Evolution and Human Behavior最新文献

{"title":"Epstein Barr virus, infectious mononucleosis and associated diseases as contributors to the costs of intimate kissing","authors":"Paul W. Ewald","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106817","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106817","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>When evaluating whether kissing is an evolutionary adaptation, fitness costs and benefits need to be considered. Any disease transmitted by kissing needs to be considered on the cost side. Infectious mononucleosis is the prototypical disease transmitted by intimate kissing, so much so that it is commonly known as the kissing disease. When the Epstein Barr virus was first accepted as the primary cause of infectious mononucleosis in 1968, it was generally considered a relatively benign pathogen in affluent populations. Infectious mononucleosis caused fatigue but was self limited and EBV usually caused asymptomatic infection. If that were the whole story then EBV would impose a relatively small fitness cost when spread by intimate kissing. Over the past half-century, however, EBV has been associated with severe diseases such as cancers, multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus erythematosus, which would impose higher fitness costs that would offset the mating advantages of kissing, and make adaptive explanations based on mating advantages less tenable. This paper evaluates whether the severe consequences of EBV infection extend back deeply into human evolution or arose more recently, reflecting a mismatch between modern and ancestral conditions. Comparative evidence indicates that infectious mononucleosis has been largely a recent consequence of EBV infection resulting from increased hygienic activites that reduce the probability of infection prior to adolescence. Infections during and after adolescence are sufficiently severe to generate symptomatic infection recognized as infectious mononucleosis, which in turn is associated with even more severe chronic diseases, such as breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, and Hodgkin's lymphoma. The recency of these associations indicates that this collection of severe diseases would not have imposed a fitness cost on intimate kissing. The flip side of this conclusion is that intimate kissing is now more unsafe than it used to be during our evolutionary history, and humans are left without innate avoidance mechanisms that would be more consistent with the present costs of intimate kissing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"47 2","pages":"Article 106817"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145886226","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Toward a mechanistic account of personality: A case study of competitor derogation accuracy and the dark triad","authors":"Patrick K. Durkee ,&nbsp;Peyton A. Graves ,&nbsp;Nina N. Rodriguez","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106790","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106790","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>From an adaptationist perspective, personality constructs can be viewed as behavioral summaries reflecting interindividual variation in evolved psychological mechanisms. In this study, we investigate how differences in the functioning of competitor derogation mechanisms—specifically differences in accuracy of derogation tactic effectiveness estimates—relate to variation in personality constructs, including the Dark Triad, Big Five, and emotional intelligence. We first established criterion ratings for a large set of competitor derogation tactics (<em>k</em> = 445) using an online U.S. sample (<em>n</em> = 320). In a second online U.S. sample (<em>N</em> = 355), we then estimated associations between individual differences in competitor derogation accuracy and self-reported personality constructs using Bayesian multilevel models. We found that higher Dark Triad scores were associated with lower competitor derogation accuracy at the zero-order level, but unique variance in Machiavellianism predicted greater accuracy. Competitor derogation accuracy was also positively associated with emotional intelligence, conscientiousness, and agreeableness, and negatively associated with extraversion. These findings illustrate one way an adaptationist framework can help link personality variation to evolved psychological mechanisms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"47 1","pages":"Article 106790"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145420290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Vulnerability and the computational logic of fear: insights from the horror genre","authors":"Edgar Dubourg ,&nbsp;Coltan Scrivner","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106813","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106813","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Fear is a universal feature of storytelling, yet the structural conditions that make fictional threats compelling remain poorly understood. Here, we propose the <em>Protagonist Vulnerability Index</em> (PVI), an evolutionarily grounded computational approach to explain why some narratives evoke stronger fear responses than others. PVI quantifies protagonist vulnerability by assessing the imbalance in formidability between protagonists and antagonists and the risk of attack faced by the protagonist. Across 691 films, higher PVI values predicted classification as horror, the presence of fear-related keywords in non-horror films, and stronger physiological fear responses indexed by heart rate. Linking film preferences to psychological and demographic data from more than 3.5 million individuals on Facebook, we found that preference for high-PVI films was associated with lower agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion, and with higher openness. Openness moderated the negative association between neuroticism and engagement with fear-related content, indicating that curiosity can counteract threat avoidance in anxious individuals. These findings clarify the structural and psychological conditions that activate evolved threat-management systems. The results show how horror operates as a narrative simulation of extreme formidability asymmetry, and provide a framework for predicting, and potentially engineering, fear in fiction.