Pornography's Ubiquitous External Ejaculation: Predictors of Perceptions.

One of the most contentious topics in the sexual arena is that of pornography. While some researchers focus on the costs and benefits of consumption, others focus on questions surrounding the objectification or degradation of women, with relatively little focus on the men involved, and the appeal of visual sexual stimuli more generally, including what that may tell us about the sexual interests of the consumers. In this study, we focus on what factors influence men's and women's perceptions of sexually explicit images, in particular the ubiquitous external ejaculation. Sex differences in perceptions of the images are examined as well as the influence of the emotional affect of the recipient of the ejaculation, the sexual orientation of the participant (are they looking at an image of their preferred sex or not), and a number of individual difference factors, including religiosity, Dark Triad personality traits, mate value, short-term mating strategy, and disgust sensitivity. Overall, the largest influences on perceptions were the direct effects of target emotional affect and sex, sex of viewer, sexual orientation of viewer, short-term mating orientation, and level of sexual disgust. In addition, substantial variation in perceptions was explained by the interaction between sex, sexual orientation, and target sex. The importance of positive affect in the images as well as the lack of association with psychopathy again suggests that the appeal (or at least the ubiquity of the images in pornographic material) is not rooted in degradation, but in some other aspect of short-term sexual psychology.

Development and validation of a Japanese translation of the K-SF-42.

In this study, we conducted the translation and validation of the K-SF-42 in Japan (Figueredo, 2017). The K-SF-42 is a new short form of the Arizona Life History Battery. We obtained empirical evidence that the original seven-factor structure could be applied to the Japanese translated version of K-SF-42 (K-SF-42-J). We also observed good internal consistency of the seven scales of K-SF-42-J. The multi-group confirmatory factor analysis findings suggest that the K-SF-42-J can be used in both sexes and diverse age groups. The K-SF-42-J scales showed similar correlates as the English original, with higher scores of other life history strategy measurement, trait emotional intelligence, well-being, and cultural and social resources in childhood. Use of the K-SF-42-J will allow researchers with Japanese speaking samples to integrate their findings with the existing life history strategy research literature. The brevity of the K-SF-42-J will be appealing to researchers who are concerned about taxing the time and motivation of their participants.

Differential mortality of infectious disease in Italian polities: COVID-19, past plague epidemics, and currently endemic respiratory disease.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has harshly impacted Italy since its arrival in February 2020. In particular, provinces in Italy's Central and Northern macroregions have dealt with disproportionately greater case prevalence and mortality rates than those in the South. In this paper, we compare the morbidity and mortality dynamics of 16th and 17th century Plague outbreaks with those of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic across Italian regions. We also include data on infectious respiratory diseases which are presently endemic to Italy in order to analyze the regional differences between epidemic and endemic disease. A Growth Curve Analysis allowed for the estimation of time-related intercepts and slopes across the 16th and 17th centuries. Those statistical parameters were later incorporated as criterion variables in multiple General Linear Models. These statistical examinations determined that the Northern macroregion had a higher intercept than the Southern macroregion. This indicated that provinces located in Northern Italy had historically experienced higher plague mortalities than Southern polities. The analyses also revealed that this geographical differential in morbidity and mortality persists to this day, as the Northern macroregion has experienced a substantially higher COVID-19 mortality than the Southern macroregion. These results are consistent with previously published analyses. The only other stable and significant predictor of epidemic disease mortality was foreign urban potential, a measure of the degree of interconnectedness between 16th and 17th century Italian cities. Foreign urban potential was negatively associated with plague slope and positively associated with plague intercept, COVID-19 mortality, GDP per capita, and immigration per capita. Its substantial contribution in predicting both past and present outcomes provides a temporal continuity not seen in any other measure tested here. Overall, this study provides compelling evidence that temporally stable geographical factors, impacting both historical and current foreign pathogen spread above and beyond other hypothesized predictors, underlie the disproportionate impact COVID-19 has had throughout Central and Northern Italian provinces.

Exchanging fluids The sociocultural implications of microbial, cultural, and ethnic admixture in Latin America.

