were shown to raters who estimated either their physical strength or their attractiveness. Estimates of physical strength determined over 70% of men's bodily attractiveness. Additional analyses showed that tallness and leanness were also favoured, and, along with estimates of physical strength, accounted for 80% of men's bodily attractiveness. Contrary to popular theories of men's physical attractiveness, there was no evidence of a nonlinear effect; the strongest men were the most attractive in all samples.
Evolution equips sexually reproducing species with mate choice mechanisms that function to evalua... more Evolution equips sexually reproducing species with mate choice mechanisms that function to evaluate the reproductive consequences of mating with different individuals. Indeed, evolutionary psychologists have shown that women's mate choice mechanisms track many cues of men's genetic quality and ability to invest resources in the woman and her offspring. One variable that predicted both a man's genetic quality and his ability to invest is the man's formidability (i.e. fighting ability or resource holding power/potential). Modern women, therefore, should have mate choice mechanisms that respond to ancestral cues of a man's fighting ability. One crucial component of a man's ability to fight was his upper body strength. Here, we test how important physical strength is to men's bodily attractiveness. Three sets of photographs of men's bodies were shown to raters who estimated either their physical strength or their attractiveness. Estimates of physical stre...
Social institutions make use of collective power to shape individual behavior. Attempts to modify... more Social institutions make use of collective power to shape individual behavior. Attempts to modify these institutions to improve the welfare, fairness, or equity of a society will benefit from having an accurate view of how human nature works so they can design the interventions in ways that actually lead to the desired outcome. This means that the study of evolutionary psychology - i.e. the study of human nature - is particularly relevant when crafting societal changes in ways that avoid the frequent unintended consequences of these interventions. Here, we review the computational structure of human anger, and then analyze the fit between Western criminal justice systems and this universal emotion. This analysis shows structural correspondences between anger and features of the criminal justice system, though anomalies are noted. Finally, we review an evolutionary account of the emotion of hatred and note how hatred can account for some failures in the criminal justice system (e.g.,...
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2016
Justice-making institutions rest on a vast network of rules, people, and artifacts. The federal c... more Justice-making institutions rest on a vast network of rules, people, and artifacts. The federal criminal code of the United States, for example, has hundreds of sections with provisions for robbery and burglary, counterfeit bonds, chemical weapons, riots, expenditures to influence voting, and many others. This complexity can be traced to a handful of small-n-person games played by our foraging ancestors in their stateless societies. The overarching theme is conflict. Justice is predicated on actual or possible conflicts of interest. Individual brains include an array of adaptations that were selected because they regulated conflict-relevant behavior in fitness-promoting fashion: concepts (e.g., WRONGFUL ACT, UNJUST DISTRIBUTION), intuitions (e.g., a wrong deserves a punishment), and emotion systems (e.g., anger), among others. These ancient adaptations appear to form the core of justice-making institutions in modern societies—a core that is augmented by deliberation and writing syst...
Evolution and Human Behavior
Emotionen, 2019
Imagine trying to describe the human nose without referring to the fact that it is designed to in... more Imagine trying to describe the human nose without referring to the fact that it is designed to inhale air. The shape would be communicated clumsily, but one could state plainly that the nose has two holes that narrow as they recede into the skull. One could mention the internal hairs and the ability to flare the nostrils.
Theories from evolutionary biology have many implications for research in the cognitive sciences.... more Theories from evolutionary biology have many implications for research in the cognitive sciences. Evolutionary psychologists have been using these theories to guide their research, the goal of which is to map the evolved, species-typical cognitive and neural architecture of humans (and other species). INTRODUCTION Evolutionary psychology (EP) is a paradigm that can be applied to any issue in psychology, rather than a subfield built around the study of a single topic such as vision, social psychology, or child development. As a result, evolutionary theories have opened up many previously unexplored research areas to investigation. Moreover, topics that have already been explored from other perspectives can be advanced empirically and theoretically by adding an evolutionary perspective to the mix. This is because few (if any) of the mechanisms that make up the human mind/brain have been completely mapped. Evolutionary analyses of the adaptive functions that a mechanism evolved to perf...
