Fact-checked by Grok 2 weeks ago

Sociobiology

Sociobiology is the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior, employing evolutionary theory to explain patterns observed in animal societies, including those of humans.^[1]
The discipline was formalized by biologist Edward O. Wilson, who coined the term in his 1975 book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, which integrated findings from ethology, ecology, and population genetics to argue that social traits like altruism and hierarchy emerge as adaptations maximizing reproductive success.^[2]^[1]
Central to sociobiology is the concept of inclusive fitness, which posits that behaviors enhancing the survival and reproduction of genetic relatives—via mechanisms such as kin selection—can evolve even if they reduce the actor's direct fitness, as seen in the sterile castes of eusocial insects like ants and bees.^[3]^[1]
While the approach yielded empirical successes in elucidating non-human animal behaviors, Wilson's extension to human sociality provoked intense controversy, with critics alleging it undervalued environmental and cultural influences in favor of genetic causation, though subsequent research has substantiated many of its core predictions in fields like behavioral ecology.^[1]^[4]

Definition and Core Concepts

Definition and Scope

Sociobiology constitutes the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior across organisms, including humans, as articulated by E.O. Wilson in his 1975 publication Sociobiology: The New Synthesis.^[2] This framework extends principles of population biology and evolutionary theory to the organization and dynamics of social systems, positing that social behaviors emerge as adaptations shaped by natural selection to enhance reproductive success.^[4] Unlike approaches that attribute social phenomena predominantly to cultural or environmental factors, sociobiology prioritizes genetically influenced traits that confer fitness advantages, verifiable through comparative analyses of behavioral patterns in diverse species.^[5] The scope of sociobiology encompasses a range of social behaviors, including altruism, aggression, mating strategies, and hierarchical structures, interpreting these as evolved responses to ecological and genetic pressures rather than arbitrary cultural constructs.^[2] Empirical evidence from animal societies, such as cooperative foraging in insects or parental investment in vertebrates, underscores how such behaviors maximize inclusive genetic propagation over individual survival alone.^[4] This approach demands rigorous testing against observational data, rejecting explanations lacking causal links to heritable variation and selection pressures.^[5] By integrating insights from genetics, ecology, and ethology, sociobiology delineates the proximate mechanisms—neural, hormonal, and physiological—underlying ultimate evolutionary functions of sociality, thereby bridging individual-level adaptations with group-level outcomes.^[2] It challenges nurture-dominant models by highlighting instances where environmental plasticity serves underlying genetic imperatives, as seen in fixed action patterns conserved across phylogeny.^[4] This delimitation excludes purely phenomenological descriptions, insisting on falsifiable hypotheses grounded in Darwinian evolution.^[5]

Inclusive Fitness and Kin Selection

Inclusive fitness extends the concept of Darwinian fitness by accounting for an individual's total genetic contribution to future generations, encompassing not only direct reproduction through personal offspring but also indirect effects on the reproductive success of genetic relatives, weighted by the coefficient of relatedness r. This framework, introduced by W.D. Hamilton in his 1964 papers, posits that natural selection acts on genes influencing social behaviors that maximize this inclusive measure, thereby resolving the apparent paradox of altruism—behaviors where the actor incurs a fitness cost while benefiting others—by demonstrating how such acts can propagate genes shared with kin.^[6]^[7] Hamilton formalized the condition for the evolution of altruism via kin selection with the inequality rB > C, where r is the genetic relatedness between actor and recipient (ranging from 0 to 1, with 0.5 typical for full siblings under diploid inheritance), B is the reproductive benefit conferred to the recipient, and C is the reproductive cost to the actor; if the product of relatedness and benefit exceeds the cost, the altruistic trait spreads in the population.^[8] This gene-centered criterion emphasizes individual-level selection on inclusive effects rather than group benefits, providing a mechanistic explanation grounded in Mendelian inheritance and population genetics.^[9] Kin selection operates as the process through which inclusive fitness favors nepotistic behaviors, particularly in contexts where close relatives share alleles identical by descent, enabling costly aid to kin to yield net genetic gains. A canonical application arises in the Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps), where haplodiploid sex determination—males develop from unfertilized eggs and are haploid, while females are diploid—creates asymmetric relatedness: full sisters share 75% of their genes on average (due to shared paternal genome), exceeding the 50% relatedness to their own offspring or brothers.^[10] This disparity predicts that sterile female workers, forgoing personal reproduction, preferentially rear sisters (future queens and workers) over investing in sons, as the inclusive fitness return from aiding sisters (r = 0.75) outweighs direct reproduction (r = 0.5), provided colony benefits suffice under Hamilton's rule. Hamilton's 1964 analysis highlighted this as a key factor promoting eusociality—the extreme altruism of non-reproductive castes—in over 90% of known eusocial insect species, which are hymenopterans, contrasting with rarer occurrences in diploid taxa.^[6]^[11] Empirical studies validate kin selection's predictions in hymenopterans through observations of behaviors that align with maximizing inclusive fitness, such as worker policing of reproduction to eliminate low-relatedness males and maintain high sister relatedness. For instance, in honeybees (Apis mellifera), workers preferentially consume eggs laid by other workers (r=0.25-0.375 to nephews) in favor of queen-laid eggs (r=0.75 to sisters), a pattern consistent across colonies and supported by genetic assays confirming enforcement of Hamilton's rule thresholds.^[12] Similarly, in fire ants (Solenopsis invicta), colony-level assays show worker aggression suppresses queenless reproduction when indirect fitness via siblings exceeds potential direct gains, privileging gene-level accounting over vague group selection claims that lack comparable predictive precision.^[13] These findings, derived from controlled experiments and pedigree analyses since the 1970s, underscore kin selection's causal efficacy in social evolution, with deviations (e.g., multiple queen-mating reducing r) correlating to shifts in altruism levels as predicted.^[10] While debates persist on alternative models, inclusive fitness consistently outperforms them in fitting genetic and behavioral data from eusocial insects.^[14]

Historical Development

Precursors in Ethology and Genetics

Ethology emerged in the early 20th century as a discipline emphasizing the biological roots of animal behavior, with key figures like Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen demonstrating that many social and reproductive actions are innate and species-specific, shaped by natural selection. Lorenz's 1935 experiments on greylag geese revealed imprinting as a critical period mechanism where hatchlings rapidly form attachments to the first moving object encountered, illustrating how evolved behavioral programs ensure filial bonds without learning.^[15] ^[16] Tinbergen, in the 1950s, elaborated on fixed action patterns—stereotyped, releaser-triggered sequences such as the male three-spined stickleback's aggressive zigzag dance in response to red stimuli—arguing these motor programs are genetically encoded and adaptive for survival and reproduction in social contexts.^[17] These observations countered blank-slate views by providing empirical evidence that behaviors like aggression and mating displays are heritable traits, not solely environmental products, laying groundwork for analyzing sociality as evolved.^[18] In parallel, population genetics provided mathematical frameworks for understanding how selection acts on genes underlying social traits. Ronald Fisher's 1930 fundamental theorem of natural selection formalized that the rate of evolutionary change in mean fitness equals the additive genetic variance in fitness, emphasizing gene-level transmission over individual or group outcomes and enabling models of traits like cooperation.^[19] J.B.S. Haldane, in his 1932 book The Causes of Evolution, extended this by quantifying altruism's viability: an individual could sacrifice for relatives if the genetic benefit (weighted by relatedness) exceeds the cost, as in calculations showing self-sacrifice profitable for two siblings or eight cousins, prefiguring gene-centered views of kin-directed behaviors.^[20] These insights shifted focus from organismal to allelic competition, resolving puzzles like sterile castes in social insects through inclusive benefits.^[21] Early ethological studies of dominance hierarchies further evidenced innate social structures, with Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe's 1922 work on chickens establishing the "pecking order" as a linear rank system minimizing conflict via ritualized aggression, observable across species without cultural transmission.^[22] Similar patterns appeared in pre-1975 primate research, such as Solly Zuckerman's 1932 observations of hamadryas baboons, where hierarchical aggression enforced mating access and resource control, and Rudolph Schenkel's 1947 wolf pack analyses revealing rank-based inhibition of fights, suggesting genetic predispositions for status-seeking over learned norms.^[23] These findings, rooted in field and captive data, highlighted causal roles of hormones and neurology in aggression gradients, challenging nurture-dominant explanations by showing consistent, heritable patterns adaptive for group stability.^[24]

E.O. Wilson's Synthesis (1975)

