Essays
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Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Refugee Youth in Resettlement - Kia‐Keating, Maryam
The global refugee crisis has reached unprecedented levels in scale and severity. Refugee youth face adversities at every phase of their experience; however, compared to premigration and migration, far less is understood about postmigration factors impacting well‐being. An overemphasis on traumatic stress has led to a gap in the research on resilience, protective, and promotive factors during resettlement. In contrast to a deficit model, the socioecological framework provides a holistic understanding of individual functioning. It is vital for future research to utilize a socioecological framework to highlight protective and promotive factors and inform policy and prevention efforts that target contextual and macro‐level processes that can benefit refugee youth development. Participatory, human‐centered, and empowerment approaches are emergent strategies that view and treat refugee youth populations as equitable partners, building their agency to move toward social action and help lead the efforts in reducing health disparities and supporting refugee resilience in resettlement. -
Controlling the Influence of Stereotypes on One's Thoughts - Forscher, Patrick S.
Research on reducing or controlling implicit bias has been characterized by a tension between the two goals of reducing lingering intergroup disparities and gaining insight into human cognition. The tension between these two goals has created two distinct research traditions, each of which is characterized by different research questions, methods, and ultimate goals. We argue that the divisions between these research traditions are more apparent than real and that the two research traditions could be synergistic. We attempt to integrate the two traditions by arguing that implicit bias, and the disparities it is presumed to cause, is a public health problem. On the basis of this perspective, we identify shortcomings in our current knowledge of controlling implicit bias and provide a set of recommendations for future research. -
Cooperative Breeding and Human Evolution - Kramer, Karen L.
The demographic success of humans compared to other closely related species is one of the remarkable stories of our evolutionary history. This can be attributed both to high fertility and improved chances of survival. But it is also fundamentally shaped by features of human parenting, cooperation, and social organization. The concept and theory of cooperative breeding combines these features and is a useful framework to consider child‐rearing patterns characteristic of humans. Cooperative breeding theory was developed in biology to explain a social system found in relatively few animals in which nonparental members of a social group help to support offspring. In traditional human societies, numerous studies document that a variety of kin and nonkin of different ages and sex help mothers and contribute to infant childcare and provisioning juveniles. Cooperative breeding theory offers a well‐developed theoretic and empirical context in which to evaluate cross‐cultural diversity and to understand why humans cooperate in this way. This review situates humans compared to other species of cooperative breeders by outlining what we share in common and what are distinctly human aspects of parenting and childrearing. Attention is paid to both foundational research and new questions that have more recently surfaced through comparative research. Cooperative breeding is relevant to recent debates concerning the evolution of human life history, sociality, and psychology and has implications to demographic patterns, family formation, and social organization in the past as well as in today's world. -
Cooperative Relationships - Hruschka, Daniel J.
Cooperative relationships arise from a history of mutually beneficial interactions between individuals, and they enable cooperation among a range of entities, including biological organisms, business firms, and nation‐states. As one of the simplest of emergent social forms, cooperative relationships can possess higher level properties (e.g., common expectations and rules of interaction, shared communication protocols) that are more than the sum of individual interactions. As such, cooperative relationships can become “things” in their own right, shaping how partners treat each other and how others treat partners within a relationship. Many open questions remain about how the emergent properties of cooperative relationships arise and how they foster future beneficial interactions while mitigating the risk of exploitation. Here, we frame these diverse findings and emerging questions in terms of the inputs and algorithms that partners use in forming models of each other and in guiding behaviors toward each other. We finish by outlining areas ripe for future exploration. -
Culture, Diffusion, and Networks in Social Animals - Mann, Janet
Long‐term studies of social animals provide detailed data on individual attributes, behaviors, and associations that enable us to explore cultural diffusion in networks. In this essay, we describe how network science can be used to improve our understanding of cultural and information transmission. After presenting an operational definition of culture, we discuss methodologies and research questions applicable to unweighted, weighted, and dynamic networks. We then highlight relevant studies and methods for both descriptive and predictive analyses that have been used to identify culture and social learning in animal networks. Applying and extending the techniques presented will improve our understanding of information transmission, social learning, and embedded subcultures in the context of human networks. -
Empathy Gaps Between Helpers and Help‐Seekers: Implications for Cooperation - Bohns, Vanessa K.
