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Multiple proposals suggest that xenophobia increases when infectious disease threats are salient. The current longitudinal study tested this hypothesis by examining whether and how anti-immigrant sentiments varied in the Netherlands across four time points during the COVID-19 pandemic (May 2020, February 2021, October 2021 and June 2022 through Flycatcher.eu). The results revealed that (1) anti-immigrant sentiments were no higher in early assessments, when COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths were high, than in later assessments, when COVID-19 hospitalizations were low, and (2) within-person changes in explicit disease concerns and disgust sensitivity did not relate to anti-immigrant sentiments, although stable individual differences in disgust sensitivity did. These findings suggest that anecdotal accounts of increased xenophobia during the pandemic did not generalize to the population sampled from here. They also suggest that not all increases in ecological pathogen threats and disease salience increase xenophobia., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© The Author(s) 2024.)

Most Five-Factor Model (FFM) questionnaire items contain unique variance that is partly heritable, stable, and consensually observable, demonstrates consistent associations with age and sex, and predicts life outcomes beyond higher order factors. Extending these findings to the HEXACO model, we meta-analyzed single-item cross-rater agreement, heritability, and 2-year stability using samples from six countries. We analyzed raw item scores and their residual variance and adjusted the estimates for measurement unreliability. The median cross-rater agreement, heritability, and stability estimates were, respectively, .30, .30, and .57, for raw items and .10, .16, and .39, for item residuals. Adjusted for reliability, the respective medians were .46 and .25 for cross-rater agreement, .46 and .39 for heritability, and .87 and .94 for stability. These results are strikingly consistent with FFM-based findings, providing nondismissible evidence that single items index a partly unique level of the trait hierarchy-personality nuances -with trait properties comparable to those of higher-order traits., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Prepared learning accounts suggest that specialized learning mechanisms increase the retention of associations linked to ancestrally-prevalent threats. Few studies have investigated specialized aversion learning for pathogen threats. In four pre-registered studies (N's = 515, 495, 164, 175), we employed an evaluative conditioning procedure to test whether foods (versus non-foods) are more readily associated with negative content associated with pathogens than negative content not associated with pathogens. Participants saw negatively valenced (either pathogen-relevant or -irrelevant), neutral or positively-valenced stimuli paired with meats and plants (in Studies 1 and 2) and with meats and abstract shapes (in Studies 3 and 4). They then evaluated each stimulus explicitly via self-reports (Studies 1-4) and implicitly via an Affect Misattribution Procedure (Studies 3 and 4). Linear mixed models revealed general evaluative conditioning effects, but inconsistent evidence for specialized (implicit or explicit) learning for a food-pathogen association. However, results from a mega-analysis across studies revealed stronger conditioning effects for meats paired with pathogen-relevant negative stimuli than pathogen-irrelevant negative stimuli., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest We declare having no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Fundamental frequency (  f o ) is the most perceptually salient vocal acoustic parameter, yet little is known about how its perceptual influence varies across societies. We examined how f o affects key social perceptions and how socioecological variables modulate these effects in 2,647 adult listeners sampled from 44 locations across 22 nations. Low male f o increased men's perceptions of formidability and prestige, especially in societies with higher homicide rates and greater relational mobility in which male intrasexual competition may be more intense and rapid identification of high-status competitors may be exigent. High female f o increased women's perceptions of flirtatiousness where relational mobility was lower and threats to mating relationships may be greater. These results indicate that the influence of f o on social perceptions depends on socioecological variables, including those related to competition for status and mates.

This article has been withdrawn at the request of the editor. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/article-withdrawal., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Fitouchi et al. persuasively argue against popular disgust-based accounts of puritanical morality. However, they do not consider alternative account of moral condemnation that is also based on the psychology of disgust. We argue that these other disgust-based accounts are more promising than those dismissed in the target article.

Third party punishment (TPP) is thought to be crucial to the evolution and maintenance of human cooperation. However, this type of punishment is often not rewarded, perhaps because punishers' underlying motives are unclear. We propose that the expression of moral emotions could solve this problem by advertising such motives. In each of three experiments ( n = 1711), a third-party punishment game was followed by a trust game. Third parties expressed anger or disgust instead of, or in addition to, financial punishment. Results showed that third parties who expressed these emotions were trusted more than those who didn't express (Experiment 1), and more than those who financially punished (Experiment 2). Moreover, third parties who expressed while financially punishing were trusted more than those who punished without expressing (Experiment 3). Findings suggest that emotion expression might play a role in the evolution and maintenance of cooperation by facilitating TPP.