In 1975, Edward O. Wilson, a Harvard University professor and leading myrmecologist, published Sociobiology: The New Synthesis through the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, a 697-page treatise that unified disparate fields including ethology, population genetics, and ecology to elucidate the evolutionary origins of social behaviors.^[25] The work systematically reviewed empirical data on phenomena such as territoriality, mating systems, and division of labor across invertebrates and vertebrates, positing these as genetically influenced adaptations refined by natural selection in specific ecological contexts.^[26] Wilson's analysis leveraged his expertise in ant biology to dissect complex social strategies, exemplified by slave-making in species like Formica sanguinea and Polyergus ants, where raiders evolve specialized morphology and behavior for pupal abduction, integrating host workers into their colonies as a parasitic optimization of labor acquisition amid high energetic costs of independent foraging.^[27]^[28] This case illustrated how natural selection favors traits that maximize inclusive fitness, with mathematical models quantifying raid efficiency based on host density and defender resistance.^[27] A central innovation was the application of optimality models—adapted from economic theory and optimal foraging—to social systems, treating behavioral repertoires as evolutionarily stable solutions to trade-offs in reproduction, defense, and resource allocation, yielding predictions such as caste ratios in eusocial insects that aligned with field observations.^[29] These frameworks shifted focus from proximate mechanisms to ultimate causation, providing quantitative tools to test hypotheses against data from controlled experiments and long-term population studies.^[29] The synthesis challenged prevailing behaviorist paradigms, which attributed social actions primarily to environmental learning and conditioning, by marshaling genetic and phylogenetic evidence for innate predispositions, as seen in conserved traits like haplodiploidy facilitating eusociality in Hymenoptera.^[30] Wilson's rigorous compilation of cross-species comparisons offered causal alternatives to ad hoc explanations, grounding behaviors in heritable variation under selection pressures. The book's empirical depth and analytical precision earned early acclaim for advancing a predictive science of social evolution.^[31] In the years immediately following E. O. Wilson's 1975 synthesis, sociobiology expanded through targeted applications to behavioral strategies across species, including humans. David P. Barash's 1977 book Sociobiology and Behavior applied core principles to human domains such as mate selection, parental investment, aggression, and dominance hierarchies, arguing these traits reflect evolved adaptations shaped by natural selection.^[32]^[33] This work built on Wilson's framework by integrating empirical observations from zoology and psychology, demonstrating sociobiology's utility in explaining proximate social outcomes without invoking cultural determinism alone.^[4] Theoretical refinements in the 1980s addressed cooperation mechanisms beyond kin selection, incorporating mathematical modeling from game theory. Robert Axelrod's 1984 analysis of iterated Prisoner's Dilemma tournaments showed that reciprocal strategies, such as "tit-for-tat," could stably evolve cooperation among non-relatives by punishing defection and rewarding mutual benefit, extending Robert Trivers' 1971 reciprocal altruism model to dynamic, repeated interactions.^[34] These simulations, run with over 60 strategies submitted by experts, yielded robust predictions tested against biological data, reinforcing sociobiology's emphasis on individual-level selection while providing tools to quantify altruism's stability under varying costs and benefits.^[35] Critiques of early sociobiology, particularly its perceived overreach into human affairs and reliance on naive group selection, spurred a reorientation toward behavioral ecology as a more empirically grounded variant. By the early 1980s, practitioners increasingly adopted this label to focus on ultimate evolutionary functions of behavior in ecological contexts, sidelining group-level explanations in favor of gene-centered models that prioritized individual fitness maximization and rejected unsubstantiated multi-level selection without rigorous evidence.^[36]^[37] This shift, evident in the proliferation of studies on optimal foraging, mating systems, and conflict resolution, refined sociobiology through iterative hypothesis testing and adaptationist hypotheses, enhancing its resilience against ideological challenges by aligning predictions more closely with observable data from field experiments.^[38] These developments laid groundwork for evolutionary psychology's emergence in the 1990s, which further parsed human cognition as domain-specific adaptations, though sociobiology proper matured via cross-species comparisons that validated refined models against alternatives like cultural evolution.^[4] Empirical validations, such as avian and primate studies on reciprocity, underscored the framework's predictive power, with cooperation evolving reliably under conditions of future interaction and low cheating risks.^[34]

Theoretical Foundations

Social behaviors constitute extended phenotypes that natural selection evaluates based on their impact on the propagation of underlying genes through differential reproductive success. In group-living animals, selection pressures favor traits enabling individuals to navigate competition and resource acquisition, where behaviors yielding net fitness gains—such as reduced conflict or enhanced survival—predominate over those imposing uncompensated costs.^[39] This gene-level causality underscores how social interactions, while appearing group-oriented, ultimately serve individual genetic interests by improving access to mates and sustenance.^[40] Dominance hierarchies exemplify selection on social traits, forming via agonistic contests and self-organizing dynamics like winner-loser effects, which minimize energy expenditure on repeated fights. High-ranking individuals secure priority over contested resources, elevating their reproductive output; for instance, in spotted hyenas, long-term field data spanning 27 years document stable hierarchies where dominants monopolize breeding opportunities.^[39] In paper wasps (Polistes fuscatus), females leverage visual signals and social eavesdropping to assert dominance, gaining superior nesting positions that boost offspring survival rates.^[39] These structures persist because they stabilize groups, allowing selection to refine attributes like aggression thresholds and signaling accuracy, with phylogenetic patterns across vertebrates and invertebrates affirming their adaptive origins under varying ecological demands.^[41] Foraging strategies in social insects further illustrate cost-benefit optimization under selection, where collective tactics distribute risks and amplify returns. In ants and bees, pheromone trails and recruitment dances facilitate rapid patch exploitation, countering predation hazards while maximizing caloric intake per effort; variants yielding higher net energy—accounting for search time, handling costs, and group competition—displace inefficient alternatives over generations. Such behaviors evolve as gene-encoded predispositions that enhance individual contributions to colony persistence, indirectly boosting inclusive genetic representation without relying on relatedness biases.^[42] Maladaptive social traits like spite—actions harming both actor and unrelated recipient without fitness reciprocity—occur infrequently, as evolutionary models reveal their instability: initial invasion requires improbable negative relatedness thresholds, and even if established, spite erodes under competition from neutral or beneficial strategies in sizable populations.^[43] Empirical rarity in non-human animals supports this, with spite confined to niche genetic contexts like transmission distorters rather than pervasive behavioral norms.^[44] Phylogenetic comparisons across mammals link adaptive sociality, such as group-living, to longevity and habitat stability, evidencing selection's pruning of unfit variants while retaining those aligned with environmental fitness gradients.^[45]

Altruism, Cooperation, and Group Selection Debates

The altruism paradox refers to the challenge of explaining behaviors that appear to reduce an individual's reproductive success while benefiting others, as such traits should be selected against in standard Darwinian models of individual fitness maximization.^[6] In 1964, W. D. Hamilton addressed this by formalizing inclusive fitness, which extends direct fitness (personal reproduction) to indirect components gained through aiding genetic relatives, quantified by Hamilton's rule: the behavior evolves if the genetic relatedness r times the fitness benefit to the recipient B exceeds the fitness cost to the actor C (rB > C).^[46] This kin selection mechanism resolves the paradox empirically in cases like alarm calling in ground squirrels or sterile worker castes in eusocial insects, where shared genes are propagated via relatives despite zero direct reproduction.^[47] Cooperation among non-kin extends beyond inclusive fitness through mechanisms like reciprocal altruism, where costly aid is exchanged over repeated interactions, as modeled by Robert Trivers in 1971.^[48] Trivers argued that natural selection favors such behaviors when the potential long-term benefits from reciprocation outweigh immediate costs, supported by examples including grooming in primates and cleaning symbioses in fish, where cheaters risk future exclusion.^[49] Iterated game-theoretic models, notably Robert Axelrod's 1984 tournaments of the prisoner's dilemma, demonstrate that simple strategies like "tit-for-tat"—cooperating initially but mirroring the opponent's last move—achieve high stability and scores by promoting reciprocity while punishing defection.^[35] Punishment further stabilizes cooperation, as costly sanctions against free-riders (e.g., altruistic punishment in economic games) prevent exploitation, with experimental data showing humans incur costs to enforce norms even in one-shot anonymous settings.^[37] Group selection, revived by V. C. Wynne-Edwards in his 1962 book Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behaviour, posits that natural selection acts on group-level traits to regulate population density and prevent overexploitation, with individuals subordinating reproduction for collective welfare.^[50] This view faced sharp critique for neglecting intra-group dynamics: George C. Williams's 1966 Adaptation and Natural Selection argued that "selfish" genetic variants would proliferate within altruistic groups, causing internal collapse before inter-group competition could favor group-beneficial traits, rendering group selection empirically rare and theoretically inefficient compared to individual-level explanations.^[51] Subsequent models by John Maynard Smith in the 1970s reinforced this via the "haystack" simulations, showing group selection requires implausibly high between-group variance and low within-group migration to outperform kin or reciprocity-based alternatives.^[52] Modern multilevel selection (MLS) theories, advanced by David Sloan Wilson and Elliott Sober since the 1990s, incorporate group-level effects as partitions of total fitness but do not supplant inclusive fitness; instead, they align mathematically when relatedness structures populations, as Hamilton's framework already embeds group-like outcomes through gene-level accounting.^[53] Empirical tests, such as microbial evolution experiments, confirm that MLS gains emerge primarily from kin-structured interactions rather than novel group adaptations, with critics noting MLS's descriptive flexibility often rederives inclusive fitness results without added predictive power.^[37] Thus, while MLS refines edge cases like rare vertical transmission, inclusive fitness and reciprocity remain the parsimonious defaults for sociobiological explanations of altruism and cooperation.^[54]

Sexual Selection and Reproductive Strategies

Bateman's principle, derived from A.J. Bateman's 1948 experiments on fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), posits that males exhibit higher variance in reproductive success than females because male fertility benefits more from multiple matings, while female reproductive output is constrained by gamete production and investment limits.^[55] This asymmetry drives male strategies favoring polygyny and riskier competition for access to females, often resulting in exaggerated male traits such as ornaments or weaponry observed in species like deer antlers or bird plumage.^[56] Empirical support comes from replicated studies showing steeper Bateman gradients—linking mating success to reproductive success—in males across insects, birds, and mammals.^[57] Complementing this, Robert Trivers' 1972 parental investment theory explains sex roles through differential costs: females, bearing higher obligatory investment via egg production, internal gestation, and initial care, evolve greater selectivity in mates to maximize offspring viability, whereas males, with cheaper gametes, prioritize quantity of fertilizations.^[58] This framework predicts female-biased choosiness in most anisogamous species, fostering intersexual selection where females assess male genetic quality, vigor, or resources. In primates, female choice manifests in preferences for dominant males or those displaying affiliative behaviors, influencing paternity shares beyond male coercion alone.^[59] Reproductive conflicts arise from these divergent interests, exemplified by sexually selected infanticide in lions (Panthera leo), where coalition males overtaking a pride kill unrelated cubs to terminate lactational amenorrhea in females, accelerating their return to estrus and enabling sireship of the killers' own progeny—studies estimate this boosts lifetime reproductive success for infanticidal males by 1-2 additional litters per takeover.^[60] Similar patterns occur in primates like hanuman langurs, where incoming males eliminate prior offspring to expedite female fertility.^[61] Sexual dimorphism provides proxy evidence for these dynamics: across vertebrates, male-biased size dimorphism correlates with polygynous mating systems and intense male contest competition, as in elephant seals where males exceed females in mass by 10-fold, reflecting selection for fighting prowess over natural selection pressures alone.^[62] In contrast, female-biased dimorphism is rarer and tied to role-reversed species with male parental care, underscoring investment's causal role in dimorphic evolution.^[63] These patterns, quantified via metrics like coefficient of variation in mating success, affirm sexual selection's primacy in shaping reproductive strategies within sociobiological frameworks.^[64]

