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Athena Aktipis (website)
University of Arizona  

Walk the Walk: Models of Mobility and the Evolution of Cooperation

Cooperation is the foundation of social behavior, yet the dynamics underlying the evolution of cooperation are still widely debated, with some arguing that complex cognitive abilities are necessary for cooperation to be selected. Here I use agent-based models to ask whether the simple ability to leave uncooperative groups, the ‘Walk Away’ strategy, can foster the evolution of cooperation. I find that the Walk Away strategy leads to spatial and evolutionary dynamics that promote cooperation in the absence of complex cognitive or behavioral abilities. Further, the conditional mobility associated with Walk Away enables the evolution of cooperation under conditions previously thought to be prohibitive for the evolution of cooperation.  The capacity to ‘Walk Away’ from uncooperative partners or groups might be a central yet neglected foundation for many components of social behavior.  This is of particular importance to social and evolutionary psychologists interested in group structure, group composition and group stability. Further, topics such as close relationships, social bonding, commitment, as well as social exclusion and ostracism involve constraining mobility, either by forcing an individual to leave or constraining their ability to ‘Walk Away’ from an interaction.  Agent-based simulations are an easily accessible computational tool that enables the modeling of spatial dynamics and individual decision-making, making them a useful supplement for anyone studying these topics. This approach allows researchers to explore the limits and implications of their theoretical premises with quantitatively rigorous models.

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Lorne Campbell (website)
University of Western Ontario

Are the Traits We Prefer in Potential Mates the Traits They Value in Themselves?  An Analysis of Sex Differences in the Self-concept

When evaluating potential mates, men place greater importance on youth and beauty, whereas women place more importance on status and resources. Six studies tested the hypothesis that the self-concepts of men and women reflect the preferences of potential mates. Studies 1–3 showed that traits related to status were an important aspect of men’s self-concepts, whereas traits related to physical attractiveness were an important aspect of women’s self-concepts. Studies 4–6 found that men were more upset when derogated by rivals on traits related to status, whereas women were more upset when derogated on their physical attractiveness, suggesting that status and attractiveness are integral parts of men’s and women’s self-concepts respectively. The importance of the self-concept in human mating is discussed.

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Aurelio José Figueredo (website)
University of Arizona  

Ecological Approaches to Personality

Many consider the maintenance of heritable behavioral variability among individuals across evolutionary time a dilemma for evolutionary psychology. Why have natural and sexual selection not eliminated individual differences in favor of some optimally adaptive set of universal trait values? The statistical associations among personality traits and a wide array of life outcomes clearly relevant to survival and reproduction make it unlikely that such individual differences in traits could be selectively neutral. We argue that a principled application of quantitative theoretical ecology can best explain inter-individual behavioral diversity and that the diversification of behavioral phenotypes matches the diversification of socioecological niches within species-typical multidimensional niche space, particularly for social species. We show that this pattern manifests phylogenetically and ontologically in the evolutionary history of species and in the behavioral development of individuals. Furthermore, we demonstrate that selective pressures maintain, and in some cases increase individual trait differences during both developmental and evolutionary time. Finally, we outline the multiple selective pressures hypothesized to bear on the evolution of individual behavioral differences. Although we present several hypotheses regarding the centrality of some of these selective pressures, we do not champion any one. As in other branches of science, many evolved adaptations are the product of, not one, but multiple selective forces. There is seldom a one-to-one correspondence between a specific trait and a specific selective pressure. We apply this principle to the multiple selective ecological pressures that may have shaped the evolution of individual differences in personality, without advocating the primacy of one or another, and develop a more holistic and integrated view of the entire process. More specifically, we review the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence that individual variation in personality and behavior is shaped by a combination of: (1) frequency-dependent niche-splitting, (2) developmental plasticity, (3) genetic diversification, (4) directional social selection, and (5) behavioral flexibility.

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David Funder (website)
University of California, Riverside

What's Wrong with the Fundamental Attribution Error: A Common Cause for Evolutionary and Personality Psychology

Evolutionary and personality psychology share two vexations. First, both are unavoidably enmeshed in perpetual controversies: evolutionary psychology has the “nature-nature” controversy, while personality psychology cannot escape the “person-situation” debate. Second, the “reign of error,” in which a large amount of psychological research is devoted to listing the ways in which people think incorrectly, is fundamentally opposed to evolutionary psychology’s assumption that basic cognitive mechanisms are adaptations good enough for the tasks of survival and reproduction, and to personality psychology’s assumption that common sense and human judgment provide a reasonable starting place for the assessment of individual differences. A close consideration of the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) illuminates these areas of common concern. The FAE, purported to be the basic erroneous tendency of people to overestimate personal causes of behavior (such as personality traits), and underestimate situational causes, is firmly established in the literature and conventional psychological thought. However, the FAE is contradicted by common experience, leads (on close analysis) to conclusions that would horrify its proponents and, in the end, is fundamentally incoherent. Like nature and nurture, persons and situations are partners in the determination of behavior, not adversaries.