European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2021
The goal of the current analyses was to explore associations of self-rated physical attractivenes... more The goal of the current analyses was to explore associations of self-rated physical attractiveness with facets of psychological well-being across adolescence. Participants provided information on their perceived physical attractiveness, internalized distress, suicidal ideation, and self-harm at 15, 17 and 20 years of age. Male adolescents repeatedly provided higher ratings of their own physical attractiveness in comparison to female peers. Self-perceived physical attractiveness was negatively associated with internalized distress in 15- to 20-year-old girls. In boys this association reached statistical significance only at the ages of 17 and 20 years. Statistically significant relations between suicidal ideation, self-harm and physical attractiveness resulted in girls only. Findings suggest small but stable relationships between self-rated physical attractiveness and facets of psychological well-being between 15 and 20 years–particularly in girls. Results underline the importance of self-perceived attractiveness in relation to mental health across adolescence.
We argue herein that, while often conceptualized as an extreme form of anger, hatred is a human e... more We argue herein that, while often conceptualized as an extreme form of anger, hatred is a human emotion distinct from anger, with unique triggers, conceptual orientations, and terminating conditions. An examination of the social conditions of our species’ evolutionary history reveals that hatred evolved to address its own distinct adaptive problem: individuals whose existence was -- on balance -- costly to the hater. Because a well-designed system for solving this problem would have been tailored toward neutralizing those costs, we call this hypothesis ‘the neutralization theory of hatred.’ This theory places the features of hatred within a functional framework. Specifically, we argue that hatred is triggered by cues that an individual’s existence causes fitness decrements for the hater. Cognitively, hatred orients the mind so as to view costs heaped onto the hated person as benefits to the hater -- thus motivating spiteful behavior -- and can be characterized as maintaining a negat...
Psychological Science, 2013
Over human evolutionary history, upper-body strength has been a major component of fighting abili... more Over human evolutionary history, upper-body strength has been a major component of fighting ability. Evolutionary models of animal conflict predict that actors with greater fighting ability will more actively attempt to acquire or defend resources than less formidable contestants will. Here, we applied these models to political decision making about redistribution of income and wealth among modern humans. In studies conducted in Argentina, Denmark, and the United States, men with greater upper-body strength more strongly endorsed the self-beneficial position: Among men of lower socioeconomic status (SES), strength predicted increased support for redistribution; among men of higher SES, strength predicted increased opposition to redistribution. Because personal upper-body strength is irrelevant to payoffs from economic policies in modern mass democracies, the continuing role of strength suggests that modern political decision making is shaped by an evolved psychology designed for sma...
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2009
Selection in species with aggressive social interactions favours the evolution of cognitive mecha... more Selection in species with aggressive social interactions favours the evolution of cognitive mechanisms for assessing physical formidability (fighting ability or resource-holding potential). The ability to accurately assess formidability in conspecifics has been documented in a number of non-human species, but has not been demonstrated in humans. Here, we report tests supporting the hypothesis that the human cognitive architecture includes mechanisms that assess fighting ability—mechanisms that focus on correlates of upper-body strength. Across diverse samples of targets that included US college students, Bolivian horticulturalists and Andean pastoralists, subjects in the US were able to accurately estimate the physical strength of male targets from photos of their bodies and faces. Hierarchical linear modelling shows that subjects were extracting cues of strength that were largely independent of height, weight and age, and that corresponded most strongly to objective measures of upp...
Evolution and Human Behavior, 2012
We propose that intuitions about modern mass-level criminal justice emerge from evolved mechanism... more We propose that intuitions about modern mass-level criminal justice emerge from evolved mechanisms designed to operate in ancestral small-scale societies. By hypothesis, individuals confronted with a crime compute two distinct psychological magnitudes: one that reflects the crime's seriousness and another that reflects the criminal's long-term value as an associate. These magnitudes are computed based on different sets of cues and are fed into motivational mechanisms regulating different aspects of sanctioning. The seriousness variable regulates how much to react (e.g., how severely we want to punish); the variable indexing the criminal's association value regulates the more fundamental decision of how to react (i.e., whether we want to punish or repair). Using experimental designs embedded in surveys, we validate this theory across several types of crime and two countries. The evidence augments past research and suggests that the human mind contains dedicated psychological mechanisms for restoring social relationships following acts of exploitation.
