Department of Psychology, University of Macau;
Hui Jing Lu
Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Jennifer E. Lansford
Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University
Ann T. Skinner
Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University
Marc H. Bornstein
Child and Family Research Program in Developmental Neuroscience, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, Maryland, and Institute for Fiscal Studies, London, United Kingdom
Laurence Steinberg
Department of Psychology, Temple University, and Department of Psychology, King Abdulaziz University
Kenneth A. Dodge
Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University
Bin Bin Chen
Department of Psychology, Fudan University
Qian Tian
Department of Psychology, Fudan University
Dario Bacchini
Department of Psychology, University of Naples “Federico II”
Kirby Deater-Deckard
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts
Concetta Pastorelli
Department of Psychology, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
Liane Peña Alampay
Department of Psychology, Ateneo de Manila University
Emma Sorbring
Division of Psychology, Pedagogy and Sociology, University West
Suha M. Al-Hassan
Queen Rania Faculty for Childhood, Hashemite University, and Department of Early Childhood and Special Education, Emirates College for Advanced Education
Paul Oburu
Department of Educational Psychology, Maseno University
Patrick S. Malone
Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University
Laura Di Giunta
Faculty of Psychology, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado
Consultorio Psicológico Popular, Universidad San Buenaventura
Sombat Tapanya
Department of Psychiatry, Chiang Mai University
Acknowledgement: This research has been funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant RO1-HD054805 and Fogarty International Center grant RO3-TW008141. This research also was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH/NICHD and by a General Research Fund (Project 15608415) from the Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong SAR. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH, NICHD, or RGC.
Note: Drew H. Bailey served as the action editor for this article.—EFD
One underreported aspect of John Bowlby’s attachment theory is his insistent emphasis on predation as a major extrinsic risk in shaping human and other primates’ psychological systems (
LH is most accurately defined as the process of animals capturing energy from their environments and using it to produce offspring (
Specific tradeoffs that form LH strategies adhering to fast–slow and early–late reproductive schedules (
Safety constraints are, therefore, the main driver of human LH. When extrinsic threats to safety affect the adult population directly or the child population through ineffective parental intervention (
Slow LH strategy prevails when the level or fluctuation of extrinsic risk is low, thereby rendering a habitat more predictable for its inhabitants, and also when resources are limited or competition is intense (
The contingent coupling of environmental conditions with fast–slow LH tradeoff strategies that has been selected throughout human evolution continues to respond to current environments (
In response to varying extents of mortality risk and in agreement with slow–fast LH strategies, child social behaviors can be classified into two distinct types—affiliative, mutualistic, and more other-centered, and aggressive, antagonistic, and more self-centered, although there is also overlap between the two especially in controlling resources (
Fast LH driving antagonistic behavior is widely observed in other animals. In harsh and unpredictable environments generated by predation or variations in food supplies, animals are bolder toward heterospecifics and more aggressive toward conspecifics (
Adoption of aggressive or affiliative behaviors is also related to learning styles, which are represented by searching and exploratory behavior in the animal world. Even though this relationship attenuates when averaged across species (
Other research has shown the linkage between optimal foraging behavior, known as area-restricted search (ARS;
Although few studies have approached student learning from an LH foraging perspective, findings from other literature seem to corroborate similar LH predictions related to human learning. For example, several reviews and meta-analyses have identified factors affecting children’s academic performance, including deficits in attention (
This study tested LH hypotheses (see
The sample consisted of 1,245 children (51% girls), their mothers (n = 1,169), and their fathers (n = 962). Most parents (78%) were married. Nearly all were biological parents, with 4% being grandparents, stepparents, or other adult caregivers. In 2011 at the end of Time 1 of the present study, the children were 10 years of age on average (M = 10.40 years, SD = .74). They were close to 13 (M = 12.90 years, SD = .84) and 15 years old (M = 14.60 years, SD = .80) in 2014 and 2016 at the end of Time 2 and 3 of the present study, respectively. Families were drawn from 10 cities of nine countries: Shanghai, China (n = 103), Medellín, Colombia (n = 101), Naples, Italy (n = 99), Rome, Italy (n = 106), Zarqa, Jordan (n = 113), Kisumu, Kenya (n = 99), Manila, Philippines (n = 107), Trollhättan/Vänersborg, Sweden (n = 123), Chiang Mai, Thailand (n = 110), and Durham, NC (n = 101 European Americans, n = 96 African Americans, n = 87 Latin Americans). These are all considered medium to large cities in their respective countries. This sample of countries was diverse on several sociodemographic dimensions, including predominant race/ethnicity, predominant religion, economic indicators, and indices of child well-being. For example, on the Human Development Index, a composite indicator of a country’s status with respect to health, education, and income, participating countries ranked from 8 to 145 out of 188 countries with available data (
Participants were recruited from schools serving socioeconomically diverse families in each site. Letters describing the study were sent home with children, which parents were asked to sign and return if they were willing to be contacted (in some countries) and contacted by phone to follow up on the letter (in other countries). Children were sampled from public and private schools serving high, middle, and low income families in the approximate proportion to which these income groups were represented in the local population. Retention rates were high. At Time 3, 92% of the initial sample continued with the study 5.5 years after the initial recruitment. Participants who provided complete data across almost 6 years did not differ from the initial sample with respect to child gender, parents’ marital status, or mothers’ and fathers’ education. Child age and gender did not vary across sites. Data for the present study were drawn from separate interviews conducted with a child and the two adult caregivers, respectively.
