A Double-Track Pathway to Fast Strategy in Humans and Its Personality Correlates

Abstract

The fast–slow paradigm of life history (LH) focuses on how individuals grow, mate, and reproduce at different paces. This paradigm can contribute substantially to the field of personality and individual differences provided that it is more strictly based on evolutionary biology than it has been so far. Our study tested the existence of a fast–slow continuum underlying indicators of reproductive effort—offspring output, age at first reproduction, number and stability of sexual partners—in 1,043 outpatients with healthy to severely disordered personalities. Two axes emerged reflecting a double-track pathway to fast strategy, based on restricted and unrestricted sociosexual strategies. When rotated, the fast–slow and sociosexuality axes turned out to be independent. Contrary to expectations, neither somatic effort—investment in status, material resources, social capital, and maintenance/survival—was aligned with reproductive effort, nor a clear tradeoff between current and future reproduction was evident. Finally, we examined the association of LH axes with seven high-order personality pathology traits: negative emotionality, impulsivity, antagonism, persistence-compulsivity, subordination, and psychoticism. Persistent and disinhibited subjects appeared as fast-restricted and fast-unrestricted strategists, respectively, whereas asocial subjects were slow strategists. Associations of LH traits with each other and with personality are far more complex than usually assumed in evolutionary psychology.

The evolution of personality disorders: A review of proposals

“…Accordingly, selective pressures on “pathological” traits are not homogeneously purifying, as would be expected for a disease ( 15 ). Instead, some traits are selected for, others against, and still others show tradeoffs ( 12 , 14 , 102 , 104 , 247 ). Thus, in the eyes of evolution, many PDs are merely unpleasant or socially undesirable conditions ( 8 , 9 , 25 ).…”

“…Strategies at the fast pole of the continuum are believed to maximize fitness under adverse environmental conditions by prioritizing current over future reproduction, mating over parenting, and quantity over quality. Indeed, individuals showing externalizing traits are not well equipped for retaining long-term partners, raising children, or preparing for the future, but they are for short-term mating or opportunistic gains ( 12 , 104 , 247 ). Per contra, anxious temperaments, conscientiousness, agreeableness, autism spectrum disorders, depression, anorexia, and obsessive-compulsive traits have been related to the slow pole ( 240 , 244 , 245 , 248 ).…”

“…This does not stem from life history theory, which is based solely on biodemographic indicators ( 249 , 250 ). In fact, fast features such as early life reproduction and increased reproductive output are also associated with persistence, industriousness, and religiousness ( 247 , 251 ), so the evidence should be interpreted with caution. Furthermore, it has also been suggested that fitness tradeoffs might be less stable and more complex than previously thought ( 231 , 252 ).…”

Evolving motivations? Cross-cultural data show links between fundamental social motives and fertility.

“…Evolutionary psychologists often assume that short-term mating tends to be related to higher reproductive success as well: short-term mating is thought to be a part of the “fast” life history pathway characterized by earlier reproduction and a higher number of offspring (Lawson, 2011). However, the existing data do not support this assumption: short-term mating (measured as the number of sexual partners) tends to be unrelated or even negatively associated to fertility (Gutiérrez et al, 2022; Međedović, 2021b). Conversely, the same studies showed that long-term mating (operationalized as the duration of the longest partner relationship) is positively related to reproductive success and earlier age of first reproduction.…”

Mating Performance and Singlehood Across 14 Nations

“…To use one example, people today would look for mates online (Dinh et al, 2021), which could potentially give them hundreds or even thousands of options. Such a plethora of options may tax individuals' mental hardware, which has not evolved to deal with so many choices, resulting in people doing poorly in finding mates online (Thomas et al, 2022; for further discussion on mating and reproductive success in contemporary societies, see Gutiérrez et al, 2022;Međedovic ́, 2021Međedovic ́, , 2022.…”