Vladas Griskevicius
Biographic Data
| ID | 90417 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vladas Griskevicius |
| GIVEN NAMES | Vladas |
| FAMILY NAME | Griskevicius |
| SIGNATURE | GRISKEVICIUS V |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Minnesota |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1208 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 18 |
Fundamental evolved motives meet environmental threats and opportunities
Beyond the Ballot: The Associations Between Political Ideology, Division of Parental Work, Social Support, and the Relational and Parental Experiences of Mothers
Gender equality in the division of parental work is related to women’s relationship quality and well-being. This pre-registered dyadic study examined the association between couples’ political ideology, perceptions of the division of parental work, and relationship quality, parental satisfaction, and parental self-efficacy. In addition, the study examined the moderating role of social support. Two hundred and thirteen dyads completed measures of …
From Cradle to Grave: How Childhood and Current Environments Impact Consumers' Subjective Life Expectancy and Decision-Making
The age to which people expect to live likely drives many important consumer decisions. Yet we know surprisingly little about the antecedents and consequences of consumers' subjective life expectancies. In the present work, we propose that subjective life expectancy is influenced by the combination of people's childhood environment and their current environment. We find that people who grew up in poorer environments expected to have a shorter lif…
Parenting Motivation and Consumer Decision-Making
Parenting has been a central activity throughout human history, yet little research has examined the parental care motivation system on preferences and decision-making. Because successful parenting involves caring for both a child’s immediate and long-term needs, we consider whether parenting motivation leads people to focus more on the present or on the future. A series of five experiments reveals that parenting motivation activates gender-speci…
Can an unpredictable childhood environment enhance working memory? Testing the sensitized-specialization hypothesis
Although growing up in an adverse childhood environment tends to impair cognitive functions, evolutionary-developmental theory suggests that this might be only one part of the story. A person's mind may instead become developmentally specialized and potentially enhanced for solving problems in the types of environments in which the person grew up. In the current research, we tested whether these specialized advantages in cognitive function might …
Beyond Risk and Protective Factors: An Adaptation-Based Approach to Resilience
How does repeated or chronic childhood adversity shape social and cognitive abilities? According to the prevailing deficit model, children from high-stress backgrounds are at risk for impairments in learning and behavior, and the intervention goal is to prevent, reduce, or repair the damage. Missing from this deficit approach is an attempt to leverage the unique strengths and abilities that develop in response to high-stress environments. Evoluti…
Childhood attachment and adult personality: A life history perspective
According to attachment theory, being securely attached to one’s primary caregiver early in life should be related to personality adulthood. However, no studies to date have investigated this key premise using prospective data. To address this gap, we discuss evolutionary-based models of attachment and use them to examine how secure versus insecure children might score differently on Big 5 traits that underlie the meta-trait stability. We modeled…
Silver Spoons and Platinum Plans: How Childhood Environment Affects Adult Health Care Decisions
Can socioeconomic status in childhood influence desire for health coverage in adulthood? We develop and test a model that yielded two sets of findings across five experiments. First, people who grew up poor were generally less interested in health coverage compared to those who grew up wealthy. This effect was independent of people's current level of socioeconomic status, emerged most strongly when adults were experiencing financial threat, and w…
The effect of unpredictable early childhood environments on parenting in adulthood
Life history theory suggests that individual differences in parenting are partially rooted in environmental conditions experienced early in life. Whereas certain conditions should promote increased investment in parenting, unpredictable and/or harsh environments should promote decreased investment in parenting, especially in men. We tested this hypothesis in 3 studies. In Study 1a, we conducted analyses on 112 parents taking part in the Minnesota…
Cognitive adaptations to stressful environments: When childhood adversity enhances adult executive function
Can growing up in a stressful childhood environment enhance certain cognitive functions? Drawing participants from higher-income and lower-income backgrounds, we tested how adults who grew up in harsh or unpredictable environments fared on 2 types of executive function tasks: inhibition and shifting. People who experienced unpredictable childhoods performed worse at inhibition (overriding dominant responses), but performed better at shifting (eff…
Spending on Daughters versus Sons in Economic Recessions
Although parents often try not to favor one child, we examine whether specific environmental factors might bias parents to favor children of one sex over the other. This research draws on theory in evolutionary biology suggesting that investment in female versus male offspring depends on resource availability. Applying this to consumers, a series of experiments show that poor economic conditions favor resource allocations to daughters over sons. …
Naturally Green: Harnessing Stone Age Psychological Biases to Foster Environmental Behavior
It is widely agreed that humans must reduce their environmental impact. We propose that an improved understanding of our evolved human nature can help to improve programs and policies to address environmental problems. Combining evolutionary and social psychological approaches, we argue that environmental problems are often caused or exacerbated by five evolutionarily adaptive psychological biases: Humans (1) value personal over collective outcom…
Sense of control under uncertainty depends on people’s childhood environment: A life history theory approach