Help‐seekers and potential helpers often experience an “empathy gap”—an inability to understand each other''s unique perspectives. Both parties are concerned about their reputation, self‐esteem, and relationships, but these concerns differ in ways that lead to misinterpretation of the other party's actions, and, in turn, missed opportunities for cooperation. In this essay, we review research that describes the role‐specific concerns of helpers and help‐seekers. We then review studies of emotional perspective‐taking, which can help explain why help‐seekers and helpers often experience empathy gaps. We go on to discuss recent work that illustrates the consequences of empathy gaps between helpers and help‐seekers—social prediction errors that prevent helping and misguided intentions that can lead to unhelpful help. Finally, we discuss some promising directions for future research. -
Family Relationships and Development - Grusec, Joan E.
Family relationships take different forms, with each form affecting development in a different way and requiring a different kind of parenting intervention. In this essay I begin by reviewing different approaches that have been taken to understanding social and affective outcomes of parenting and how each focuses on one particular kind of relationship. I then discuss central concepts including the importance for successful socialization of the internalization or the taking over of parental values and attitudes as one's own. Some current research is addressed, including (i) the investigation of control and how it can be exercised in such a way that it does not threaten children's autonomy and, therefore, their willingness to comply with parental directives; (ii) investigation of the many interactions between parenting and variables having to do with characteristics of the child and the context in which socialization takes place; and (iii) concern with the impact of different kinds of parental sensitivity on specific aspects of children's behavior. Finally, some key issues for future research are discussed. These include increased attention to the direction of effect between child and parent behavior, continuing attempts to understand how control is most effectively administered, and a focus on understanding the nature of interactions between genes and parenting in the developmental process. -
Food Sharing - Gurven, Michael
Food sharing is a human universal trait that forms the centerpiece of economic and social life in hunter‐gatherer societies. Human livelihoods require sharing at all life stages: to support infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and to help reduce risk of daily food shortfalls in adulthood. Attempts to understand the evolved human life history require an examination of the conditions that led to the evolution of food sharing. We summarize key findings and recent directions, and raise unexplored questions. Past emphases included testing predictions from several evolutionary models, and the role that sharing may have played in shaping human family formation. The functions of sharing fall into two categories: reducing food shortages that come with relying on a difficult foraging niche, and advertising attractive qualities of the donor. New directions include multivariate analyses of larger samples from a variety of diverse small‐scale subsistence populations, greater consideration of the interdependency between producing food and sharing it, incorporation of bargaining theory into exchange models, and greater attention to proximate psychological mechanisms. Future studies need to explain cross‐cultural variation in sharing norms and behavior and use a variety of methods to better bridge observed sharing patterns with the study of underlying social preferences and beliefs. -
Gestural Communication in Nonhuman Species - Pika, Simone
The evolution of language remains one of science's greatest mysteries. Although first comparative investigations into language origins focused on vocal abilities of nonhuman animals, especially primates, the number of publications reporting new and fascinating results about gestural skills of nonhuman animals has notably increased. To get a better insight in this intriguing scientific field, the present essay will provide a brief overview of its history and will then pinpoint current trends and future avenues. -
Kin‐Directed Behavior in Primates - Berman, Carol M.