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2016
Evolution equips sexually reproducing species with mate choice mechanisms that function to evalua... more Evolution equips sexually reproducing species with mate choice mechanisms that function to evaluate the reproductive consequences of mating with different individuals. Indeed, evolutionary psychologists have shown that women's mate choice mechanisms track many cues of men's genetic quality and ability to invest resources in the woman and her offspring. One variable that predicted both a man's genetic quality and his ability to invest is the man's formidability (i.e. fighting ability or resource holding power/potential). Modern women, therefore, should have mate choice mechanisms that respond to ancestral cues of a man's fighting ability. One crucial component of a man's ability to fight was his upper body strength. Here, we test how important physical strength is to men's bodily attractiveness. Three sets of photographs of men's bodies were shown to raters who estimated either their physical strength or their attractiveness. Estimates of physical strength determined over 70% of men's bodily attractiveness. Additional analyses showed that tallness and leanness were also favoured, and, along with estimates of physical strength, accounted for 80% of men's bodily attractiveness. Contrary to popular theories of men's physical attractiveness, there was no evidence of a nonlinear effect; the strongest men were the most attractive in all samples.
Evolution equips sexually reproducing species with mate choice mechanisms that function to evalua... more Evolution equips sexually reproducing species with mate choice mechanisms that function to evaluate the reproductive consequences of mating with different individuals. Indeed, evolutionary psychologists have shown that women's mate choice mechanisms track many cues of men's genetic quality and ability to invest resources in the woman and her offspring. One variable that predicted both a man's genetic quality and his ability to invest is the man's formidability (i.e. fighting ability or resource holding power/potential). Modern women, therefore, should have mate choice mechanisms that respond to ancestral cues of a man's fighting ability. One crucial component of a man's ability to fight was his upper body strength. Here, we test how important physical strength is to men's bodily attractiveness. Three sets of photographs of men's bodies were shown to raters who estimated either their physical strength or their attractiveness. Estimates of physical stre...
Social institutions make use of collective power to shape individual behavior. Attempts to modify... more Social institutions make use of collective power to shape individual behavior. Attempts to modify these institutions to improve the welfare, fairness, or equity of a society will benefit from having an accurate view of how human nature works so they can design the interventions in ways that actually lead to the desired outcome. This means that the study of evolutionary psychology - i.e. the study of human nature - is particularly relevant when crafting societal changes in ways that avoid the frequent unintended consequences of these interventions. Here, we review the computational structure of human anger, and then analyze the fit between Western criminal justice systems and this universal emotion. This analysis shows structural correspondences between anger and features of the criminal justice system, though anomalies are noted. Finally, we review an evolutionary account of the emotion of hatred and note how hatred can account for some failures in the criminal justice system (e.g.,...
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2016
Justice-making institutions rest on a vast network of rules, people, and artifacts. The federal c... more Justice-making institutions rest on a vast network of rules, people, and artifacts. The federal criminal code of the United States, for example, has hundreds of sections with provisions for robbery and burglary, counterfeit bonds, chemical weapons, riots, expenditures to influence voting, and many others. This complexity can be traced to a handful of small-n-person games played by our foraging ancestors in their stateless societies. The overarching theme is conflict. Justice is predicated on actual or possible conflicts of interest. Individual brains include an array of adaptations that were selected because they regulated conflict-relevant behavior in fitness-promoting fashion: concepts (e.g., WRONGFUL ACT, UNJUST DISTRIBUTION), intuitions (e.g., a wrong deserves a punishment), and emotion systems (e.g., anger), among others. These ancient adaptations appear to form the core of justice-making institutions in modern societies—a core that is augmented by deliberation and writing syst...
Evolution and Human Behavior
Emotionen, 2019
Imagine trying to describe the human nose without referring to the fact that it is designed to in... more Imagine trying to describe the human nose without referring to the fact that it is designed to inhale air. The shape would be communicated clumsily, but one could state plainly that the nose has two holes that narrow as they recede into the skull. One could mention the internal hairs and the ability to flare the nostrils.
Theories from evolutionary biology have many implications for research in the cognitive sciences.... more Theories from evolutionary biology have many implications for research in the cognitive sciences. Evolutionary psychologists have been using these theories to guide their research, the goal of which is to map the evolved, species-typical cognitive and neural architecture of humans (and other species). INTRODUCTION Evolutionary psychology (EP) is a paradigm that can be applied to any issue in psychology, rather than a subfield built around the study of a single topic such as vision, social psychology, or child development. As a result, evolutionary theories have opened up many previously unexplored research areas to investigation. Moreover, topics that have already been explored from other perspectives can be advanced empirically and theoretically by adding an evolutionary perspective to the mix. This is because few (if any) of the mechanisms that make up the human mind/brain have been completely mapped. Evolutionary analyses of the adaptive functions that a mechanism evolved to perf...
