CyberStatus: Responses to status manipulation and fears of positive and negative evaluations.

Fear of positive evaluation (FPE) and fear of negative evaluation (FNE), which play distinct and central roles in social anxiety (SA), are postulated to reflect conflicting forces in hierarchal group contexts. Yet, experimental studies testing these assumptions are scarce. We examined the impact of status positions on FPE, FNE, and SA using a novel manipulation, CyberStatus. Participants (N = 557) provided self-descriptive statements before being randomly assigned to high, intermediate, or low-status conditions. Next, they reported their emotions, status, and belongingness-related cognitions and adjusted their self-presentation. FPE was more strongly linked to self-presentation modifications in the high- compared to intermediate-status conditions and positively associated with perceived status in the low vs. intermediate conditions. Furthermore, FPE and SA were more linked to belongingness in low vs. intermediate status conditions while FNE demonstrated the reversed pattern. These findings support and expand the evolutionary perspective on evaluation fears and emphasize the importance of assessing the linkage between status and belongingness systems in SA.

Evolutionary perspectives on substance and behavioural addictions: Distinct and shared pathways to understanding, prediction and prevention.

Addiction poses significant social, health, and criminal issues. Its moderate heritability and early-life impact, affecting reproductive success, poses an evolutionary paradox: why are humans predisposed to addictive behaviours? This paper reviews biological and psychological mechanisms of substance and behavioural addictions, exploring evolutionary explanations for the origin and function of relevant systems. Ancestrally, addiction-related systems promoted fitness through reward-seeking, and possibly self-medication. Today, psychoactive substances disrupt these systems, leading individuals to neglect essential life goals for immediate satisfaction. Behavioural addictions (e.g. video games, social media) often emulate ancestrally beneficial behaviours, making them appealing yet often irrelevant to contemporary success. Evolutionary insights have implications for how addiction is criminalised and stigmatised, propose novel avenues for interventions, anticipate new sources of addiction from emerging technologies such as AI. The emerging potential of glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists targeting obesity suggest the satiation system may be a natural counter to overactivation of the reward system.

Fertility Fails to Predict Voter Preference for the 2020 Election: A Pre-Registered Replication of Navarrete et al. (2010).

As part of the Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE) program, the present study reassesses the claim made in Navarrete et al. (2010) Study 1, that women's voter preference for male candidates who demonstrate cues of strong genetic fitness increases across the reproductive cycle as a function of conception risk. We report an attempt to conceptually replicate these findings, modifying the outcome variables for voter preference to reflect the 2020 election rather than the 2008 election, while maintaining fidelity to the original study by including Barack Obama as a candidate. Contrary to the original findings, conception risk did not predict greater voter support for Obama as a younger, more attractive alternative to Donald J. Trump, nor was conception risk a significant factor in other matchups we presented to participants. Candidate intelligence and participant psychopathy scores on the Dark Triad were found to be factors in preference for Obama/Biden or Trump, respectively. We discuss these results in the context of evolutionary and political psychology, suggesting the need for further research that takes political factors into account.

Attitudes and Laws About Abortion Are Linked to Extrinsic Mortality Risk: A Life-History Perspective on Variability in Reproductive Rights.

Abortion policy is conventionally viewed as a political matter with religious overtones. This article offers a different view. From the perspective of evolutionary biology, abortion at a young age can represent prioritization of long-term development over immediate reproduction, a pattern established in other animal species as resulting from stable ecologies with low mortality risk. We examine whether laws and moral beliefs about abortions are linked to local mortality rates. Data from 50 U.S. states, 202 world societies, 2,596 adult individuals in 363 U.S. counties, and 147,260 respondents across the globe suggest that lower levels of mortality risk are associated with more permissive laws and attitudes toward abortion. Those associations were observed when we controlled for religiosity, political ideology, wealth, education, and industrialization. Integrating evolutionary and cultural perspectives offers an explanation as to why moral beliefs and legal norms about reproduction may be sensitive to levels of ecological adversity.