People vary both in their embrace of their society's traditions, and in their perception of hazards as salient and necessitating a response. Over evolutionary time, traditions have offered avenues for addressing hazards, plausibly resulting in linkages between orientations toward tradition and orientations toward danger. Emerging research documents connections between traditionalism and threat responsivity, including pathogen-avoidance motivations. Additionally, because hazard-mitigating behaviors can conflict with competing priorities, associations between traditionalism and pathogen avoidance may hinge on contextually contingent tradeoffs. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a real-world test of the posited relationship between traditionalism and hazard avoidance. Across 27 societies (N = 7844), we find that, in a majority of countries, individuals' endorsement of tradition positively correlates with their adherence to costly COVID-19-avoidance behaviors; accounting for some of the conflicts that arise between public health precautions and other objectives further strengthens this evidence that traditionalism is associated with greater attention to hazards., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

A broad literature indicates that pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust sensitivity relate to, among other things, political attitudes, moral condemnation, and symptoms of psychopathology. Consequently, disgust sensitivity has been widely assessed across subfields of psychology. Yet, no work has examined whether self-reports in disgust sensitivity reflect systematic trait variation that is detectable by others, and the extent to which such variation is distinct from broader personality. Here, we present the first study to examine self-other agreement in pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust sensitivity. Romantic partners (n₁ = 290), friends (n₂ = 212), and acquaintances (n₃ = 140) rated each other on these three domains of disgust sensitivity and on HEXACO personality. Correlations between dyad partners' self and other ratings were calculated to estimate the magnitude of self-other agreement. We found self-other agreement in all domains of disgust sensitivity (rs of .46, .66, and .36 for pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust sensitivity, respectively), with this agreement weakly to moderately inferred from personality perceptions (percentages mediated by HEXACO were 15%, 7%, and 33% for pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust sensitivity, respectively). These results suggest that pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust sensitivity reflect systematic trait variation that is detectable by others and distinct from broader personality traits. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Decades of research have shown that about half of individual differences in personality traits is heritable. Recent studies have reported that heritability is not fixed, but instead decreases across the life span. However, findings are inconsistent and it is yet unclear whether these trends are because of a waning importance of heritable tendencies, attributable to cumulative experiential influences with age, or because of nonlinear patterns suggesting Gene × Environment interplay. We combined four twin samples (N = 7,026) from Croatia, Finland, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and we examined age trends in genetic and environmental variance in the six HEXACO personality traits: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness. The cross-national sample ranges in age from 14 to 90 years, allowing analyses of linear and nonlinear age differences in genetic and environmental components of trait variance, after controlling for gender and national differences. The amount of genetic variance in Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness followed a reversed U-shaped pattern across age, showed a declining trend for Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness, and was stable for Emotionality. For most traits, findings provided evidence for an increasing relative importance of life experiences contributing to personality differences across the life span. The findings are discussed against the background of Gene × Environment transactions and interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Over the past decade, evolutionary psychologists have proposed that many moral stances function to promote self-interests. At the same time, behavioral geneticists have demonstrated that many moral stances have genetic bases. We integrated these perspectives by examining how moral condemnation of recreational drug use relates to sexual strategy (i.e., being more vs. less open to sex outside of a committed relationship) in a sample of Finnish twins and siblings ( N = 8,118). Twin modeling suggested that genetic factors accounted for 53%, 46%, and 41% of the variance in drug condemnation, sociosexuality, and sexual-disgust sensitivity, respectively. Further, approximately 75% of the phenotypic covariance between drug condemnation and sexual strategy was accounted for by genes, and there was substantial overlap in the genetic effects underlying both drug condemnation and sexual strategy ( r g = .41). Results are consistent with the proposal that some moral sentiments are calibrated to promote strategic sexual interests, which arise partially via genetic factors.

