Previous theoretical accounts have predicted that warfare and intergroup conflict are environmental factors that contribute to the emergence of a fast life-history strategy. However, this assumption has never been directly empirically tested. We examined youth who grew up in a territory that experienced violent intergroup conflict and compared them with a control group on various life-history measures: age of first sexual intercourse, mating behavior, desired timing of marriage and first reproduction and desired number of children. We also measured other characteristics (...) to explore the congruence between them and exposure to conflict. Participants from the postconflict society showed indications of faster life-history strategy: greater mating effort, a tendency to marry and have their first child sooner, and a larger desired number of children. Furthermore, interactions between exposure to conflict and participants’ sex were found: females from a postconflict society want to have their child earlier, and males have elevated short-term mating success. Finally, the exposure to violent conflict turned out to have congruent effects with economic poverty but not troublesome family relations. The findings are in accordance with life-history theory and show the adaptiveness of human behavior related to fitness optimization in hostile and dangerous environments. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate regarding the content of psychopathy, especially about the status of antisocial behavior and disinhibition characteristics as core psychopathy features. Psychopathic Personality Traits Scale (PPTS) represents a novel model of psychopathy based on core psychopathy markers such as Interpersonal manipulation, Egocentricity and Affective responsiveness. However, this model presupposes another narrow trait of psychopathy: cognitive responsiveness, which represents a lack of cognitive empathy. Since previous models of psychopathy do not depict this feature as a core psychopathy trait, (...) the goal of this study was to empirically evaluate if the lack of cognitive empathy is a narrow psychopathy trait or its correlate. The research was conducted on a community sample via online study (N=342; Mage=23.7 years; 31% males). Results showed that the correlations between Cognitive responsiveness and other psychopathy features were significantly lower than intercorrelations of other three traits. Factor analysis, conducted on PPTS items, provided a two-factor solution, where Cognitive responsiveness was yielded as a factor separate from other psychopathy indicators. Finally, the exploration of the shared latent space of psychopathy and cognitive empathy resulted in the two-factor solution where psychopathy and the lack of cognitive empathy were extracted as correlated but separate latent variables. The data clearly supported the former model. Research results showed that the lack of cognitive empathy should not be considered an indicator of psychopathy but its correlate. The findings emphasize the need to be cautious in conceptualization of the psychopathy construct. (shrink)