The Effect of Income and Wealth on Behavioral Strategies, Personality Traits, and Preferences.

Individuals living in either harsh or favorable environments display well-documented psychological and behavioral differences. For example, people in favorable environments tend to be more future-oriented, trust strangers more, and have more explorative preferences. To account for such differences, psychologists have turned to evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology, in particular, the literature on life-history theory and pace-of-life syndrome. However, critics have found that the theoretical foundations of these approaches are fragile and that differences in life expectancy cannot explain vast psychological and behavioral differences. In this article, we build on the theory of optimal resource allocation to propose an alternative framework. We hypothesize that the quantity of resources available, such as income, has downstream consequences on psychological traits, leading to the emergence of behavioral syndromes. We show that more resources lead to more long-term orientation, more tolerance of variance, and more investment in low marginal-benefit needs. At the behavioral level, this translates, among others, into more large-scale cooperation, more investment in health, and more exploration. These individual-level differences in behavior, in turn, account for cultural phenomena such as puritanism, authoritarianism, and innovation.

The Desirable Dad Hypothesis: Male Same-Sex Attraction as the Product of Selection for Paternal Care via Antagonistic Pleiotropy.

Same-sex attraction, a heritable trait with a reproductive cost, lacks a comprehensive evolutionary explanation. Here we build on a hypothesis invoking antagonistic pleiotropy, which suggests that genes linked to male same-sex attraction remain in the gene pool because they have conferred some fitness advantage to heterosexual men possessing them. We posit the "desirable dad hypothesis," which proposes that alleles linked to male non-heterosexual orientations increase traits conducive to childcare; heterosexual men possessing same-sex attracted alleles are more desirable mating partners as a function of possessing superior paternal qualities. We conducted three studies to test predictions from this hypothesis. Results were consistent with all three predictions. Study 1 (N = 1632) showed that heterosexual men with same-sex attracted relatives were more feminine than men without, as indicated by self-report measures of femininity (η2 = .007), warmth (η2 = .002), and nurturance (η2 = .004 - .006). In Study 2 (N = 152), women rated feminine male profiles as more romantically appealing than masculine ones (d = 0.83)-but less so than profiles possessing a combination of feminine and masculine traits. In Study 3 (N = 153), women perceived feminine male profiles as depicting the best fathers and masculine profiles the worst (d = 1.56): consistent with the idea that femininity is attractive for childcare reasons. Together, these findings are consistent with the idea that sexual selection for male parental care may be involved in the evolution of male same-sex attraction.

Two social minds in one brain? error-related negativity provides evidence for parallel processing pathways during social evaluation.

Several authors assume that evaluative conditioning (EC) relies on high-level propositional thinking. In contrast, the dual-process perspective proposes two processing pathways, one associative and the other propositional, contributing to EC. Dual-process theorists argue that attitudinal ambiguity resulting from these two pathways' conflicting evaluations demonstrate the involvement of both automatic and controlled processes in EC. Previously, we suggested that amplitude variations of error-related negativity and error-positivity, two well-researched event-related potentials of performance monitoring, allow for the detection of attitudinal ambiguity at the neural level. The present study utilises self-reported evaluation, categorisation performance, and neural correlates of performance monitoring to explore associative-propositional ambiguity during social attitude formation. Our results show that compared to associative-propositional harmony, attitudinal ambiguity correlates with more neutral subjective evaluations, longer response times, increased error commission, and diminished error-related negativity amplitudes. While our findings align with dual-process models, we aim to offer a propositional interpretation. We discuss dual-process theories in the context of evolutionary psychology, suggesting that associative processes may only represent a small piece of the EC puzzle.

Preliminary evidence for neck musculature in shaping functional stereotypes of men's relationship motives.

Neck musculature is reliably diagnostic of men's formidability and central to several inferences of their physical prowess. These inferences facilitate stereotypes of men's social value from which perceivers estimate their abilities to satisfy reproductive goals related to mate acquisition and parental care. Participants evaluated men's interest in various mating and parenting strategies, wherein men varied in the size of visible neck musculature through trapezii and sternocleidomastoids for perceivers to identify potential reproductive interests and goals. Large trapezii elicited perceptions of men as more effective at protecting offspring, albeit at the expense of nurturance and interest in long-term pair bonds. Results extend previous findings implicating formidability as central to relationship decisions by considering a novel modality.

