Does a fitness factor contribute to the association between intelligence and health outcomes? Evidence from medical abnormality counts among 3654 US Veterans

Arden, Rosalind; Gottfredson, Linda S.; Miller, Geoffrey F.

doi:10.1016/j.intell.2009.03.008

Cited by 58 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(36 reference statements)

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“…Behaviour genetic and molecular genetic studies will appear that ask whether the phenotypic correlations between intelligence and health measures have any genetic basis. Some already predict that this is the case, and such authors view intelligence as one aspect of a more general fitness factor that is a signal for sexual selection [37,38]. …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The researchers on allostatic load emphasise the cross-system covariance that is at the heart of the system integrity ideas: ‘surprisingly little attention has been paid to the health impacts of the co-occurrence of physiological dysregulation across multiple systems’ (p. 463). And system integrity is also akin to the idea of a general fitness, ‘f’ , factor suggested by others [37,38]. This general fitness factor is conceptualized by the authors as being caused by ‘mutation load’ [38].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…And system integrity is also akin to the idea of a general fitness, ‘f’ , factor suggested by others [37,38]. This general fitness factor is conceptualized by the authors as being caused by ‘mutation load’ [38]. …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Looking for ‘System Integrity’ in Cognitive Epidemiology

Deary¹

2012

Gerontology

101

100

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Background: In the last decade, an increasing body of empirical evidence has gathered to establish an association between higher cognitive ability in youth and later mortality, less morbidity and better health. This field of research is known as cognitive epidemiology. The causes of these associations are not understood. Objective: Among the possible explanations for the associations is the suggestion that they might, in part, be accounted for by general bodily ‘system integrity’. That is, scoring well on cognitive ability tests might be an indicator of a more general tendency for complex systems in the body to be efficient. The construct of system integrity is critically assessed. Method: This viewpoint provides a critical presentation and an empirical and theoretical evaluation of the construct of system integrity as it is used in cognitive epidemiology. Results: A precedent of the system integrity suggestion is discovered. The empirical tests of the system integrity idea to date are critically evaluated. Other possible routes to testing system integrity are suggested. There is a critical re-evaluation of the idea and other, related concepts. Conclusion: The construct of system integrity is distinct from related constructs. It is still underdeveloped theoretically, and undertested empirically within cognitive epidemiology.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Looking for ‘System Integrity’ in Cognitive Epidemiology

Deary¹

2012

Gerontology

101

100

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“…However, consider the implications of the small, but significant, negative correlations we found between mobile phone use and intelligence. Higher intelligence is associated with greater longevity and better health in many ways (Arden, Gottfredson, & Miller, 2009;Batty, Deary, & Gottfredson, 2007). Because more intelligent, healthier people apparently use mobile phones less often, epidemiological studies could find apparent correlations between health problems and mobile phone use that are really driven by underlying associations between intelligence and health, and between intelligence and lower mobile phone use.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Heritability and Genetic Correlates of Mobile Phone Use: A Twin Study of Consumer Behavior

et al. 2012

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There has been almost no overlap between behavior genetics and consumer behavior research, despite each field's importance in understanding society. In particular, both have neglected to study genetic influences on consumer adoption and usage of new technologies — even technologies as important as the mobile phone, now used by 5.8 out of 7.0 billion people on earth. To start filling this gap, we analyzed self-reported mobile phone use, intelligence, and personality traits in two samples of Australian teenaged twins (mean ages 14.2 and 15.6 years), totaling 1,036 individuals. ACE modeling using Mx software showed substantial heritabilities for how often teens make voice calls (.60 and .34 in samples 1 and 2, respectively) and for how often they send text messages (.53 and. 50). Shared family environment – including neighborhood, social class, parental education, and parental income (i.e., the generosity of calling plans that parents can afford for their teens) — had much weaker effects. Multivariate modeling based on cross-twin, cross-trait correlations showed negative genetic correlations between talking/texting frequency and intelligence (around –.17), and positive genetic correlations between talking/texting frequency and extraversion (about .20 to .40). Our results have implications for assessing the risks of mobile phone use such as radiofrequency field (RF) exposure and driving accidents, for studying adoption and use of other emerging technologies, for understanding the genetic architecture of the cognitive and personality traits that predict consumer behavior, and for challenging the common assumption that consumer behavior is shaped entirely by culture, media, and family environment.