Knowledge of evolutionary influences on patterns of human mating, social interactions, and differential health is increasing, yet these insights have rarely been applied to historical analyses of human population dynamics. The genetic and evolutionary forces behind biases in interethnic mating and in the health of individuals of different ethnic groups in Latin America and the Caribbean since the European colonization of America are still largely ignored. We discuss how historical and contemporary sociocultural interactions and practices are strongly influenced by population-level evolutionary forces. Specifically, we discuss the historical implications of functional (de facto) polygyny, sex-biased admixture, and assortative mating in Latin America. We propose that these three evolutionary mechanisms influenced mating patterns, shaping the genetic and cultural landscape across Latin America and the Caribbean. Further, we discuss how genetic differences between the original populations that migrated at different times into Latin America contributed to their accommodation to and survival in the different local ecologies and interethnic interactions. Relevant medical and social implications follow from the genetic and cultural changes reviewed.

Slowing life history (K) can account for increasing micro-innovation rates and GDP growth, but not macro-innovation rates, which declined following the end of the Industrial Revolution.

Baumard proposes that life history slowing in populations over time is the principal driver of innovation rates. We show that this is only true of micro-innovation rates, which reflect cognitive and economic specialization as an adaptation to high population density, and not macro-innovation rates, which relate more to a population's level of general intelligence.

The ecology of empire The dynamics of strategic differentiation-integration in two competing Western European biocultural groups.

We tracked the relative integration and differentiation among life history traits over the period spanning AD 1800-1999 in the Britannic and Gallic biocultural groups. We found that Britannic populations tended toward greater strategic differentiation, while Gallic populations tended toward greater strategic integration. The dynamics of between-group competition between these two erstwhile rival biocultural groups were hypothesized as driving these processes. We constructed a latent factor that specifically sought to measure between-group competition and residualized it for the logarithmic effects of time. We found a significantly asymmetrical impact of between-group competition, where the between-group competition factor appeared to be driving the diachronic integration in Gallic populations but had no significantly corresponding influence on the parallel process of diachronic differentiation in Britannic populations. This suggests that the latter process was attributable to some alternative and unmeasured causes, such as the resource abundance consequent to territorial expansion rather than contraction.

How Universal Is the General Factor of Personality? An Analysis of the Big Five in Forager Farmers of the Bolivian Amazon.

In various personality models, such as the Big Five, a consistent higher order general factor of personality (GFP) can be identified. One view in the literature is that the GFP reflects general social effectiveness. Most GFP studies, however, have been conducted in Western, educated, industrialized, and rich democracies (WEIRD). Therefore, to address the question of the universality of the GFP, we test whether the GFP can also be identified in a preliterate indigenous sample of Tsimane by using self-reports, spouse reports, and interviewer ratings. In the Tsimane, a viable GFP could be identified and the intercorrelations between personality traits were significantly stronger than in samples from industrial countries. The GFP correlated with the ratings of social engagement. In addition, self and spouse ratings of the GFP overlapped. Overall, the findings are in line with the notion that the GFP is a human universal and a substantive personality factor reflecting social effectiveness.

Predicting Romantic Interest at Zero Acquaintance: Evidence of Sex Differences in Trait Perception but Not in Predictors of Interest.

We evaluated five competing hypotheses about what predicts romantic interest. Through a half-block quasi-experimental design, a large sample of young adults (i.e., responders; n = 335) viewed videos of opposite-sex persons (i.e., targets) talking about themselves and responders rated the targets' traits and their romantic interest in the target. We tested whether similarity, dissimilarity, or overall trait levels on mate value, physical attractiveness, life history strategy, and the Big-Five personality factors predicted romantic interest at zero acquaintance, and whether sex acted as a moderator. We tested the responders' individual perception of the targets' traits, in addition to the targets' own self-reported trait levels and a consensus rating of the targets made by the responders. We used polynomial regression with response surface analysis within multilevel modeling to test support for each of the hypotheses. Results suggest a large sex difference in trait perception; when women rated men, they agreed in their perception more often than when men rated women. However, as a predictor of romantic interest, there were no sex differences. Only the responders' perception of the targets' physical attractiveness predicted romantic interest; specifically, responders' who rated the targets' physical attractiveness as higher than themselves reported more romantic interest.