Rethinking Norm Psychology.

Norms permeate human life. Most of people's activities can be characterized by rules about what is appropriate, allowed, required, or forbidden-rules that are crucial in making people hyper-cooperative animals. In this article, I examine the current cognitive-evolutionary account of "norm psychology" and propose an alternative that is better supported by evidence and better placed to promote interdisciplinary dialogue. The incumbent theory focuses on rules and claims that humans genetically inherit cognitive and motivational mechanisms specialized for processing these rules. The cultural-evolutionary alternative defines normativity in relation to behavior-compliance, enforcement, and commentary-and suggests that it depends on implicit and explicit processes. The implicit processes are genetically inherited and domain-general; rather than being specialized for normativity, they do many jobs in many species. The explicit processes are culturally inherited and domain-specific; they are constructed from mentalizing and reasoning by social interaction in childhood. The cultural-evolutionary, or "cognitive gadget," perspective suggests that people alive today-parents, educators, elders, politicians, lawyers-have more responsibility for sustaining normativity than the nativist view implies. People's actions not only shape and transmit the rules, but they also create in each new generation mental processes that can grasp the rules and put them into action.

Polygamous Interest in a Mononormative Nation: The Roles of Sex and Sociosexuality in Polygamous Interest in a Heterosexual Sample from the UK.

Polygamy is a form of "one-sided" consensually non-monogamous relationship where one person has multiple committed partners, each of whom is only involved with that one person. It was likely a reoccurring feature of ancestral mating that posed adaptive problems for our ancestors. Yet polygamy, and multi-partnering more generally, is understudied in Western cultures, raising questions about the existence of polygamous interest and whether this is calibrated adaptively to personal conditions. In two studies, we examined polygamous interest in two heterosexual online samples from the UK. In Study 1 (N = 393), modest interest was found for polygamous relationships overall. Men were six times more open to polygyny than women, but there was little sex difference in openness to polyandry. Further analysis revealed that all forms of multi-partnering were undesirable relative to singlehood and monogamy; however, consensual multi-partner relationships were less undesirable than non-consensual ones. Sex differences were largest for polygyny and arrangements where men had agreed access to a casual partner alongside a committed one, yet these were two of the most acceptable forms of multi-partnering when men and women's responses were combined. Sociosexuality positively predicted interest in most forms of multi-partnering. Study 2 (N = 735) focused on polygyny and added status-linked traits as predictors. The results of Study 1 were broadly replicated, though the status-linked traits did not predict polygynous interest specifically. Instead, sociosexuality and male intrasexual competitiveness uniquely predicted general interest in multi-partner relationships. Overall, interest in polygamy appears to emerge despite social discouragement and sex differences in interest track the relative costs and benefits associated with it. However, there is no strong evidence that polygamous interest is uniquely calibrated to personal conditions when compared to other forms of multi-partnering.

To Enhance, or not to Enhance: The Situational Context Shapes Women's Intentions on Amount and Diligence of Makeup Application.

Makeup is a tool that women use to shape their image and gain benefits in both inter- and intrasexual selection. As makeup enables the hiding or enhancing of facial features, it allows women to strategically shape impressions in a given context. It affects interpersonal perceptions, workplace impressions, and can attract romantic partners. However, research has primarily focused on examining everyday makeup use, although the amount and type of makeup can vary depending on the situation and the motivation to make an impression. In two studies, we investigated how the intended amount and application of makeup differ depending on various situational contexts. Specifically, in Study 1 (N = 533), we explored the everyday and party contexts, while in Study 2 (N = 400), we additionally introduced the contexts of mating and threat. The results show that: 1) women intend to put on more makeup in a more diligent way in party contexts compared to everyday contexts, 2) the intended diligence of makeup application is the highest in contexts were women expect an attractive man to be present, and the lowest when a threatening context is introduced, 3) these effects are partially or fully mediated by women's motivation to make an impression, and 4) neither sociosexual orientation nor appearance orientation significantly moderated the obtained effects. Our studies extend previous research on makeup application as an appearance-enhancing or worsening strategy by further investigating the signaling function of women's makeup and its strategic use in various situational contexts. We discuss the results from a functional evolutionary perspective.

