{"title":"Partner choice does not predict prosociality across countries.","authors":"Scott Claessens, Thanos Kyritsis","doi":"10.1017/ehs.2022.51","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.51","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Why does human prosociality vary around the world? Evolutionary models and laboratory experiments suggest that possibilities for partner choice (i.e. the ability to leave unprofitable relationships and strike up new ones) should promote cooperation across human societies. Leveraging the Global Preferences Survey (<i>n =</i> 27,125; 27 countries) and the World Values Survey (<i>n =</i> 54,728; 32 countries), we test this theory by estimating the associations between relational mobility, a socioecological measure of partner choice, and a wide variety of prosocial attitudes and behaviours, including impersonal altruism, reciprocity, trust, collective action and moral judgements of antisocial behaviour. Contrary to our pre-registered predictions, we found little evidence that partner choice is related to prosociality across countries. After controlling for shared causes of relational mobility and prosociality - environmental harshness, subsistence style and geographic and linguistic proximity - we found that only altruism and trust in people from another religion are positively related to relational mobility. We did not find positive relationships between relational mobility and reciprocity, generalised trust, collective action or moral judgements. These findings challenge evolutionary theories of human cooperation which emphasise partner choice as a key explanatory mechanism, and highlight the need to generalise models and experiments to global samples.</p>","PeriodicalId":36414,"journal":{"name":"Evolutionary Human Sciences","volume":"4 ","pages":"e54"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10426035/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10018137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S Craig Roberts, Jitka Třebická Fialová, Agnieszka Sorokowska, Ben Langford, Piotr Sorokowski, Vít Třebický, Jan Havlíček
{"title":"Emotional expression in human odour.","authors":"S Craig Roberts, Jitka Třebická Fialová, Agnieszka Sorokowska, Ben Langford, Piotr Sorokowski, Vít Třebický, Jan Havlíček","doi":"10.1017/ehs.2022.44","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.44","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent work has demonstrated that human body odour alters with changing emotional state and that emotionally laden odours can affect the physiology and behaviour of people exposed to them. Here we review these discoveries, which we believe add to a growing recognition that the human sense of smell and its potential role in social interactions have been underappreciated. However, we also critically evaluate the current evidence, with a particular focus on methodology and the interpretation of emotional odour studies. We argue that while the evidence convincingly indicates that humans retain a capacity for olfactory communication of emotion, the extent to which this occurs in ordinary social interaction remains an open question. Future studies should place fewer restrictions on participant selection and lifestyle and adopt more realistic experimental designs. We also need to devote more consideration to underlying mechanisms and to recognise the constraints that these may place on effective communication. Finally, we outline some promising approaches to address these issues, and raise some broader theoretical questions that such approaches may help us to answer.</p>","PeriodicalId":36414,"journal":{"name":"Evolutionary Human Sciences","volume":"4 ","pages":"e44"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10426192/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10021006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Women carry for less: body size, pelvis width, loading position and energetics.","authors":"Cara M Wall-Scheffler","doi":"10.1017/ehs.2022.35","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.35","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The energetic cost of walking varies with mass and speed; however, the metabolic cost of carrying loads has not consistently increased proportionally to the mass carried. The cost of carrying mass, and the speed at which human walkers carry this mass, has been shown to vary with load position and load description (e.g. child vs. groceries). Additionally, the preponderance of women carriers around the world, and the tendency for certain kinds of population-level sexual dimorphism has led to the hypothesis that women might be more effective carriers than men. Here, I investigate the energetic cost and speed changes of women (<i>N =</i> 9) and men (<i>N =</i> 6) walking through the woods carrying their own babies (mean baby mass = 10.6 kg) in three different positions - on their front, side and back using the same Ergo fabric baby sling. People carrying their babies on their backs are able to maintain their unloaded walking speed (1.4 m/s) and show the lowest increase in metabolic cost per distance (J/m, 17.4%). Women carry the babies for a lower energetic cost than men at all conditions (<i>p</i> < 0.01). Further energetic and kinematic evidence elucidates the preponderance of back-carrying cross-culturally, and illustrates the importance of relatively wider bi-trochanteric breadths for reducing the energetic costs of carrying.</p>","PeriodicalId":36414,"journal":{"name":"Evolutionary Human Sciences","volume":"4 ","pages":"e36"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10426031/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10011203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
E Reindl, C Tennie, I A Apperly, Z Lugosi, S R Beck
