Sleep and risk-taking propensity in life history and evolutionary perspectives (original) (raw)

Life history theory and evolutionary psychology

The handbook of evolutionary psychology, 2005

The evolution of life is the result of a process in which variant forms compete to harvest energy from the environment and convert it into replicates of those forms. Individuals "capture" energy from the environment (through foraging, hunting, or cultivating) and "allocate" it to reproduction and survival-enhancing activities. Selection favors individuals who efficiently capture energy and effectively allocate it to enhance fitness within their ecological niche.

LIFE HISTORY TRAITS IN HUMANS: Theory and Empirical Studies

Annual Review of Anthropology, 1999

n Abstract Life history theory offers evolutionary explanations for the timing of life events, with a particular focus on age-schedules of fertility and mortality and growth. Traditional models examine trade-offs between current and future reproduction and quality versus quantity of offspring. These models can be used to understand questions concerning time of gestation, age of weaning, juvenile mortality profiles, age at maturation, adult body size, fertility rates, senescence, menopause, and the length of the life span. The trajectory of energy acquisition and its allocations is also an important part of life history theory. Modifications of these models have been developed to examine the period of learning, postweaning parental investment, and patterns of development. In this article, we combine energetic and demographic approaches in order to examine the human life course from an optimality perspective. The evolved life history solves related problems across two generations. The first set of decisions concerns how to maximize own lifetime net energy production that can be used for reproduction. The second set of decisions concerns how to maximize total offspring energy production (summed over all offspring).

Human Life History Strategies: Calibrated to External or Internal Cues

Human life history (LH) strategies are theoretically regulated by developmental exposure to environmental cues that ancestrally predicted LH-relevant world states (e.g., risk of morbidity–mortality). Recent modeling work has raised the question of whether the association of childhood family factors with adult LH variation arises via (i) direct sampling of external environmental cues during development and/or (ii) calibration of LH strategies to internal somatic condition (i.e., health), which itself reflects exposure to variably favorable environments. The present research tested between these possibilities through three online surveys involving a total of over 26,000 participants. Participants completed questionnaires assessing components of self-reported environmental harshness (i.e., socioeconomic status, family neglect, and neighborhood crime), health status, and various LH-related psychological and behavioral phenotypes (e.g., mating strategies, paranoia, and anxiety), modeled as a unidimensional latent variable. Structural equation models suggested that exposure to harsh ecologies had direct effects on latent LH strategy as well as indirect effects on latent LH strategy mediated via health status. These findings suggest that human LH strategies may be calibrated to both external and internal cues and that such calibrational effects manifest in a wide range of psychological and behavioral phenotypes.

Sleep-Wake State Tradeoffs, Impulsivity and Life History Theory

Evolutionary Psychology, 2012

Evolutionary ecological theory predicts that sleep-wake state tradeoffs may be related to local environmental conditions and should therefore correlate to alterations in behavioral life history strategies. It was predicted that firefighters who slept more and reported better quality sleep on average would exhibit lower impulsivity inclinations related to slower life history trajectories. UPPS impulsivity scores and self-reported sleep averages were analyzed and indicated a negative association between sleep variables and urgency and a positive association with premeditation. Perseverance, and in some cases premeditation, however, disclosed an unpredicted marginally significant positive association between increased and emergency nighttime waking-related sleep deprivation. Sensation seeking was not associated with sleep variables, but was strongly associated with number of biological children. This research contributes to understanding the implications of human sleep across ecologica...

The behavioral correlates of overall and distinctive life history strategy

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2013

Life history (LH) theory provides an evolutionary theoretical framework for understanding individual differences in maturation, mating, reproduction, parenting, and social interaction. However, the psychometric assessment of human life history has been largely limited to generalized self-reports. Using template matching, this article examines the relationship between personality differences associated with slow-life history (slow-LH) and social behavior in 3 archival datasets. Two of these datasets include direct observations of behavior in the laboratory, and the 3rd provides self-reports of behavior in real life situations experienced within the preceding 24 hr. The results paint a consistent picture of the slow-LH individual as engaging in numerous adaptive social behaviors. However, when "normativeness" (the tendency for most people to be normal in both the statistical and evaluative sense) is statistically removed from the LH scores, a slightly different picture emerges. Both slow-LH and fast-LH persons display a number of behaviors that may be either adaptive or maladaptive in different contexts. Specifically, slow-LH individuals tended to behave in a manner that was considerate, kind, hard-working, and reliable but also socially awkward, insecure, and overcontrolling. Fast-LH individuals came across as talkative, socially skilled, dominant, and charming but also unpredictable, hostile, manipulative, and impulsive. These results are consistent with the evolutionary interpretation of LH strategies as being adapted to systematically different environments rather than better or worse approaches to reproductive fitness overall.