Genetic and Biological Mechanisms

Quantitative genetic studies, primarily through twin and adoption designs, have estimated the heritability of social behaviors such as aggression at approximately 50%, indicating that additive genetic factors account for about half of the observed variance in these traits across populations.^[65] Meta-analyses of multiple studies confirm this range, with genetic influences consistently outweighing shared environmental effects for aggressive tendencies, supporting a substantial innate component in the predisposition to such behaviors.^[66] Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) further elucidate these genetic underpinnings by identifying variants associated with intelligence, which correlates genetically with social outcomes like educational attainment and occupational success, independent of measured environmental confounders.^[67] Polygenic scores derived from GWAS for personality traits, such as extraversion, predict positive affect, life satisfaction, and related social functioning in large cohorts like the UK Biobank, demonstrating that aggregated genetic effects forecast behavioral variance beyond non-genetic predictors.^[68] These scores capture narrow-sense heritability, reinforcing the polygenic architecture of social traits. Epigenetic mechanisms, including DNA methylation, modulate the expression of genes underlying social behaviors by altering accessibility without changing the DNA sequence, with patterns that can be transgenerationally heritable yet primarily serve adaptive plasticity under selection pressures.30139-9) Such modifications do not override the core genetic variance established by quantitative genetics but fine-tune phenotypic expression in response to cues, maintaining the heritability of behavioral dispositions while enabling context-specific adjustments.^[69]

Gene-Environment Interactions

Gene-environment interactions in sociobiology highlight how evolutionary processes have sculpted genetic systems to produce adaptive phenotypic plasticity, where genotypes generate context-dependent behaviors rather than rigid traits. Reaction norms, the functional mapping of genotype to phenotype across environmental variation, illustrate this: selection favors genes that canalize development toward fitness-enhancing outcomes, buffering against deleterious conditions while permitting flexibility in heterogeneous ancestral environments. For instance, in fluctuating resource availability, genotypes may yield divergent foraging strategies, with steeper norms indicating greater plasticity shaped by past selection pressures.^[70]^[71] A prominent example involves the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene, where low-expression variants interact with adverse rearing environments to elevate antisocial outcomes. In a cohort of 442 New Zealand males followed from birth to age 26, childhood maltreatment predicted antisocial behavior primarily among low-MAOA carriers (44% of whom developed conduct disorder versus 21% of high-MAOA individuals), demonstrating how genes confer vulnerability or resilience to environmental stressors. This GxE effect, replicated in meta-analyses, reveals no main genetic effect in benign conditions but amplification in harsh ones, aligning with selection for conditional strategies that conserve resources when risks are low.^[72]^[73] Such interactions extend to social cognition via evoked culture, where environments activate specialized neural mechanisms rather than imposing behaviors de novo. In reciprocal altruism scenarios, cues of potential cheating trigger enhanced performance on logical inference tasks, as shown in experiments where participants selectively verify violations of social contracts—detecting cheaters at rates far exceeding abstract logic problems. Tooby and Cosmides argue this reflects evolved modules, evoked by ancestral exchange contexts, producing culturally variable but mechanistically universal responses, such as moralistic punishment in cooperative dilemmas.^[74]^[75] Adoption and twin designs further substantiate persistent genetic influence on social behaviors across environments, countering socialization-only models. Combined analyses of adolescent twins and adoptees estimate heritability of personality traits like extraversion at 40-50%, with shared environments accounting for less than 10% variance, even when rearing SES varies widely. Similarly, for externalizing behaviors, genetic factors explain 50-70% of stability from childhood to adulthood, with minimal attenuation by adoptive homes, indicating selection has equipped genes to express reliably despite environmental shifts. These patterns imply co-evolutionary dynamics, where genes and selective environments mutually shape each other over generations.^[76]^[77]^[78]

Empirical Evidence

Animal Studies and Comparative Biology

Animal studies in sociobiology draw on observations of social behaviors across species to identify evolutionarily conserved patterns, providing a comparative framework for understanding genetic and selective pressures on cooperation, hierarchy, and conflict without human-specific cultural overlays.^[10] In eusocial insects like ants and termites, colonies exhibit extreme division of labor, with queens achieving exceptional longevity—often exceeding 20-30 years in species such as the black garden ant (Lasius niger)—while workers remain sterile and forgo personal reproduction to rear siblings.^[79] ^[80] This sterility in workers, observed consistently across Hymenopteran ants and diploid termites, aligns with genetic fitness maximization through inclusive benefits, as evidenced by genomic analyses showing relaxed selection on worker reproductive traits and upregulation of shared reproductive genes in queens.^[81] ^[82] In primates, particularly chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), field observations document lethal intergroup raiding by male coalitions, targeting unfamiliar individuals from neighboring communities to expand territory and resources.^[83] At Gombe Stream National Park, Jane Goodall's longitudinal studies from the 1970s onward recorded the Kasakela community's systematic elimination of rival males over four years, resulting in the annexation of approximately 40% more territory, with raids preferentially striking lone or small groups of non-kin outsiders.^[84] Similar patterns at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, involved 18 fatal attacks by resident males between 1999 and 2009, correlating with demographic imbalances favoring aggressors and underscoring kin-coordinated territorial defense.^[84] Paleontological traces further reveal deep evolutionary antecedents of sociality in early mammals and synapsids. In Permian deposits of South Africa's Karoo Basin, burrow complexes attributed to the dicynodont Diictodon feliceps contain aggregated neonate skeletons alongside adults, suggesting communal rearing or shelter-sharing among multiple generations around 260 million years ago.^[85] Mixed-age assemblages of pelycosaur-like synapsids in the same formation indicate gregarious habits, with burrow fills preserving clustered remains that imply coordinated burrowing and group occupancy rather than solitary use.^[86] These fossils, dated to the late Guadalupian stage, demonstrate that social aggregation predates modern mammalian forms, rooted in fossorial adaptations for protection and resource sharing.^[86]

Human Behavioral Genetics and Twin Studies

Twin and adoption studies in human behavioral genetics provide robust designs for estimating heritability by comparing monozygotic (MZ) twins, who share nearly 100% of genetic material, to dizygotic (DZ) twins, who share about 50%, and by assessing adoptees' resemblances to biological versus adoptive relatives. These methods isolate genetic effects from shared environmental confounds, such as family upbringing, enabling causal inferences about the proportion of trait variance attributable to additive genetic influences (h²). When MZ-DZ correlations exceed expectations under pure environmental models and reared-apart MZ twins show substantial similarity, heritability estimates strengthen, countering assumptions of environmental determinism.^[87]^[88] The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, launched in 1979 and ongoing, recruited over 100 MZ twin pairs separated in infancy and raised in different households, yielding heritability estimates of approximately 70% for adult IQ based on intraclass correlations around 0.70, consistent with prior smaller studies. Personality traits exhibited MZ correlations of 0.4-0.5, implying h² of 40-60%, while behavioral similarities in interests, attitudes, and habits persisted despite divergent environments, underscoring genetic causation over cultural transmission. Adoption studies reinforce this, revealing stronger IQ correlations with biological parents (r ≈ 0.4) than adoptive ones (r ≈ 0.2), with links to outcomes like educational attainment and occupational status holding independently of rearing environment.^[88]^[89]^[90] For personality, twin studies meta-analyses estimate h² at 40-60% across Big Five dimensions, with openness to experience at 61%, extraversion at 53%, neuroticism at 41%, agreeableness at 41%, and conscientiousness at 42%, derived from MZ-DZ differences in large cohorts. Political ideology shows comparable heritability of 0.4-0.6, as evidenced by twin analyses of 19 diverse measures spanning attitudes, voting, and partisanship, where genetic factors explained variance consistently across eras and populations, independent of measurement method. These estimates increase with age for cognitive traits like IQ, reaching 80% by 18-20 years via the Wilson effect, observed in longitudinal twin and adoption data.^[91]^[92]^[90] Supporting these broad heritability findings, molecular studies identify candidate genes influencing specific behaviors, such as the DRD4 exon III VNTR polymorphism linked to novelty-seeking—a facet of extraversion—with meta-analyses confirming modest but significant associations accounting for 1-2% of variance, aligning with polygenic expectations from twin designs. Adoption designs further disentangle passive gene-environment correlations, showing that biological parent traits predict adoptee behaviors more than adoptive ones, as in IQ-social mobility persistence documented in Bouchard-led reviews from the 1990s. Overall, these studies establish genetic variance as a primary driver of individual differences in human behavior, with environmental effects largely non-shared.^[93]^[94]

