Evolutionary Psychopathology

Giudice, Marco Del

doi:10.1093/med-psych/9780190246846.001.0001

Cited by 92 publications

(148 citation statements)

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“…One existing explanation for mean‐level sex differences in insecure attachment is based in an evolutionary, life‐history theory account of interpersonal development (Belsky, Steinberg, & Draper, ; Del Giudice, , ; Del Giudice & Belsky, ; Euler, ). Life‐history theory emphasizes an individual's life‐history strategy, which is thought to be driven by the limited amount of resources available to all organisms, and the way in which they will allocate their resources in response to their environments to maximize their (genetic) fitness (Del Giudice, ). In brief, sex differences in insecure attachment are thought to emerge as a result of distinctive sex‐linked behavioral strategies for promoting genetic fitness via pair‐bonding and reproduction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Antecedents of attachment states of mind in normative‐risk and high‐risk caregiving: cross‐race and cross‐sex generalizability in two longitudinal studies

Haltigan

Roisman

Groh

et al. 2019

Child Psychology Psychiatry

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Background: Longitudinal investigations of relatively large typical-risk (e.g., Booth-LaForce & Roisman, 2014) and higher-risk samples (e.g., Raby et al., 2017;Roisman et al., 2017) have produced evidence consistent with the claim that attachment states of mind in adolescence and young adulthood, as measured by the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), are associated with the quality of caregiving experienced during childhood. None of these studies, however, has examined whether such associations are consistent across sex and/or race, as would be expected in light of the sensitivity hypothesis of attachment theory. Methods: We examine whether sex or race moderates previously reported links between caregiving and AAI states of mind in two longitudinal studies (pooled N = 1,058) in which caregiving was measured either within (i.e., observed [in]sensitive care) or outside (i.e., childhood maltreatment) of the normative range of caregiving experiences. Results: Hierarchical moderated regression analyses in both longitudinal cohorts provided evidence that maternal insensitivity and experiences of maltreatment were prospectively associated with dismissing and preoccupied states of mind in adolescence, as hypothesized. Moreover, these associations were generally comparable in magnitude for African American and White/non-Hispanic participants and were not conditional on participants' biological sex. Conclusions: Both maternal insensitivity and the experience of maltreatment increased risk for insecure attachment states of mind in adolescence. Moreover, our analyses provided little evidence that either participant race or participant sex assigned at birth moderated these nontrivial associations between measures of the quality of experienced caregiving and insecure attachment states of mind in adolescence. These findings provide support for the sensitivity hypothesis of attachment theory and inform the cultural universality hypothesis of attachment processes. Cross-sex and cross-race validity of the AAI N = 759. M, maternal. Participant sex-coded as 0 = boys, 1 = girls. Participant racecoded as 0 = African American, 1 = White/Caucasian. Recent longitudinal investigations have provided evidence that attachment states of mind in adolescenceand young adulthood are associated with the quality of caregiving experienced during childhood. No prior studies, however, have examined whether such associations are consistent across race and/or sex, as would be expected in light of the universality hypothesis of attachment theory.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Antecedents of attachment states of mind in normative‐risk and high‐risk caregiving: cross‐race and cross‐sex generalizability in two longitudinal studies

Haltigan

Roisman

Groh

et al. 2019

Child Psychology Psychiatry

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“…Hence, in addition to the small sample size already referred to, our failure to detect higher intrasexual competition for mates in AN may have other explanations. These include: (1) contrary to SCH, AN, and BN may have distinct evolutionary roots; or (2) the current classifications of eating disorders may not reflect the deep structure of these disorders ( Del Giudice, 2018 ).…”

