Evolutionary Theory and Political Behavior

Political behavior is behavior aimed at regulating access to resources: Who is recognized to get what, when, and how? Evidence across a number of disciplines shows that humans over evolutionary history have evolved sophisticated abilities to engage in political behavior through status seeking and coalition formation in order to attract resources to themselves, their kin, and their allies. As demonstrated by recent research, this evolutionary history of politics continues to shape how modern individuals behave in modern mass politics and prompt people to derive their political attitudes from ancestrally relevant factors such as upper body strength and short-term fluctuations in hunger. Important areas for research lies ahead in (i) understanding how evolution has given rise to individual variation in political behavior, (ii) investigating the extent to which the evolved psychology of humans biases modern political behavior, and (iii) strengthening the ties between this emerging application of evolutionary theory and more traditional research on political behavior. Keywords: evolutionary theory; evolution; political behavior; resources; modern individuals; political attitudes; research; individual variation; human biases