Applications to Human Societies

Evolutionary Psychology and Innate Traits

Evolutionary psychology applies sociobiological principles to the human mind, positing that cognitive and emotional mechanisms evolved as adaptations to recurrent problems in ancestral environments, primarily the Pleistocene epoch spanning approximately 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. These mechanisms include domain-specific neural modules that process information relevant to survival and reproduction, such as threat detection and mate retention, rather than general-purpose learning devices. This framework challenges blank-slate conceptions of the mind by emphasizing genetically influenced predispositions shaped by natural and sexual selection. Sexual jealousy exemplifies an innate trait functioning as an anti-cuckoldry device, particularly in males facing paternity uncertainty due to internal female fertilization. Experimental evidence demonstrates sex-differentiated responses: men exhibit greater distress and physiological arousal, such as increased heart rate and skin conductance, to scenarios of a partner's sexual infidelity compared to emotional infidelity, while women show the reverse pattern. This pattern holds across forced-choice paradigms and continuous measures of jealousy intensity, aligning with evolutionary predictions from asymmetric reproductive costs.^[95]^[96] Sex differences in risk-taking and mate choosiness stem from parental investment theory, where females' greater obligatory gestation and lactation—averaging nine months of pregnancy plus extended nursing—impose higher costs, favoring selectivity in partners to ensure offspring viability. Males, with lower minimal investment limited to sperm production, pursue higher-variance strategies, including greater risk propensity in status-seeking and physical domains, as evidenced by meta-analyses showing consistent male overrepresentation in extreme risk behaviors like reckless driving and violent competition. These traits manifest universally as adaptations to ancestral asymmetries in reproductive opportunity.^[97]^[98] Cognitive faculties like language further illustrate evolved innateness, with Steven Pinker arguing in 1994 that humans possess a specialized language acquisition device enabling rapid grammar mastery from minimal input, contra empiricist views positing a content-free mind reliant solely on environmental imprinting. Children's overregularization errors, such as "goed" instead of "went," reveal innate rule-based processing rather than rote imitation, supporting a modular architecture honed by selection for social coordination in hunter-gatherer groups. This critiques extensions of Chomskyan nativism toward extreme universality by grounding language in adaptive functionality over abstract formalism.

Cross-Cultural and Anthropological Evidence

Cross-cultural databases like the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), developed by George P. Murdock in the 1930s and expanded thereafter, document near-universal prohibitions on incestuous relations between primary kin across hundreds of societies, with data from over 1,200 cultures showing such taboos in 99% of cases examined.^[99]^[100] This invariance supports sociobiological explanations grounded in kin selection, where avoidance of mating with close relatives minimizes the risk of homozygous deleterious alleles, thereby preserving inclusive fitness rather than arising solely from arbitrary cultural norms.^[101] Marriage practices in these datasets similarly exhibit patterns consistent with kin selection dynamics, such as preferential alliances with distant kin to balance genetic relatedness and outbreeding benefits, observed in recurrent residence rules (e.g., patrilocal in 68% of societies) and exogamy requirements that prevent clan-level inbreeding while fostering cooperative networks.^[102]^[103] Anthropological fieldwork among hunter-gatherers, often viewed as analogs to Pleistocene human societies, reveals underlying biological invariants masked by surface-level egalitarianism. Richard B. Lee's longitudinal studies of the !Kung San from the 1960s to 1980s found that while overt hierarchy was minimal due to food-sharing norms, sexual division of labor persisted: women gathered 60-80% of calories but men's hunting provided high-value protein (20-40% of diet) and conferred prestige, aligning with male-biased provisioning strategies evolved for paternal investment.^[104]^[105] Large-scale surveys of mate preferences further demonstrate cross-cultural stability in reproductive behaviors. David M. Buss's 1989 study of 10,047 individuals across 37 cultures spanning six continents reported robust sex differences: women consistently rated ambition, industriousness, and earning capacity higher (effect sizes d > 0.80), while men prioritized physical attractiveness and chastity (d > 0.50), patterns holding irrespective of socioeconomic development or gender equality indices.^[106]^[104] These findings indicate evolved preferences for resource acquisition in females and fertility cues in males, enduring despite vast cultural, ecological, and temporal diversity from 1984-1986 fieldwork.^[106]

Scientific Reception and Debates

Integration into Mainstream Biology

The foundational principles of sociobiology, emphasizing evolutionary explanations for social behaviors, gained traction in mainstream biology during the late 1970s and accelerated post-1980s through their incorporation into behavioral ecology.^[36] This integration is evidenced by the establishment of the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology in 1976, which rapidly became a primary outlet for quantitative studies applying evolutionary models to animal sociality, including kin selection and parental investment.^[107] By the 1980s, leading behavioral ecology textbooks, such as those outlining optimality and game-theoretic approaches to foraging and mating systems, routinely adopted sociobiological frameworks to explain adaptive social strategies across taxa.^[38] Precursor validations from ethology further facilitated this acceptance; the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded to Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, and Nikolaas Tinbergen, recognized discoveries in animal behavior patterns and orientation, providing empirical groundwork for sociobiology's ultimate causal analyses.^[108] These awards predated Wilson's 1975 synthesis but aligned with its extension of proximate mechanisms into evolutionary function.^[109] Empirical support has since solidified core predictions, with genomic analyses confirming high genetic relatedness in eusocial insects as a driver of altruism, as predicted by inclusive fitness theory.^[110] Studies of microbial and social animal genetics have similarly validated that relatedness promotes cooperative traits, countering earlier skepticism about genetic underpinnings of sociality.^[111] Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis has amassed extensive citations—exceeding 5,000 in scholarly databases—and catalyzed subfields like evolutionary psychology without necessitating retreats from foundational claims on heritability and adaptation.^[112]^[113] This trajectory reflects academia's progressive embrace, measured by sustained publication growth and interdisciplinary adoptions in zoology and population genetics.^[114] Multi-level selection theory, as articulated by Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson in their 1998 book Unto Others, posits that natural selection can operate simultaneously at multiple hierarchical levels, including genes, individuals, and groups, thereby partitioning fitness effects into within- and between-group components.^[115] This framework supplements gene-centered views dominant in early sociobiology by accommodating scenarios where group-level adaptations, such as altruism in structured populations, evolve under specific conditions like limited migration and differential group extinction.^[116] However, computer simulations of selection dynamics, including those modeling proto-cell division and cooperative interactions, indicate that gene-level mechanisms remain the primary drivers in most empirical contexts, as multi-level effects require stringent parameters (e.g., high between-group variance and low within-group conflict) to override individual-level selection.^[117] ^[118] Critiques emphasizing phenotypic plasticity highlight how environmental cues can modulate social behaviors, challenging strict genetic determinism by demonstrating flexible responses that enhance fitness across variable conditions.^[119] While plasticity accounts for adaptive variation, such as in stress reactivity or territoriality, quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping in animal models reveals heritable genetic baselines underlying these traits, with significant loci identified for affiliative behaviors in mice (e.g., ultrasonic vocalizations on chromosome 18) and aggression in other species.^[120] ^[121] These findings affirm that plasticity operates atop polygenic architectures, where QTLs contribute small but cumulative effects (often <10% variance per locus), supporting sociobiology's core claim of evolved predispositions despite environmental modulation.^[122] Debates on human evolvability underscore the tension between rapid cultural evolution—accelerating via transmission rates orders of magnitude faster than genetic mutation—and slower allelic shifts, yet empirical patterns of mismatch provide causal explanations for contemporary dysfunctions.^[123] For instance, post-agricultural and industrial shifts have decoupled modern diets and social structures from Pleistocene-adapted psychologies, correlating with elevated rates of obesity, anxiety, and metabolic disorders, as evidenced by cross-population studies showing higher prevalence in environments diverging from ancestral norms.^[124] This overlay does not negate genetic foundations but illustrates how cultural amplifiers exacerbate mismatches, with heritability estimates for related traits (e.g., impulsivity) remaining stable at 40-60% across eras, per twin studies integrated with evolutionary models.^[123]

Sociopolitical Controversies

Ideological Objections and Determinism Charges

In November 1975, sixteen academics, including paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and geneticist Richard Lewontin, published an open letter titled "Against 'Sociobiology'" in The New York Review of Books, condemning E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis as a form of genetic determinism that reduced complex social behaviors to innate biological imperatives while downplaying environmental and cultural influences.^[125] The signatories argued that such views echoed historical biological determinism, potentially justifying existing social hierarchies by implying that traits like aggression or altruism were genetically fixed and unequally distributed across groups, thereby undermining efforts to address inequality through social engineering.^[125] These criticisms drew from Marxist-influenced perspectives that framed human behaviors as artifacts of class structures and economic relations rather than evolved adaptations, with groups like Science for the People—a radical collective advocating "science for the people" against perceived bourgeois science—organizing protests against Wilson.^[126] In February 1978, during Wilson's speech at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C., Science for the People activists disrupted the event by rushing the stage, dousing Wilson with water, and chanting slogans accusing him of racism and genocide for extending sociobiological principles to human behavior.^[126] The group's newsletter later celebrated the action as a successful challenge to sociobiology's "ideological" intrusion into human affairs, prioritizing class-based explanations over biological ones.^[126] By the late 1970s, mainstream media outlets amplified these charges, often portraying sociobiology as a revival of eugenics that threatened progressive ideals by suggesting innate differences in sex roles, intelligence, or social stratification, which critics claimed could rationalize discrimination rather than foster universal equality.^[127] Such narratives, prevalent in left-leaning publications, equated biological inquiry into human universals with reactionary politics, reflecting a broader academic and journalistic aversion to any framework implying limits on environmental malleability for social outcomes.^[128]