Differential Effects of Fundamental and Longitudinal Life History Trade-Offs on Delay Discounting: An Evolutionary Framework

Behavioral Sciences, 2022

We synthesized life history theory and the antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis to form an integrative framework for understanding delay discounting (DD). We distinguished between fundamental and longitudinal life history trade-offs to explain individual and age differences of DD. Fundamental life history trade-offs are characterized by life history strategies (LHS), describing how individuals adjust reproductive timing according to childhood environments, while longitudinal life history trade-offs characterize how individuals make trade-offs between early- vs. late-life reproduction as a function of age. Results of a life-span sample (242 Chinese participants) supported several theoretical predictions: (a) slower LHS predicted lower DD; (b) the relationship between chronological age and DD was U-shaped; (c) the effects of age and LHS were differential. Mechanisms underlying fundamental and longitudinal trade-offs were explored. Regarding fundamental trade-offs, LHS mediated the effec...

Optimal resource allocation and its consequences on behavioral strategies, personality traits and preferences

Life history theory is increasingly invoked in psychology as a framework for understanding differences in individual preferences. In particular, evolutionary human scientists tend to assume that, along with reproductive strategies, several behavioral traits such as cooperation and risk-taking and, in its broadest version, a range of psychological and personality traits also cluster into ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ life histories. However, the inclusion of such a wide range of traits in a life history strategy is founded on relatively little theoretical justification. Beyond environmental factors such as mortality risk, we argue that quantitative changes in resources - either embodied, physical or social - can lead to qualitative changes in people’s priorities and psychology. People use their resources to satisfy their different needs. People with access to fewer resources focus on their needs with the greatest marginal fitness benefit, while people with more resources can also afford to satis...

Possibility of Dying as a Unified Explanation of Why We Discount the Future, Get Weaker with Age, and Display Risk-Aversion

Economic Inquiry, 2010

I formulate a simple and parsimonious evolutionary model that shows that because most species face a possibility of dying because of external factors, called extrinsic mortality in the biology literature, it can simultaneously explain (a) why we discount the future, (b) get weaker with age, and (c) display risk-aversion. The paper suggests that testable restrictions-across species, across time, or across genders-among time preference, aging, and risk-aversion could be analyzed in a simple framework (JEL A10, D90).

Measures of domain-specific resource allocations in life history strategy: Indicators of a latent common factor or ordered developmental sequence

The psychometric trait approach to human life history, based on common factor modeling, has recently come under some criticism for neglecting to inquire into the developmental progression that orients and executes human life history trajectories (Copping, Campbell, & Muncer, 2014). It was asserted that the psychometric approach wholly focuses on creating a higher-order latent factor of life history by subsuming individual differences with developmental and social experiences, ignoring ontogenetic progression. Implicit in the critique is the assumption that developmental perspectives and latent approaches are mutually exclusive and incompatible with each other. The response to this critique by Figueredo and colleagues (2015) proposed instead that developmental perspectives and latent trait approaches are both compatible and necessary to further research on human life history strategies. The current paper uses three independent cross-sectional samples to examine whether models of human life history are best informed by a developmental perspective, psychometric trait approach, or both. In this investigation, we seek to determine whether models of human Life History (LH) are best informed by a developmental perspective, psychometric trait approach, or a combination of both. We briefly describe what LH theory is, then outline each approach to the study of human LH strategy and attempt to integrate them into a more comprehensive model of LH epigenesis. We then present three tests of this integrated epigenetic model, in comparison and contrast to two more restricted models, using a nationally-representative USA adult sample and three convenience samples, one USA and two Latin-American college student samples.