Past research found that environmental uncertainty leads people to behave differently depending on their childhood environment. For example, economic uncertainty leads people from poor childhoods to become more impulsive while leading people from wealthy childhoods to become less impulsive. Drawing on life history theory, we examine the psychological mechanism driving such diverging responses to uncertainty. Five experiments show that uncertainty…
Conspicuous Consumption, Relationships, and Rivals: Women's Luxury Products as Signals to Other Women
Past research shows that luxury products can function to boost self-esteem, express identity, and signal status. We propose that luxury products also have important signaling functions in relationships. Whereas men use conspicuous luxury products to attract mates, women use such products to deter female rivals. Drawing on both evolutionary and cultural perspectives, five experiments investigated how women's luxury products function as a signaling…
Fundamental motives: How evolutionary needs influence consumer behavior
When the Economy Falters, Do People Spend or Save? Responses to Resource Scarcity Depend on Childhood Environments
Just as modern economies undergo periods of boom and bust, human ancestors experienced cycles of abundance and famine. Is the adaptive response when resources become scarce to save for the future or to spend money on immediate gains? Drawing on life-history theory, we propose that people’s responses to resource scarcity depend on the harshness of their early-life environment, as reflected by childhood socioeconomic status (SES). In the three expe…
Evolutionary Psychology: A Fresh Perspective for Understanding and Changing Problematic Behavior
From rising obesity and soaring health care costs to escalating violence and environmental degradation, contemporary society faces many challenges. Are there policies that are naturally effective in changing the behaviors that produce these problems? In this article, the authors examine some of the roots of socially problematic behavior by taking an evolutionary perspective that considers human nature. They review four insights that an evolutiona…
The evolutionary basis of risky adolescent behavior: Implications for science, policy, and practice
This article proposes an evolutionary model of risky behavior in adolescence and contrasts it with the prevailing developmental psychopathology model. The evolutionary model contends that understanding the evolutionary functions of adolescence is critical to explaining why adolescents engage in risky behavior and that successful intervention depends on working with, instead of against, adolescent goals and motivations. The current article articul…
Evolution, stress, and sensitive periods: The influence of unpredictability in early versus late childhood on sex and risky behavior
According to a recent evolutionary life history model of development proposed by Ellis, Figueredo, Brumbach, and Schlomer (2009), growing up in harsh versus unpredictable environments should have unique effects on life history strategies in adulthood. Using data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, we tested how harshness and unpredictability experienced in early childhood (age 0-5) versus in later childhood (age 6-16) un…
The financial consequences of too many men: Sex ratio effects on saving, borrowing, and spending
The ratio of males to females in a population is an important factor in determining behavior in animals. We propose that sex ratio also has pervasive effects in humans, such as by influencing economic decisions. Using both historical data and experiments, we examined how sex ratio influences saving, borrowing, and spending in the United States. Findings show that male-biased sex ratios (an abundance of men) lead men to discount the future and des…
Ovulation leads women to perceive sexy cads as good dads
Why do some women pursue relationships with men who are attractive, dominant, and charming but who do not want to be in relationships--the prototypical sexy cad? Previous research shows that women have an increased desire for such men when they are ovulating, but it is unclear why ovulating women would think it is wise to pursue men who may be unfaithful and could desert them. Using both college-age and community-based samples, in 3 studies we sh…
Economic decision biases and fundamental motivations: How mating and self-protection alter loss aversion
Much research shows that people are loss averse, meaning that they weigh losses more heavily than gains. Drawing on an evolutionary perspective, we propose that although loss aversion might have been adaptive for solving challenges in the domain of self-protection, this may not be true for men in the domain of mating. Three experiments examine how loss aversion is influenced by mating and self-protection motives. Findings reveal that mating motiv…
Boosting beauty in an economic decline: Mating, spending, and the lipstick effect
Although consumer spending typically declines in economic recessions, some observers have noted that recessions appear to increase women's spending on beauty products--the so-called lipstick effect. Using both historical spending data and rigorous experiments, the authors examine how and why economic recessions influence women's consumer behavior. Findings revealed that recessionary cues--whether naturally occurring or experimentally primed--decr…
Sex ratio and women's career choice: Does a scarcity of men lead women to choose briefcase over baby
Although the ratio of males to females in a population is known to influence behavior in nonhuman animals, little is known about how sex ratio influences human behavior. We propose that sex ratio affects women's family planning and career choices. Using both historical data and experiments, we examined how sex ratio influences women's career aspirations. Findings showed that a scarcity of men led women to seek high-paying careers and to delay sta…
The Evolutionary Bases for Sustainable Behavior: Implications for Marketing, Policy, and Social Entrepreneurship
How can evolved human nature be leveraged to help eliminate or alleviate environmental problems? The authors examine the evolutionary bases of destructive and ecologically damaging human behavior. They propose that many modern environmental and social problems are caused or exacerbated by five adaptive tendencies rooted in evolutionary history: (1) propensity for self-interest, (2) motivation for relative rather than absolute status, (3) proclivi…
Normative Social Influence is Underdetected