People vary in their willingness to try new foods. This variation, which is most frequently measured using the Food Neophobia Scale (FNS; Pliner & Hobden, 1992), has been interpreted as unidimensional. In four studies (N's = 210, 306, 160, and 161), we 1) demonstrate that food neophobia varies across meat and plant dimensions, 2) explore the validity of a measure of meat and plant neophobia, and 3) test whether these food neophobia dimensions predict decisions to eat a novel food item (i.e., a snack bar that contains insects). Mixed-effects model across the four studies indicated that the two dimensions differentially relate to a number of variables, including disgust sensitivity, animal empathy, and masculinity. Women scored higher on meat neophobia than men, but the sexes did not differ on plant neophobia. Only meat neophobia uniquely predicted eating a novel insect-based snack bar. Overall, these results extend knowledge regarding orientations toward novel foods., (Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Multiple studies report that disgust-eliciting stimuli are perceived as salient and subsequently capture selective attention. In the current study, we aimed to better understand the nature of temporal attentional biases toward disgust-eliciting stimuli and to investigate the extent to which these biases are sensitive to contextual and trait-level pathogen avoidance motives. Participants (N = 116) performed in an emotional attentional blink task in which task-irrelevant disgust-eliciting, fear-eliciting, or neutral images preceded a target by 200, 500, or 800 ms (i.e., lag 2, 5 and 8, respectively). They did so twice-once while not exposed to an odor and once while exposed to either an odor that elicited disgust or an odor that did not-and completed a measure of disgust sensitivity. Results indicate that disgust-eliciting visual stimuli produced a greater attentional blink than neutral visual stimuli at lag 2 and a greater attentional blink than fear-eliciting visual stimuli at both lag 2 and at lag 5. Neither the odor manipulations nor individual differences measures moderated this effect. We propose that visual attention is engaged for a longer period of time following disgust-eliciting stimuli because covert processes automatically initiate the evaluation of pathogen threats. The fact that state and trait pathogen avoidance do not influence this temporal attentional bias suggests that early attentional processing of pathogen cues is initiated independent from the context in which such cues are perceived. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

A substantial body of research has illuminated psychological adaptations motivating pathogen avoidance, mechanisms collectively known as the behavioral immune system. Can knowledge about these mechanisms inform how people respond to widespread disease outbreaks, such as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)] pandemic? We review evidence suggesting that the evolutionary history of the behavioral immune system, and the cues that activate it, are distinct in many ways from modern human experiences with pandemics. Moreover, the behaviors engaged by this system may have limited utility for combating pandemic diseases like COVID-19. A better understanding of the points of distinction and points of overlap between our evolved pathogen-avoidance psychology and responses to pandemics may help us realize a more precise and intervention-ready science., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

To understand the consequences of cleansing, Lee and Schwarz favor a grounded procedures perspective over recently developed disgust theory. We believe that this position stems from three errors: (1) interpreting cleansing effects as broader than they are; (2) not detailing the proximate mechanisms underlying disgust; and (3) not detailing adaptive function versus system byproducts when developing the grounded procedures perspective.

Are male and female immigrants viewed similarly or differently? Consistent with an evolutionary threat management perspective, we suggest that the answer to this question depends upon what types of threats immigrant groups are perceived as posing. In the present study, we compared attitudes toward male and female immigrants from either a violent ecology (e.g., Syria) or a pathogen-rich ecology (e.g., Liberia). We hypothesized that people would have more negative attitudes toward male than female immigrants from a violent ecology, but that attitudes would be similar toward male and female immigrants from a pathogen-rich ecology. Internal meta-analyses of three studies (total N = 1,488) were in line with our hypothesis. They showed that attitudes toward male immigrants from a violent ecology were more negative than attitudes toward female immigrants from the same ecology. In contrast, attitudes toward male and female immigrants were similar when those immigrants came from a pathogen-rich ecology. Our findings are consistent with an evolutionary threat management perspective on outgroup prejudice and are aligned with the male warrior hypothesis: Attitudes toward male versus female outgroup members vary with the potential threats these outgroups pose., (© The Author(s) 2019.)

We introduce the Politics and the Life Sciences Special Issue on Disgust and Political Attitudes discussing the importance of understanding state and trait disgust, the innovative and transparent process by which registered reports and preregistered studies were chosen and funded, and the manuscripts that make up this special issue. This essay concludes by discussing future research directions in disgust and political attitudes, as well as the benefits of a transparent review process that avoids the "file drawer problem" of unpublished null findings.

