A growing body of empirical literature supports the validity of psychometric assessments of human life history strategies, but no comprehensive quantitative summaries have yet been published. We present a psychometric validation study of a 20-item Short-Form of the Arizona Life History Battery (ALHB), the Mini-K, using meta-analytic procedures to survey a multiplicity of published and unpublished studies on English-speaking North American college student samples. Correlations between the Mini-K with other measures of related constructs describe the dimensions of the broader conceptual framework encompassed by human life history strategy and empirically establish a nomological network surrounding the Mini-K by quantitatively characterizing its system of relations to related and unrelated constructs. These constructs include the General Factor of Personality, Mutualistic and Antagonistic Social Strategies, Emotional Intelligence, Executive Functions, Covitality, and Evaluative Self-Assessment as well as other indicators of human life history strategy, including all those comprising the ALHB and many others not used in the ALHB, and indicators of one’s Romantic Partner’s life history strategy. Although a single measure cannot capture something as complex and multifaceted as life history strategy, both the Mini-K and the ALHB of which it is a part, perform as predicted by evolutionary psychological theory within this wider conceptual framework.

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a b s t r a c tLife History Strategy (LHS) describes a cluster of evolved traits whose adaptive function is to facilitate an organism's reproduction. Individuals who allocate more resources towards somatic and parental/nepotistic effort and less towards mating effort are described as slow life history strategists, while those with the opposite resource allocation pattern are described as fast life history strategists. There are many measures purported to measure individual differences in LHS, however these have not yet been systematically compared. In this paper we compare the Arizona Life History Battery (ALHB), Mini-K, High-K Strategy Scale, and two Super-K Factors and test the internal consistency or measurement model structure of each measure, and the convergent validity between the measures. We found all measures show adequate internal consistency and measurement model structure and in general, the ALHB, Mini-K, and one Super-K Factor show the strongest convergence between the measures. Implications are discussed.

We integrate life history (LH) theory with “hot/cool” systems theory of self-regulation to predict sexually and socially coercive behaviors, including intimate partner violence (IPV) and interpersonal aggression (IPA). LH theory predicts that a variety of traits form LH strategies: adaptively coordinated behavioral clusters arrayed on a continuum from slow to fast. We test structural models examining 2 propositions: (a) “hot” cognitive processes, promoted by faster LH strategies, increase the likelihood of sexually/socially coercive behaviors that make up IPV and IPA; (b) “cool” cognitive processes, promoted by slower LH strategies, buffer against the likelihood of sexually/socially coercive behaviors that make up IPV and IPA. We present single and multisample structural equations models (SEMs and MSEMs) testing hypothesized causal relations among these theoretically specified predictors with IPV and IPA. Study 1 develops a Structural Equation Model for IPV; Study 2 extends the model to IPA using MSEM and provides 5 cross-cultural constructive replications of the findings. Integrating LH theory and hot/cool systems analysis of cognitive processes is a promising and productive heuristic for future research on IPV and IPA perpetration and victimization.