Measures used in the interviews were administered in the predominant language of each country (Mandarin Chinese in China, Spanish in Colombia and the United States, Italian in Italy, Arabic in Jordan, Dholuo in Kenya, Filipino in the Philippines, Swedish in Sweden, Thai in Thailand, and English in the United States), following forward- and back-translation by translators fluent in English and the target language and after group discussions to resolve any linguistic, semantic, and cultural ambiguities that arose during translation. Interviews lasted 1.5 to 2 h at each of the three times of data collection and were conducted in participants’ homes, schools, or at other locations chosen by the participants. Procedures for the project were approved by the Duke University Institutional Review Board (IRB; Study title: Parenting, adolescent self-regulation, and risk-taking across cultures; Protocol number: 2032), as well as by university IRBs in all of the other participating countries—University of Macau, Macau, China; Universidad San Buenaventura, Medellín, Colombia; Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan; University of Naples, Naples, Italy; Università di Roma, Rome, Italy; Maseno University, Maseno, Kenya; Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City, Philippines; University West, Trollhättan, Sweden; Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Mothers and fathers provided written informed consent, and children provided assent. Family members were interviewed separately to ensure privacy. For the present study, adult participants were given the choice of completing the measures in writing or orally, with the interviewer reading the questions aloud and recording the participants’ responses (with a visual aid to help the participants understand the response scales). At Time 1, children were administered the measures orally, and, for the two subsequent assessments, they were given the option of completing the measures orally or in writing. To thank them for their participation, children were given small gifts or monetary compensation, parents were given modest financial compensation, families were entered into drawings for prizes, and modest financial contributions were made to children’s schools.
We used four measures to assess childhood environmental harshness and unpredictability.
Unsafe neighborhood
Mothers and children separately reported on the 7-item questionnaire measuring the perceived safety and livability of a neighborhood (
Negative life events
Using the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (
Family chaos
We adopted five items from the Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale (
Family income change
Mothers provided two ratings during Time 1 and the following year on how much in the last 12 months the household’s annual income has changed and indicated the change on a 5-point scale (1 = decreased a lot [more than 25%]; 2 = decreased a little bit [between 5 and 25%]; 3 = did not change at all or it did not significantly change [less than 5%]; 4 = increased a little bit [between 5 and 25%]; 5 = increased a lot [more than 25%]). The rating was reverse coded so that higher numbers indicate income decrease. The two ratings over 2 years were averaged to form the final variable. Internal consistency reliability estimate based on the two ratings was .42 and the correlation between the two ratings was .26.
