Search

Within evolutionary psychology, a dominant assumption is that adaptive variation in fast versus slow life history strategies centrally includes variation in sociosexual orientations. Fast reproductive strategies—prioritizing current reproduction and high number of low-quality offspring—are purportedly facilitated by short-term, uncommitted sexual relationships with multiple partners and investing little in resulting offspring (a high mating effort, low parental effort strategy). Slow strategies—of producing few, high-quality offspring—purportedly entails having few lifetime sexual partners and forming long-term, committed pair-bonds in which both parents invest heavily in offspring (a high parental effort, low mating effort strategy). Notably, proposals for individual variation in human life history strategies are inspired by cross-species evidence on covariation of traits related to reproduction and longevity. However, examination of evidence across mammals, birds, and primates reveals that variations in mating versus parental effort are not central to the interspecies dimensions of fast-slow strategies. Variations in pair-bonding and biparental care likewise do not map onto the fast-slow continuum or offspring quantity versus quality dimension. Indeed, in human foraging groups, male provisioning appears to increase offspring quantity. For several reasons, sex with multiple partners does not promote women's fertility rate. Alternative selection pressures are more likely to have led to adaptive variation in human mating strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Negative Emotions in the Reception of Fictional Narratives: A Cognitive Approach" explores the relationship between various art forms and negative emotions, focusing on the role of negative emotions in the reader's aesthetic experience. The book includes ten case studies that examine different genres, such as horror movies, literature works, computer games, and films. The studies employ psychological analysis and theoretical frameworks from cognitive science, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and cognitive psychology. The book offers new perspectives on how readers' minds react to the emotional aspects of fictional narratives and provides insights into the complexity of emotions experienced by readers. [Extracted from the article]

Weekes-Shackelford, V. A., & Shackelford, T. K. (eds.). (2021). The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and Parenting. New York: Oxford University Press.

What features of peoples childhood environments go on to shape their prosocial behavior during adulthood? Past studies linking childhood environment to adult prosocial behavior have focused primarily on adverse features, thereby neglecting the possible influence of exposure to enriched environments (e.g., access to material resources, experiences with rich cooperative relationships, and interactions with morally exemplary role models). Here, we expand the investigation of childhood environmental quality to include consideration of enriching childhood experiences and their relation to adult prosociality. In two cross-sectional studies, we found promising evidence that enriched childhood environments are associated with adult moral behavior. In study 1 (N = 1,084 MTurk workers), we adapted an existing measure of enriched childhood environmental quality for retrospective recall of childhood experiences and found that subjects recollections of their enriched childhood experiences are distinct from their recollections of adverse childhood experiences. In Study 2 (N = 2,208 MTurk workers), we found that a formative composite of subjects recollections of enriched childhood experiences is positively associated with a variety of morally relevant traits in adulthood, including agreeableness, honesty-humility, altruism, endorsement of the principle of care, empathic responding to the plights of needy others, and charitable donations in an experimental setting, and that these associations held after controlling for childhood environmental adversity, childhood socioeconomic status, sex, and age. We also found evidence suggesting that some, but not all, of the relationship between enrichment and adult prosociality can be explained by a shared genetic correlation. We include a new seven-item measure as an appendix.

The Journal of Analytical Psychology has published a list of recently received books. One notable book is "On Dreams and the East: Notes of the 1933 Berlin Seminar" by C.G. Jung, H. Zimmer, and G.V.R. Sorge. This book contains notes from a seminar held by Jung in Berlin in 1933, exploring the symbolism of yoga and its application to dream analysis. Another book, "Time and Trauma in Analytical Psychology and Psychotherapy: The Wisdom of Andean Shamanism" by D. Bryon, examines the experience of time in psychoanalysis and Andean shamanism. Other books cover topics such as the therapist-patient relationship in film, feminism and technology, maternal infanticide, and the concept of absolute freedom. Additionally, there are books that analyze the cultural impacts of Brexit and the war in Ukraine, as well as the significance of Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Parzival" on Jung's thinking. Finally, there are reissued classics and collections of essays on psychology and spirituality. One book, "Indian Mirror—The Making of the Brazilian Soul" by R. Gambini, explores the projection of the Christian "shadow" onto early Brazilian natives and its impact on their culture. [Extracted from the article]