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Bill von Hippel (website)
University of Queensland

The Evolution and Psychology of Self-deception

In this talk I’ll describe a model of self-deception developed by Robert Trivers and myself. The basic premise of this model is that self-deception evolved to facilitate deception of others and to motivate the self to achieve additional fitness-enhancing outcomes. I’ll first describe how self-deception serves these interpersonal and intrapersonal goals, and will then discuss the non-unitary nature of the mind and how different types of psychological dualism enable the same individual to be both deceiver and deceived. Next I’ll describe varieties of self-deception and some of the evidence for these different varieties. Finally, I’ll contrast our evolutionary approach to self-deception with current theories in psychology.

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Jon Maner (website)
Florida State University 

Responses to Social Exclusion Reflect the Pushes and Pulls of Human Sociality

Humans possess a powerful and deeply rooted need for social belonging. Forms of social exclusion and rejection thwart that need, and can result in considerable psychological pain. How do people respond to that pain? Many previous studies document negative and antisocial responses to exclusion, including withdrawal, aggression, and feelings of meaninglessness. When faced with exclusion, then, people sometimes respond by lashing out or giving up. An evolutionary perspective, however, suggests a different type of response: because humans throughout history have relied on group-living for so many of their basic needs, the threat of possible exclusion should produce a strong desire to restore positive social connections. Emerging evidence suggests that, indeed, many people respond to social exclusion by seeking to establish and strengthen social bonds. This talk will describe psychological, behavioral, and biological evidence indicating a desire for social reconnection among people who have been excluded or rejected. The talk will also highlight factors that determine whether people respond to exclusion with a renewed desire for social contact versus a desire for social withdrawal. Ultimately, both types of responses may reflect the evolved need for positive social bonds.

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Aaron Sell (website)
University of California, Santa Barbara

The Evolutionary Psychology of Human Anger

Anger can be understood as a cognitive mechanism designed by natural selection to negotiate conflicts of interest in ways similar to, but distinct from, non-human animal conflict. The Recalibrational Theory of anger uses an evolutionary biological framework to predict themajor features of anger and explain their computational structure by reference to this function. Datasets collected from five distinct cultures address the major features of anger including under what conditions anger is evoked, when aggression is used by the anger system, which individuals set lower thresholds for anger and aggression, why and how anger triggers modifications of the face and voice, and how one predicts and explains the computational structure of anger-based arguments. The data demonstrate that anger is a well-designed system for recalibrating targets in ways that minimize immediate and future costs resulting from conflicts of interest.

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Jessica Tracy (website)
University of British Columbia

The Nature of Pride

One of the major findings in the behavioral and social sciences is the discovery that a small set of “basic” emotions have distinct, universally recognized, nonverbal expressions. This finding promoted widespread acceptance of Darwin’s (1872) claim that emotions are an evolved part of human nature, but also diverted attention away from emotions assumed to lack universal expressions, such as the unique class of “self-conscious” emotions. However, recent research suggests that at least one self-conscious emotion—pride—may fit within the Darwinian framework. I will present a series of studies demonstrating that pride has a distinct nonverbal expression which is reliably and cross-culturally recognized by adults and children, through an automatic cognitive process. Furthermore, the recognizable pride expression is spontaneously displayed in response to success, by sighted and blind individuals across cultures. These findings suggest that the pride expression is likely to be an innate behavioral response to success, which may have evolved to serve a fundamental social function. In fact, new research suggests that the pride expression may function as a status signal, sending a message that is distinct from other positive and negative emotions, implicitly perceived, and powerful enough to override contradictory contextual information. Other research on the psychological structure of pride supports this functionalist account. Analyses of the semantic meaning of pride, the dispositional tendency to experience pride, and actual pride experiences suggest that there are two distinct pride facets, consistent with a theoretical distinction between “authentic” and “hubristic” pride. These findings help explain how the experience of pride may serve a complementary adaptive function to its expression. Specifically, each facet of pride is linked to a distinct status-attainment and maintenance strategy (i.e., “dominance” vs. “prestige”), suggesting that the two facets may have evolved separately to motivate the divergent behaviors needed to attain each kind of status. Overall, the accumulated evidence suggests that pride is a complex emotion that is closely linked to self-esteem, narcissism, achievement, and social status, and may be an evolved—and certainly a fundamental—part of human nature.