The linguistic and cognitive sciences have severely underestimated the degree of linguistic diversity in the world. Part of the reason for this is that we have projected assumptions based on English and familiar languages onto the rest. We focus on some distortions this has introduced, especially in the study of semantics.

Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is (...) substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior – hence, there are no obviousa priorigrounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions ofhumannature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges. (shrink)

The ratio of index- and ring-finger lengths is thought to be related to prenatal androgen exposure, and in many, though not all, populations, men have a lower average digit ratio than do women. In many studies an inverse relationship has been observed, among both men and women, between 2D:4D ratio and measures of athletic ability. It has been further suggested that, in hunter-gatherer populations, 2D:4D ratio might also be negatively correlated with hunting ability, itself assumed to be contingent on athleticism. (...) This hypothesis has been tested using endurance running performance among runners from a Western, educated, and industrialized population as a proximate measure of hunting ability. However, it has not previously been tested among actual hunter-gatherers using more ecologically valid measures of hunting ability and success. The current study addresses this question among Tanzanian Hadza hunter-gatherers. I employ a novel method of assessing hunting reputation that, unlike previous methods, allows granular distinctions to be made between hunters at all levels of perceived ability. I find no statistically significant relationship between digit ratio and either hunting reputation or two important hunting skills. I confirm that Hadza men have higher mean 2D:4D ratios than men in many Western populations. I discuss the notion that 2D:4D ratio may be the consequence of an allometric scaling relationship between relative and absolute finger lengths. Although it is difficult to draw clear conclusions from these results, the current study provides no support for the theorized relationship between 2D:4D ratio and hunting skill. (shrink)

Modern attitudes to meat in both men and women reflect a strong meat-masculinity association. Sex differences in the relationship between meat and masculinity have not been previously explored. In the current study we used two IATs (implicit association tasks), a visual search task, and a questionnaire to measure implicit and explicit attitudes toward meat in men and women. Men exhibited stronger implicit associations between meat and healthiness than did women, but both sexes associated meat more strongly with ‘healthy’ than ‘unhealthy’ (...) concepts. As ‘healthy’ was operationalized in the current study using terms such as “virile” and “powerful,” this suggests that a meat-strength/power association may mediate the meat-masculinity link readily observed across western cultures. The sex difference was not related to explicit attitudes to meat, nor was it attributable to a variety of other factors, such as a generally more positive disposition toward meat in men than women. Men also exhibited an attention bias toward meats, compared to non-meat foods, while females exhibited more caution when searching for non-meat foods, compared to meat. These biases were not related to implicit attitudes, but did tend to increase with increasing hunger levels. Potential ultimate explanations for these differences, including sex differences in bio-physiological needs and receptivity to social signals are discussed. (shrink)

Men may find women with small feet relative to body size more attractive because foot size reliably indexes nubility—i.e., age and parity. I collected judgments of attractiveness in response to drawings of women with varying foot sizes from a sample of 159 Karo Batak respondents from North Sumatra, Indonesia, as part of a collaborative project on foot size and attractiveness. The data revealed a contrarian preference among the Karo Batak for women with big feet. The judgments were compared with the (...) results of an existing cross-cultural study that found a preference for women with small feet in aggregate, but a mix of small- and large-foot preferences in the societies taken individually. Using contingency table analysis, I found that ecology and less exposure to Western media were associated with a preference for women with big feet; patriarchal values were not. The findings suggest that human mating preferences may arise in response to local ecological conditions, and may persist and spread via cultural transmission. This has implications for the concept of universality espoused in some versions of evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

We use data collected among Hadza hunter-gatherers between 2005 and 2009 to examine hypotheses about the causes and consequences of men’s foraging and food sharing. We find that Hadza men foraged for a range of food types, including fruit, honey, small animals, and large game. Large game were shared not like common goods, but in ways that significantly advantaged producers’ households. Food sharing and consumption data show that men channeled the foods they produced to their wives, children, and their consanguineal (...) and affinal kin living in other households. On average, single men brought food to camp on 28% of days, married men without children at home on 31% of days, and married men with children at home on 42% of days. Married men brought fruit, the least widely shared resource, to camp significantly more often than single men. A model of the relationship between hunting success and household food consumption indicates that the best hunters provided 3–4 times the amount of food to their families than median or poor hunters. These new data fill important gaps in our knowledge of the subsistence economy of the Hadza and uphold predictions derived from the household and kin provisioning hypotheses. Key evidence and assumptions backing prior claims that Hadza hunting is largely a form of status competition were not replicated in our study. In light of this, family provisioning is a more viable explanation for why good hunters are preferred as husbands and have higher fertility than others. (shrink)