SUMMARY: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals has been considered Charles Darwin's forgotten masterpiece and is his only book on psychology. It is also the first ever systematic application of Darwinian theory to the expression of emotions and has been considered by some to be the foundational text of evolutionary psychology. This article explores some key concepts in the book and gives reasons why both psychiatry and psychology can benefit greatly from becoming better acquainted with this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the scientific status of Freud's psychoanalysis, which has been widely criticized and dismissed as unscientific. However, recent developments in evolutionary psychology and neuroscience have led to a more balanced assessment of Freud's legacy. While Freud's personal flaws and inaccuracies in his work are acknowledged, it is argued that his contributions should not be overlooked. Evolutionary psychology has found conceptual similarities with Freudian thinking, and experimental research has yielded results consistent with psychoanalytic theory. The article calls for a more measured and nuanced approach to Freud's ideas, recognizing the pearls of wisdom amidst the criticisms. [Extracted from the article]

The free energy principle is a formal theory of adaptive self-organising systems that emerged from statistical thermodynamics, machine learning and theoretical neuroscience and has since been translated into biologically plausible ‘process theories’ of cognition and behaviour, which fall under the banner of ‘active inference’. Despite the promise this theory holds for theorising, research and practical applications in psychology and psychiatry, its impact on these disciplines has only now begun to bear fruit. The aim of this treatment is to consider the extent to which active inference has informed theoretical progress in psychology, before exploring its contributions to our understanding and treatment of psychopathology. Despite facing persistent translational obstacles, progress suggests that active inference has the potential to become a new paradigm that promises to unite psychology’s subdisciplines, while readily incorporating the traditionally competing paradigms of evolutionary and developmental psychology. To date, however, progress towards this end has been slow. Meanwhile, the main outstanding question is whether this theory will make a positive difference through applications in clinical psychology, and its sister discipline of psychiatry.