The K-SF-42.

The purpose of the present article is to propose an alternative short form for the 199-item Arizona Life History Battery (ALHB), which we are calling the K-SF-42, as it contains 42 items as compared with the 20 items of the Mini-K, the short form that has been in greatest use for the past decade. These 42 items were selected from the ALHB, unlike those of the Mini-K, making direct comparisons of the relative psychometric performance of the two alternative short forms a valid and instructive exercise. A series of secondary data analyses were performed upon a recently completed five-nation cross-cultural survey, which was originally designed to assess the role of life history strategy in the etiology of interpersonal aggression. Only data from the ALHB that were collected in all five cross-cultural replications were used for the present analyses. The single immediate objective of this secondary data analysis was producing the K-SF-42 such that it would perform optimally across all five cultures sampled, and perhaps even generalize well to other modern industrial societies not currently sampled as a result of the geographic breadth of those included in the present study. A novel method, based on the use of the Cross-Sample Geometric Mean as a criterion for item selection, was used for generating such a cross-culturally valid short form.

Substance, History, and Politics.

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.

General intelligence is a source of individual differences between species: Solving an anomaly.

Burkart et al. present a paradox - general factors of intelligence exist among individual differences (g) in performance in several species, and also at the aggregate level (G); however, there is ambiguous evidence for the existence of g when analyzing data using a mixed approach, that is, when comparing individuals of different species using the same cognitive ability battery. Here, we present an empirical solution to this paradox.

Adversity, Adaptive Calibration, and Health: The Case of Disadvantaged Families.

Epidemiologists and medical researchers often employ an allostatic load model that focuses on environmental and lifestyle factors, together with biological vulnerabilities, to explain the deterioration of human physiological systems and chronic degenerative disease. Although this perspective has informed medicine and public health, it is agnostic toward the functional significance of pathophysiology and health deterioration. Drawing on Life History (LH) theory, the current paper reviews the literature on disadvantaged families to serve as a conceptual model of stress-health relationships in which the allocation of reproductive effort is instantiated in the LH strategies of individuals and reflects the bioenergetic and material resource tradeoffs. We propose that researchers interested in health disparities reframe chronic degenerative diseases as outcomes resulting from strategic calibration of physiological systems to best adapt, survive, and reproduce in response to demands of specific developmental contexts. These effects of adversity on later-age degenerative disease are mediated, in part, by socioemotional and cognitive mechanisms expressed in different life history strategies.

Considering the role of ecology on individual differentiation.

Our commentary articulates some of the commonalities between Baumeister et al.'s theory of socially differentiated roles and Strategic Differentiation-Integration Effort. We expand upon the target article's position by arguing that differentiating social roles is contextual and driven by varying ecological pressures, producing character displacement not only among individuals within complex societies, but also across social systems and multiple levels of organization.

The unholy trinity: The Dark Triad, coercion, and Brunswik-Symmetry.

Psychopathy, Narcissism, and Machiavellianism (the Dark Triad) have each been hypothesized as predictors of socially deviant behavior including sexual coercion, but the three traits also covary significantly with one another. The purpose of this study was to examine several alternative Multisample Structural Equation Models (MSEMs) exploring the relations between the Dark Triad and Sexually Coercive Behavior, testing whether any or all of the three specific "Dark Personality" traits uniquely contributed to predicting sexually coercive behavior. Self-report questionnaires measuring Primary and Secondary Psychopathy, Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Sexually Coercive Behavior were administered to a sample of undergraduates. The relative fit of each of the MSEMs to the data was examined by means of hierarchically nested model comparisons. The most parsimonious yet explanatory model identified was one in which a single common factor composed of the three Dark Triad indicators explained the relationships among the Dark Triad traits and Sexually Coercive Behavior without any direct contributions from the specific Dark Triad indicators. Results indicate that the three Dark Triad traits, controlling for the common factor, do not differentially predict Sexually Coercive Behavior. These results are interpreted with respect to the principle of Brunswik-Symmetry.