The tendency to attend to and avoid cues to pathogens varies across individuals and contexts. Researchers have proposed that this variation is partially driven by immunological vulnerability to infection, though support for this hypothesis is equivocal. One key piece of evidence (Miller & Maner, 2011) shows that participants who have recently been ill-and hence may have a reduced ability to combat subsequent infection-allocate more attention to faces with infectious-disease cues than do participants who have not recently been ill. The current article describes a direct replication of this study using a sample of 402 individuals from the University of Michigan, the University of Glasgow, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam-more than 4 times the sample size of the original study. No effect of illness recency on attentional bias for disfigured faces emerged. Though it did not support the original finding, this replication provides suggestions for future research on the psychological underpinnings of pathogen avoidance.

Behavioral-immune-system research has illuminated how people detect and avoid signs of infectious disease. But how do we regulate exposure to pathogens that produce no symptoms in their hosts? This research tested the proposition that estimates of interpersonal value are used for this task. The results of three studies ( N = 1,694), each conducted using U.S. samples, are consistent with this proposition: People are less averse to engaging in infection-risky acts not only with friends relative to foes but also with honest and agreeable strangers relative to dishonest and disagreeable ones. Further, a continuous measure of how much a person values a target covaries with comfort with infection-risky acts with that target, even within relationship categories. Findings indicate that social prophylactic motivations arise not only from cues to infectiousness but also from interpersonal value. Consequently, pathogen transmission within social networks might be exacerbated by relaxed contamination aversions with highly valued social partners.

Across societies, humans punish norm violations. To date, research on the antecedents and consequences of punishment has largely relied upon agent-based modeling and laboratory experiments. Here, we report a longitudinal study documenting punishment responses to norm violations in daily life (k = 1507; N = 257) and test pre-registered hypotheses about the antecedents of direct punishment (i.e., confrontation) and indirect punishment (i.e., gossip and social exclusion). We find that people use confrontation versus gossip in a context-sensitive manner. Confrontation is more likely when punishers have been personally victimized, have more power, and value offenders more. Gossip is more likely when norm violations are severe and when punishers have less power, value offenders less, and experience disgust. Findings reveal a complex punishment psychology that weighs the benefits of adjusting others' behavior against the risks of retaliation.

Past research indicates that patient perceptions of surgeon warmth and competence influence treatment expectancies and satisfaction with treatment outcomes. Stereotypes have a powerful impact on impression formation. The present research explores stereotypes about surgeon warmth and competence and investigates the extent to which surgeon gender influences perceptions of female and male surgeons. A between-subjects experiment was conducted online using crowdsourcing technology to derive a representative sample from the general population. Four hundred and fifteen participants were randomly assigned to evaluate the warmth and competence of males, females, surgeons, male surgeons, or female surgeons, using validated measures. Planned contrasts revealed that as a group, surgeons received higher warmth and competence ratings than non-surgeons (p = .007). Consistent with gender stereotypes, female surgeons received higher warmth ratings (p < .001) and lower competence ratings (p = .001) than male surgeons. The stereotype of surgeons held by the general public is that they are high in warmth and competence relative to other occupational groups. Surgeon gender appears to influence general beliefs about the warmth and competence of female and male surgeons., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Researchers have proposed that intergroup prejudice is partially caused by behavioral immune system mechanisms. Across four studies (total N = 1,849), we used both experimental (pathogen priming) and individual differences (pathogen disgust sensitivity [PDS]) approaches to test whether the behavioral immune system influences prejudice toward immigrants indiscriminately (the generalized out-group prejudice hypothesis) or specifically toward immigrants from a pathogen-rich ecology (the origin-specific out-group prejudice hypothesis). Internal meta-analyses lend some support to both hypotheses. At the experimental level, pathogen primes had no effect on attitudes toward origin-unspecified immigrants or immigrants from a pathogen-rich ecology. At the individual differences level, PDS has a unique negative effect on comfort with immigrants from pathogen-rich ecologies but not on comfort with immigrants from unspecified ecologies. However, pathogen disgust sensitivity was negatively related to the decision to allow entry to both origin-unspecified immigrants and immigrants from a pathogen-rich ecology.

People vary in the degree to which they experience disgust toward-and, consequently, avoid-cues to pathogens. Prodigious work has measured this variation and observed that it relates to, among other things, personality, psychopathological tendencies, and moral and political sentiments. Less work has sought to generate hypotheses aimed at explaining why this variation exists in the first place, and even less work has evaluated how well data support these hypotheses. In this paper, we present and review the evidence supporting three such proposals. First, researchers have suggested that variability reflects a general tendency to experience anxiety or emotional distress. Second, researchers have suggested that variability arises from parental modelling, with offspring calibrating their pathogen avoidance based on their parents' reactions to pathogen cues. Third, researchers have suggested that individuals calibrate their disgust sensitivity to the parasite stress of the ecology in which they develop. We conclude that none of these hypotheses is supported by existing data, and we propose directions for future research aimed at better understanding this variation.This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Evolution of pathogen and parasite avoidance behaviours'., (© 2018 The Authors.)

