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Why do some individuals support nationalist policies while others don't? The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis in evolutionary psychology suggests that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values whereas less intelligent individuals may be more likely to hold evolutionarily familiar values. Nationalism is evolutionarily familiar, so the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis suggests that less intelligent individuals may be more likely to be nationalist. The analyses of the General Social Survey (GSS) data in the US and the National Child Development Study (NCDS) data in the UK confirmed the prediction. Less intelligent Americans were more likely to have nationalist attitudes, and less intelligent British voters were more likely to support nationalist parties in five general elections over three decades. The tendency of less intelligent individuals to be more nationalist and belligerent may, among other things, form the microfoundation of democratic peace in international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

The purpose of this article is to pose and preliminarily answer the question, ‘Can the sense of shame be a virtue?’ It offers a brief, empirically informed, affirmative answer to this question. After developing the context of this question, the article describes the emotion of shame and the shame system by situating them in their evolutionary and cultural contexts. This positions us to address Aristotelian reasons for a negative answer to our question having to do with whether shame is merely an emotion (no) and whether the sense of shame functions as a disposition to decide (yes). We summarize the evolutionary purpose of shame as a social-rank based emotion and identify benefits accruing to a population in which the sense of shame is working well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of proportionality has been central to the retributive revival in penal theory, and underlies desert theory's normative and practical commitment to limiting punishment. Theories of punishment combining desert-based and consequentialist considerations also appeal to proportionality as a limiting condition. In this paper we argue that these claims are founded on an exaggerated idea of what proportionality can offer, and in particular fail properly to consider the institutional conditions needed to foster robust limits on the state's power to punish. The idea that appeals to proportionality as an abstract ideal can help to limit punishment is, we argue, a chimera: what has been thought of as proportionality is not a naturally existing relationship, but a product of political and social construction, cultural meaning-making, and institution-building. Drawing on evolutionary psychology and comparative political economy, we argue that philosophers and social scientists need to work together to understand how the appeal of the idea of proportionality can best be realised through substantive institutional frameworks under particular conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response is presented to the article "Against Literary Darwinism," by Jonathan Kramnick, from the Winter 2011 issue, wherein Kramnick criticizes the literary theories of what he sees as the undo influence of evolutionary psychology on literary analysis. The author asserts that the work of evolutionary critics shares strong similarities with the Victorian-era views of science and literature.

The article discusses the scholastic debate surrounding sympathy and emotion during the Victorian era. Details are given highlighting the nuanced social and academic definitions offered for the emotional states of sympathy and love during the period. Examples of psychological and physiological research surrounding the subject in British intellectual culture are provided, particularly cited from the journal "Mind." The scrutiny of sympathy by scholars in evolutionary and developmental psychology, ethics and aesthetics is also discussed.

The article focuses on a study that analyzes the phenomena of public scientific debates, wherein scientific controversies are argued in public such as in the mass media using an evolutionary psychology in Great Britain. An earlier analysis of the subject has suggested that academics associated with evolutionary psychology had been active in media. Evolutionary psychology has contended scientific boundaries outside the constraints of academic discourse to claim expertise in the study of human beings.

Discusses findings from quantitative analyses of Great Britain press and print media coverage of evolutionary psychology during the 1990s. Link between press coverage of evolutionary psychology and the publications of popular books on the subject; Finding that a higher proportion of academics and authors wrote about evolutionary psychology in the press; Finding that evolutionary psychology coverage appeared in various areas of the daily press, and was rarely written about by specialist science journalists.

Researchers have long noted that many of the multiple elicitors of disgust have some relation to infectious disease. There is an emerging consensus that disgust evolved in Animalia to direct the behaviours that reduce risk of infection, so-called 'parasite avoidance theory'. If this is correct, then the disgust motive should be structured in a manner that reflects the ways in which infectious disease can be avoided. In this study, we generated a set of items based on the epidemiology of disease transmission. These were then rated for their capacity to elicit disgust by a large, predominantly North American/UK sample and subjected to factor analysis to identify latent variables. While a number of plausible factor solutions emerged, Velicer's MAP (minimum average partial) test suggested six domains: atypical appearance, lesions, sex, hygiene, food and animals. This structure did not exactly mirror the transmission routes of infections, as we initially predicted, but it may rather reflect distinct kinds of behavioural tasks involved in avoiding disease. This finding makes sense from the perspective of a cognitive system that evolved under selection for a behavioural response to threats from the social and biological environment. We suggest that regularly occurring types of infectious disease problems have produced regularities in the domain structure of pathogen disgust and discuss the implications of these results for understanding the structure, function and measurement of motives such as disgust in humans and other animals.This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Evolution of pathogen and parasite avoidance behaviours'., (© 2018 The Author(s).)

2009 was Darwin year; his familiar bearded face peered out from a great radiation of TV series, book covers and even a feature film. The reasons for this were his bicentennial and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the . However, there is no reason the celebrations should cease with the turn of the New Year. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]