ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2020
Life-history theory in psychology and evolutionary biology: one research programme or two?
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 40 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A Systematic Review and Meta-Analytic Assessment of Unpredictability and Disordered Eating.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2026Pooled it
- Genetic and Phenotypic Associations of the Polygenic Score of Delay Discounting and Life History Traits.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2026Article
- Adverse childhood experiences, age at menopause, and vasomotor symptoms among mid-life Latine adults in California.Evolutionary human sciences · 2026Article
- Developmental frameworks, what have you done for me lately?Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Grade-level differences in the association between cumulative family risk factors and problematic smartphone use among Chinese adolescents.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Developmental life history transitions can be shaped by structural inequities: Insights from the sociology of race.Developmental biology · 2025Review
- Impulsivity and social support as intervening and interactive variables in the link between childhood socioeconomic status and mental health among first-year college students.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Harshness and unpredictability during childhood: an approach from life-history theory to understanding risk behaviors.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Life-history strategy, adverse environment, and justification of life-ending decisions.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- When to stop social learning from a predecessor in an information-foraging task.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Beyond form: The value of systems conceptualizations of function in increasing precision and novelty in the study of developmental psychopathology.Development and psychopathology · 2024Article
- The Uncontrollable Mortality Risk Hypothesis: Theoretical foundations and implications for public health.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2024Article
- Childhood Environmental Unpredictability and Experimentally Primed Uncertainty in Relation to Intuitive versus Deliberate Visual Search.Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.) · 2023Article
- Cognitive biases as an adaptive strategy in autism and schizophrenia spectrum: the compensation perspective on neurodiversity.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Review
- The evolution of personality disorders: A review of proposals.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Review
- Introducing the Neuroplastic Narrative: a non-pathologizing biological foundation for trauma-informed and adverse childhood experience aware approaches.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Childhood environmental harshness and unpredictability negatively predict eHealth literacy through fast life-history strategy.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Does higher perceived risk of morbidity and mortality decrease risk-taking?Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Sociosexuality and Sexual Behavior in Men During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Trends in psychology · 2022Article
- Individual differences in decision-making: evidence for the scarcity hypothesis from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The term 'life-history theory' (LHT) is increasingly often invoked in psychology, as a framework for integrating understanding of psychological traits into a broader evolutionary context. Although LHT as presented in psychology papers (LHT-P) is typically described as a straightforward extension of the theoretical principles from evolutionary biology that bear the same name (LHT-E), the two bodies of work are not well integrated. Here, through a close reading of recent papers, we argue that LHT-E and LHT-P are different research programmes in the Lakatosian sense. The core of LHT-E is built around ultimate evolutionary explanation, via explicit mathematical modelling, of how selection can drive divergent evolution of populations or species living under different demographies or ecologies. The core of LHT-P concerns measurement of covariation, across individuals, of multiple psychological traits; the proximate goals these serve; and their relation to childhood experience. Some of the links between LHT-E and LHT-P are false friends. For example, elements that are marginal in LHT-E are core commitments of LHT-P, and where explanatory principles are transferred from one to the other, nuance can be lost in transmission. The methodological rules for what grounds a prediction in theory are different in the two cases. Though there are major differences between LHT-E and LHT-P at present, there is much potential for greater integration in the future, through both theoretical modelling and further empirical research. This article is part of the theme issue 'Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals'.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.