Women’s obligatory parental investment may lead women to value men’s ability and willingness to invest in future offspring when evaluating long-term mates. Although men’s disposition toward parental investment has received less attention than their resource acquisition ability, several studies have shown that behavioral cues to men’s willingness to invest influence women’s evaluations. However, it remains unclear whether parental investment cues specifically influence long-term mate attractiveness or generally increase favorability. This study used text-based profiles to examine whether cues to men’s willingness to invest have domain-specific effects on women’s evaluations. Female nursing school students in Japan (N = 254) were randomly assigned to read a male profile that either included or did not include parental investment cues and then evaluated the target man across long-term mating, short-term mating, and non-mating contexts. The results showed that men described as having positive attitudes toward parenting and children were evaluated as more attractive as long-term mates, but less attractive as short-term mates. No effects were observed for non-mating evaluations, namely friend attractiveness and general liking. These findings suggest that men’s attitudes toward parenting and children serve as cues to men’s willingness to invest in future offspring and influence women’s evaluations in a domain-specific manner. The study findings also suggest that parental investment cues may signal not only men’s suitability as long-term mates but also their lower suitability as short-term mates. This study provides evidence for the domain specificity of parental investment cues and highlights the importance of such cues in human mate choice.
Despite much research devoted to the causes of sexual violence, less has focused on identifying the defenses women deploy to prevent sexual violence, or ameliorate its costs. We present two studies (N = 582 women) using a convenience sample from a university in the southern United States. Across two studies, we used an act nomination paradigm to identify defenses against five potential perpetrators: strangers, acquaintances, dates, romantic partners, and a general prompt. We created the largest preliminary taxonomy of women’s defenses against sexual violence encompassing over 9,000 spontaneous nominations categorized into 48 tactics and 19 categories. We highlight the variety of defenses, the specificity of some defenses as a function of participant-perpetrator relationship, and discuss future directions.
How do people decide whom to help when information about others is limited? From an evolutionary perspective, personality traits may function as social cues that facilitate evaluations of potential interaction partners. The present study examined whether the Big Five traits of both potential helpers and targets predict helping intentions toward strangers. A total of 120 Japanese adults evaluated 40 experimentally constructed personality profiles and rated both their willingness to help and their liking for each target. Linear mixed-effects models revealed trait-specific patterns. Openness and extraversion showed no significant participant or target effects on helping intentions. In contrast, targets higher in conscientiousness and agreeableness received more help, and significant participant × target interactions emerged for both traits. Supplementary response surface analyses indicated that these interactions were not driven by personality similarity per se. Rather, individuals higher in conscientiousness or agreeableness were particularly responsive to the corresponding traits in targets. Additional mediation analyses showed that the interaction effects on helping were fully accounted for by liking, suggesting that personality traits influence helping primarily through evaluative processes. These findings indicate that agreeableness and conscientiousness function as socially interpretable cues that shape evaluations of potential partners under conditions of uncertainty. More broadly, the results suggest that social evaluation may represent a psychological mechanism through which personality traits contribute to assortative patterns in cooperation.
Though mythologies are sometimes recognized as evolutionarily significant for illuminating the human condition, differences among them may reflect adaptive challenges faced by specific human groups contending with distinct ecological conditions. To explore this socio-biogeographical hypothesis, wherein expansion into different ecologies imposed distinct evolutionary exigencies reflected in myth, we review Indo-European serpent, dog, and horse myths, and then consider ecological, ancestral, and cultural diversity among the biocultural descendants of Chalcolithic and Bronze Age societies. Multiple comparative phylogenetic examinations were conducted to determine the cultural evolutionary dynamics of these animal myths. Inter-rater reliability analyses of animal myths revealed an adequate level of agreement among raters. A Sequential Canonical Cascade model based on the phylogenetic independent contrasts of Y-chromosome haplogroup frequencies, the diversity of venomous snakes, on the rates of serpent, dog, and horse myths reached statistical significance and explained, on average, 62
Borderline personality pathology is closely linked to early life experiences, yet most research has emphasized discrete adverse events rather than broader childhood environments. Guided by life history theory, this research examined whether recollections of childhood socioecological conditions – specifically unpredictability and harshness – are associated with distinct borderline traits in adulthood. Across two U.S. samples and one Israeli sample (total N = 4,993), perceived childhood unpredictability showed robust positive associations with neurotic, antagonistic, disinhibited, and dissociative borderline traits. In contrast, perceived harshness displayed weaker, context-dependent effects that were often reduced or reversed after accounting for unpredictability. Harshness also moderated the effects of unpredictability, which were typically strongest in less harsh environments. Gender moderation was inconsistent and largely limited to externalizing traits.