Strategic differentiation and integration of genomic-level heritabilities facilitate individual differences in preparedness and plasticity of human life history.

Life history (LH) strategies refer to the pattern of allocations of bioenergetic and material resources into different domains of fitness. While LH is known to have moderate to high population-level heritability in humans, both at the level of the high-order factor (Super-K) and the lower-order factors (K, Covitality, and the General Factor of Personality), several important questions remain unexplored. Here, we apply the Continuous Parameter Estimation Model to measure individual genomic-level heritabilities (termed transmissibilities). These transmissibility values were computed for the latent hierarchical structure and developmental dynamics of LH strategy, and demonstrate; (1) moderate to high heritability of factor loadings of Super-K on its lower-order factors, evidencing biological preparedness, genetic accommodation, and the gene-culture coevolution of biased epigenetic rules of development; (2) moderate to high heritability of the magnitudes of the effect of the higher-order factors upon their loadings on their constituent factors, evidencing genetic constraints upon phenotypic plasticity; and (3) that heritability of the LH factors, their factor loadings, and the magnitudes of the correlations among factors, are weaker among individuals with slower LH speeds. The results were obtained from an American sample of 316 monozygotic (MZ) and 274 dizygotic (DZ) twin dyads and a Swedish sample of 863 MZ and 475 DZ twin dyads, and indicate that inter-individual variation in transmissibility is a function of individual socioecological selection pressures. Our novel technique, opens new avenues for analyzing complex interactions among heritable traits inaccessible to standard structural equation methods.

Methodologically sound: Evaluating the psychometric approach to the assessment of human life history [reply to Copping, Campbell, and Muncer, 2014].

Copping, Campbell, and Muncer (2014) have recently published an article critical of the psychometric approach to the assessment of life history (LH) strategy. Their purported goal was testing for the convergent validation and examining the psychometric structure of the High-K Strategy Scale (HKSS). As much of the literature on the psychometrics of human LH during the past decade or so has emanated from our research laboratory and those of close collaborators, we have prepared this detailed response. Our response is organized into four main sections: (1) A review of psychometric methods for the assessment of human LH strategy, expounding upon the essence of our approach; (2) our theoretical/conceptual concerns regarding the critique, addressing the broader issues raised by the critique regarding the latent and hierarchical structure of LH strategy; (3) our statistical/methodological concerns regarding the critique, examining the validity and persuasiveness of the empirical case made specifically against the HKSS; and (4) our recommendations for future research that we think might be helpful in closing the gap between the psychometric and biometric approaches to measurement in this area. Clearly stating our theoretical positions, describing our existing body of work, and acknowledging their limitations should assist future researchers in planning and implementing more informed and prudent empirical research that will synthesize the psychometric approach to the assessment of LH strategy with complementary methods.

The behavioral correlates of overall and distinctive life history strategy.

Life history (LH) theory provides an evolutionary theoretical framework for understanding individual differences in maturation, mating, reproduction, parenting, and social interaction. However, the psychometric assessment of human life history has been largely limited to generalized self-reports. Using template matching, this article examines the relationship between personality differences associated with slow-life history (slow-LH) and social behavior in 3 archival datasets. Two of these datasets include direct observations of behavior in the laboratory, and the 3rd provides self-reports of behavior in real life situations experienced within the preceding 24 hr. The results paint a consistent picture of the slow-LH individual as engaging in numerous adaptive social behaviors. However, when "normativeness" (the tendency for most people to be normal in both the statistical and evaluative sense) is statistically removed from the LH scores, a slightly different picture emerges. Both slow-LH and fast-LH persons display a number of behaviors that may be either adaptive or maladaptive in different contexts. Specifically, slow-LH individuals tended to behave in a manner that was considerate, kind, hard-working, and reliable but also socially awkward, insecure, and overcontrolling. Fast-LH individuals came across as talkative, socially skilled, dominant, and charming but also unpredictable, hostile, manipulative, and impulsive. These results are consistent with the evolutionary interpretation of LH strategies as being adapted to systematically different environments rather than better or worse approaches to reproductive fitness overall.