Are vipers prototypic fear-evoking snakes? A cross-cultural comparison of Somalis and Czechs.

Snakes are known as highly fear-evoking animals, eliciting preferential attention and fast detection in humans. We examined the human fear response to snakes in the context of both current and evolutionary experiences, conducting our research in the cradle of humankind, the Horn of Africa. This region is characterized by the frequent occurrence of various snake species, including deadly venomous viperids (adders) and elapids (cobras and mambas). We conducted experiments in Somaliland and compared the results with data from Czech respondents to address the still unresolved questions: To which extent is human fear of snakes affected by evolutionary or current experience and local culture? Can people of both nationalities recognize venomous snakes as a category, or are they only afraid of certain species that are most dangerous in a given area? Are respondents of both nationalities equally afraid of deadly snakes from both families (Viperidae, Elapidae)? We employed a well-established picture-sorting approach, consisting of 48 snake species belonging to four distinct groups. Our results revealed significant agreement among Somali as well as Czech respondents. We found a highly significant effect of the stimulus on perceived fear in both populations. Vipers appeared to be the most salient stimuli in both populations, as they occupied the highest positions according to the reported level of subjectively perceived fear. The position of vipers strongly contrasts with the fear ranking of deadly venomous elapids, which were in lower positions. Fear scores of vipers were significantly higher in both populations, and their best predictor was the body width of the snake. The evolutionary, cultural, and cognitive aspects of this phenomenon are discussed.

Nocturnal selective pressures on the evolution of human musicality as a missing piece of the adaptationist puzzle.

Human musicality exhibits the necessary hallmarks for biological adaptations. Evolutionary explanations focus on recurrent adaptive problems that human musicality possibly solved in ancestral environments, such as mate selection and competition, social bonding/cohesion and social grooming, perceptual and motor skill development, conflict reduction, safe time-passing, transgenerational communication, mood regulation and synchronization, and credible signaling of coalition and territorial/predator defense. Although not mutually exclusive, these different hypotheses are still not conceptually integrated nor clearly derived from independent principles. I propose The Nocturnal Evolution of Human Musicality and Performativity Theory in which the night-time is the missing piece of the adaptationist puzzle of human musicality and performing arts. The expansion of nocturnal activities throughout human evolution, which is tied to tree-to-ground sleep transition and habitual use of fire, might help (i) explain the evolution of musicality from independent principles, (ii) explain various seemingly unrelated music features and functions, and (iii) integrate many ancestral adaptive values proposed. The expansion into the nocturnal niche posed recurrent ancestral adaptive challenges/opportunities: lack of luminosity, regrouping to cook before sleep, imminent dangerousness, low temperatures, peak tiredness, and concealment of identity. These crucial night-time features might have selected evening-oriented individuals who were prone to acoustic communication, more alert and imaginative, gregarious, risk-taking and novelty-seeking, prone to anxiety modulation, hedonistic, promiscuous, and disinhibited. Those night-time selected dispositions may have converged and enhanced protomusicality into human musicality by facilitating it to assume many survival- and reproduction-enhancing roles (social cohesion and coordination, signaling of coalitions, territorial defense, antipredatorial defense, knowledge transference, safe passage of time, children lullabies, and sexual selection) that are correspondent to the co-occurring night-time adaptive challenges/opportunities. The nocturnal dynamic may help explain musical features (sound, loudness, repetitiveness, call and response, song, elaboration/virtuosity, and duetting/chorusing). Across vertebrates, acoustic communication mostly occurs in nocturnal species. The eveningness chronotype is common among musicians and composers. Adolescents, who are the most evening-oriented humans, enjoy more music. Contemporary tribal nocturnal activities around the campfire involve eating, singing/dancing, storytelling, and rituals. I discuss the nocturnal integration of musicality's many roles and conclude that musicality is probably a multifunctional mental adaptation that evolved along with the night-time adaptive landscape.