{"title":"Young children spontaneously invent three different types of associative tool use behaviour.","authors":"E Reindl, C Tennie, I A Apperly, Z Lugosi, S R Beck","doi":"10.1017/ehs.2022.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Associative Tool Use (ATU) describes the use of two or more tools in combination, with the literature further differentiating between Tool set use, Tool composite use, Sequential tool use and Secondary tool use. Research investigating the cognitive processes underlying ATU has shown that some primate and bird species spontaneously invent Tool set and Sequential tool use. Yet studies with humans are sparse. Whether children are also able to spontaneously invent ATU behaviours and at what age this ability emerges is poorly understood. We addressed this gap in the literature with two experiments involving preschoolers (E1, <i>N</i> = 66, 3 years 6 months to 4 years 9 months; E2, <i>N</i> = 119, 3 years 0 months to 6 years 10 months) who were administered novel tasks measuring Tool set, Metatool and Sequential tool use. Participants needed to solve the tasks individually, without the opportunity for social learning (except for enhancement effects). Children from 3 years of age spontaneously invented all of the types of investigated ATU behaviours. Success rates were low, suggesting that individual invention of ATU in novel tasks is still challenging for preschoolers. We discuss how future studies can use and expand our tasks to deepen our understanding of tool use and problem-solving in humans and non-human animals.</p>","PeriodicalId":36414,"journal":{"name":"Evolutionary Human Sciences","volume":"4 ","pages":"e5"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10426097/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10018136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The evolution of shame and its display.","authors":"Mitchell Landers, Daniel Sznycer","doi":"10.1017/ehs.2022.43","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.43","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The shame system appears to be natural selection's solution to the adaptive problem of information-triggered reputational damage. Over evolutionary time, this problem would have led to a coordinated set of adaptations - the shame system - designed to minimise the spread of negative information about the self and the likelihood and costs of being socially devalued by others. This <i>information threat theory of shame</i> can account for much of what we know about shame and generate precise predictions. Here, we analyse the behavioural configuration that people adopt stereotypically when ashamed - slumped posture, downward head tilt, gaze avoidance, inhibition of speech - in light of shame's hypothesised function. This behavioural configuration may have differentially favoured its own replication by (a) hampering the transfer of information (e.g. diminishing audiences' tendency to attend to or encode identifying information - shame <i>camouflage</i>) and/or (b) evoking less severe devaluative responses from audiences (shame <i>display</i>). The shame display hypothesis has received considerable attention and empirical support, whereas the shame camouflage hypothesis has to our knowledge not been advanced or tested. We elaborate on this hypothesis and suggest directions for future research on the shame pose.</p>","PeriodicalId":36414,"journal":{"name":"Evolutionary Human Sciences","volume":"4 ","pages":"e45"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10426012/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10374207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Early adversity, adult lifestyle, and posttraumatic stress disorder in a military sample.","authors":"Edward K Clint, Daniel M T Fessler","doi":"10.1017/ehs.2022.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.19","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Early adversity is considered a major risk factor for adult posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Simultaneously, however, early adversity is also known to contribute to psychological resilience, and, indeed, some high-adversity groups do not display elevated PTSD risk. We explored correlates of PTSD in the Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers military dataset to evaluate contrasting accounts of the relationship between early adversity and PTSD. The standard deficit model depicts ontogeny as inherently vulnerable to insult, such that early adversity yields a less robust adult phenotype. A complementary life history theory account holds that adverse early experiences cue a fast life history orientation that reduces investment in maintenance, yielding an adult phenotype less able to recover from trauma. An opposing life history theory account holds that early adversity cues expectations of an adverse adult environment, adaptively reducing reactivity to adverse events. We use principal component analysis to extract a latent variable representing several childhood experiences and multiple lifestyle factors that plausibly proxy life history orientation. After correcting for covariates, we find a strong positive influence of such proxies on PTSD risk, suggesting that early adversity may indeed increase risk for PTSD, and thus that either the standard deficit model, the reduced maintenance account or a combination are correct.</p>","PeriodicalId":36414,"journal":{"name":"Evolutionary Human Sciences","volume":"4 ","pages":"e24"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/d8/cf/S2513843X22000196a.PMC10426010.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10076949","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tabitha Dorshorst, Gillian Weir, Joseph Hamill, Brigitte Holt
{"title":"Archery's signature: an electromyographic analysis of the upper limb.","authors":"Tabitha Dorshorst, Gillian Weir, Joseph Hamill, Brigitte Holt","doi":"10.1017/ehs.2022.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.20","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Non-technical summary: </strong>Bow and arrow technology plays a significant role in the recent evolutionary history of modern humans, but limitations of preservation make it challenging to identify archaeological evidence of early archery. Since bone structure can change in response to muscle force, archers of the past can potentially be identified through analysis of upper arm bones. However, there is limited research on how archery impacts upper limb musculature. This study offers initial insights into how archery impacts humeral musculature and highlights the need for additional research focused on archery's direct impact on humeral morphology.