Evolutionary Psychology : An International Journal of Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology and Behavior

In recent years, researchers have discovered much about how disgust works, its neural basis, its relationship with immune function, its connection with mating, and some of its antecedents and consequents. Despite these advances in our understanding, an under-explored area is how disgust may be used to serve a communicative function, including how individuals might strategically downplay or exaggerate the disgust display in front of different audiences. Here, we generated two hypotheses about potential communicative functions of disgust, and tested these hypotheses in four countries (Turkey, Croatia, Germany, and Norway)...

Some men who have sex with men (MSM) having more casual sex and sexual partners is interpreted to be a sign of mental disorder and used to justify negative attitudes toward them by some. MSM may internalize this attitude causing internalized homophobia (IH). According to the sexual strategies theory, MSM having more casual sex is the result of differences between men's and women's sexual strategies and is unrelated to sexual orientation. We investigated whether this explanation would reduce IH and improve mental health in MSM...

Advantageous inequity aversion (i.e., the tendency to respond negatively to unfairness that benefits oneself) usually develops in 6-8-year-olds. However, little is known about the selection pressures that might have shaped this phenomenon. Using data collected from 120 4-8-year-old Finnish children, we tested two evolutionary explanations for the development of advantageous inequity aversion: reciprocal altruism (i.e., benefiting from sharing when the roles are likely reversed in the future) and inclusive fitness (i...

Sexual double standards are social norms that impose greater social opprobrium on women versus men or that permit one sex greater sexual freedom than the other. This study examined sexual double standards when choosing a mate based on their sexual history. Using a novel approach, participants (N = 923, 64% women) were randomly assigned to make evaluations in long-term or short-term mating contexts and asked how a prospective partner's sexual history would influence their own likelihood of having sex (short-term) or entering a relationship (long-term) with them...

The present studies investigated the relationships between men's perceived risk of experiencing sperm competition (i.e., when the ejaculates of two or more men simultaneously occupy the reproductive tract of a single woman), and their use of strategies to detect, prevent, and correct their partner's sexual infidelity. We investigated these associations using self-reports provided by men (Study 1, n  = 113), partner-reports provided by women (Study 2, n  = 136), and dyadic reports (Study 3, n  = 103 couples)...

Findings on female sexual motivation across the ovulatory cycle are mixed. Some studies have reported increased female sexual desire on fertile days or midway through the ovulatory cycle, whereas others have reported increased sexual desire on nonfertile days. We postulated and tested the hypothesis that the pattern of the cyclical change of female sexual desire is associated with women's life history. Female participants completed life-history measures and rated their levels of sexual desire on the survey day and reported the first day of their current and subsequent cycle, respectively (Study 1), or recorded their sexual desire throughout an entire cycle by submitting daily reports (Study 2)...

Adult individuals frequently face difficulties in attracting and keeping mates, which is an important driver of singlehood. In the current research, we investigated the mating performance (i.e., how well people do in attracting and retaining intimate partners) and singlehood status in 14 different countries, namely Austria, Brazil, China, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Peru, Poland, Russia, Spain, Turkey, the UK, and Ukraine ( N  = 7,181). We found that poor mating performance was in high occurrence, with about one in four participants scoring low in this dimension, and more than 57% facing difficulties in starting and/or keeping a relationship...

Intimate relationships are not easy to keep as the high rates of divorce and singlehood testify. The current research aimed to examine the behavioral acts which are likely to have a negative effect on people's willingness to continue an intimate relationship. More specifically, by using qualitative research methods on a sample of 269 Greek-speaking participants, Study 1 identified 88 acts that have a negative impact on people's willingness to continue an intimate relationship. Study 2 employed quantitative research methods on a sample of 536 Greek speaking participants, and classified these acts into six broader factors...

This study focuses on determinants underlying young persons" self-reported intentions to steal a small amount of money. From an evolutionary standpoint, theft is a frequency-dependent strategy that may have been favored because it gave individuals a reproductively-relevant advantage in the competition for scarce resources. Although human groups do not tolerate the act of stealing, theft is still very common. Our study is rooted in Robert Frank's theory of the moral commitment problem. Moral emotions such as anticipated guilt are devices designed by evolutionary forces to motivate cooperative behavior in situations entailing a commitment problem...

Evolutionary models suggest that self-concept is a dynamic structure shaped jointly by interpersonal motivations and social challenges. Yet, empirical data assessing this claim are sparse. We examined this question in two studies. In study 1, participants (N = 386) generated spontaneous self-descriptions and filled out questionnaires assessing dominance and affiliation motivations. We found that self-descriptions categorized as communion or agency were associated with affiliation and dominance motivations, respectively...