A Shared Intentionality Account of Uniquely Human Social Bonding.

Many mechanisms of social bonding are common to all primates, but humans seemingly have developed some that are unique to the species. These involve various kinds of interactive experiences-from taking a walk together to having a conversation-whose common feature is the triadic sharing of experience. Current theories of social bonding have no explanation for why humans should have these unique bonding mechanisms. Here we propose a shared intentionality account of uniquely human social bonding. Humans evolved to participate with others in unique forms of cooperative and communicative activities that both depend on and create shared experience. Sharing experience in these activities causes partners to feel closer because it allows them to assess their partner's cooperative competence and motivation toward them and because the shared representations created during such interactions make subsequent cooperative interactions easier and more effective.

Cultural evolution from the producers' standpoint.

Standard approaches to cultural evolution focus on the recipients or consumers. This does not take into account the fitness costs incurred in producing the behaviours or artefacts that become cultural, i.e. widespread in a social group. We argue that cultural evolution models should focus on these fitness costs and benefits of cultural production, particularly in the domain of 'symbolic' culture. In this approach, cultural products can be considered as a part of the extended phenotype of producers, which can affect the fitness of recipients in a positive way (through cooperation) but also in a detrimental way (through manipulation and exploitation). Taking the producers' perspective may help explain the specific features of many kinds of cultural products.

The Shame System Operates With High Precision.

Previous research indicates that the anticipatory shame an individual feels at the prospect of taking a disgraceful action closely tracks the degree to which local audiences, and even foreign audiences, devalue those individuals who take that action. This supports the proposition that the shame system (a) defends the individual against the threat of being devalued, and (b) balances the competing demands of operating effectively yet efficiently. The stimuli events used in previous research were highly variable in their perceived disgracefulness, ranging in rated shame and audience devaluation from low (e.g., missing the target in a throwing game) to high (e.g., being discovered cheating on one's spouse). But how precise is the tracking of audience devaluation by the shame system? Would shame track devaluation for events that are similarly low (or high) in disgracefulness? To answer this question, we conducted a study with participants from the United States and India. Participants were assigned, between-subjects, to one of two conditions: shame or audience devaluation. Within-subjects, participants rated three low-variation sets of 25 scenarios each, adapted from Mu, Kitayama, Han, & Gelfand (2015), which convey (a) appropriateness (e.g., yelling at a rock concert), (b) mild disgracefulness (e.g., yelling on the metro), and (c) disgracefulness (e.g., yelling in the library), all presented un-blocked, in random order. Consistent with previous research, shame tracked audience devaluation across the high-variation superset of 75 scenarios, both within and between cultures. Critically, shame tracked devaluation also within each of the three sets. The shame system operates with high precision.

Corrigendum: Strategies of prosociality: comparing Nordic and Slavonic altruism toward Ukrainian refugees.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1065889.].

Gods are watching and so what? Moralistic supernatural punishment across 15 cultures.

Psychological and cultural evolutionary accounts of human sociality propose that beliefs in punitive and monitoring gods that care about moral norms facilitate cooperation. While there is some evidence to suggest that belief in supernatural punishment and monitoring generally induce cooperative behaviour, the effect of a deity's explicitly postulated moral concerns on cooperation remains unclear. Here, we report a pre-registered set of analyses to assess whether perceiving a locally relevant deity as moralistic predicts cooperative play in two permutations of two economic games using data from up to 15 diverse field sites. Across games, results suggest that gods' moral concerns do not play a direct, cross-culturally reliable role in motivating cooperative behaviour. The study contributes substantially to the current literature by testing a central hypothesis in the evolutionary and cognitive science of religion with a large and culturally diverse dataset using behavioural and ethnographically rich methods.