Dark triad (DT) refers to a set of antisocial and self-interested personality traits (Machiavellianism, sub-clinical psychopathy and narcissism). The nocturnal cognitive niche hypothesis suggests that the DT was advantageous in a nocturnal niche because it enables exploitative strategies and would be linked with an evening-oriented chronotype as part of a fast life history strategy. In the present self-report study (N = 300), this hypothesis was tested in a Brazilian sample. It was found that Machiavellianism was a predictor of this chronotype profile in females and secondary psychopathy was a predictor of this profile in males. Also, sex differences were replicated: on average, males exhibited "darker" personalities and more evening-oriented chronotype. Finally, these associations were tested with structural equation modeling controlling for sex and was found that the exploitative "darkcore" (psychopathy and Machiavellianism) predicts an evening-oriented chronotype. These results provide the first support for the nocturnal cognitive niche hypothesis in a non-WEIRD population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monsters and other imaginary animals have been conjured up by a wide range of cultures. Can their popularity be explained, and can their properties be predicted? These were long-standing questions for structuralist or cognitive anthropology, as well as literary studies and cultural evolution. The task is to solve the puzzle raised by the popularity of extraordinary imaginary animals, and to explain some cross-cultural regularities that such animals present—traits like hybridity or dangerousness. The standard approach to this question was to first investigate how human imagination deals with actually existing animals. Structuralist theory held that some animals are particularly "good to think with." According to Mary Douglas's influential hypothesis, this was chiefly true of animals that disrupt intuitive classifications of species—the "monsters-as-anomalies" account. But this hypothesis is problematic, as ethnobiology shows that folk classifications of biological species are so plastic that classificatory anomalies can be disregarded. This led cognitive anthropologists to propose alternative versions of the "monsters as anomalies" account. Parallel to this, a second account of monsters—"monsters-as-predators"—starts from the importance of predator detection to our past survival and reproduction, and argues that dangerous features make animals "good to think with," and should be overrepresented in imaginary animals. This article argues that both accounts understand something about monsters that the other account cannot explain. We propose a synthesis of these two accounts that attempts to explain why the two most characteristic aspects of monsters, anomalousness and predatoriness, tend to go together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An overview is provided of the psychological constituents of the emotional register, and special focus is given to the longer-lasting existential moods—our being-attuned to being—that we as humans experience. The classic concepts of existentialism (Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre) are reviewed and challenged. Moods, such as emptiness, meaninglessness, existential anxiety for freedom and nothingness, have not always been dominating aspects of human existence, nor are they today. These moods primarily stem from urbanity and modernity; but worldwide the majority of people do not know what autonomy, freedom, and relativity means. The outer as well as the inner nature of humans, and of human existence, are underexposed in classic and modern existential thinking. The aim here is to remedy this shortcoming by presenting an empirically anchored outline of a natural existential psychology, which, based on modern neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, comparative psychology, and phenomenology, provides further knowledge about our basic existential moods and our species-specific resonances of being-in-the-world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article incorporates into Christian theological anthropology some recent findings of a school of scientific researchers in the fields of comparative and developmental psychology. These researchers—namely, Michael Tomasello, Malinda Carpenter, and others affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology—have advanced a theologically significant hypothesis about a basic difference between the social‐cognitive capacities of human beings and those of other animals. Their hypothesis is that human beings are distinguished from other animals, in part, because of an ability to share attention with conspecifics in a unique way, namely, by means of a capacity called joint attention. In keeping with the procedures of modern science, they have tested and verified their hypothesis through laboratory experiments on nonhuman primates (chimpanzees in particular) and on human beings (infants and toddlers). In their capacity as scientists, however, they do not attempt show the relevance of their hypothesis for Christian theological anthropology. This article shows how joint attention sheds new light upon the Christian doctrine that human beings are created in the image of the Trinity (imago Trinitatis). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various psychological predictors of mate preference have been identified in prior research that when accounted for simultaneously could reveal the unique contributions of each. This study aimed to explore the extent to which perceived attractiveness, personality characteristics, and attachment styles are associated with young Iranian adults' mate preferences, attending to group differences based on biological sex. A total of 644 Iranian young adults completed a questionnaire that included items related to one's perceived intelligence and physical attractiveness, HEXACO personality traits, and KASER mate preferences (kindness/dependability, attractiveness/sexuality, status/resources, education/intelligence, and religiosity/chastity). Several differences based on biological sex were apparent in the personality, attachment, and mate preferences measures, as well as with their intercorrelations. Analyses using multiple linear regression indicated that each of the KASER variables had some unique combinations of the three types of psychological characteristics, and some variance by biological sex. For example, kindness/dependability was predicted for males by the two perceived attractiveness variables and by two personality variables (emotionality and conscientiousness), but only by the agreeableness personality trait for females. Attachment styles were only relevant for education/intelligence and religiosity/chastity, with little evidence of sex‐based differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Werner Greve argues for an abstract and integrative theory of development; to progress toward such a theory, he suggests that evolutionary psychology can provide concepts for a processual approach to adaptation. To complement this perspective, I propose to start where the author finishes: the need to further qualify change, and to account for information. Considering ruptures and sense-making as cornerstones of a developmental approach, I recall that open dynamic approaches offer a meta-theoretical frame for an integrative developmental psychology, and that cultural approaches already and always account for meaning-making to start with. Assuming these two givens, a variety of integrative propositions account for stability and change; I present an historical example, the work of Gordon Allport, and a current one, our work as sociocultural psychologists, to show how the theoretical and heuristic interest of this proposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the project of a lifespan perspective in developmental psychology has not yet been systematically pursued. Overall, the number of age-specific papers far outweighs the number of lifespan approaches, and even approaches that focus on the lifespan as a whole are often restricted to adulthood. Further, there is a lack of approaches that examine cross-lifespan relationships. However, the lifespan perspective has brought with it a "processual turn" that suggests an examination of developmental regulatory processes that are either operative across the lifespan or develop across the lifespan. Accommodative adjustment of goals and evaluations in response to obstacles, loss, and threat is discussed as an example of such a process. Not only is it prototypical of efficacy and change of developmental regulation across the lifespan, but at the same time it makes clear that stability (e.g., of the self)—as a possible outcome of accommodation—is not an alternative to, but a variant of development. Explaining how accommodative adaptation changes, in turn, requires a broader perspective. For this purpose, an evolutionary approach to developmental psychology is proposed that not only views human development as a product of phylogenesis, but also applies the central concepts of the theory of evolution (adaptation and history) directly to ontogeny. The challenges, conditions, and limitations of such a theoretical application of adaptation to human development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]