A Life History Approach to the Dynamics of Social Selection

Abstract

We hope to have illustrated with several empirical examples how an approach based on the judicious application of LH theory can help elucidate several thorny problems in the traditional social and psychological sciences. As in the conventional biological sciences, Life history (LH) theory can serve as an integrative framework with which to organize and better understand our data. These contributions should therefore be viewed as complementing lather than competing with traditional approaches, providing a supportive scaffolding on which to build and elaborate on our theoretical superstructures. By arranging our social science findings in a biologically meaningful way, we can often detect patterns in the data that were not previously self-evident, and better understand the ultimate level causal forces underlying the observed and often puzzling associations we encounter. LH theory thus provides a 'big picture' backdrop with which to view our existing knowledge as well as offering a more coherent view of social and psychological phenomena that can serve as a heuristic for the generation of novel testable hypotheses regarding the latent structural relations among them that might not have been apparent others wise. We have argued that the natural selective pressures driving both LH evolution and development constrain the social selective pressures, which then constrain the sexual selective pressures. We use the word constrain advisedly, in that we do not suggest determination of one level by the other. If that were the case, one would hardly need a multilevel model, because a single and all-powerful level of explanation would suffice. As seen in the hierarchically nested level of biological organization, novel emergent properties arise with each new level of behavioral and social complexity. Due to the reciprocal causal transactions between levels, the emergent properties arising at a higher level can also constrain those of the lower. In neuropsychology, for example, we see that the later evolving and developing prefrontal cortex regulates the more ancestrally and developmentally primitive areas of the brain, primarily through the mechanisms of differential inhibition that we collectively label executive functioning. These higher-level processes do not shut down, gender irrelevant, or somehow supersede the functions of the lower-level systems of the brain, such as the cerebellum. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)