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Life history theory is a mid-level evolutionary approach that is increasingly being utilized in psychology to examine ontogenetic development. In life history theory there are two prototypical strategies for facing the challenges of growth and reproduction. Differences in these strategies have primarily been thought to be caused by genetics, early life experiences, or a combination thereof as seen in gene x environment correlations and interactions. Although not exclusive of other views, an alternative view is that life history strategies afford a degree of behavioral flexibility and are adjusted based on situational cues. The cue examined in the current study was life expectancy. In support of this idea, when life expectancy was manipulated a change in mating preferences was recorded that was in line with the hypothesis.

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There has been a recent increase in interest in the psychological differences and antecedents related to political orientation. Personality, disgust sensitivity, attachment, and closeness to parents have all been found or have been theorized to be predictive of political orientation. These variables and the additional roles played by normative identity style and parental identification were examined. The results showed that normative identity style is associated with political orientation and that the role played by parental identification depends on the perceived parental political ranking, the gender of the parent, and the measure used to examine political orientation. No support was found for Lakoff's (2002) model of parenting and political orientation.Recently there has been a surge in interest in the psychological foundations of political orientation (Jost 2006). While a significant portion of the variance in political orientation is explained by individual genetic differences (Alford et al. 2005), heritability estimates of political attitudes show that both shared and nonshared environmental effects explain sizable amounts of variance for attitudes on the majority of political issues studied. Also, genes do not directly influence political orientation (i.e., there are not genes for being a Democrat or Republican) and therefore the variance explained by heritability estimates on political attitudes is due to any number of mediating psychological variables. The search for these Curr Psychol (2012) 31:65-78