Life history strategies are measured in the literature by the 199-item Arizona Life History Battery (ALHB;
We adapted and modified 46 ALHB items to measure five out of the seven subscales; Romantic partner attachment and Religiosity were not measured because of our young adolescent and multicultural sample. Children responded to these questions either on a 6-point or 4-point scale consistent with the ALHB scales. Ten items were used to measure Insight, planning, and control. Sample items included “Once I make a plan to get something done, I stick to it,” “I can do just about anything I set my mind to,” and “I believe that things will always work out no matter how difficult they seem.” Internal consistency reliability estimate was .85. Sixteen items with eight for each parent were used to assess Parent–child relationship quality. Sample items included “Dad/mom pays attention to me,” “Dad/mom makes it easy for me to confide in him/her,” and “Dad/mom takes real interest in me.” Internal consistency reliability estimate was .91. Family social contact and support was measured by eight items (e.g., “Spend time with grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles,” “Do things together with brothers and sisters,” and “Do well for the sake of the family”). Internal consistency reliability estimate was .80. Six items were used to measure Friends’ social contact and support (e.g., “I have friends that I really care about,” “When something good happens to me, I have people in my life that I like to share good news with,” and “When I have a problem, I have someone who will be there for me”). Internal consistency reliability estimate was .83. General altruism was assessed by six items (e.g., “I try to help others,” “I share things I like with friends,” and “I let others use my things”). Internal consistency reliability estimate was .64. These five subscales form a composite measure of LH in the slow direction that we call Slow LH Behavioral Profile.
Fathers and mothers completed 33 items of the Achenbach’s Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL;
Both parents rated their child’s academic performance in reading, writing, math, spelling, social studies, and science. These subjects were adapted from the performance in academic subject section of the CBCL, which has demonstrated criterion validity (
Nonverbal IQ
At Time 1, children were administered the Matrix Reasoning Subscale of the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI;
Maternal and paternal slow LH behavioral profile
At Time 2, parents were given nine items to measure the Romantic partner attachment dimension of the ALHB (
Reported in
To test the LH model in
We then tested the model on all participants as one sample. The results are reported in
To rule out possible site differences, we also tested the same model using centered data by removing the city mean from each variable. The results were almost identical (the signs of parameter estimates were identical, the magnitudes of statistical significance were highly similar, and the magnitudes of the parameter estimates were similar) to those based on the raw data, suggesting little site interference.
Because LH and intellectual ability are heritable and, with respect to academic performance, intellectual ability may also mediate environmental and LH influences (D. Giudice, personal communication, June 5, 2018), we conducted hierarchical regression analysis to examine the incremental or unique variance explained by our hypothesized LH predictions after controlling for parents’ slow LH behavioral profile and children’s nonverbal IQ. With academic performance as the outcome variable, we first entered the nonverbal IQ into the regression equation. IQ was a positive and significant predictor of academic performance (β = .21, p < .001). We then entered harshness and unpredictability. It was still significant (β = −.07, p < .05), contributing 0.5% unique explained variance after controlling for IQ. We then entered, as control variables, paternal and maternal slow LH profiles, which explained an additional 1.9% of the variance. We finally entered child slow LH profile. It continued to be a robust predictor (β = .27, p < .001), explaining 6.7% unique variance after controlling all of the other variables. We did the same with externalizing. IQ was entered first as a control variable and explained 2.1% of the variance. Harshness and unpredictability was entered next. It remained a significant predictor (β = .33, p < .001), explaining 1.1% unique variance. Paternal and maternal slow LH profiles were entered next as controls. They explained an additional 0.9% of the variance, which was statistically significant (p < .01). Finally, we entered child slow LH profile. It continued to be a robust predictor (β = −.29, p < .001), accounting for 7.8% of the unique variance explained after controlling for all of the other variables. These results provide additional confidence in confirming our hypothesized associations among environmental harshness and unpredictability, LH, and social and academic behavior in adolescents.
LH tradeoff allocations of limited bioenergy arise from environmental constraints (
The findings of the present study confirm evolutionarily selected contingent responses involving environmental harshness and unpredictability, fast–slow LH strategies, and social and academic behavioral outcomes. Specifically, as represented by such factors as unsafe neighborhood conditions, negative life events, family chaos, and family income change—all measured during childhood—safety constraints were negatively associated with slow LH behavioral profile measured 2 years later. As prescribed by LH theory, slow LH behavioral profile was negatively and positively associated with externalizing behavior and academic performance, respectively, both of which were measured an additional 2 years later, by which time the children had become young adolescents. Moreover, childhood environmental harshness and unpredictability was directly related to adolescents’ externalizing and academics in the predicted directions. This set of longitudinal relations was invariant or relatively invariant across countries. These findings confirm LH predictions regarding development and behavior. Maturing among cues of unreliable environment, children, like other animals, adopt fast LH strategies, are present-oriented and may find little purpose in focusing on academic studies. As fast strategists, they attend to immediate instrumental goals and discount long-term benefits by underperforming academically and adopting externalizing and antagonistic sociality. The opposite is true for children living in a stable environment that fosters slow LH and child development oriented toward long-term socialization goals including affiliative sociality and academic achievement.
