Abstract

In evolutionary psychology, it is customary to measure life-history via psychometric inventories such as the Arizona Life History Battery. The validity of this approach has been questioned: it is argued that these measures are not congruent with biological life history events, such as the number of children, age at first birth, or pubertal timing. However, empirical data to test this critique are lacking. We therefore administered the ALHB to a convenience sample of young adults in Serbia. We also collected information on psychosocial-biodemographic life history parameters closely related to biological life history traits: pubertal timing, onset of sexual behavior, short- and long-term mating, number of children, timing of reproduction, parenthood values, and environmental harshness. We found that correlations between these two sets of measures were rare, unsystematic, and mostly low in magnitude. Stable patterns of relations emerged only between the indicators of environmental conditions from both sets of measures. Furthermore, some ALHB indicators were found to be positively related with early fertility, which is incongruent with the conceptual foundation of ALHB. Finally, network analysis and factor analysis within each set of measures revealed different structures and that the hypothesis of unidimensionality, on which the ALHB was founded, cannot be applied to psychosocial-biodemographic life history indicators. Our results support the critique of ALHB as a set of measures lacking validity to capture biodemographic life-history parameters. ALHB measures are indeed relevant for understanding life-history variation, but they cannot be used as a substitute for specific life history characteristics. Our findings are a warning to researchers to use direct measures of biological events in order to measure life-history dynamics.