Do perceived control and time orientation mediate the effect of early life adversity on reproductive behaviour and health status? Insights from the European Value Study and the European Social Survey.

Abstract

An association between early life adversity and a range of coordinated behavioural responses that favour reproduction at the cost of a degraded health is often reported in humans. Recent theoretical works have proposed that perceived control – i.e., people’s belief that they are in control of external events that affect their lives – and time orientation – i.e., their tendency to live on a day-to-day basis or to plan for the future – are two closely related psychological traits mediating the associations between early life adversity, reproductive behaviours and health status. However, the empirical validity of this hypothesis remains to be demonstrated. In the present study, we examine the role of perceived control and time orientation in mediating the effects of early life adversity on a trade-off between reproductive traits (age at 1st childbirth, number of children) and health status by applying a cross-validated structural equation model frame on two large public survey datasets, the European Values Study (EVS, final N = 43 084) and the European Social Survey (ESS, final N = 31 065). Our results show that early life adversity, perceived control and time orientation are all associated with a trade-off favouring reproduction over health. However, perceived control and time orientation mediate only a small portion of the effect of early life adversity on the reproduction-health trade-off.

Choice seeking is motivated by the intrinsic need for personal control

“…Thus, individuals with an internal locus of control tend to believe that they, as opposed to external factors such as chance or other agents, control the events that affect their lives. Crucially, the notion of locus of control makes specific predictions about the relationship between preference for choice-choice being an opportunity to exercise control-and the environment: individuals should express a weaker preference for choice when the environment is adverse, stressful or unpredictable (47). This prediction is consistent with what is known about the influence of environmental adversity on control externalization: individuals exposed to greater environmental instabilities tend to believe that external and uncontrollable forces are the primary causes of events that affect their lives, as opposed to themselves (48).…”

Specifying the timescale of early life unpredictability helps explain the development of internalising and externalising behaviours and their link with reproductive effort in adolescence

“…Harshness refers to extrinsic morbidity-mortality, which encompasses all external factors causing death and disability in a given population and that are beyond the individuals' control, while unpredictability refers to the rates at which harshness varies over time and space (Ellis et al 2009). There is ample empirical evidence for the association between these dimensions and 'fast' human life histories, that favour reproductive efforts and short-term goals, to the detriment of somatic maintenance efforts and longer-term goals (Belsky et al, 2012;Farkas et al, 2021;Li et al, 2018;Mell et al, 2018;Nettle, 2010;Szepsenwol et al, 2017). It turns out that harsh and unpredictable environments can contribute, via extreme levels of both physiological and psychological components of fast LH strategies, to a host of physical and mental health outcomes (Belsky et al, 2012;Del Giudice & Ellis, 2016;Pepper & Nettle, 2017).…”

The Cognitive, Ecological, and Developmental Origins of Self-Disturbance in Borderline Personality Disorder

“…Even though this issue has not yet been directly studied, some recent findings suggest that early life adversity may also play a role in the emergence of agency-based symptoms. For example, there is some evidence to support the hypothesis that early life adversity promotes the belief of a diminished personal control over one's life (108).…”

“…From a biological fitness perspective, it makes sense for these individuals not to risk delaying the satisfaction of immediate needs to invest time and energy in long-term activities whose pay-offs are likely to change unpredictably. Some empirical data appears to support this hypothesis by showing that people who have experienced environmental uncertainty or low perceived control are more likely than others to act on a day-to-day basis in various domains such as health, reproduction, social or economic decision-making (108,(116)(117)(118)(119)(120)(121)(122)(123)(124)(125). Interestingly, such a present-future trade-off clearly appears to be at play in people with BPD (18).…”

“…In addition, a recent metaanalysis of 65 studies has shown that experiencing adverse events (particularly traumatic events) at an earlier age significantly accelerates the onset of puberty as well as biological aging (indexed by telomere length and age of DNA methylation) in both women and men (146). Finally, a recent study of large representative samples of the European population indicated that a decrease in perceived control over life events, as well as a psychological focus on the present time, were both related to a life-history trade-off characterized by poorer health status, younger age at first reproduction, and higher fertility (108).…”