TY - JOUR
T1 - Environmental harshness and unpredictability, life history, and social and academic behavior of adolescents in nine countries
AU - Chang, Lei
AU - Lu, Hui Jing
AU - Lansford, Jennifer E.
AU - Skinner, Ann T.
AU - Bornstein, Marc H.
AU - Steinberg, Laurence
AU - Dodge, Kenneth A.
AU - Chen, Bin Bin
AU - Tian, Qian
AU - Bacchini, Dario
AU - Deater-Deckard, Kirby
AU - Pastorelli, Concetta
AU - Alampay, Liane Peña
AU - Sorbring, Emma
AU - Al-Hassan, Suha M.
AU - Oburu, Paul
AU - Malone, Patrick S.
AU - Di Giunta, Laura
AU - Uribe Tirado, Liliana Maria
AU - Tapanya, Sombat
PY - 2019/4
Y1 - 2019/4
N2 - Safety is essential for life. To survive, humans and other animals have developed sets of psychological and physiological adaptations known as life history (LH) tradeoff strategies in response to various safety constraints. Evolutionarily selected LH strategies in turn regulate development and behavior to optimize survival under prevailing safety conditions. The present study tested LH hypotheses concerning safety based on a 6-year longitudinal sample of 1,245 adolescents and their parents from 9 countries. The results revealed that, invariant across countries, environmental harshness, and unpredictability (lack of safety) was negatively associated with slow LH behavioral profile, measured 2 years later, and slow LH behavioral profile was negatively and positively associated with externalizing behavior and academic performance, respectively, as measured an additional 2 years later. These results support the evolutionary conception that human development responds to environmental safety cues through LH regulation of social and learning behaviors.
AB - Safety is essential for life. To survive, humans and other animals have developed sets of psychological and physiological adaptations known as life history (LH) tradeoff strategies in response to various safety constraints. Evolutionarily selected LH strategies in turn regulate development and behavior to optimize survival under prevailing safety conditions. The present study tested LH hypotheses concerning safety based on a 6-year longitudinal sample of 1,245 adolescents and their parents from 9 countries. The results revealed that, invariant across countries, environmental harshness, and unpredictability (lack of safety) was negatively associated with slow LH behavioral profile, measured 2 years later, and slow LH behavioral profile was negatively and positively associated with externalizing behavior and academic performance, respectively, as measured an additional 2 years later. These results support the evolutionary conception that human development responds to environmental safety cues through LH regulation of social and learning behaviors.
KW - Academic performance
KW - Environmental harshness
KW - Externalizing
KW - Fast and slow life history strategy
KW - Unpredictability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85057560595&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/dev0000655
DO - 10.1037/dev0000655
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 30507220
AN - SCOPUS:85057560595
SN - 0012-1649
VL - 55
SP - 890
EP - 903
JO - Developmental Psychology
JF - Developmental Psychology
IS - 4
ER -