Carlos David Navarrete

Evolution and the psychology of intergroup conflict: the male warrior hypothesis

The social science literature contains numerous examples of human tribalism and parochialism—the tendency to categorize individuals on the basis of their group membership, and treat ingroup members benevolently and outgroup members malevolently. We hypothesize that this tribal inclination is an adaptive response to the threat of coalitional aggression and intergroup conflict perpetrated by ‘warrior males’ in both ancestral and modern human environments. Here, we describe how male coalitional aggression could have affected the social psychologies of men and women differently and present preliminary evidence from experimental social psychological studies testing various predictions from the ‘male warrior’ hypothesis. Finally, we discuss the theoretical implications of our research for studying intergroup relations both in humans and non-humans and discuss some practical implications.

Prejudice at the nexus of race and gender: an outgroup male target hypothesis.

Adopting an evolutionary approach to the psychology of race bias, we posit that intergroup conflict perpetrated by male aggressors throughout human evolutionary history has shaped the psychology of modern forms of intergroup bias and that this psychology reflects the unique adaptive problems that differ between men and women in coping with male aggressors from groups other than ones own. Here we report results across 4 studies consistent with this perspective, showing that race bias is moderated by gender differences in traits relevant to threat responses that differ in their adaptive utility between the sexes-namely, aggression and dominance motives for men and fear of sexual coercion for women. These results are consistent with the notion that the psychology of intergroup bias is generated by different psychological systems for men and women, and the results underscore the importance of considering the gender of the outgroup target as well as the gender of the agent in psychological studies on prejudice and discrimination.

Meat Is Good to Taboo: Dietary Proscriptions as a Product of the Interaction of Psychological Mechanisms and Social Processes

Comparing food taboos across 78 cultures, this paper demonstrates that meat, though a prized food, is also the principal target of proscriptions. Reviewing existing explanations of taboos, we find that both functionalist and symbolic approaches fail to account for meats cross-cultural centrality and do not reflect experience-near aspects of food taboos, principal among which is disgust. Adopting an evolutionary approach to the mind, this paper presents an alternative to existing explanations of food taboos. Consistent with the attendant risk of pathogen transmission, meat has special salience as a stimulus for humans, as animal products are stronger elicitors of disgust and aversion than plant products. We identify three psychosocial processes, socially-mediated ingestive conditioning, egocentric empathy, and normative moralization, each of which likely plays a role in transforming individual disgust responses and conditioned food aversions into institutionalized food taboos.

Fear Extinction to an Out-Group Face The Role of Target Gender

Conditioning studies on humans and other primates show that fear responses acquired toward danger-relevant stimuli, such as snakes, resist extinction, whereas responses toward danger-irrelevant stimuli, such as birds, are more readily extinguished. Similar evolved biases may extend to human groups, as recent research demonstrates that a conditioned fear response to faces of persons of a social out-group resists extinction, whereas fear toward a social in-group is more readily extinguished. Here, we provide an important extension to previous work by demonstrating that this fear-extinction bias occurs solely when the exemplars are male. These results underscore the importance of considering how gender of the target stimulus affects psychological and physiological responses to out-group threat.

The Ecology of Automaticity: How Situational Contingencies Shape Action Semantics and Social Behavior

What is the role of ecology in automatic cognitive processes and social behavior? Our motivated-preparation account posits that priming a social category readies the individual for adaptive behavioral responses to that category—responses that take into account the physical environment. We present the first evidence showing that the cognitive responses (Study 1) and the behavioral responses (Studies 2a and 2b) automatically elicited by a social-category prime differ depending on a person’s physical surroundings. Specifically, after priming with pictures of Black men (a threatening out-group), participants responded with either aggressive behavior (fight) or distancing behavior (flight), depending on what action was allowed by the situation. For example, when participants were seated in an enclosed booth (no distancing behavior possible) during priming, they showed increased accessibility of fight-related action semantics; however, when seated in an open field (distancing behavior possible), they showed increased accessibility of flight-related action semantics. These findings suggest that an understanding of automaticity must consider its situated nature.

Extending the Behavioral Immune System to Political Psychology: Are Political Conservatism and Disgust Sensitivity Really Related?

Previous research suggests that several individual and cultural level attitudes, cognitions, and societal structures may have evolved to mitigate the pathogen threats posed by intergroup interactions. It has been suggested that these anti-pathogen defenses are at the root of conservative political ideology. Here, we test a hypothesis that political conservatism functions as a pathogen-avoidance strategy. Across three studies, we consistently find no relationship between sensitivity to pathogen disgust and multiple measures of political conservatism. These results are contrasted with theoretical perspectives suggesting a relationship between conservatism and pathogen avoidance, and with previous findings of a relationship between conservatism and disgust sensitivity.

Normative Bias and Adaptive Challenges: A Relational Approach to Coalitional Psychology and a Critique of Terror Management Theory

Adherence to ingroup ideology increases after exposure to death-related stimuli, a reaction that proponents of terror management theory (TMT) explain as a psychological defense against the uniquely human existential fear of death. We argue that existential concerns are not the relevant issue; rather, such concepts can be subsumed under a larger category of adaptive challenges that prime coalitional thinking. We suggest that increases in adherence to ingroup ideology in response to adaptive challenges are manifestations of normative mental representations emanating from psychological systems designed to enhance coordination and membership in social groups. In providing an alternative to TMT, we (1) explain why the theory is inconsistent with contemporary evolutionary biology, (2) demonstrate that mortality-salience does not have the unique evocative powers ascribed to it by TMT advocates, and (3) discuss our approach to coalitional psychology, a framework consistent with modern evolutionary theory and informed by a broad understanding of cultural variation, can be employed to help account for both the corpus of results in TMT research and the growing body of findings inconsistent with TMTs predictions.

Reports of My Death Anxiety Have Been Greatly Exaggerated: A Critique of Terror Management Theory from an Evolutionary Perspective

Although terror management theorys proponents claim that it is an evolutionary theory of human behavior, its major tenets are implausible when examined carefully from a modern evolutionary perspective. We explain why it is unlikely that natural selection would have designed a “survival instinct” or innate “fear of death,” nor an anxiety-reduction system in general, or worldview-defense system in particular, to ameliorate such fears. We argue that results of mortality-salience experiments are better explained as by-products of a psychological system of coalitional computation that evolved for a variety of functions, including defense against other humans, that is activated by certain kinds of death-related thoughts.

Race Bias Tracks Conception Risk Across the Menstrual Cycle

Although a considerable body of research explores alterations in womens mating-relevant preferences across the menstrual cycle, investigators have yet to examine the potential for the menstrual cycle to influence intergroup attitudes. We examined the effects of changes in conception risk across the menstrual cycle on intergroup bias and found that increased conception risk was positively associated with several measures of race bias. This association was particularly strong when perceived vulnerability to sexual coercion was high. Our findings highlight the potential for hypotheses informed by an evolutionary perspective to generate new knowledge about current social problems—an avenue that may lead to new predictions in the study of intergroup relations.

Racial Identity and Depression Among African American Women

This study examines direct, interactive, and indirect effects of racial identity and depression in a sample of 379 African American women. Results indicated that higher racial private and public regard were associated with lower depression. The relationship between private regard and depression was moderated by racial centrality, such that higher private regard was more strongly related to lower depression when womens race was a central part of their self-concept. Finally, results indicated that self-esteem fully mediated the relationship between private regard and depression and partially mediated the relationship between public regard and depression. The authors discuss the results in relation to reflected appraisal, the insulation hypothesis, and identity theory.