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"47 1","pages":"Article 106813"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145736735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Expectations about plant edibility in 6-month-old infants","authors":"Camille Rioux ,&nbsp;Annie E. Wertz","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106750","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106750","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Watching what others put in their mouths is a powerful way to learn what to eat. Yet human diets and eating behaviors are complicated, and not everything that goes into another person's mouth is food: The fusilli is edible, but the fork is not. Therefore, some selectivity is necessary to guide social learning processes about food. Here we examined 6-month-old infants' expectations about what kinds of entities are likely to be edible using a violation-of-expectation setup in which infants viewed an actor eating from two different items. We hypothesized that infants may have selective edibility expectations about plants, and in particular fruits, that stem from humans' long evolutionary history of foraging wild plant foods and specialization in higher caloric density plant parts. In Experiment 1 (<em>N</em> = 40), we found that infants expect plants, relative to feature-matched artifacts, to be edible, replicating a previous finding [<span><span>Wertz &amp; Wynn, <strong>2014a</strong></span></span>]. In Experiments 2 (<em>N</em> = 40) and 3 (<em>N</em> = 39), we examined, for the first time, whether selective expectations about plant edibility are tied to particular plant parts. Our results showed that infants do not differentially expect leaves to be edible, but our results for fruits were inconclusive. Taken together, these findings suggest that infants differentially expect plants to be edible and that these expectations appear to be strongest for whole plants.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"47 1","pages":"Article 106750"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145467760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The attractive personality: Like me, but better","authors":"Thomas H. Kleppestø ,&nbsp;Mons Bendixen ,&nbsp;Hans Fredrik Sunde ,&nbsp;Brendan Zietsch ,&nbsp;Kaitlyn T. Harper ,&nbsp;Håvard Karlsen ,&nbsp;Marius Stavang ,&nbsp;Nikolai Haahjem Eftedal ,&nbsp;Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106811","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106811","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>People tend to prefer mates who are similar to themselves, yet also desire partners with specific characteristics. The relative importance of assortative and absolute preferences might differ for big five and political personality. We examined partner preferences at the facet level of the big five framework and compared them with preferences regarding a key political personality trait—social dominance orientation (SDO). We also assessed how average preferences in one sex align with actual average trait levels in the opposite sex. We analyzed correlations and mean differences between self-ratings and ideal partner ratings, and compared average preferences with opposite-sex trait means among 538 Norwegian students, using a survey comprising social dominance orientation (SDO-7) and the IPIP-NEO-60. Both sexes preferred partners similar to themselves on big five traits and SDO, particularly for SDO. Systematic differences also emerged between self-ratings and ideal partner ratings, especially for neuroticism, where both sexes preferred lower levels. We observed mismatches between preferred and actual trait levels—for example, men's average desired agreeableness matched women's average, but women's preferred level exceeded men's actual average. These findings suggest that ideal partner preferences are shaped by one's own traits, especially for political personality, but some traits (e.g., low neuroticism) are broadly preferred across individuals.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"47 1","pages":"Article 106811"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145736736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A comparative approach to the evolution of kissing","authors":"Matilda Brindle ,&nbsp;Catherine F. Talbot ,&nbsp;Stuart West","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106788","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106788","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Kissing can be observed across the animal kingdom. This presents an evolutionary puzzle, since the fitness benefits of kissing are unclear. We use a non-anthropocentric approach to define kissing as a non-agonistic interaction involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer. Using this definition we collate basic observational data across the Afro-Eurasian primates and employ Bayesian phylogenetic methods to reconstruct the evolutionary history of kissing. We find that kissing occurs in most extant large apes, and likely also occurred in Neanderthals (<em>Homo neanderthalensis</em>), first evolving in the ancestor to this group ∼21.5–16.9 mya. Additionally, we highlight various life history variables that correlate reasonably, but not perfectly, with kissing across the apes (multi-male mating systems, non-folivorous diets, and premastication). With a major caveat about the quantity of available data at present, we hope that our results provide a useful starting point for further research into the adaptive function of kissing that highlights hypothesis generation and testing within a phylogenetic framework.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"47 1","pages":"Article 106788"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145924568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cognitive empathy and dehumanization co-vary with dark triad traits and agency detection sensitivity","authors":"Konrad Rudnicki ,&nbsp;Olgierd Borowiecki ,&nbsp;Karolien Poels ,&nbsp;Bianca Beersma ,&nbsp;Wei Peng ,&nbsp;Ed Sleebos ,&nbsp;Charlotte De Backer","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106800","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106800","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Dark Triad traits – psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism – raise evolutionary questions about the mechanisms enabling social exploitation in individuals with lower empathy. While empathy likely evolved to sustain cooperation and social bonds, less effective cognitive empathy among individuals with Dark Triad traits may reflect trade-offs favoring self-serving strategies over prosocial engagement. One such trade-off may involve impairments in agency detection sensitivity, a cognitive process foundational to recognizing others as intentional agents with independent goals and emotions. These impairments could disrupt the ability to engage in perspective-taking, a critical component of cognitive empathy, thereby facilitating manipulative and exploitative behaviors.