Humans infected by Toxoplasma gondii express no specific symptoms but manifest higher incidence of many diseases, disorders and differences in personality and behavior. The aim of this study was to compare the political beliefs and values of Toxoplasma -infected and Toxoplasma -free participants. We measured beliefs and values of 2315 responders via an online survey (477 Toxoplasma -infected) using the Political Beliefs and Values Inventory (PI34). This study showed Toxoplasma -infected and Toxoplasma -free participants of our cross-sectional study differed in three of four factors of PI34, scoring higher in Tribalism and lower in Cultural liberalism and Anti-Authoritarianism...

Vocal characteristics are important cues to form social impressions. Previous studies indicated that men with masculine voices are perceived as engaging in higher rates of infidelity and being less committed to their relationship. In the current study, we examined how women in China perceive information regarding infidelity and relationship investment conveyed by the voices (voice pitch and vocal tract length) of males, and whether different vocal characteristics play a similar role in driving these impressions...

Exposure to environmental cues reflecting potential threats to future survivability is associated with a stronger endorsement of short-term mating strategies. Less is known, however, about the effects of safety and security cues. In four studies, we examined the effects of attachment-related security cues compared to neutral cues on preferences for short- and long-term mating strategies. Preferences were assessed using self-report and behavioral measures. In line with Life History Theory (LHT) and our hypotheses, exposure to attachment-related security cues was mainly associated with a stronger preference for long-term mating strategies and a weaker preference for short-term strategies...

Previous research has yielded mixed findings on the relationship between facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), an androgen-dependent feature, and risk-taking propensity. We argue that mixed findings might result from overlooked variables. Given that risk-taking propensity might be ultimately linked to a search for mating opportunities, we analyze if reproductive strategies moderate the relationship between fWHR and risk-taking propensity. Our results, obtained from a sample of 434 male participants, show a positive association between fWHR and recreational and social risk-taking only for men who are more motivated to focus on mating effort over offspring survival...

What features of people's childhood environments go on to shape their prosocial behavior during adulthood? Past studies linking childhood environment to adult prosocial behavior have focused primarily on adverse features, thereby neglecting the possible influence of exposure to enriched environments (e.g., access to material resources, experiences with rich cooperative relationships, and interactions with morally exemplary role models). Here, we expand the investigation of childhood environmental quality to include consideration of enriching childhood experiences and their relation to adult prosociality...

An ecological approach to social perception states that impressions of faces have functional value in that they guide adaptive behavior ensuring people's survival. For example, people may avoid others whose faces appear sick to avoid an illness representing a survival threat. We broadened the ecological approach in the current work by examining whether merely thinking about what illnesses on faces look like (i.e., how sickness on faces is represented ) holds functional value in guiding behavior to ensure survival...

The Behavioral Immune System (BIS, Schaller & Park, 2011) is a defense system whose function is to protect against pathogen exposure. Memory is an important component of this system (Fernandes et al., 2017). We investigated "contamination effects" in memory in relation to COVID-19. Photographs of everyday objects were shown to adults ( N  = 80) in the hands of either a healthy or a contagious person who had contracted SARS-CoV-2. "Contaminated objects" were recalled better than "non-contaminated objects" suggesting that a contamination effect in memory in humans is easily acquired in the absence of apparent visual cues of disease...

Sex differences in the use of competitive tactics have been well established. Although many factors may contribute to these sex differences, according to social role theory (SRT), stereotypes and expectations about men's and women's typical social roles are crucial. We addressed the potential impact of social roles by studying massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), a setting where individuals represent themselves with avatars and thus enjoy the opportunity to compete without regard to the typical expectations and behaviors associated with men's and women's roles...

Attachment styles are frequently viewed from within the evolutionary conceptual framework; however, their associations with evolutionary fitness are very rarely empirically explored. In the present research ( N  = 448), we analyzed the relations between romantic attachment (anxiety and avoidance) and various fitness indicators in Serbian adults: matting patterns (short and long-term mating), reproductive motivation, reproductive success (age of first birth, number of children, and grandchildren), and kin care (care for biological relatives in general and care for children)...

Intimate relationships are not always easy to keep. Accordingly, the current research has attempted to identify the strategies that people employ in order to improve their relationships with their partners. In particular, by using open-ended questionnaires in a sample of 219 Greek-speaking participants, we have identified 81 acts that people were likely to perform toward this end. Subsequently, using quantitative research methods in a sample of 511 Greek-speaking participants, we classified these acts into 14 broader relationship enhancement strategies...