Sports are an excellent venue for demonstrating evolutionary principles to audiences not familiar with academic research. Team sports and sports fandom feature dynamics of in-group loyalty and intergroup competition, influenced by our evolved coalitional psychology. We predicted that reactions to expressions signaling mutual team/group allegiance would vary as a function of the territorial context. Reactions should become more prevalent, positive, and enthusiastic as one moves from the home territory to a contested area, and from a contested area to a rival's territory during active rival engagement. We also predicted that men would be more responsive than women based on sex differences in evolved coalitional psychology. The research team visited public places immediately prior to 2016-2017 collegiate football and basketball games. A male research confederate wore a sweatshirt displaying the logo of one of the competing university teams and vocalized the team's most popular slogan when he saw a fan displaying similar logos. Observers followed 5 m behind, recording reactions (N = 597) and response positivity/enthusiasm. Reaction tone was most positive in the rival territory, least positive in the home territory, and intermediate in the periphery and contested territory. Rates of "no reaction" were lowest in the rival territory but were highest in the periphery. Men had higher reaction rates and more positive and enthusiastic reaction tones than women. Reactions generally followed predictions based on expected signal value. This project provides evidence that coalitional psychology influences dynamics related to university sports team rivalries and that context matters for expressions of alliance.
Recent policing incidents have increased attention to relationships between community members and police. Academic research on attitudes toward police predominantly follows Tyler’s process-based model of policing; examining the influence of sociodemographic factors on perceptions of procedural justice, whether or not police are fair and trustworthy in their interaction with community members. We developed additional domains of attitudes toward police using evolutionary life history theory (LHT) as a basis for understanding relations with authority figures. We focus on the social roles of police officers in their communities: maintenance of the stability of society, the benefits in social status derived from the role of police officer, and the use of institutional power to exploit community residents and gain resources illicitly. Our new domains demonstrated explanatory power beyond perceptions of procedural justice, demographic factors, and a general life history speed indicator, in both undergraduate (N = 581) and Internet- recruited German (N = 471) samples.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.