Theories suggest that political ideology relates to cooperation, with conservatives being more likely to pursue selfish outcomes, and liberals more likely to pursue egalitarian outcomes. In study 1, we examine how political ideology and political party affiliation (Republican vs. Democrat) predict cooperation with a partner who self-identifies as Republican or Democrat in two samples before ( n = 362) and after ( n = 366) the 2012 US presidential election. Liberals show slightly more concern for their partners' outcomes compared to conservatives (study 1), and in study 2 this relation is supported by a meta-analysis ( r = .15). However, in study 1, political ideology did not relate to cooperation in general. Both Republicans and Democrats extend more cooperation to their in-group relative to the out-group, and this is explained by expectations of cooperation from in-group versus out-group members. We discuss the relation between political ideology and cooperation within and between groups., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Why is disgust sensitivity associated with socially conservative political views? Is it because socially conservative ideologies mitigate the risks of infectious disease, whether by promoting out-group avoidance or by reinforcing norms that sustain antipathogenic practices? Or might it be because socially conservative ideologies promote moral standards that advance a long-term, as opposed to a short-term, sexual strategy? Recent attempts to test these two explanations have yielded differing results and conflicting interpretations. Here, we contribute to the literature by examining the relationship between disgust sensitivity and political orientation, political party affiliation, and an often overlooked outcome-actual voter behavior. We focus on voter behavior and affiliation for the 2016 U.S. presidential election to determine whether pathogen or sexual disgust better predicts socially conservative ideology. Although many prominent aspects of Donald Trump's campaign-particularly his anti-foreign message-align with the pathogen-avoidance model of conservatism, we found that pathogen-related disgust sensitivity exerted no influence on political ideology, political party affiliation, or voter behavior, after controlling for sexual disgust sensitivity. In contrast, sexual disgust sensitivity was associated with increased odds of voting for Donald Trump versus each other major presidential candidate, as well as with increased odds of affiliating with the Republican versus the Democratic or Libertarian parties. In fact, for every unit increase in sexual disgust sensitivity, the odds of a participant voting for Trump versus Clinton increased by approximately 30%. It seems, then, that sexual disgust trumps pathogen disgust in predicting socially conservative voting behavior.

Infectious disease is an ever-present threat in daily life. Recent literature indicates that people manage this threat with a suite of antipathogenic psychological and behavioral defense mechanisms, which motivate the avoidance of people and objects bearing cues to pathogen risk. Here, we demonstrate that self-image is also impacted by these mechanisms. In seven studies, pathogen cues led individuals chronically averse to germs to express greater concern about their own physical appearance. Correspondingly, these people exhibited behavioral intentions and decisions intended to conceal or improve their appearance, such as purchasing facial products, taking pharmaceuticals, and undergoing cosmetic surgery. This work opens a new area of investigation for infectious-disease psychology research and highlights the central role played by physical appearance in pathogen-related cognition.

Social interactions are characterized by distinct forms of interdependence, each of which has unique effects on how behavior unfolds within the interaction. Despite this, little is known about the psychological mechanisms that allow people to detect and respond to the nature of interdependence in any given interaction. We propose that interdependence theory provides clues regarding the structure of interdependence in the human ancestral past. In turn, evolutionary psychology offers a framework for understanding the types of information processing mechanisms that could have been shaped under these recurring conditions. We synthesize and extend these two perspectives to introduce a new theory: functional interdependence theory (FIT). FIT can generate testable hypotheses about the function and structure of the psychological mechanisms for inferring interdependence. This new perspective offers insight into how people initiate and maintain cooperative relationships, select social partners and allies, and identify opportunities to signal social motives.

