The Biology of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder Symptomatology: Identifying an Extremely K-Selected Life History Variant

Abstract

Size at birth, growth rate, age at sexual maturity, number and size of offspring, and longevity are among the variables studied in life history evolution, a mid-level branch of evolutionary biology. Long-lived, slow maturing, and highly encephalized Homo sapiens, though skewed as a group towards the very slow end of the spectrum, nevertheless show some life history variation; variation which may relate to, and to some extent explain, personality variation. When applied to extant personality disorders, the risk-taking, boldness, and impulsivity of psychopathy is explained as a fast life history strategy. Herein, it is argued that the highly heritable obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), opposite psychopathy, is a slow life history strategy. Both OCPD and slow life history strategists exhibit anxiety and harm avoidance, risk and loss aversion, future-oriented thought and time urgency, delayed gratification, and conscientious labor and fidelity. In addition to a host of compelling correlations, the preponderance of intrinsic over extrinsic mortality that explains the evolution of slow life histories is precisely that which has been described in an ecological etiology that explains OCPD as a product of post-migration evolution from Africa into Eurasia.