Kinship was one of the first foundational principles of primate social organization to be recognized and to be viewed within an explicit evolutionary framework, specifically kin selection theory. Over time we have come to appreciate how much kinship structures and kin preferences vary between and within species, and how they are constrained by demography, life history characteristics, ecology, and mechanisms for recognizing kin. We have only recently discovered that many species are able to recognize paternal kin and to express preferences for them, but we have much to learn about how individuals do this, and how they make choices among different classes of kin and nonkin. Many potential benefits of close kin relationships have been uncovered, and some have been firmly linked to fitness benefits. Questions about kin selection versus mutualism or reciprocity as an explanation for kin preferences continue to pose challenges. Recent empirical studies support the operation of kin selection, but suggest that it may extend only within fairly narrow limits of relatedness. Much current theoretical research focuses on modeling the ways in which kinship interacts with dispersal patterns, reproductive skew, habitat saturation, and other ecological and life history patterns to produce various selective regimes related to cooperation. Some recent promising theoretical models of the origins of human social systems also rely in part on principles of kin selection and on a greatly expanded understanding of kin‐related behavior in nonhuman primates. -
Leadership - Tecza, Adrienne
Historically, research on human leadership has been the sole domain of the social sciences, and has focused on the formalized role leaders have come to play in modern institutions. However, an independent yet parallel body of work has recently emerged in biology, where evolutionary theory is being used to investigate the origins and function of leader–follower dynamics in nonhuman animals. In recent years, interdisciplinary scholars in evolutionary psychology have attempted to merge these previously disparate research traditions, investigating whether the leader–follower relationships that evolved to help our species overcome challenges in the past holds insights for leadership strategies in our modern world. In this essay, we investigate the feasibility of such an interdisciplinary approach, the obstacles it faces, and the promise it holds for the future of leadership research. -
Motherhood - Hinde, Katie
Motherhood is fundamentally the state of being a mother. In mammals this manifests as behaviorally nurturing and physiologically nourishing one's young. The state of motherhood requires substantial and dramatic changes in the mother's behavior, brain, and body. Moreover among humans, motherhood occurs within a familial, socioeconomic, and cultural context. Among many animals, to become a mother marks the transition to a new stage of life, from a period dedicated to growth and development to a period of sexual maturity and productivity. Considering trade‐offs within and across the stages of the life course, known as life history theory, is essential to understand motherhood. Moreover, the interests of the mother and the infant overlap, but are not identical, leading to conflicts of interest. Here we will consider established and emerging topics of investigation into motherhood—from the neuron to the society—and directions for the future. -
Positive Developments During the Transition to Adulthood - Noam, Gil G.
The transition into adulthood, that phase between childhood and adulthood that we traditionally term adolescence, has undergone a rapid evolution in meaning. Our concept of the definition of what makes an adolescent has certainly changed since the seminal work of Erik Erikson. The boundaries of adolescence have been pushed both earlier, with puberty rates falling in the past two decades for girls even younger than 10 and extending for serious brain researchers to ages 25 and even 30. With the definition of adolescence potentially expanding from 7‐ to 30‐year‐olds, an over 20‐year age gap, it is no wonder that the unifying construct of adolescence is in trouble. This essay address the foundational research that laid the groundwork for our modern conception and understanding of emerging adulthood as differentiated from adolescence and full adulthood. It will review current thinking in this area and introduce a developmental process theory (DPT) that exposes the positives of our evolved definition of adulthood, as well as discuss avenues for further research and growth in this area. -
Primate Allomaternal Care - Tecot, Stacey
Allomaternal care (AMC) (i.e., infant care that is provided by group members other than an infant's mother) is a rare, although phylogenetically widespread, mammalian infant care strategy. In primates, however, AMC occurs at unusually high frequencies, particularly among several haplorhine (monkey and ape) taxa. In fact, AMC is present in every major primate radiation and has been described in 74% of 154 species for which data are available. Its widespread presence in the Order Primates suggests that there may have been strong selective pressure for AMC early in primate evolution, but it is currently unknown why these behaviors are so common in primates. Research focused on captive callitrichids (tamarins and marmosets) has contributed greatly to our understanding of the potential causes and consequences of highly derived forms of AMC (i.e., cooperative breeding). Recent efforts have shifted focus to understand the selective pressures leading to the expansion and diversification of AMC throughout the Primate Order, thus expanding research to investigate the causes and consequences of less derived forms of AMC. Here we review the broad‐scale patterns observed in primates and outline innovative and exciting avenues of research moving forward. -
Sibling Relationships and Development - Campione‐Barr, Nicole