Introduction: Social relationships facilitate coping with pain, but research suggests that it may be difficult to galvanize social support during an episode of acute pain., Objectives: The current research examined whether social connections are optimized in the anticipation of pain by observing patients' mimicry of an interaction partner prior to surgery. We hypothesized that when controlling for their current experience of pain, patients' anticipation of pain would be associated with greater mimicry of an interaction partner., Methods: Sixty-five patients were interviewed in the waiting room of a maxillofacial surgery unit prior to the removal of an impacted wisdom tooth. Patients' spontaneous mimicry of an interviewer was observed. Patients then rated the quality and intensity of their anticipated pain, as well as the intensity of their current pain and their affective distress., Results: Anticipated pain, current pain, and affective distress were positively correlated. Current pain was associated with less frequent mimicry of an interaction partner. The zero-order correlation between anticipated pain and mimicry did not reach conventional levels of significance; however, when controlling for current pain, anticipated pain predicted more frequent mimicry of an interaction partner. The relationship between anticipated pain and mimicry was not explained by affective distress., Conclusion: This is the first study to demonstrate that anticipated and current pain relate to behavioral mimicry in divergent ways. Further research is needed to investigate whether the current pattern of results generalizes to other interpersonal behaviors that facilitate social bonds., Competing Interests: Sponsorships or competing interests that may be relevant to content are disclosed at the end of this article.

In response to the same moral violation, some people report experiencing anger, and others report feeling disgust. Do differences in emotional responses to moral violations reflect idiosyncratic differences in the communication of outrage, or do they reflect differences in motivational states? Whereas equivalence accounts suggest that anger and disgust are interchangeable expressions of condemnation, sociofunctional accounts suggest that they have distinct antecedents and consequences. We tested these accounts by investigating whether anger and disgust vary depending on the costs imposed by moral violations and whether they differentially correspond with aggressive tendencies. Results across four studies favor a sociofunctional account: When the target of a moral violation shifts from the self to another person, anger decreases, but disgust increases. Whereas anger is associated with high-cost, direct aggression, disgust is associated with less costly indirect aggression. Finally, whether the target of a moral violation is the self or another person influences direct aggression partially via anger and influences indirect aggression partially via disgust.

Maestripieri et al. pit evolutionary psychology against social psychological and economic perspectives in a winner-take-all empirical battle. In doing so, they risk positioning evolutionary psychology as an antagonistic subdisciplinary enterprise. We worry that such a framing may exacerbate tensions between "competing" scientific perspectives and limit evolutionary psychology's potential to serve as a unifying core theory.

People who are more avoidant of pathogens are more politically conservative, as are nations with greater parasite stress. In the current research, we test two prominent hypotheses that have been proposed as explanations for these relationships. The first, which is an intragroup account, holds that these relationships between pathogens and politics are based on motivations to adhere to local norms, which are sometimes shaped by cultural evolution to have pathogen-neutralizing properties. The second, which is an intergroup account, holds that these same relationships are based on motivations to avoid contact with outgroups, who might pose greater infectious disease threats than ingroup members. Results from a study surveying 11,501 participants across 30 nations are more consistent with the intragroup account than with the intergroup account. National parasite stress relates to traditionalism (an aspect of conservatism especially related to adherence to group norms) but not to social dominance orientation (SDO; an aspect of conservatism especially related to endorsements of intergroup barriers and negativity toward ethnic and racial outgroups). Further, individual differences in pathogen-avoidance motives (i.e., disgust sensitivity) relate more strongly to traditionalism than to SDO within the 30 nations., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Objective: Recent work suggests that the psychology of pathogen-avoidance has wide-reaching effects on how people interact with the world. These processes - part of what has been referred to as the behavioural immune system - are, in a way, our 'evolved' health psychology. However, scholars have scarcely investigated how the behavioural immune system relates to health-protective behaviours. The current research attempts to fill this gap., Design: Across two cross-sectional studies (N = 386 and 470, respectively), we examined the relationship between pathogen-avoidance motives and health-protective behaviour., Outcome Measures: The studies used self-reported measures of attitude and intention as indicators of health-protective behaviour., Results: Data collected in Study 1 revealed that pathogen-avoidance motivation related to participants' attitude and intention towards sexually transmitted infections screening. High levels of pathogen-avoidance motivation were also related to having had fewer sexual partners, which partially mediated the effect of pathogen-avoidance variables on testing motivation. Study 2 extended these findings by showing moderate associations between pathogen-avoidance motivation and a broad range of health-protective behaviours, including but not limited to pathogen-related health concerns., Conclusion: We argue that understanding and targeting pathogen-avoidance psychology can add novel and important understanding of health-protective behaviour.

