Substance, History, and Politics

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine the relations between two approaches to the measurement of life history (LH) strategies: A traditional approach, termed here the biodemographic approach, measures developmental characteristics like birthweight, gestation length, interbirth intervals, pubertal timing, and sexual debut, and a psychological approach measures a suite of cognitive and behavioral traits such as altruism, sociosexual orientation, personality, mutualism, familial relationships, and religiosity. The biodemographic approach also tends not to invoke latent variables, whereas the psychological approach typically relies heavily upon them. Although a large body of literature supports both approaches, they are largely separate. This review examines the history and relations between biodemographic and psychological measures of LH, which remain murky at best. In doing so, we consider basic questions about the nature of LH strategies: What constitutes LH strategy (or perhaps more importantly, what does not constitute LH strategy)? What is gained or lost by including psychological measures in LH research? Must these measures remain independent or should they be used in conjunction as complementary tools to test tenets of LH theory? Although definitive answers will linger, we hope to catalyze an explicit discussion among LH researchers and to provoke novel research avenues that combine the strengths each approach brings to this burgeoning field.

Life-history theory in psychology and evolutionary biology: one research programme or two?

“…The justifications rely on plausible analogies (it is intuitive that the effect of personal environment on an individual ought to be the same as the effect of selective environments on populations, or that you should reproduce fast if you are likely to die sooner). The critiques often come down to empirical matters such as how much variation in individual psychological differences can or cannot be explained by a principal fast-slow axis [21,64,65] and what that means [62]. Thus, LHT-P and LHT-E are currently talking past one another.…”

Do Criminals Live Faster Than Soldiers and Firefighters?

“…Although researchers agree that, in terms of analyzing LH strategy, both psychological and biodemographic variables are important, and that relationship between them is worth investigating (Black et al 2017;Copping et al 2017;Figueredo et al 2015), the actual existence and nature of such relationship is unclear. Some argue that since traditional biodemographic variables create the basis of LH theory, omitting them in the analysis might run a risk that the examined psychosocial variables are not indicators of LH strategies but reflect something else, such as personality or lifestyle (Copping et al 2014(Copping et al , 2017.…”

The evolution of life history theory: Bibliometric analysis of an interdisciplinary research area

“…Réale et al [44] point out that the original source of the pace of life idea is the 1970s idea of r-versus K-strategists. Black et al [36] make exactly the same point with respect to the human fast-slow psychological paradigm; indeed, early names for that paradigm were 'r-K' or 'differential K' theory [45,46]. Thus, we would argue that the human research in clusters B2 and B5 of our dataset belongs more logically with the non-human pace of life research than it does with life history theory as that term is typically used in non-human biology.…”