</p><p><strong>Technical summary: </strong>Humeral morphology has been used to support behaviour reconstructions of archery in past populations. However, the lack of experimental research concerning the impacts that archery has on the upper limb weakens skeletal morphological approaches. The goal of this study was to determine how archery impacts the activation of upper limb musculature. More specifically, this study tested: (a) whether the relative muscle activations are similar between arms; and (b) what muscles were activated on the dominant (draw) arm compared with the non-dominant (bow) arm. Data on upper arm muscle activation were collected bilaterally for nine archers using surface electromyography (EMG). Results show similar levels of muscle activation bilaterally with different muscles being activated in each arm. There were significantly higher integrated EMG and peak muscle activations of the biceps brachii muscles in the draw arm compared with the bow arm. In contrast, the lateral deltoid and the triceps brachii muscles had significantly higher integrated EMG and peak muscle activations on the bow arm compared with the draw arm. This work offers initial insights into how archery impacts humeral musculature and highlights the need for additional research focused on archery's direct impact on humeral morphology.</p>","PeriodicalId":36414,"journal":{"name":"Evolutionary Human Sciences","volume":"4 ","pages":"e25"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10426064/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10023109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The origin of smiling, laughing, and crying: The defensive mimic theory.","authors":"Michael S A Graziano","doi":"10.1017/ehs.2022.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Why do we leak lubricant from the eyes to solicit comfort from others? Why do we bare our teeth and crinkle our faces to express non-aggression? The defensive mimic theory proposes that a broad range of human emotional expressions evolved originally as exaggerated, temporally extended mimics of the fast, defensive reflexes that normally protect the body surface. Defensive reflexes are so important to survival that they cannot be safely suppressed; yet they also broadcast information about an animal's internal state, information that can potentially be exploited by other animals. Once others can observe and exploit an animal's defensive reflexes, it may be advantageous to the animal to run interference by creating mimic defensive actions, thereby manipulating the behaviour of others. Through this interaction over millions of years, many human emotional expressions may have evolved. Here, human social signals including smiling, laughing and crying, are compared component-by-component with the known, well-studied features of primate defensive reflexes. It is suggested that the defensive mimic theory can adequately account for the physical form of not all, but a large range of, human emotional expression.</p>","PeriodicalId":36414,"journal":{"name":"Evolutionary Human Sciences","volume":"4 ","pages":"e10"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10426066/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10023110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Iris J Holzleitner, Julie C Driebe, Ruben C Arslan, Amanda C Hahn, Anthony J Lee, Kieran J O'Shea, Tanja M Gerlach, Lars Penke, Benedict C Jones, Lisa M DeBruine
{"title":"No increased inbreeding avoidance during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle.","authors":"Iris J Holzleitner, Julie C Driebe, Ruben C Arslan, Amanda C Hahn, Anthony J Lee, Kieran J O'Shea, Tanja M Gerlach, Lars Penke, Benedict C Jones, Lisa M DeBruine","doi":"10.1017/ehs.2022.41","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.41","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mate preferences and mating-related behaviours are hypothesised to change over the menstrual cycle to increase reproductive fitness. Recent large-scale studies suggest that previously reported hormone-linked behavioural changes are not robust. The proposal that women's preference for associating with male kin is down-regulated during the ovulatory (high-fertility) phase of the menstrual cycle to reduce inbreeding has not been tested in large samples. Consequently, we investigated the relationship between longitudinal changes in women's steroid hormone levels and their perceptions of faces experimentally manipulated to possess kinship cues (Study 1). Women viewed faces displaying kinship cues as more attractive and trustworthy, but this effect was not related to hormonal proxies of conception risk. Study 2 employed a daily diary approach and found no evidence that women spent less time with kin generally or with male kin specifically during the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle. Thus, neither study found evidence that inbreeding avoidance is up-regulated during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle.</p>","PeriodicalId":36414,"journal":{"name":"Evolutionary Human Sciences","volume":"4 ","pages":"e47"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10426077/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10023114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Methodological issues when using face prototypes: A case study on the Faceaurus dataset.","authors":"Jeanne Bovet, Arnaud Tognetti, Thomas V Pollet","doi":"10.1017/ehs.2022.25","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2022.25","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Prototype faces, created by averaging faces from several individuals sharing a common characteristic (for example a certain personality trait), can be used for highly informative experimental designs in face research. Although the facial prototype method is both ingenious and useful, we argue that its implementation is associated with three major issues: lack of external validity and non-independence of the units of information, both aggravated by a lack of transparency regarding the methods used and their limitations. Here, we describe these limitations and illustrate our claims with a systematic review of studies creating facial stimuli using the prototypes dataset 'Faceaurus'. We then propose some solutions that can eliminate or reduce these problems. We provide recommendations for future research employing this method on how to produce more generalisable and replicable results.</p>","PeriodicalId":36414,"journal":{"name":"Evolutionary Human Sciences","volume":"4 ","pages":"e48"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10426020/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10076950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}