Empirical Defenses Against Cultural Blank-Slate Views

Twin studies provide robust evidence against the cultural blank-slate doctrine, which posits that environmental socialization alone accounts for behavioral variation. The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, led by Thomas J. Bouchard Jr. from 1979 to 1999, examined over 100 pairs of monozygotic twins separated in infancy and raised in disparate households; these twins displayed high intraclass correlations for personality traits (e.g., 0.50 for extraversion, 0.48 for neuroticism), occupational interests, and social attitudes, often exceeding those of dizygotic twins reared together.^[88] ^[129] Heritability estimates derived from such designs indicate that genetic factors explain 40-70% of variance in these traits, contradicting predictions that radically different rearing environments would erase genetic influences on socialization outcomes.^[130]^[89] These findings expose logical fallacies in blank-slate defenses, such as those advanced by Richard Lewontin, who argued that high within-population genetic variation precludes meaningful heritability of complex traits.^[131] However, as critiqued in subsequent analyses, Lewontin's apportionment overlooks that additive genetic variance within groups—quantified via twin concordances and molecular genetics—directly supports causal genetic roles in individual differences, independent of group-level diversity metrics.^[131] Steven Pinker, in The Blank Slate (2002), substantiates this by contrasting empirical heritability mathematics with ideological rejections from figures like Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould, whose dismissal of innate adaptations ignored converging evidence from fossils (e.g., rapid evolutionary shifts in hominid cognition) and quantitative genetics, often prioritizing anti-determinist priors over data.^[132]^[133] Pinker notes that such critiques, emanating from ideologically aligned academic circles, systematically underweighted genetic causal realism in favor of unverified environmental malleability assumptions. Causal tests in policy domains further undermine blank-slate orthodoxy through predictive failures. Behaviorism's mid-20th-century hegemony, exemplified by B.F. Skinner's environmental conditioning models, collapsed in the 1960s amid empirical disconfirmation: interventions aiming to mold behavior via reinforcement schedules proved inadequate for innate faculties like language acquisition, as Noam Chomsky's 1959 review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior demonstrated via poverty-of-stimulus arguments, where children's grammatical competence exceeded observable inputs.^[134] This shift to cognitive science validated modular, biologically constrained mental structures over tabula rasa ideals. Conversely, evolutionary-informed approaches yield verifiable successes; dating platforms leveraging sexual selection principles—such as prioritizing physical cues of fertility and status—facilitate higher match rates and relationship stability than neutral algorithms, as evidenced by user data aligning with cross-validated mate preferences (e.g., women favoring resource cues, men symmetry indicators).^[135]^[136] These outcomes affirm that acknowledging innate dispositions enhances predictive accuracy, whereas nurture-only models falter under randomized environmental manipulations.

Modern Extensions

Biosocial Sciences and Evolutionary Sociology

Biosocial sciences represent an interdisciplinary framework that incorporates evolutionary principles from sociobiology into sociological inquiry, emphasizing gene-environment interactions and heritable traits to explain social outcomes beyond purely cultural or structural factors. This approach posits that social behaviors emerge from evolved psychological mechanisms interacting with modern environments, providing empirical models for phenomena like inequality and cooperation.^[137] In the 2020s, adoption has accelerated, with dedicated journal sections highlighting evolutionary explanations for persistent social disparities, such as how life-history strategies rooted in ancestral selection pressures sustain economic stratification despite institutional interventions.^[138] A 2024 special issue in Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie showcased diverse applications, including biosociology and sociogenomics, underscoring the shift from environmental determinism to multilevel causation.^[139] Evolutionary sociology extends this by applying Darwinian logic to macro-social patterns, critiquing classical paradigms like Durkheim's emphasis on normative integration as incomplete without biological foundations. Norms and institutions are reframed as proximate mechanisms—immediate regulators of behavior—that canalize evolved ultimate causes, such as kin selection or reciprocal altruism, which shape group dynamics over deep time.^[140] For instance, Daniel Nettle's analyses of personality variation demonstrate how heritable traits aligned with fast-slow life-history strategies predict divergent social outcomes, like risk-taking in unstable environments, challenging blank-slate views of socialization.^[141] This ultimate-proximate distinction clarifies why sociological variables often correlate with but do not fully causally explain behaviors without reference to adaptive origins.^[142] A prominent application lies in biosocial criminology, where longitudinal studies reveal gene-by-environment (G×E) effects on aggression. Caspi et al.'s 2002 Dunedin cohort analysis of 442 males followed from birth to age 26 found that low-activity variants of the MAOA gene (encoding monoamine oxidase A, which metabolizes neurotransmitters) combined with childhood maltreatment to elevate risks of antisocial behavior, conduct disorder, and violent convictions, with effect sizes indicating up to 85% of low-MAOA maltreated individuals developing issues versus 30% of others. This G×E interaction has been replicated and extended in meta-analyses and 30-year follow-ups, establishing temporality and ruling out reverse causation through prospective designs, thus supporting causal claims over correlational sociology-alone models.^[143]^[144] Such findings integrate sociobiological insights into policy-relevant domains, advocating targeted interventions for at-risk genotypes rather than universal environmental fixes.^[73]

Advances in Genomics and Neuroscience Integration

Advances in genomics have bolstered sociobiological frameworks by quantifying genetic contributions to socially relevant traits. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in the 2020s have identified thousands of variants linked to educational attainment, a behavioral phenotype influencing social mobility and hierarchy formation. A 2022 GWAS meta-analysis of approximately 3 million individuals across ancestries uncovered 3,952 independent genetic signals associated with years of schooling, enabling polygenic scores (PGS) that explain up to 12-15% of variance in educational outcomes.^[145] These PGS predict intergenerational social mobility in longitudinal cohorts from the United States, Britain, and Sweden, with genetic propensities correlating to upward class transitions independent of family socioeconomic status.^[146] Such cross-population predictions affirm heritable bases for behavioral divergences, aligning with sociobiological expectations of selection on cognitive-social traits, though environmental interactions modulate expression.^[147] Neuroscience integration has validated sociobiological predictions through imaging of conserved circuits for social behaviors, including mate evaluation. Extensions of David Buss's cross-cultural mate preference research incorporate functional MRI (fMRI) to reveal sex-differentiated neural responses to attractiveness cues, such as fertility indicators in female faces activating reward pathways more strongly in men.^[148] Studies from the 2010s onward demonstrate hypothalamic and ventral striatal activation patterns consistent with evolved priorities—resource provision signals eliciting stronger responses in women—supporting innate mechanisms over cultural learning alone.^[149] These findings link genomic predispositions to neural implementation, showing how polygenic influences on dopamine signaling underpin variation in mating strategies across individuals and populations. Post-2020 research emphasizes high-dimensional phenotyping to trace evolutionary divergence in social complexity, confirming sociobiological models of adaptive radiation. A 2024 analysis of bee societies applied machine learning to multidimensional social traits, revealing phenotypic diversification following the transition to eusociality, with genetic correlations driving specialized castes and cooperative behaviors.^[150] This data-driven approach highlights how genomic variation in regulatory genes fosters rapid social innovation, paralleling human behavioral adaptations and underscoring causal realism in evolutionary transitions.^[151] Integration of such tools predicts further refinements, as single-cell genomics and connectomics map gene-brain-behavior pathways with increasing precision.