Nonoffending mothers of sexually abused children often exhibit high levels of posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms. Emerging evidence suggests that trait-like individual differences in sensitivity to disgust play a role in the development of PTS symptoms. One such individual difference, disgust sensitivity, has not been examined as far as we are aware among victims of secondary traumatic stress. The current study examined associations between disgust sensitivity and PTS symptoms among mothers of sexually abused children (N = 72). Mothers completed the Impact of Event Scale-Revised and the Three Domain Disgust Scale (Tybur, Lieberman, & Griskevicius, 2009). More than one third of mothers scored above a suggested cutoff (mean score = 1.5) for high levels of PTS symptoms. Hierarchical linear regression analysis results indicated that sexual disgust sensitivity (β = .39, p = .002) was associated with PTS symptoms (R(2) = .18). An interaction analysis showed that sexual disgust sensitivity was associated with maternal PTS symptoms only when the perpetrator was not biologically related to the child (β = -.32, p = .047; R(2) = .28). Our findings suggested that sexual disgust sensitivity may be a risk factor for developing PTS symptoms among mothers of sexually abused children., (Copyright © 2016 International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.)

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 16(1) of Emotion (see record 2015-57029-001). In the article, the name of author Joshua M. Tybur was misspelled as Joshua M. Tyber. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Response sensitivity to common disgust elicitors varies considerably among individuals. The sources of these individual differences are largely unknown. In the current study, we use a large sample of female identical and nonidentical twins (N = 1,041 individuals) and their siblings (N = 170) to estimate the proportion of variation due to genetic effects, the shared environment, and other (residual) sources across multiple domains of disgust sensitivity. We also investigate the genetic and environmental influences on the covariation between the different disgust domains. Twin modeling revealed that approximately half of the variation in pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust is due to genetic effects. An independent pathways twin model also revealed that sexual and pathogen disgust sensitivity were influenced by unique sources of genetic variation, while also being significantly affected by a general genetic factor underlying all 3 disgust domains. Moral disgust sensitivity, in contrast, did not exhibit domain-specific genetic variation. These findings are discussed in light of contemporary evolutionary approaches to disgust sensitivity., ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

Evolutionary psychologists are personally liberal, just as social psychologists are. Yet their research has rarely been perceived as liberally biased--if anything, it has been erroneously perceived as motivated by conservative political agendas. Taking a closer look at evolutionary psychologists might offer the broader social psychology community guidance in neutralizing some of the biases Duarte et al. discuss.

Many recent evolutionary psychology and human behavioral ecology studies have tested hypotheses by examining correlations between variables measured at a group level (e.g., state, country, continent). In such analyses, variables collected for each aggregation are often taken to be representative of the individuals present within them, and relationships between such variables are presumed to reflect individual-level processes. There are multiple reasons to exercise caution when doing so, including: (1) the ecological fallacy, whereby relationships observed at the aggregate level do not accurately represent individual-level processes; (2) non-independence of data points, which violates assumptions of the inferential techniques used in null hypothesis testing; and (3) cross-cultural non-equivalence of measurement (differences in construct validity between groups). We provide examples of how each of these gives rise to problems in the context of testing evolutionary hypotheses about human behavior, and we offer some suggestions for future research.

Just as modern economies undergo periods of boom and bust, human ancestors experienced cycles of abundance and famine. Is the adaptive response when resources become scarce to save for the future or to spend money on immediate gains? Drawing on life-history theory, we propose that people's responses to resource scarcity depend on the harshness of their early-life environment, as reflected by childhood socioeconomic status (SES). In the three experiments reported here, we tested how people from different childhood environments responded to resource scarcity. We found that people who grew up in lower-SES environments were more impulsive, took more risks, and approached temptations more quickly. Conversely, people who grew up in higher-SES environments were less impulsive, took fewer risks, and approached temptations more slowly. Responses similarly diverged according to people's oxidative-stress levels-a urinary biomarker of cumulative stress exposure. Overall, whereas tendencies associated with early-life environments were dormant in benign conditions, they emerged under conditions of economic uncertainty.

Interest in and research on disgust has surged over the past few decades. The field, however, still lacks a coherent theoretical framework for understanding the evolved function or functions of disgust. Here we present such a framework, emphasizing 2 levels of analysis: that of evolved function and that of information processing. Although there is widespread agreement that disgust evolved to motivate the avoidance of contact with disease-causing organisms, there is no consensus about the functions disgust serves when evoked by acts unrelated to pathogen avoidance. Here we suggest that in addition to motivating pathogen avoidance, disgust evolved to regulate decisions in the domains of mate choice and morality. For each proposed evolved function, we posit distinct information processing systems that integrate function-relevant information and account for the trade-offs required of each disgust system. By refocusing the discussion of disgust on computational mechanisms, we recast prior theorizing on disgust into a framework that can generate new lines of empirical and theoretical inquiry.

