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. 2017 Jan;15(1):1474704916677342.
doi: 10.1177/1474704916677342.

Human Life History Strategies

Kristine J Chua  1 , Aaron W Lukaszewski  2 , DeMond M Grant  1 , Oliver Sng  3
Affiliations

Human Life History Strategies

Kristine J Chua et al. Evol Psychol. 2017 Jan.

Abstract

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.

Keywords: health; life history calibration; life history theory; predictive adaptive response; psychometric assessment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Path model illustrating direct effects of environmental harshness on life history strategy and indirect effects through health for Study 1 (MTurk mothers). Dashed lines represents no significance. Standardized path coefficients for direct paths are shown. Latent variables are represented in ovals, and the observed variables are represented in rectangles. *p < .05. **p < .01.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Path model illustrating direct effects of environmental harshness on life history strategy and indirect effects through health for Study 2 (undergraduates). Dashed lines represents no significance. Standardized path coefficients for direct paths are shown. Latent variables are represented in ovals, and the observed variables are represented in rectangles. *p < .05. **p < .01.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Path model illustrating direct effects of environmental harshness on life history strategy and indirect effects through health for Study 3 (European Values Study). Standardized path coefficients for direct paths are shown. Latent variables are represented in ovals, and the observed variables are represented in rectangles.*p < .001.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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