A critique of life history approaches to human trait covariation

Abstract

Covariation of life history traits across species may be organised on a ‘fast-slow’ continuum. A burgeoning literature in psychology and social science argues that trait covariation should be similarly organised across individuals within human populations. Here we describe why extrapolating from inter-species to inter-individual trait covariation is not generally appropriate. The process that genetically tailors species to their environments (i.e. Darwinian evolution) is fundamentally different from processes that tailor individuals to their environments (e.g. developmental plasticity), so their outcomes in terms of trait covariation need not be parallel or even related. We discuss why correlational selection, physical linkage, pleiotropy, and non-random mating do not substantively affect this claim in the context of complex human traits. We also discuss life history trade-offs and their relation to inter-individual trait covariation. We conclude that researchers should avoid hypotheses and explanations that assume trait covariation will correspond across and within species, unless they can mount a theoretically coherent argument to support this claim in the context of their research question.

Environmental adversity is associated with lower investment in collective actions

“…Fourth, it is important to note that life-history theory has been hotly debated for theoretical, empirical and methodological reasons in recent years [ 112 – 116 ]. Of particular relevance to this paper is the debate questioning whether life-history theory can be applied to explain individual differences in humans.…”

“…Life-history theory was initially developed to explain differences between species [ 117 ] and later applied to individual differences in humans by invoking genetic factors, early environment conditions, or phenotypic plasticity [ 1 , 73 , 77 , 118 ], the latter two concepts being central to the present paper. One criticism laid out by Zietsch & Sidari [ 116 ] is that the processes that create between species trait covariation (i.e., Darwinian evolution) and within species trait covariation (e.g., developmental plasticity) are fundamentally different. In response to this, Del Giudice [ 119 ] has argued that the two processes can in fact be functionally related.…”

The Dark Tetrad and Male Clients of Female Sex Work

“…The fast–slow continuum of life history has also been criticized by some who argue that these strategies do not operate on a single continuum ( Holtzman and Senne, 2014 ). Scholars have further contended that the evolutionary processes that lead to differences between species in life history (Darwinian evolution) are not the same as those that lead to differences in psychological traits among members within a species (e.g., developmental plasticity; Zietsch and Sidari, 2019 ). Nonetheless, academics maintain that a life history framework is useful for understanding variability in personality traits in human and non-human animals ( Wolf et al, 2007 ; Vonk et al, 2017 ; Davis et al, 2019b ; Young et al, 2019 ; Del Giudice, 2020 ).…”

Life History and Multi-Partner Mating: A Novel Explanation for Moral Stigma Against Consensual Non-monogamy

“…Although recent work criticizes the validity of applying LHT to trait variation within humans (e.g., Nettle and Frankenhuis, 2019;Zietsch and Sidari, 2019), this predictive lens has been useful for studying psychosocial developmental plasticity within underprivileged environments (see Kuzawa and Bragg, 2012). Relative to a slow life history strategy, people with faster life history strategies prefer immediate over delayed rewards (Griskevicius et al, 2011), reproduce earlier (Boothroyd et al, 2013;Hehman and Salmon, 2019), have more casual sex (Dunkel et al, 2015;Salmon et al, 2016), experience earlier sexual debut and report greater sexual risk-taking (James et al, 2012), pursue social status via dominance rather than prestige (Lukaszewski, 2015), score higher on measures of psychopathy (e.g., boldness, aggression, and disinhibition; Mededović, 2018) and dark personality (i.e., impulsivity, antisociality, entitlement/exploitativeness, Machiavellianism, and aggression;McDonald et al, 2012), and are more likely to use psychoactive substances (Richardson et al, 2014).…”