Although health psychologists' efforts to understand and promote health are most effective when guided by theory, health psychology has not taken full advantage of theoretical insights provided by evolutionary psychology. Here, we argue that evolutionary perspectives can fruitfully inform strategies for addressing some of the challenges facing health psychologists. Evolutionary psychology's emphasis on modular, functionally specialized psychological systems can inform approaches to understanding the myriad behaviors grouped under the umbrella of "health," as can theoretical perspectives used by evolutionary anthropologists, biologists, and psychologists (e.g., Life History Theory). We detail some early investigations into evolutionary health psychology, and we provide suggestions for directions for future research.

Recent research has established a link between disgust sensitivity and stigmatizing reactions to various groups, including obese individuals. However, previous research has overlooked disgust's multiple evolved functions. Here, we investigated whether the link between disgust sensitivity and obesity stigma is specific to pathogen disgust, or whether sexual disgust and moral disgust--two separate functional domains--also relate to negative attitudes toward obese individuals. Additionally, we investigated whether sex differences exist in the manner disgust sensitivity predicts obesity stigma, whether the sexes differ across the subtypes of obesity bias independent of disgust sensitivity, and last, the association between participants' BMI and different subtypes of obesity stigma. In study 1 (N = 92), we established that obesity elicits pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust. In study 2, we investigated the relationship between these types of disgust sensitivity and obesity stigma. Participants (N = 387) reported their level of disgust toward various pathogen, sexual, and moral acts and their attitudes toward obese individuals. For women, but not men, increased pathogen disgust sensitivity predicted more negative attitudes toward obese individuals. Men reported more negative general attitudes toward obese individuals whereas women reported greater fear of becoming obese. The sexes also differed in how their own BMI related to the subtypes of obesity stigma. These findings indicate that pathogen disgust sensitivity plays a role in obesity stigma, specifically for women. Defining the scope of disgust's activation in response to obesity and its relationship with other variables can help identify possible mechanisms for understanding and ultimately alleviating prejudice and discrimination.

Although the ratio of males to females in a population is known to influence behavior in nonhuman animals, little is known about how sex ratio influences human behavior. We propose that sex ratio affects women's family planning and career choices. Using both historical data and experiments, we examined how sex ratio influences women's career aspirations. Findings showed that a scarcity of men led women to seek high-paying careers and to delay starting a family. This effect was driven by how sex ratio altered the mating market, not just the job market. Sex ratios involving a scarcity of men led women to seek lucrative careers because of the difficulty women have in finding an investing, long-term mate under such circumstances. Accordingly, this low-male sex ratio produced the strongest desire for lucrative careers in women who are least able to secure a mate. These findings demonstrate that sex ratio has far-reaching effects in humans, including whether women choose briefcase over baby., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

The ratio of males to females in a population is an important factor in determining behavior in animals. We propose that sex ratio also has pervasive effects in humans, such as by influencing economic decisions. Using both historical data and experiments, we examined how sex ratio influences saving, borrowing, and spending in the United States. Findings show that male-biased sex ratios (an abundance of men) lead men to discount the future and desire immediate rewards. Male-biased sex ratios decreased men's desire to save for the future and increased their willingness to incur debt for immediate expenditures. Sex ratio appears to influence behavior by increasing the intensity of same-sex competition for mates. Accordingly, a scarcity of women led people to expect men to spend more money during courtship, such as by paying more for engagement rings. These findings demonstrate experimentally that sex ratio influences human decision making in ways consistent with evolutionary biological theory. Implications for sex ratio effects across cultures are discussed.

Mate preferences may operate in part to mitigate the threats posed by infectious disease. In this paper, we outline various ways in which preferring healthy mates can offer direct benefits in terms of pathogen avoidance and indirect benefits in terms of heritable immunity to offspring, as well as the costs that may constrain mate preferences for health. We then pay special attention to empirical work on mate preferences in humans given the depth and breadth of research on human mating. We review this literature and comment on the degree to which human mate preferences may reflect preferences for health.