</div><div>A preregistered online study involving <em>N</em> = 604 participants recruited via the Prolific platform entailed assessing cognitive empathy performance (Multifaceted Empathy Test), dehumanization propensity, Dark Triad traits, and agency detection sensitivity using a specialized motion task. Results revealed that psychopathy was associated with lower cognitive empathy and greater dehumanization. However, variation in agency detection sensitivity did not explain this association directly. Instead, correlation between psychopathy and cognitive empathy grew even more negative in individuals with low levels of agency detection sensitivity.</div><div>These findings suggest that worse agency detection may accompany existing empathy attenuation in individuals high in psychopathy, which could be linked to even higher difficulty of engaging in prosocial behavior for them. This supports the notion of a deficit driven strategy, whereby those who score high on psychopathy might conserve cognitive resources by bypassing effortful moral reasoning and empathy, particularly when such engagement would be impeded by other, co-existing down-regulated cognitive processes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"47 1","pages":"Article 106800"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145467784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A homage to Glenn E. Weisfeld","authors":"Stefan M.M. Goetz,&nbsp;Samuele Zilioli","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106784","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106784","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"47 1","pages":"Article 106784"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145924244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Self-assessment biases and motivations: An error management approach","authors":"Nina N. Rodriguez ,&nbsp;Aaron W. Lukaszewski ,&nbsp;Patrick K. Durkee","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106808","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106808","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Research into self-assessment biases find that each type of bias predicts specific social benefits and social costs. However, little research has attempted to explain why people vary in their self-assessment biases. In this study, we applied error management logic to develop hypotheses about the coordination of self-assessment biases in socially valued traits with personality strategies. For individuals pursuing a strategy organized around acquiring status and resources, it is less costly to err on the side of over-estimation. For individuals motivated by the avoidance of social threats, under-estimation is the less costly error. To test these ideas, we used three datasets (<em>N</em> = 721) containing measures of subjects’ (1) biases in self-assessment of physical strength and attractiveness (using third-party/objective measures and self-assessments), and (2) variation in behavioral strategies. Consistent with hypotheses, over-estimation predicted behavioral strategies organized around status acquisition (e.g., high Extraversion, high Personal Sense of Power, low Honesty-Humility). Additionally, behavioral strategies associated with threat avoidance (e.g., high Fearfulness) tended to show a bias toward under-estimation. These findings suggest that self-evaluative biases are functionally coordinated, per error management logic, with strategic behavioral variation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"47 1","pages":"Article 106808"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145736737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Self-serving intergroup aggression escalates and prevails over parochial cooperation","authors":"Qinyu Xiao ,&nbsp;Simon Columbus ,&nbsp;Robert Böhm","doi":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106801","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106801","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Anthropological evidence suggests that intergroup conflict in small-scale societies frequently involves opportunistic attacks by small groups of raiders. These incursions are low-risk and often offer immediate benefits to their participants; however, they can also fuel cycles of revenge between groups, exposing raiders’ in-group members to counterattacks. The existing experimental literature on intergroup conflict has mostly assumed that conflict participation is individually costly but benefits the in-group, leaving the aforementioned form of intergroup aggression understudied. In this research, we used an economic game paradigm that affords both self-serving intergroup aggression, which we term “individual exploitation,” and self-sacrificial conflict participation to investigate the prevalence and determinants of the former and compare it with the latter. In two incentivised behavioural experiments with UK online participants (<em>N</em>s = 647 and 272), we found prevalent and escalating individual exploitation – consistent with small-scale warfare in pre-state societies – but little self-sacrificial and cooperative conflict participation. We also show that intragroup comparisons can drive such escalation, and costly peer punishment is largely ineffective in containing individual exploitation and promoting in-group cooperation. Our results imply that understanding the human psychology of intergroup aggression requires more consideration of individual exploitation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":55159,"journal":{"name":"Evolution and Human Behavior","volume":"47 1","pages":"Article 106801"},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145571551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}