Harsh childhood environmental characteristics predict exploitation and retaliation in humans

Abstract

Across and within societies, people vary in their propensities towards exploitative and retaliatory defection in potentially cooperative interaction. We hypothesized that this variation reflects adaptive responses to variation in cues during childhood that life will be harsh, unstable and short-cues that probabilistically indicate that it is in one's fitness interests to exploit co-operators and to retaliate quickly against defectors. Here, we show that childhood exposure to family neglect, conflict and violence, and to neighbourhood crime, were positively associated for men (but not women) with exploitation of an interaction partner and retaliatory defection after that partner began to defect. The associations between childhood environment and both forms of defection for men appeared to be mediated by participants' endorsement of a 'code of honour'. These results suggest that individual differences in mutual benefit cooperation are not merely due to genetic noise, random developmental variation or the operation of domain-general cultural learning mechanisms, but rather, might reflect the adaptive calibration of social strategies to local social-ecological conditions.

What the future held: Childhood psychosocial adversity is associated with health deterioration through adulthood in a cohort of British women

“…As well as early reproduction, CPA has been associated with many non-reproductive outcomes, such as increased psychopathology (Heim & Nemeroff, 2001), shorter time perspective (Chisholm, 1999), and less cooperative social attitudes (McCullough, Pedersen, Schroder, Tabak, & Carver, 2013). It would be interesting to investigate to what extent differential health weathering might also provide an adaptive rationale for these changes.…”

Revenge is seductive, if not sweet: Why friends matter for prevention efforts

“…Evolutionary analyses point out that retaliation and exploitation can be adaptive responses to harsh environments. Associations between harsh childhood environments and such aggression are mediated by allegiance to honor codes (McCullough, Pedersen, Schroder, Tabak, & Carver, 2013).…”

Childhood environmental harshness predicts coordinated health and reproductive strategies: A cross-sectional study of a nationally representative sample from France

“…The level of environmental harshness experienced during childhood was assessed with a survey consisting of 24 items, reflecting various aspects of childhood environment that previous studies had found to be associated with one or several life history traits in adulthood (Griskevicius et al, 2011;McCullough, Pedersen, Schroder, Tabak, & Carver, 2012;Nettle & Cockerill, 2010;Simpson et al, 2012). The first seven items captured general features of the family unit during participants' childhood.…”