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“…For instance, intelligence is thought to be an indicator of both 'good genes' and resource provision potential Prokosch, Yeo, & Miller, 2005;Rozsa, 2008;Yeo, Gangestad, Liu, Wassink, & Calhoun, 2011). High intelligence is associated with good health even when controlling for various possible confounds, purportedly because health and intelligence both reflect the same 'good genes' (Arden, Gottfredson, & Miller, 2009). Furthermore, across 184 countries and among states within the U.S., average intelligence scores are strongly linked to local pathogen prevalence (Eppig, Fincher, & Thornhill, 2010.…”

Section: Summary Of Partmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexual selection and the role of variation in women's mate preference for masculine traits

Lee¹

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Indirect (genetic) benefits to offspring have been proposed as a mechanism for why certain traits are preferred in a partner; however, whether this mechanism plays a role in humans is currently debated. In this thesis, I aim to address whether women's preference for masculinity is due to indirect benefits, which according to the predominant theory is preferred by women for heritable benefits in immune functioning of offspring.Before I present the empirical findings of this thesis, I first give an overview of the evolutionary approach to human mating and describe sexual selection mechanisms that may drive preference for a trait and review the literature on human mate preference for sexual dimorphism (i.e., the masculinity of males and the femininity of females). The thesis is then separated into two parts:In Part 1, I present three studies that investigate the relationship between contextual factors and mate preferences. In Study 1, we tested whether individual pathogen avoidance and resource scarcity predicted revealed mate preferences for facial attractiveness, facial sexual dimorphism, and perceived intelligence based on 689 participants' attractiveness ratings of manipulated online dating profiles. Supporting our predictions, pathogen disgust positively predicted men and women's preferences for facial attractiveness and men's preference for facial femininity, whereas women's resource scarcity negatively predicted their preference for facial masculinity. Contrary to previous results, pathogen disgust was not associated with women's facial masculinity preferences, and unexpectedly, neither pathogen disgust nor resource scarcity predicted preference for greater perceived intelligence. In Study 2, we investigated the association between women's pathogen disgust and facial masculinity preferences further by extending previous research that is solely based on young adult participants and targets, using forced-choice preference measures, begging the question as to whether the findings are generalisable to other adult age groups or other preference measures. We conducted three experiments assessing facial masculinity preferences of women of a iii wider age range rating target faces of a wider age range than previously investigated. In Experiment 1 and 2, 447 and 433 women respectively made forced choices between two identical faces that were manipulated on masculinity/femininity. In Experiment 1, face stimuli were manipulated on sexual dimorphism using age-matched templates, while in Experiment 2 young face stimuli were manipulated with older templates and older face stimuli were manipulated using young templates.In Experiment 3, the facial masculinity preferences of 386 women were revealed through their attractiveness ratings of natural (unmanipulated) faces. For Experiment 1, no association was found between women's pathogen disgust and masculinity preference, but when limiting the sample to younger women rating younger faces we replicated previous findings of significant association between pathogen disgu...

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Does a fitness factor contribute to the association between intelligence and health outcomes? Evidence from medical abnormality counts among 3654 US Veterans

Cited by 58 publications

References 36 publications

Looking for ‘System Integrity’ in Cognitive Epidemiology

Looking for ‘System Integrity’ in Cognitive Epidemiology

The Heritability and Genetic Correlates of Mobile Phone Use: A Twin Study of Consumer Behavior

Sexual selection and the role of variation in women's mate preference for masculine traits

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