References

[1]
Sociobiology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Nov 11, 2013 · The first meaning of “sociobiology” is a term for a range of work that is more often currently referred to as behavioral ecology. Behavioral ...
[2]
Sociobiology - Harvard University Press
Mar 24, 2000 · ... Sociobiology: The New Synthesis will be welcomed by a new generation ... But, in an audacious final chapter, Wilson extended the analysis ...Missing: summary | Show results with:summary
[3]
Part 3: Sociobiology and Evolutionary Influences on Behavior
The fundamental concept underlying sociobiology is that of inclusive fitness. Inclusive fitness refers to the advantages of behaviors that increase the ...
[4]
Sociobiology - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
Sociobiology is an evolutionary science concerned with all patterns of social living, including those of humans. Established by Edward O. Wilson's famous 1975 ...
[5]
What is Sociobiology? - Simply Psychology
Jun 25, 2025 · Sociobiology is the systematic study of how natural selection shapes the biological basis of all social behavior (Wilson, 1975).
[6]
The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I - ScienceDirect.com
W.D. Hamilton ... Species following the model should tend to evolve behaviour such that each organism appears to be attempting to maximize its inclusive fitness.
[7]
[PDF] The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour. I - Joel Velasco
This quantity is named “inclusive fitness”. Species following the model should tend to evolve behaviour such that each organism appears to be attempting to ...
[8]
Hamilton's rule and the causes of social evolution - PubMed Central
Specifically, in its most celebrated application, Hamilton's rule states that altruism (net loss of direct fitness) is selected if rb – c > 0. By identifying ...
[9]
Hamiltonian inclusive fitness: a fitter fitness concept - PubMed Central
In 1963–1964 WD Hamilton introduced the concept of inclusive fitness, the only significant elaboration of Darwinian fitness since the nineteenth century.
[10]
THE EVOLUTION OF EUSOCIALITY - PMC - NIH
Therefore, colonies of altruistic individuals might, due to kin selection, evolve more frequently in hymenopterans than clades that have diplodiploid sex ...
[11]
a unifying genetic hypothesis distinct from kin selection theory
Haplodiploidy, eusociality and absence of male parental and alloparental care in Hymenoptera: a unifying genetic hypothesis distinct from kin selection theory.
[12]
the case of worker reproduction in insect societies - Journals
Dec 23, 2013 · Empirical data on worker-produced males in eight species of Melipona bees support the predictions from a model that takes into account the ...
[13]
Natural selection drives the evolution of ant life cycles - PNAS
A popular testing ground of inclusive fitness theory has been the colony life cycles and within-colony behavior of eusocial insects, especially ants, leading to ...
[14]
The validity and value of inclusive fitness theory - PubMed Central
Sep 14, 2011 · The leading theory in the study of social evolution and eusociality is Hamilton's [1] inclusive fitness theory, also known as kin selection theory.
[15]
Imprinting Psychology: Konrad Lorenz Theory
Jun 16, 2023 · Lorenz (1935) investigated the mechanisms of imprinting, where some species of animals form an attachment to the first large moving object that they meet.
[16]
Back to basics: A re-evaluation of the relevance of imprinting in the ...
Dec 20, 2022 · There are four distinctive properties that Lorenz (1935) initially attributed to imprinting. First, that it takes place only during a brief ...
[17]
Fixed Action Pattern: Definition & Examples - Simply Psychology
Sep 29, 2023 · Tinbergen (1959) studied what has become a classic example of a key stimulus and Fixed Action Pattern in the male three-spined stickleback fish.
[18]
[PDF] nikolaas - tinbergen: the study of instinct - University of Oregon
These action patterns--or the interconnections within the nervous system that control them-have evolved in a given species, just as its fur or feathers have ...
[19]
[PDF] THE FUNDAMENTAL THEOREM OF NATURAL SELECTION - Free
In 1930 R. A. Fisher formulated the fundamental theorem of natural selection which states that “the rate of increase in (mean) fitness of any organism at ...
[20]
[PDF] The Causes of Evolution - JBS Haldane
This book is based on a series of lectures delivered in. January 1931 at the Prifysgol Cymru, Aberystwyth, and entitled “ A Re-examination of Darwinism.55.
[21]
Conditions for the evolution of altruism under darwinian selection
It is shown that altruism can evolve even if the groups are randomly formed. The conditions for such evolution are contrasted with those prevailing when the ...
[22]
[PDF] The centennial of the pecking order - UNL Digital Commons
Dec 3, 2021 · At this time, primatologists were applying. Schjelderup-Ebbe's concept of a pecking order in the societies of wild and captive primates, many of ...
[23]
(PDF) Dominance hierarchies - ResearchGate
Dec 28, 2016 · animals? Although some early ethologists suggested that hierarchy ... dominance modulate the gaze-cuing effect in at least one primate species.<|control11|><|separator|>
[24]
The Concept and Definition of Dominance in Animal Behaviour - jstor
On the system of social ranks in a natural group ofJapanese monkeys,. (parts I & II). - Primates 1, p. 111-148 (in Japanese). - (1965). On the system of social ...
[25]
Edward Osborne Wilson, 92 - Harvard Gazette
May 4, 2023 · Edward Osborne Wilson was a passionate and supremely expert myrmecologist. His impact as one of the most influential biologists of his generation, however, ...
[26]
The evolutionary history of division of labour - PMC - NIH
May 11, 2011 · Wilson E. O. 1975. Sociobiology: the new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press [Google Scholar]; 5. Huxley J ...Missing: summary | Show results with:summary
[27]
Sociobiology of slave-making ants | Request PDF - ResearchGate
Aug 7, 2025 · Slavery in ants is a form of social parasitism. Slave-making ants raid nests of other ant species, capture the developing offspring, and rear ...
[28]
[PDF] Slavery in ants.
The siibsericea ant releases its scent to alert its nestmates to the presence of danger. The subinteisra sprays its secretions at resistingants during slave ...Missing: Sociobiology | Show results with:Sociobiology
[29]
Sociobiology - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Nov 11, 2013 · Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) as the “systematic ... Furthermore, Orzack and Sober take optimality models to be censored models ...
[30]
Edward Osborne Wilson, Naturalist (1929–2021) - PNAS
Jan 21, 2022 · During his almost 70 years of scientific work, Ed Wilson witnessed the human-made habitat destruction and mass extinction of life forms.
[31]
[PDF] Sociobiology
Modem sociobiology is being created by gifted in vestigators who work primarily in population biol ogy, invertebrate zoology, including entomology.<|separator|>
[32]
Sociobiology and Behavior - David P. Barash - Google Books
About the author (1977). David P. Barash holds a Ph.D. in zoology & is professor of psychology & zoology at the University of Washington.Missing: applications | Show results with:applications
[33]
Sociobiology and Behavior. By David P. Barash. Foreword by ... - jstor
Sociobiology and Behavior. By David P. Barash. Foreword by. Edward 0. Wilson (New York: Elsevier, 1977. xv + 378 pp.).Missing: applications | Show results with:applications
[34]
The Evolution of Cooperation | Science
Cooperation in organisms, whether bacteria or primates, has been a difficulty for evolutionary theory since Darwin.
[35]
[PDF] The Evolution of Cooperation*
Adapted from Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation. ... To find a good strategy to use in such situations, I invited experts in game theory to submit ...Missing: sociobiology | Show results with:sociobiology
[36]
“It Felt More like a Revolution.” How Behavioral Ecology Succeeded ...
Apr 25, 2022 · He made it clear that sociobiology was merely a means to bring “the study of animal behavior from an ecological and evolutionary perspective ...
[37]
Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology
In this article, we take a “back to basics” approach, explaining what group selection is, why its rejection was regarded as so important, and how it has been ...
[38]
“It Felt More like a Revolution.” How Behavioral Ecology Succeeded ...
This is a compelling narrative, as both sociobiology and behavioral ecology have their roots in ethology and animal behavior. However, there is a more complex ...
[39]
The establishment and maintenance of dominance hierarchies
Jan 10, 2022 · Animal groups are often organized hierarchically, with dominant individuals gaining priority access to resources and reproduction over ...
[40]
Chapter 10 Social Behavior and Sexual Selection | A Primer of ...
Natural selection can readily explain the evolution of behaviors that result in a benefit for the donor, both when the recipient also benefits (cooperation) ...<|separator|>
[41]
Emergence of size-structured dominance hierarchies through ... - NIH
Jan 10, 2022 · Size-based dominance hierarchies influence fitness, group size and population dynamics and link dominance structure to evolutionary and ...
[42]
11.2: Foraging Ecology - Biology LibreTexts
Oct 24, 2022 · To maximize fitness, an animal adopts a foraging strategy that provides the most benefit (energy) for the lowest cost, maximizing the net energy ...
[43]
An evolutionarily stable strategy approach to indiscriminate spite
May 1, 1979 · Recently Rothstein4 has shown analytically that the initial spread of spiteful traits will be very slow in all but the smallest populations. He ...Author Information · About This Article · Cite This Article
[44]
Evolving the ingredients for reciprocity and spite - PMC
On an ultimate level, we speculate that psychologically spiteful behaviour evolved in humans as a byproduct of selection on punishment. In particular, and ...
[45]
Correlated evolution of social organization and lifespan in mammals
Jan 31, 2023 · We perform a phylogenetic comparative analysis of ~1000 mammalian species on three states of social organization (solitary, pair-living, and group-living) and ...
[46]
The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I - PubMed
The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I. J Theor Biol. 1964 Jul;7(1):1-16. doi: 10.1016/0022-5193(64)90038-4. Author. W D Hamilton. PMID: 5875341; DOI ...
[47]
The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II - ScienceDirect.com
Two principles are presented, the first concerning the evolution of social behaviour in general and the second the evolution of social discrimination.
[48]
The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism | The Quarterly Review of Biology
A model is presented to account for the natural selection of what is termed reciprocally altruistic behavior.
[49]
[PDF] The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism - Greater Good Science Center
Three instances of altruistic behavior are discussed, the evolution of which the model can explain: (1) behavior involved in cleaning symbioses; (2) warning ...Missing: 1980s | Show results with:1980s
[50]
[PDF] Wynne-Edwards V C. Animal dispersion in relation to social ...
Jun 23, 1980 · The book expounds a general theory that animals can limit their own numbers by so- cial mechanisms. In so doing they avoid de-.
[51]
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691182865/adaptation-and-natural-selection
[52]
[PDF] Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current ...
The survival and evolution of groups are fortuitous consequences of these adaptations and of their occasional malfunctioning, as in mutation and introgression.