We are economists with a long-standing interest in evolutionary psychology, who recently came to appreciate the rich collections of relevant data cultural anthropologists have spent decades collecting on the social environments of a wide range of human societies. While we found some systematic collections of these observations, we could not find a systematic summary of the social environment of the subsample of societies that most resemble the social environment where most human psychology seems to have evolved: small bands of nomadic (...) foragers. This short paper therefore represents our attempt to create such a summary. Using an existing dataset aggregated from diverse ethnographies, we collect statistics on the social environment of the studied cultures which most closely resemble our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Compared with relatively modern societies, nomadic foragers had similar levels of food and disease, and less murder and suicide. They did not fight over land or resources, and they enforced justice directly and personally. They avoided class divisions like rich vs. poor, shared food more, and their leaders had no formal powers. Polygamy, premarital sex, and extramarital sex were all widespread, divorce was easy, and men and women were generally considered equal. Kids were taught to be more generous, trusting, and honest, and were never punished physically. (shrink)

From an evolutionary perspective, phenotypic, social, and environmental factors help to shape the different costs and benefits of pursuing different reproductive strategies from one individual to another. Since men’s reproductive success is mainly constrained to women’s availability, their mating orientations should be partially calibrated by features that women prefer in a potential partner. For long-term relationships, women prefer traits that signal access to resources, protection skills, and the willingness to share them. Using generalized linear models with laboratory data taken from (...) a Chilean population, this study aimed to test whether real and potential resources, protection skills, and the willingness to provide resources and protection are related to mating orientation in men. Our predictions were: socioeconomic status would be positively associated with long-term and short-term mating orientation but for long-term-oriented individuals, this would be enhanced by having a more favorable parenthood disposition and strength would be positively related to long-term mating orientation in men with higher socioeconomic status and a favorable disposition toward parenthood and it would have a positive and direct association with short-term mating orientation. Our results partially supported the first hypothesis, since men with higher socioeconomic status were more long-term oriented, but parenting disposition did not moderate this effect. Contrary to our expectations, socioeconomic status was not related to short-term mating orientation. Strength appeared not to be significant for long-term mating orientation, even interacting with other traits. However, strength by itself was powerfully linked with a short-term mating orientation. Our results suggest that only some individuals that are attractive for long-term relationships are indeed long-term oriented and may reflect the overall conflict of interests between mating strategies among sexes. (shrink)

The ratio of index- and ring-finger lengths is thought to be related to prenatal androgen exposure, and in many, though not all, populations, men have a lower average digit ratio than do women. In many studies an inverse relationship has been observed, among both men and women, between 2D:4D ratio and measures of athletic ability. It has been further suggested that, in hunter-gatherer populations, 2D:4D ratio might also be negatively correlated with hunting ability, itself assumed to be contingent on athleticism. (...) This hypothesis has been tested using endurance running performance among runners from a Western, educated, and industrialized population as a proximate measure of hunting ability. However, it has not previously been tested among actual hunter-gatherers using more ecologically valid measures of hunting ability and success. The current study addresses this question among Tanzanian Hadza hunter-gatherers. I employ a novel method of assessing hunting reputation that, unlike previous methods, allows granular distinctions to be made between hunters at all levels of perceived ability. I find no statistically significant relationship between digit ratio and either hunting reputation or two important hunting skills. I confirm that Hadza men have higher mean 2D:4D ratios than men in many Western populations. I discuss the notion that 2D:4D ratio may be the consequence of an allometric scaling relationship between relative and absolute finger lengths. Although it is difficult to draw clear conclusions from these results, the current study provides no support for the theorized relationship between 2D:4D ratio and hunting skill. (shrink)

The ratio of index- and ring-finger lengths is thought to be related to prenatal androgen exposure, and in many, though not all, populations, men have a lower average digit ratio than do women. In many studies an inverse relationship has been observed, among both men and women, between 2D:4D ratio and measures of athletic ability. It has been further suggested that, in hunter-gatherer populations, 2D:4D ratio might also be negatively correlated with hunting ability, itself assumed to be contingent on athleticism. (...) This hypothesis has been tested using endurance running performance among runners from a Western, educated, and industrialized population as a proximate measure of hunting ability. However, it has not previously been tested among actual hunter-gatherers using more ecologically valid measures of hunting ability and success. The current study addresses this question among Tanzanian Hadza hunter-gatherers. I employ a novel method of assessing hunting reputation that, unlike previous methods, allows granular distinctions to be made between hunters at all levels of perceived ability. I find no statistically significant relationship between digit ratio and either hunting reputation or two important hunting skills. I confirm that Hadza men have higher mean 2D:4D ratios than men in many Western populations. I discuss the notion that 2D:4D ratio may be the consequence of an allometric scaling relationship between relative and absolute finger lengths. Although it is difficult to draw clear conclusions from these results, the current study provides no support for the theorized relationship between 2D:4D ratio and hunting skill. (shrink)