Life History Theory

Kavanagh, Phillip S.; Kahl, Bianca L.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1914-1

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…If an individual chooses to engage in tasks to increase fertility, such as increasing mating frequency, they may be simultaneously compromising survival due to a cost to immune functioning. Each of these fundamental trade-offs and selected traits contribute to an individual's fitness, but they do involve substantial energy investment, invoking both costs and benefits (Kavanagh and Kahl 2016).…”

Section: Life History Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Ego

Patrick¹,

Diamond²

2020

Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

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Various theories and models of evolutionary psychology posit that personality traits are part of adaptive strategies regulating behavioral adaptation to various environmental (ecological and/or social) conditions encountered during childhood.Life history theory provides the most comprehensive framework to understand how circumstances experienced in early life might influence personality. It proposes that personality traits develop into a certain profile depending on different conditional factors. Actual circumstances define resource allocation, that is, how the individual utilizes available resources (e.g., food, parental support, etc.) in order to maximize survival and/or reproduction. The most dominant environmental components to affect allocation strategies are level of mortality, level of stability or predictability of conditions, and level of heterogeneity of the trait in the local environment. Less favorable conditions (i.e., higher mortality rates and less parental investment) are suggested to form personality traits linked to more exploitative behavioral strategies with unrestrictive sexual behavior, whereas more advantageous circumstances proposedly shape rather prosocial behaviors and more restricted sexuality. Early childhood experiences (i.e., quality of caregiving, low socioeconomic status of the family) can be seen as indicators for such environmental factors which might also promote the development of personality profiles linked to certain life history strategies.

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Section: Life History Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Ego

Patrick¹,

Diamond²

2020

Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

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“…In recent era, comparatively meteoric developments in modern living circumstances have vastly outpaced genetic/psychological alterations such that people are still primarily adapted to natural settings than otherwise in the current world (O, 2018;Spinella, 2003). Indeed, the concept of an evolutionary mismatch is gaining ground in psychological sciences (see Li, van Vugt, & Colarelli, 2018), and has recently been proposed in the context of the development of various psychopathologies (Kavanagh & Kahl, 2016 and other wellbeing issues (e.g., Li, Lim, Tsai, & O, 2015;Tsatsoulis, Mantzaris, Bellou, & Andrikoula, 2013).…”

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing the unsolved problems hypothesis: The evolutionary life issues-mitigating function of nature exposure and its relationship with human well-being

Jiaqing

Kavanagh

Brüne

et al. 2019

Urban Forestry & Urban Greening

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Theories on the benefits of spending time in natural settingsa growingly crucial topic in a progressively urbanized worldhave been developed with varying success, and none could comprehensively illuminate the evolutionary underpinnings of this phenomenon. This paper posits that the alleviation of unsolved life problems by means of unique personal (imaginativeness) and environmental (nature exposure) factors and their synthesis, so as to free up opportunities for other evolutionarily-essential tasks in humans, is posited to be pivotalthe unsolved problems hypothesis. Six hundred participants completed a study testing these assumptions on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Results highlight the relevance of unsolved existential issues in environmental (but not personal or integrative) influences on the majority of well-being indicators (e.g., extent of psychotic symptoms, annual income and procreative outcomes). Findings could initiate new lines of enquiry to unravel the evolutionary mechanism underlying a phenomenon that has huge implications for human functioning and well-being.

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“…We are going to argue that despite these advances in thinking, there is still a missing link. While we know that there are certain behaviors and biological markers associated with both fast and slow life history strategies, the question remains, “what causes some individuals to experience psychological distress, whereas others do not?” After all, having a fast life strategy is neither good nor bad from an evolutionary perspective—it is just adaptive 1 ( Kavanagh and Kahl, 2016 ). Is the missing link our expectations – a mismatch between our current life history strategy, the current environment, and a failure to appropriately adapt?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These terms were later extrapolated to be r -selected, or fast, and K -selected, or slow, strategies with specific reproductive and developmental behaviors associated with each strategy ( Del Giudice et al, 2015 ). More recently the r -/ K - categorical distinctions have been dropped in favor of conceptualizing life history strategies as being on a fast-slow continuum; especially when referring to humans, who are after all quintessentially a slow species by definition ( Kavanagh and Kahl, 2016 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…People with a slower life history strategy generally experience slower development with delayed maturation, and are more future orientated ( Del Giudice et al, 2015 ). Although humans are a slow strategy species we do present with a large degree of within species variation ( Kavanagh and Kahl, 2016 ). It is important to note that neither fast nor slow strategies are fundamentally better – the benefits of each strategy are contingent on the individual’s environment ( Del Giudice and Ellis, 2014 ; Sung et al, 2016 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Are Expectations the Missing Link between Life History Strategies and Psychopathology?

Kavanagh

Kahl

2018

Front. Psychol.

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Despite advances in knowledge and thinking about using life history theory to explain psychopathology there is still a missing link. That is, we all have a life history strategy, but not all of us develop mental health problems. We propose that the missing link is expectations – a mismatch between expected environmental conditions (including social) set by variations in life history strategies and the current environmental conditions. The mismatch hypothesis has been applied at the biological level in terms of health and disease and we believe that it can also be applied more broadly at the psychological level in terms of perceived expectations in the social environment and the resulting distress—psychopathology—that manifests when our expectations are not met.

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Life History Theory

Cited by 10 publications

References 33 publications

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Testing the unsolved problems hypothesis: The evolutionary life issues-mitigating function of nature exposure and its relationship with human well-being

Are Expectations the Missing Link between Life History Strategies and Psychopathology?

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