Although research on sibling relationships has been far less frequent than research on other close relationships such as parent–child, peer, and romantic partner relationships, researchers have found siblings to be important for the development of social competence as well as positive and negative adjustment. In addition, the sibling relationship is considered the longest lasting relationship across the life span and it serves unique developmental functions. This essay briefly describes foundational research on the influence of dyadic structural variables, relationship dynamics, and sibling influences on adjustment; outlines cutting‐edge research within the field on the contexts of family ethnicity, developmental period, and important processes and influences on relationship dynamics; and discusses key issues for future research such as expanding to under‐studied ethnic groups (e.g., Native American and Asian‐American families), family structures and contexts (e.g., adoption, single‐parents by choice, gay/lesbian parents), and mechanisms for relationship influence. Expanding the field to incorporate such research questions will likely require sibling researchers to examine findings from research on other important, close relationships, as well as collaboration of researchers from a variety of psychological disciplines as well as in the fields of sociology, neuroscience, genetics, anthropology, and human development and family studies. -
State of the Art in Competition Research - Fülöp, Márta
Until the 1990s in psychology, competition was conceived as a unidimensional concept which is opposed to cooperation. Since then, the competition–cooperation dichotomy has shifted and competition is conceptualized as a multifaceted concept that is not in mutually exclusive relationship with cooperation. Constructive and destructive forms of competition have been distinguished regarding their motivational, strategic, and behavioral consequences. Personality psychologists identified different competitive attitudes and research on the psychology of winning and losing, and differentiated specific patterns of emotional and behavioral coping with winning and losing. More recently, psychophysiological, genetic, and neuroimaging studies enrich the understanding of competition. The warrior and worrier genes, the psychology and physiology of challenge and threat, and the neurohormonal changes open up new dimensions of interpretation of competitive encounters and winning and losing. The new challenge of the field is the integration of the accumulated knowledge in a new bio‐psycho‐socio‐cultural model of competition. -
Stereotype Content - Capestany, Beatrice H.
Scholars have recently proposed a model that describes and systematically categorizes the content of stereotypes. This stereotype content model posits that groups are stereotyped along the dimensions of trait warmth (i.e., likeability and friendliness) and competence (Fiske, Xu, Cuddy, & Glick, 1999). Groups will typically be stereotyped into one of four clusters—low warmth and high competence, high warmth and low competence, high warmth and high competence, and lastly low warmth and low competence. The combination of positively and negatively valenced clusters creates ambivalent or mixed stereotype content that produces paternalistic (high warmth, low competence) or envious (low warmth, high competence) forms of prejudice. The model has generated interesting new results and insights about the nature of stereotypes and their impact on behaviors, including dehumanization. -
Stereotype Threat - Schmader, Toni
Research has documented that subtle reminders of negative stereotypes can reduce performance for those who are targeted by them. This phenomenon has been labeled stereotype threat and was originally proposed as a novel explanation for racial and gender gaps in certain types of intellectual performance. Two decades of research on stereotype threat has expanded to explain performance differences for a number of different groups across a variety of domains. The most recent research on stereotype threat has both mapped out the sequence of cognitive and affective mechanisms that underlie the phenomena and tested the effectiveness of various interventions that allow people to perform up to their potential. Future work is needed to examine possible cultural variation in stereotype threat, study the dynamic processes of how the phenomenon unfolds over time, and move to inform public policies in workplaces and schools. -
Vocal Communication in Primates - Slocombe, Katie E.
Vocal communication is common in the animal kingdom. Researchers often examine vocal communication in nonhuman primates (primates) with the aim of identifying similarities and differences with human language and speech, in order to trace the evolutionary origins of our complex communication system. Primates can produce distinct calls in response to specific events, such as the discovery of a certain predator, and listeners seem to understand what these calls refer to. Although on the surface there are similarities between this type of communication and human referential words, the mental processes that underlie them may be very different. While in general the flexibility shown by primate receivers may demonstrate some commonalities with humans, there is much more controversy over whether there are similarities between the production of primate vocalizations and language. It is widely accepted that primates, unlike humans, lack the ability to generate new vocalizations. Although this means primates have a closed repertoire of calls that cannot be expanded, primates are capable of combining their existing calls to generate new messages. The degree of voluntary control and intentionality involved in the use of calls is also a matter of debate, with recent evidence on both a neural and behavioral level challenging traditional assumptions that primate vocalizations are used in an automatic, reflexive manner. More research is needed to examine the mental processes underlying communicative behavior in both the producer and the receiver. In the future adopting a more holistic, multimodal approach to studying primate communication is likely to challenge and ultimately improve our understanding of primate communication and the evolution of human language.