Section: Limitations and Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hence, the application of the concept of life history can help fine-tune the SCH where BN patients pursue a fast life history strategy and compete for short term mates through the display of immediate fecundity whereas AN patients pursue a slow life history strategy and compete for long-term mates through the display of thinness and hence reproductive potential ( Del Giudice, 2014 ). It is, therefore, hypothesized that BN patients are engaged in future discounting and thus engaging in immediate reproductive effort whereas AN patients in their pursuit of a slow life history strategy are forgoing current reproduction in favor of doing so in the future ( Del Giudice, 2018 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolutionary Psychology of Eating Disorders: An Explorative Study in Patients With Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa

et al. 2018

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Prior research on non-clinical samples has lent support to the sexual competition hypothesis for eating disorders (SCH) where the drive for thinness can be seen as an originally adaptive strategy for women to preserve a nubile female shape, which, when driven to an extreme, may cause eating disorders. Restrictive versus impulsive eating behavior may also be relevant for individual differences in allocation of resources to either mating effort or somatic growth, reflected in an evolutionary concept called “Life History Theory” (LHT). In this study, we aimed to test the SCH and predictions from LHT in female patients with clinically manifest eating disorders. Accordingly, 20 women diagnosed with anorexia nervosa (AN), 20 with bulimia nervosa (BN), and 29 age-matched controls completed a package of questionnaires comprising measures for behavioral features and attitudes related to eating behavior, intrasexual competition, life history strategy, executive functioning and mating effort. In line with predictions, we found that relatively faster life history strategies were associated with poorer executive functioning, lower perceived own mate value, greater intrasexual competition for mates but not for status, and, in part, with greater disordered eating behavior. Comparisons between AN and BN revealed that individuals with BN tended to pursue a “fast” life history strategy, whereas people with AN were more similar to controls in pursuing a “slow” life history strategy. Moreover, intrasexual competition for mates was significantly predicted by the severity of disordered eating behavior. Together, our findings lend partial support to the SCH for eating disorders. We discuss the implications and limitations of our study findings.

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“…Without doubt, current approaches such as cybernetic and active inference models embody important functional principles; but they usually stop at the proximate level of individual behavior, and fail to explicitly consider the ultimate source of function in living organisms-evolution by natural selection. Like the broader disciplines of psychology and medicine (Brüne & Schiefenhovel, 2019;Buss, 2015;Stearns & Medzhitov, 2016), psychiatry and psychopathology should embrace the evolutionary metatheory, and recast mental disorders within a broader, naturalistic understanding of function and dysfunction (Brüne, 2015;Brüne et al, 2012;Del Giudice, 2016a, 2018Durisko et al, 2016;McGuire & Troisi, 1998;Nesse, 2019;Nesse & Jackson, 2006).…”

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confidence: 99%

An Integrative Evolutionary Framework for Psychopathology

Giudice¹,

Haltigan²

2020

Preprint

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The field of psychopathology is in a transformative phase, and is witnessing a renewed surge of interest in theoretical models of mental disorders. While many interesting proposals are competing for attention in the literature, they tend to focus narrowly on the proximate level of analysis and lack a broader understanding of biological function. In this paper, we present an integrative framework for mental disorders built on concepts from life history theory, and describe a taxonomy of mental disorders based on its principles, the Fast-Slow-Defense model (FSD). The FSD integrates psychopathology with normative individual differences in personality and behavior, and allows researchers to draw principled distinctions between broad clusters of disorders, as well as identify functional subtypes within current diagnostic categories. Simulation work demonstrates that the model can explain the large-scale structure of comorbidity, including the apparent emergence of a general “p factor” of psychopathology. A life history approach also provides novel integrative insights into the role of environmental risk/protective factors and the developmental trajectories of various disorders. After describing the main features of the FSD model and illustrating its application to the classification of autism and schizophrenia, we juxtapose it with the recent Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP). We highlight points of difference and similarity, and show how a functional approach helps resolve inconsistencies within a parsimonious account. The FSD model has great potential to further understanding of the development and expression of psychopathology across the lifespan.

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Evolutionary Psychopathology

Cited by 92 publications

References 0 publications

Antecedents of attachment states of mind in normative‐risk and high‐risk caregiving: cross‐race and cross‐sex generalizability in two longitudinal studies

Antecedents of attachment states of mind in normative‐risk and high‐risk caregiving: cross‐race and cross‐sex generalizability in two longitudinal studies

Evolutionary Psychology of Eating Disorders: An Explorative Study in Patients With Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa

An Integrative Evolutionary Framework for Psychopathology

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