The interplay of behavioral dispositions and cognitive abilities: sociosexual orientation, emotional intelligence, executive functions and life history strategy / O interjogo entre disposições comportamentais e habilidades cognitivas: orientação sócio-sexual, inteligência emocional, funções executivas e estratégia de história de vida

Life History (LH) theory predicts that psychosocial traits will be selected to cluster into functionally coherent and coordinated suites of coadapted behavioral tactics. Among these coadapted tactics are behavioral dispositions, or "sociosexual orientations", towards either short-term mating (STM) and long-term mating (LTM), which are associated with fast and slow LH strategies, respectively. We predicted that certain specific mental abilities, executive functions (EF) and emotional intelligence (EI) should be higher in slow LH strategies, and should differentially predict STM and LTM, and partially mediate the relations between LH strategy and these different sociosexual orientations. 527 female undergraduates completed questionnaires measuring their LH strategies, EI, EF, and sociosexual orientations towards STM or LTM. The data were found to be consistent with our theoretically specified structural model. The results suggest that EF partially mediates both the relation between slow LH strategy and STM and the relation between slow LH and EI, and only indirectly influences LTM through its effects on STM and EI. In addition, EI partially mediates the relation between slow LH strategy and LTM. Implications for how LH strategy coordinates behavioral dispositions and the mental abilities required to implement them are discussed.(AU)

A teoria da História de Vida (Life History - LH) prevê que traços psicossociais serão selecionados de modo a se agruparem em conjuntos coordenados e coerentes de táticas comportamentais coadaptadas. Entre tais táticas coadaptadas estão disposições comportamentais, ou "orientações sócio-sexuais", dirigidas tanto a uniões de curto prazo (short-term mating - STM) e uniões de longo prazo (long-term mating - LTM), as quais são associadas a estratégias lentas e rápidas de LH, respectivamente. Predizemos que algumas habilidades mentais específicas, funções executivas (executive funcions - EF) e inteligência emocional (emotional intelligente - EI) devem ser altas em estratégias lentas de LH, e devem diferencialmente predizer STM e LTM, e parcialmente mediar as relações entre estratégias de LH e tais diferentes orientações sócio-sexuais. 572 estudantes de graduação do sexo feminino completaram questionários medindo suas estratégias de LH, EI, EF e orientações sócio-sexuais dirigidas a STM ou LTM. Os dados encontrados foram consistentes com nosso modelo estrutural teoricamente especificado. Os resultados sugerem que as EF parcialmente mediam ambas relações entre as estratégias LH lentas e STM e a relação entre LH lento e EI, e somente de maneira indireta influencia a LTM por meio de seus efeitos na STM e EI. Além do que, a EI parcialmente media a relação entre estratégia de LH lenta e LTM. Implicações para como a estratégia de LH coordena disposições comportamentais e habilidades mentais requeridas para implementá-las são discutidas.(AU)

Eating disorders and intrasexual competition: testing an evolutionary hypothesis among young women.

The sexual competition hypothesis (SCH) contends that intense female intrasexual competition (ISC) is the ultimate cause of eating disorders. The SCH explains the phenomenon of the pursuit of thinness as an adaptation to ISC in the modern environment. It argues that eating disorders are pathological phenomena that arise from the mismatch between the modern environment and the inherited female adaptations for ISC. The present study has two aims. The first is to examine the relationship between disordered eating behavior (DEB) and ISC in a sample of female undergraduates. The second is to establish whether there is any relationship between disordered eating behavior and life history (LH) strategy. Participants completed a battery of questionnaires examining eating-related attitudes and behaviors, ISC, and LH strategy. A group of 206 female undergraduates were recruited. A structural equation model was constructed to analyze the data. ISC for mates was significantly associated with DEB, as predicted by the SCH. DEB was found to be predicted by fast LH strategy, which was only partially mediated by the SCH. The results of this study are supportive of the SCH and justify research on a clinical sample.