European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2021
The goal of the current analyses was to explore associations of self-rated physical attractivenes... more The goal of the current analyses was to explore associations of self-rated physical attractiveness with facets of psychological well-being across adolescence. Participants provided information on their perceived physical attractiveness, internalized distress, suicidal ideation, and self-harm at 15, 17 and 20 years of age. Male adolescents repeatedly provided higher ratings of their own physical attractiveness in comparison to female peers. Self-perceived physical attractiveness was negatively associated with internalized distress in 15- to 20-year-old girls. In boys this association reached statistical significance only at the ages of 17 and 20 years. Statistically significant relations between suicidal ideation, self-harm and physical attractiveness resulted in girls only. Findings suggest small but stable relationships between self-rated physical attractiveness and facets of psychological well-being between 15 and 20 years–particularly in girls. Results underline the importance of self-perceived attractiveness in relation to mental health across adolescence.
We argue herein that, while often conceptualized as an extreme form of anger, hatred is a human e... more We argue herein that, while often conceptualized as an extreme form of anger, hatred is a human emotion distinct from anger, with unique triggers, conceptual orientations, and terminating conditions. An examination of the social conditions of our species’ evolutionary history reveals that hatred evolved to address its own distinct adaptive problem: individuals whose existence was -- on balance -- costly to the hater. Because a well-designed system for solving this problem would have been tailored toward neutralizing those costs, we call this hypothesis ‘the neutralization theory of hatred.’ This theory places the features of hatred within a functional framework. Specifically, we argue that hatred is triggered by cues that an individual’s existence causes fitness decrements for the hater. Cognitively, hatred orients the mind so as to view costs heaped onto the hated person as benefits to the hater -- thus motivating spiteful behavior -- and can be characterized as maintaining a negat...
Psychological Science, 2013
Over human evolutionary history, upper-body strength has been a major component of fighting abili... more Over human evolutionary history, upper-body strength has been a major component of fighting ability. Evolutionary models of animal conflict predict that actors with greater fighting ability will more actively attempt to acquire or defend resources than less formidable contestants will. Here, we applied these models to political decision making about redistribution of income and wealth among modern humans. In studies conducted in Argentina, Denmark, and the United States, men with greater upper-body strength more strongly endorsed the self-beneficial position: Among men of lower socioeconomic status (SES), strength predicted increased support for redistribution; among men of higher SES, strength predicted increased opposition to redistribution. Because personal upper-body strength is irrelevant to payoffs from economic policies in modern mass democracies, the continuing role of strength suggests that modern political decision making is shaped by an evolved psychology designed for sma...
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2009
Selection in species with aggressive social interactions favours the evolution of cognitive mecha... more Selection in species with aggressive social interactions favours the evolution of cognitive mechanisms for assessing physical formidability (fighting ability or resource-holding potential). The ability to accurately assess formidability in conspecifics has been documented in a number of non-human species, but has not been demonstrated in humans. Here, we report tests supporting the hypothesis that the human cognitive architecture includes mechanisms that assess fighting ability—mechanisms that focus on correlates of upper-body strength. Across diverse samples of targets that included US college students, Bolivian horticulturalists and Andean pastoralists, subjects in the US were able to accurately estimate the physical strength of male targets from photos of their bodies and faces. Hierarchical linear modelling shows that subjects were extracting cues of strength that were largely independent of height, weight and age, and that corresponded most strongly to objective measures of upp...
Evolution and Human Behavior, 2012
We propose that intuitions about modern mass-level criminal justice emerge from evolved mechanism... more We propose that intuitions about modern mass-level criminal justice emerge from evolved mechanisms designed to operate in ancestral small-scale societies. By hypothesis, individuals confronted with a crime compute two distinct psychological magnitudes: one that reflects the crime's seriousness and another that reflects the criminal's long-term value as an associate. These magnitudes are computed based on different sets of cues and are fed into motivational mechanisms regulating different aspects of sanctioning. The seriousness variable regulates how much to react (e.g., how severely we want to punish); the variable indexing the criminal's association value regulates the more fundamental decision of how to react (i.e., whether we want to punish or repair). Using experimental designs embedded in surveys, we validate this theory across several types of crime and two countries. The evidence augments past research and suggests that the human mind contains dedicated psychological mechanisms for restoring social relationships following acts of exploitation.