[53]
ON MULTILEVEL SELECTION AND KIN SELECTION ...
Oct 16, 2012 · The principle difference is that Hamilton's inclusive fitness approach assigns to the focal individual the fitness effects of its behavior on ...Missing: sociobiology | Show results with:sociobiology
[54]
Evaluating inclusive fitness | Royal Society Open Science - Journals
Jun 26, 2019 · Marta Bertolaso and Anna Maria Dieli's article considers the limitations of inclusive fitness and the need for a multi-level approach for ...Missing: sociobiology | Show results with:sociobiology
[55]
Bateman's principles and human sex roles - PMC - PubMed Central
In 1948, Angus J. Bateman reported a stronger relationship between mating and reproductive success in male fruit flies compared with females.
[56]
The measure and significance of Bateman's principles - PMC - NIH
Bateman's principles explain sex roles and sexual dimorphism through sex-specific variance in mating success, reproductive success and their relationships ...
[57]
Repetition of Bateman challenges the paradigm - PNAS
i) Male reproductive success (RS) increases with the number of mates, whereas female reproductive success does not; female RS presumably reaches a peak after ...
[58]
[PDF] Parental Investment and Sexual Selection - Joel Velasco
The parental investment pattern that today governs the operation of sexual selection apparently resulted from an evolutionarily very early dif- ferentiation ...
[59]
Bateman Revisited: The Reproductive Tactics of Female Primates1
Sexual drive in the male primate is well established (although not incompatible with male choice), but the idea of female passivity has long been refuted ( ...Abstract · MALE SEXUAL ARDOR VS... · MALE PROMISCUITY VS...
[60]
Infanticide as a male reproductive strategy has a nutritive risk effect ...
Infanticide is common among mammals and can be a male reproductive strategy (sexually selected infanticide, SSI) provided that three requirements are fulfilled, ...
[61]
Infanticide as Sexual Conflict: Coevolution of Male Strategies and ...
The killing of infants by unrelated males accelerates the return of females to breeding condition and thus improves male mating success.
[62]
Sexual selection and sexual size dimorphism in animals - Journals
Sep 15, 2021 · Sexual selection is often considered as a critical evolutionary force promoting sexual size dimorphism (SSD) in animals.Abstract · Introduction · Results · Discussion
[63]
Sexual selection and sexual size dimorphism in animals - PMC - NIH
Sexual selection is often considered as a critical evolutionary force promoting sexual size dimorphism (SSD) in animals.
[64]
Bateman gradients from first principles | Nature Communications
Jun 23, 2022 · In Bateman's words, “The primary cause of intra-masculine selection would thus seem to be that females produce much fewer gametes than males”.Introduction · Results · DiscussionMissing: variance | Show results with:variance
[65]
Human Aggression Across the Lifespan: Genetic Propensities and ...
In one early meta-analysis of 24 twin and adoption studies, heritable influences explained about half of the total variance in aggressive behavior and the ...
[66]
Longitudinal heritability of childhood aggression - Wiley Online Library
Jan 19, 2016 · Heritability estimates for human aggressive behavior indeed tend to be high. In a meta-analysis by Miles and Carey [1997] of 24 different twin ...
[67]
Genetics and intelligence differences: five special findings - Nature
Sep 16, 2014 · GCTA studies have recently explored the heritability and genetic correlations of intelligence, education and social class. A combined ...
[68]
Personality Polygenes, Positive Affect, and Life Satisfaction
Aug 22, 2016 · The direction of the effect was as predicted with polygenic neuroticism scores negatively related to life satisfaction and extraversion ...Missing: outcomes | Show results with:outcomes
[69]
Epigenetic inheritance and the missing heritability - PMC
Epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, can contribute to alter gene expression in heritable manner without affecting the underlying genomic ...
[70]
Reaction Norm - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
A 'reaction norm' describes the sensitivity of an organism, or of a set of organisms of the same genotype (eg, the members of a clone), to some specific ...
[71]
A reaction norm perspective on reproducibility - PMC
We argue that a reaction norm approach to phenotypic variation, acknowledging gene-by-environment interactions, can help us seeing reproducibility of animal ...Missing: sociobiology | Show results with:sociobiology
[72]
Role of genotype in the cycle of violence in maltreated children
Maltreated children with a genotype conferring high levels of MAOA expression were less likely to develop antisocial problems. These findings may partly explain ...Missing: paper | Show results with:paper
[73]
MAOA, childhood maltreatment and antisocial behavior - NIH
We report a meta-analysis of studies testing the interaction of MAOA genotype and childhood adversities on antisocial outcomes in predominantly non-clinical ...
[74]
[PDF] Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange - psychology
sentation, the cheater detection procedures can detect cheaters no matter what the ... to a general cultural prohibition against accusing others of cheating.
[75]
(PDF) Detecting Cheaters - ResearchGate
Aug 10, 2025 · Highly publicized discoveries include a cheater-detection module, a psychological sex difference in jealousy, and motivational mechanisms ...
[76]
Shared environmental influences on personality: A combined twin ...
In the current study we estimated the impact of shared environmental factors on adolescent personality by simultaneously modeling both twin and adoption data.
[77]
Gene–environment interplay in externalizing behavior from ... - NIH
Jun 29, 2022 · A very small evocative gene–environment correlation was detected but effect sizes were much more pronounced for stability in externalizing behavior.Genetic Nurture · Discussion And Conclusion · Limitations And Future...
[78]
Gene–environment correlations: a review of the evidence and ...
Genes affect environments indirectly, via behavior and personality characteristics. Associations between individual genetic variants and behaviors are typically ...
[79]
[PDF] Eusocial reproduction selects for longevity - bioRxiv
Mar 28, 2025 · We propose that eusociality drives the evolution of longevity through three mechanisms: first, individuals in eusocial populations tend to be ...
[80]
Termite primary queen – ancestral, but highly specialized eusocial ...
Evolutionary theories provided multiple nonexclusive arguments why should the termite kings and queens be longlived and highly fertile at a time. Because the ...
[81]
The evolution of non-reproductive workers in insect colonies with ...
Eusociality is a distinct form of biological organization. A key characteristic of advanced eusociality is the presence of non-reproductive workers.
[82]
Social Organization Is Associated With Relaxed Selection on Worker ...
Jul 7, 2025 · Worker ants are typically sterile or produce only male offspring, so traits affecting their behavior evolve mainly through kin selection. Kin ...
[83]
Lethal Coalitionary Aggression Associated with a Community ...
Jan 7, 2021 · Most lethal aggression occurs between groups, where coalitions of male chimpanzees occasionally kill members of neighboring communities that are strangers.
[84]
Lethal intergroup aggression leads to territorial expansion in wild ...
Jun 22, 2010 · ... chimpanzee community at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda. During this time, we observed the Ngogo chimpanzees kill or fatally wound 18 ...
[85]
Neonate aggregation in the Permian dicynodont Diictodon ...
May 1, 2021 · Here we present new fossil evidence in support of this interpretation and discuss the possibility that some of the burrows were specially ...Missing: sociality | Show results with:sociality
[86]
A mixed-age classed 'pelycosaur' aggregation from South Africa
More compelling evidence of early sociality in the amniote fossil record comes from the Upper Permian rocks of the Beaufort Group, in the Karoo Basin of South ...
[87]
Beyond Heritability: Twin Studies in Behavioral Research - PMC - NIH
The heritability of human behavioral traits is now well established, due in large measure to classical twin studies. We see little need for further studies ...
[88]
the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart - PubMed - NIH
Oct 12, 1990 · Like the prior, smaller studies of monozygotic twins reared apart, about 70% of the variance in IQ was found to be associated with genetic variation.
[89]
The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart” (1990), by Thomas J ...
Oct 19, 2017 · According to the authors, the monozygotic reared apart twins showed similarities in behavior, interests, religion, and intelligence regardless ...
[90]
The Wilson Effect: the increase in heritability of IQ with age - PubMed
The results show that the heritability of IQ reaches an asymptote at about 0.80 at 18-20 years of age and continuing at that level well into adulthood.
[91]
Heritability estimates of the Big Five personality traits based on ... - NIH
Jul 14, 2015 · According to twin studies, around 40–60% of the variance in the Big Five is heritable, with some overlap in heritability between personality ...
[92]
Genetic influences on political ideologies: twin analyses of 19 ...
We provide evidence that genetic factors play a role in the formation of political ideology, regardless of how ideology is measured, the era, or the population ...
[93]
Candidate genes for novelty-seeking: a meta-analysis of... - LWW
Our results provide evidence of association between the DRD4 exon III VNTR polymorphism and novelty-seeking, which is inconsistent with the results of previous ...Missing: heritability | Show results with:heritability
[94]
[PDF] IQ similarity in twins reared apart: Findings and responses to critics
Bouchard, Jr. Research on genetic influence on intelligence has a long and contentious history (Brand, 1993; Fancher, 1985; Kamin, 1974) ...
[95]
[PDF] Research Report - SEX DIFFERENCES IN JEALOUSY
Both sexes are hy- pothesized to be distressed over both sexual and emotional infidelity, and pre- vious findings bear this out (Buss, 1989). However, these two ...
[96]
Evolved Gender Differences in Jealousy Prove Robust and Replicable
The work supported the evolutionary meta-theory of gender differences, which posits differences only in domains in which the sexes have recurrently faced ...
[97]
Parental investment theory. - APA PsycNet
This chapter outlines how Robert Trivers' Parental Investment Theory (PIT) has progressed from its original publication in Sexual Selection and the Descent ...
[98]
Parental Investment Theory (Chapter 7) - The Cambridge Handbook ...
Jun 30, 2022 · According to Parental Investment Theory, the sex that has higher parental investment will be more selective when choosing a mate, while the sex ...
[99]
Cross-Cultural Analysis - Anthropology - The University of Alabama
The Cross Cultural System, which later became the Human Relations Area Files, was compiled by George Peter Murdock and colleagues at Yale in 1930s-1940s. It is ...
[100]
the cross-cultural survey - george peter murdock - jstor
, e.g., the apparent universality of intrafamily incest taboos. 3. Culture Is Social. Habits of the cultural order are not only inculcated and thus ...
[101]
[PDF] marriage-and-family.pdf - Human Relations Area Files
Jul 16, 2021 · But, while marriage and families may be virtually universal, this does not mean that marriage and family customs are the same across cultures.
[102]
Social Structure. by George Peter Murdock - jstor