Academic and social behaviors that have been investigated in the mainstream developmental literature mainly as contemporary human socialization outcomes veritably represent ancient LH implementations practiced by all animals to adapt to the safety constraints of the living environment. Children do or do not do well in schools and are aggressive or affiliative in social interactions not merely because of the success or failure of the ongoing socialization effort such as parenting, schooling, and peer influence but also because of LH strategic predisposition activated by early environment. In a harsh and unpredictable environment, children, like other animals, may discount the future by engaging in superficial learning and antagonistic sociality even though they are socialized not to do so. The opposite is true about environmental predictability in fostering slow LH and behavior that may be more consistent with human socialization goals. Human socialization is more consistent with slow than fast LH because the human species is among the slowest in LH (
However, there are individual differences resulting from many factors including LH responding to within-species variations of environmental constraints. As shown in the present study, environmental harshness and unpredictability may arise from unsafe neighborhood conditions, familial turmoil, or negative life events, all of which activate fast LH strategies and, consequently, externalizing behaviors and academic underperformance. Such social and learning behaviors are adaptive in environments that diminish the prospect for future cooperation and long-term fitness-enhancing opportunities. One practical implication of the present study is not to rashly judge putatively deviant behavior exhibited by children and adolescents, but to examine the environmental conditions that are associated with such behavior and the evolutionary causes of such associations. Another implication related to education is that instead of steadfast enforcement of socialization or questioning and unfruitfully reforming and reinventing socialization institutions (e.g., parenting or parents, instructional methods or teachers, or school systems or education policies) when socialization and education do not seem to be achieving the intended objectives, effort should be directed toward improving children’s living environments by eliminating or reducing unpredictable elements. Poverty associated with crime and violence generated by economic destitution constitutes a major threat to environmental stability. Other threats include natural and manmade disasters such as famine, wars, and large-scale disease epidemics, all of which cause mortality and morbidity and ignite cascade effects of fast LH, present orientation, and superficial learning and social behaviors aimed at immediate and short-term fitness gains. Efforts should be made to eliminate these elements of unpredictability and render the larger environment supportive of and congruent with the species’ chosen slow LH strategy. More tenable efforts may be focused on improving microenvironments; for example, promoting stable family life, safe neighborhoods, and orderly classrooms. Such microenvironments are conducive to slow LH strategies, which engender future orientation and related social and academic behaviors consistent with slow-LH-based socialization.
The present study had several limitations. First, we did not test alternative hypotheses against our LH predictions. However, falsification of evolutionary theories does not rely solely on empirical tests but also on accumulating historical and often interspecific comparative evidence that supports an optimal evolutionary explanation. We believe that we have provided such evidence and explanations with respect to externalizing behavior and academic performance, both of which represent implementations of LH strategies and yielded findings expected to be similar to those obtained from proximate socialization models because human socialization is consistent with and reinforces its slow LH origin. Second, we focused on the environmental influence of LH and our effort to control for the genetic influence of LH was minimal. Genetic confounding may affect developmental research and is a particularly relevant threat to evolutionary studies focusing on distal processes. Future developmental LH research could employ twins or siblings to distinguish between environmental and potential genetic influences on and of LH. Finally, our results, particularly some of the factor loadings, were moderate, suggesting that we might not have fully or fully accurately represented distal evolutionary processes under investigation. However, this limitation was mitigated by our use of multidimensional, multi-informant, and longitudinal data, which likely yielded more attenuated results less inflated by method variance. Despite these and other limitations, this is one of the first LH studies to examine child and adolescent social and academic development across countries, and represents an earnest effort to use diverse culture samples to test evolutionary predictions about universal fitness functions and processes. The country-invariant findings regarding LH strategies responding to early environment and enacting social and academic behaviors in the fast-slow LH directions provide a new perspective on child development and behavior that helps to explain existing findings based on socialization models. In addition, our findings carry practical implications. If elements of unsafety and unpredictability are removed from living environments, child and adolescent development may follow the species’ chosen slow LH trajectory, thereby rendering evolution and socialization more congruent and engendering more effective socialization and education.
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Submitted: April 5, 2018 Revised: September 25, 2018 Accepted: September 28, 2018