Big Five Traits Related to Short-Term Mating: From Personality to Promiscuity across 46 Nations

Schmitt, David P.; Shackelford, Todd K.

doi:10.1177/147470490800600204

Cited by 152 publications

(154 citation statements)

References 86 publications

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“…One possibility is that neurotic women seek more sexual intercourse than others, leading them to produce more children in social systems where the access to modern contraception remains limited. Indeed, previous research has linked neuroticism and its correlates of attachment anxiety to high sexual motivation (35) and increased short-term mating in the United States and Western Europe (36). Another possibility is that, in social environments where reproduction is highly valued, women want more babies (and behave accordingly) to outcompete their co-wives.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personality and reproductive success in a high-fertility human population

Alvergne

Jokela

Lummaa

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

156

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The existence of interindividual differences in personality traits poses a challenge to evolutionary thinking. Although research on the ultimate consequences of personality differences in nonhuman animals has recently undergone a surge of interest, our understanding of whether and how personality influences reproductive decisions in humans has remained limited and informed primarily by modern societies with low mortality-fertility schedules. Taking an evolutionary approach, we use data from a contemporary polygynous high-fertility human population living in rural Senegal to investigate whether personality dimensions are associated with key life-history traits in humans, i.e., quantity and quality of offspring. We show that personality dimensions predict reproductive success differently in men and women in such societies and, in women, are associated with a trade-off between offspring quantity and quality. In women, neuroticism positively predicts the number of children, both between and within polygynous families. Furthermore, within the low social class, offspring quality (i.e., child nutritional status) decreases with a woman's neuroticism, indicating a reproductive trade-off between offspring quantity and quality. Consistent with this, maximal fitness is achieved by women at an intermediate neuroticism level. In men, extraversion was found to be a strong predictor of high social class and polygyny, with extraverted men producing more offspring than their introverted counterparts. These results have implications for the consideration of alternative adaptive hypotheses in the current debate on the maintenance of personality differences and the role of individual factors in fertility patterns in contemporary humans.Big Five dimensions | life-history traits | polygyny I ndividual personality differences [also termed behavioral syndromes, temperament, or coping styles (1)] are rapidly becoming one of the most frequently studied factors underlying phenotypic variation within animal populations (2). The existence of persistent variation in personality traits poses the question of how natural selection acts on those traits and how the alternative phenotypes can coexist (3). A number of studies in nonhuman animals (>30, reviewed in ref. 4) indicate that differences in individual personality traits are associated with fitness outcomes that vary according to the individual characteristics or environments, suggesting that adaptive explanation for the interindividual variation in animal personality may be likely. In contrast, although human sciences have a long history of investigating individual personality differences from a psychological and neurobiological perspective (5), surprisingly few empirical studies have examined the ultimate causes of variation in personality dimensions in humans to date (6-9). Such knowledge, however, is critical to understanding how natural selection could shape interindividual differences in response to socioecological pressures not only from an evolutionary biological perspective but also...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personality and reproductive success in a high-fertility human population

Alvergne

Jokela

Lummaa

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

156

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“…In addition, women's personality may play a role in their sexual behaviors. Schmitt and Shackelford (2008), for instance, found extraversion to be related to sexual behaviors, with extraverted women being more promiscuous. It therefore seems wise for future studies to study these additional variables.…”

Section: Limitations and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women, Sex and Modern Society: The Sex Lives of Readers of a Dutch Women's Magazine

Dijkstra

Barelds²

2011

Int. J. of Sexual Hlth.

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“…It may predict more short-term mating [97] or accelerate childbirth [94], yet has been found to depress fertility altogether [96]. In Senegal [86], neurotic women had more children but, if they were low status, they had poorer quality offspring, perhaps indicating a trade-off.…”

Section: (D) Personalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolved psychological mechanisms of fertility motivation: hunting for causation in a sea of correlation

McAllister

Pepper

Virgo

et al. 2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Cultural, ecological, familial and physiological factors consistently influence fertility behaviours, however, the proximate psychological mechanisms underlying fertility decisions in humans are poorly understood. Understanding the psychological mechanisms underlying human fertility may illuminate the final processes by which some of these known predictors have their influence. To date, research into the psychological mechanisms underlying fertility has been fragmented. Aspects of reproductive psychology have been examined by researchers in a range of fields, but the findings have not been systematically integrated in one review. We provide such a review, examining current theories and research on psychological mechanisms of fertility. We examine the methods and populations used in the research, as well as the disciplines and theoretical perspectives from which the work has come. Much of the work that has been done to date is methodologically limited to examining correlations between ecological, social and economic factors and fertility. We propose, and support with examples, the use of experimental methods to differentiate causal factors from correlates. We also discuss weaknesses in the experimental research, including limited work with non-WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) populations.

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Big Five Traits Related to Short-Term Mating: From Personality to Promiscuity across 46 Nations

Cited by 152 publications

References 86 publications

Personality and reproductive success in a high-fertility human population

Personality and reproductive success in a high-fertility human population

Women, Sex and Modern Society: The Sex Lives of Readers of a Dutch Women's Magazine

The evolved psychological mechanisms of fertility motivation: hunting for causation in a sea of correlation

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