Murdock's remarkable treatment of family and kinship organization is the cross-cultural survey. Many students of comparative sociology have realized the ...
[103]
[PDF] Residence and Kinship - Human Relations Area Files
Jun 10, 2022 · This module gives a general picture of what we have learned from cross-cultural research about variation in kin groups, rules of descent, ...
[104]
Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary ...
Feb 4, 2010 · Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Volume 12, Issue 1; David M. Buss (a1); DOI: https ...
[105]
[PDF] 2. Politics, sexual and non-sexual, in an egalitarian society
!Kung men hunt and !Kung women gather; and gathering provides about two-thirds of the diet and hunting one-third. Behind this simple.Missing: provisioning | Show results with:provisioning
[106]
[PDF] Sex differences in human mate preferences - UT Psychology Labs
Abstract: Contemporary mate preferences can provide important clues to human reproductive history. Little is known about which characteristics people value in ...
[107]
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
Special emphasis is placed on ultimate functions and evolution of ecological adaptations of behavior, in addition to mechanistic studies of proximate cause.Volumes and issues · Submission guidelines · Articles · Aims and scope
[108]
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1973 - NobelPrize.org
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1973 was awarded jointly to Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen for their discoveries.
[109]
50 years of the Nobel Prize to Lorenz, Tinbergen, and von Frisch
Sep 27, 2023 · Behavioral ecology emerged in the 1970s as an ethological subdiscipline devoted to the study of behavioral function, one of the four aims of ...
[110]
What can microbial genetics teach sociobiology? - PMC
The study of these mutants confirms a central theoretical prediction of social evolution: that genetic relatedness promotes cooperation.
[111]
What can microbial genetics teach sociobiology? - ScienceDirect
The study of these mutants confirms a central theoretical prediction of social evolution: that genetic relatedness promotes cooperation.
[112]
‪Edward O. Wilson‬ - ‪Google Scholar‬
Harvard University - ‪‪Cited by 212088‬‬ - ‪sociobiology‬ ... The Future of Life: ALA Notable Books for Adults. EO Wilson. Vintage, 2002. 2465, 2002. Character ...
[113]
A Retrospective on Sociobiology - ResearchGate
Apr 16, 2025 · ... spawned a new field of study, evolutionary psychology, which seeks to provide an evolutionary explanation for human behaviors. Much of the ...
[114]
The Development of Sociobiology in Relation to Animal Behavior ...
Oct 6, 2017 · This paper aims at bridging a gap between the history of American animal behavior studies and the history of sociobiology. In the post-war ...Missing: surge | Show results with:surge
[115]
Unto Others - Harvard University Press
Oct 1, 1999 · Sober and Wilson argue that evolutionary biology can shed light on this problem. They do not say that human traits that evolved by individual ...
[116]
Multilevel selection, cooperation, and altruism : Reflections on unto ...
Unto Others (Sober and Wilson 1998) shows how the general principles of Multi-Level Selection (MLS) theory apply to selection at multiple levels of the ...Missing: compatibility gene- sociobiology
[117]
Computer simulations of cellular group selection reveal mechanism ...
Sep 21, 2014 · We present a computer simulation of group selection that is inspired by proto-cell division. Two types of replicating molecules, ...
[118]
Evolution of cooperation by multilevel selection - PNAS
We derive a fundamental condition for the evolution of cooperation by group selection: if b/c > 1 + n/m, then group selection favors cooperation.Missing: gene- primary mechanism
[119]
Genetics of phenotypic plasticity: QTL analysis in barley, Hordeum ...
Oct 22, 2008 · Using both simulations and real data from barley (Hordeum vulgare), we used QTL mapping to obtain insights into the genetics of phenotypic plasticity.Missing: critiques sociobiology baseline
[120]
Quantitative trait locus mapping and analysis of heritable variation in ...
Twin and family studies show that individual differences in core dimensions of social behavior are heritable, yet there are knowledge gaps in understanding the ...3. Results · 3.5. Qtl Mapping Of Social... · 3.6. Qtl Mapping Of...
[121]
Identification of QTLs for behavioral reactivity to social separation ...
Sep 9, 2014 · As regards to the reactivity to humans in particular, heritability estimates were moderate both in sheep (0.17 to 0.32) [25] and cattle (0.17 to ...Snp Genotypes · Methods For Qtl Detection · The First Qtls For...
[122]
Analysis of quantitative trait loci that influence animal behavior
Aug 5, 2025 · I show that most behaviors are influenced by QTL of small effect, each contributing to less than 10% of the variance of a behavioral trait. The ...
[123]
Using Evolutionary Theory to Guide Mental Health Research - NIH
These examples highlight the fact that some current disorders may be the direct result of evolved adaptations interacting negatively with modern environments: ...
[124]
Two Different Mismatches: Integrating the Developmental and the ...
Jul 14, 2022 · Evidence supporting the match/mismatch hypothesis of psychiatric disorders. European Neuropsychopharmacology, 24(6), 907–918. https://doi ...
[125]
Against "Sociobiology" | Elizabeth Allen, Barbara Beckwith, Jon ...
Nov 13, 1975 · Beginning with Darwin's theories of natural selection 125 years ago, new biological and genetic information has played a significant role in the ...
[126]
Sociobiology: The Controversy Continues
The report “AAAS: Sociobiology on the Run,” which appeared in Science for the People (March/April 1978), is, as the title suggests, a triumphant account of ...
[127]
Ideology as Biology | by Mark Borello and David Sepkoski
Feb 5, 2022 · Against “Sociobiology”. November 13, 1975 issue · Stuart Hampshire. The Illusion of Sociobiology. October 12, 1978 issue · Kirkus Reviews. Short ...
[128]
Against the Genetic Grain | The Nation
Mar 20, 2003 · Sociobiologists indignantly responded by denying the links between genetic determinism, eugenics, racism and National Socialism. (How dare ...
[129]
[PDF] The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart - Gwern
A heritability estimate of approximately 70% from these four studies of mainly middle-aged adults is not inconsistent with the previous literature. Do ...
[130]
Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart
Sep 13, 2022 · The goal of the assignment is to research some aspect of psychology in the upper Midwest, such as local asylums or people / events related to psychology.
[131]
Human genetic diversity: Lewontin's fallacy - PubMed
It is often stated that about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between ...Missing: heritability | Show results with:heritability
[132]
Biology vs. the Blank Slate - Reason Magazine
Oct 1, 2002 · Pinker: The blank slate is the doctrine that the mind has no unique structure and that its entire organization comes from the environment via ...Missing: critiques | Show results with:critiques
[133]
[PDF] A review of The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature ...
After all, Steven Pinker isn't a biologist. He uses evolution to understand the mind, rather than – like Richard Dawkins, for example – using his mind to ...
[134]
Embattled Giant Of Psychology Speaks His Mind
Aug 25, 1987 · Burrhus Frederic Skinner, the chief architect of behaviorism, uses the office to marshal a crusade against what he sees as grave mistakes in psychology.
[135]
Is Dating Behavior in Digital Contexts Driven by Evolutionary ... - NIH
Our results suggest that future human sexuality will be impacted by an interaction of both: sex-dimorphic ancient sexual strategies and new technologies.
[136]
The Dating Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Emerging ...
Dec 20, 2012 · The illusionist Erik von Markovik promotes a three-phase model of human courtship: Attraction, building mutual Comfort and Trust, and Seduction.
[137]
Showcasing the Variety of Biosocial and Evolutionary Approaches in ...
Sep 27, 2024 · This introduction to the special issue explores the increasing integration of biosocial and evolutionary approaches within sociology.
[138]
[PDF] Showcasing the Variety of Biosocial and Evolutionary Approaches in ...
Sep 27, 2024 · This introduction explores the integration of biosocial and evolutionary approaches in sociology, including biosociology, evolutionary ...Missing: 2020s | Show results with:2020s
[139]
Special Issue: Biosocial and evolutionary approaches in sociology
The special issue spans topics like biosociology, cultural evolution, evolutionary sociology, neurosociology, and sociogenomics.
[140]
Grand Challenges in Evolutionary Sociology and Biosociology
The area of Evolutionary Sociology and Biosociology explicitly seeks to examine the interplay of social and environmental factors with evolved, ...Missing: 2020s | Show results with:2020s<|separator|>
[141]
The evolution of personality variation in humans and other animals
A comprehensive evolutionary framework for understanding the maintenance of heritable behavioral variation in humans is yet to be developed.
[142]
Evolutionary Theory and the Ultimate-Proximate Distinction in the ...
Ultimate explanations are concerned with why a behavior exists, and proximate explanations are concerned with how it works.
[143]
MAOA, abuse exposure and antisocial behaviour: 30-year ...
In 2002, Caspi and colleagues published a paper examining the role of the monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA) in the development of antisocial behaviours. This ...Missing: biosocial | Show results with:biosocial
[144]
Biosocial Criminology: History, Theory, Research Evidence, and Policy
Nov 16, 2022 · In 2002, Caspi et al. published their seminal article in ... MAOA, abuse exposure and antisocial behaviour: 30-year longitudinal study.
[145]
Polygenic prediction of educational attainment within and between ...
We conduct a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of educational attainment (EA) in a sample of ~3 million individuals and identify 3,952 approximately ...Missing: 2020s | Show results with:2020s
[146]
Genetic analysis of social-class mobility in five longitudinal studies.
We tested if education-linked polygenic scores predicted social mobility in >20,000 individuals in five longitudinal studies in the United States, Britain, and ...
[147]
Educational Attainment and Intergenerational Mobility: A Polygenic ...
Aug 10, 2025 · Based on the EA GWAS, a polygenic score (PGS) can be derived to provide a single value reflecting an individual's genetic propensity to ...Missing: 2020s | Show results with:2020s
[148]
[PDF] Mate Preferences and Their Behavioral Manifestations
We discuss sex differences and sex similarities in human sexual psychology, which vary according to short-term and long-term mating contexts. We review context- ...Missing: fMRI 2020s
[149]
Using evolutionary theory to enhance the brain imaging paradigm
In recent years, there seems to be no preference, choice, emotion, thought, or behavior that has escaped the scrutiny of a neuroimaging machine.Missing: Buss 2020s
[150]
Data-driven analyses of social complexity in bees reveal phenotypic ...
Feb 9, 2024 · Data-driven analyses of social complexity in bees reveal phenotypic diversification following a major evolutionary transition. February 2024.
[151]
Diversification of social complexity following a major evolutionary ...
Here, we propose a data-driven, high-dimensional approach for studying the full diversity of social phenotypes. We curated and analyzed a comprehensive ...