The present research investigated the persuasive impact and detectability of normative social influence. The first study surveyed 810 Californians about energy conservation and found that descriptive normative beliefs were more predictive of behavior than were other relevant beliefs, even though respondents rated such norms as least important in their conservation decisions. Study 2, a field experiment, showed that normative social influence prod…
A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels
Two field experiments examined the effectiveness of signs requesting hotel guests' participation in an environmental conservation program. Appeals employing descriptive norms (e.g., "the majority of guests reuse their towels") proved superior to a traditional appeal widely used by hotels that focused solely on environmental protection. Moreover, normative appeals were most effective when describing group behavior that occurred in the setting that…
The evolutionary basis of risky adolescent behavior: Implications for science, policy, and practice
This article proposes an evolutionary model of risky behavior in adolescence and contrasts it with the prevailing developmental psychopathology model. The evolutionary model contends that understanding the evolutionary functions of adolescence is critical to explaining why adolescents engage in risky behavior and that successful intervention depends on working with, instead of against, adolescent goals and motivations. The current article articul…
Going green to be seen: Status, reputation, and conspicuous conservation
Why do people purchase proenvironmental "green" products? We argue that buying such products can be construed as altruistic, since green products often cost more and are of lower quality than their conventional counterparts, but green goods benefit the environment for everyone. Because biologists have observed that altruism might function as a "costly signal" associated with status, we examined in 3 experiments how status motives influenced desir…
Blatant benevolence and conspicuous consumption: When romantic motives elicit strategic costly signals
Conspicuous displays of consumption and benevolence might serve as "costly signals" of desirable mate qualities.If so, they should vary strategically with manipulations of mating-related motives.The authors examined this possibility in 4 experiments.Inducing mating goals in men increased their willingness to spend on conspicuous luxuries but not on basic necessities.In women, mating goals boosted public-but not private-helping.Although mating mot…
Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual differences in three functional domains of disgust
What is the function of disgust? Whereas traditional models have suggested that disgust serves to protect the self or neutralize reminders of our animal nature, an evolutionary perspective suggests that disgust functions to solve 3 qualitatively different adaptive problems related to pathogen avoidance, mate choice, and social interaction. The authors investigated this 3-domain model of disgust across 4 studies and examined how sensitivity to the…
The influence of mortality and socioeconomic status on risk and delayed rewards: A life history theory approach
Why do some people take risks and live for the present, whereas others avoid risks and save for the future? The evolutionary framework of life history theory predicts that preferences for risk and delay in gratification should be influenced by mortality and resource scarcity. A series of experiments examined how mortality cues influenced decisions involving risk preference (e.g., $10 for sure vs. 50% chance of $20) and temporal discounting (e.g.,…
Environmental contingency in life history strategies: The influence of mortality and socioeconomic status on reproductive timing
Why do some people have children early, whereas others delay reproduction? By considering the trade-offs between using one's resources for reproduction versus other tasks, the evolutionary framework of life history theory predicts that reproductive timing should be influenced by mortality and resource scarcity. A series of experiments examined how mortality cues influenced the desire to have children sooner rather than later. The effects of morta…
Evolution, stress, and sensitive periods: The influence of unpredictability in early versus late childhood on sex and risky behavior
According to a recent evolutionary life history model of development proposed by Ellis, Figueredo, Brumbach, and Schlomer (2009), growing up in harsh versus unpredictable environments should have unique effects on life history strategies in adulthood. Using data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, we tested how harshness and unpredictability experienced in early childhood (age 0-5) versus in later childhood (age 6-16) un…
Sense of control under uncertainty depends on people’s childhood environment: A life history theory approach
Past research found that environmental uncertainty leads people to behave differently depending on their childhood environment. For example, economic uncertainty leads people from poor childhoods to become more impulsive while leading people from wealthy childhoods to become less impulsive. Drawing on life history theory, we examine the psychological mechanism driving such diverging responses to uncertainty. Five experiments show that uncertainty…
The Evolutionary Bases for Sustainable Behavior: Implications for Marketing, Policy, and Social Entrepreneurship
How can evolved human nature be leveraged to help eliminate or alleviate environmental problems? The authors examine the evolutionary bases of destructive and ecologically damaging human behavior. They propose that many modern environmental and social problems are caused or exacerbated by five adaptive tendencies rooted in evolutionary history: (1) propensity for self-interest, (2) motivation for relative rather than absolute status, (3) proclivi…
Peacocks, Porsches, and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous consumption as a sexual signaling system
Conspicuous consumption is a form of economic behavior in which self-presentational concerns override desires to obtain goods at bargain prices. Showy spending may be a social signal directed at potential mates. We investigated such signals by examining (a) which individuals send them, (b) which contexts trigger them, and (c) how observers interpret them. Three experiments demonstrated that conspicuous consumption is driven by men who are followi…
Aggress to impress: Hostility as an evolved context-dependent strategy
Given the high costs of aggression, why have people evolved to act aggressively? Comparative biologists have frequently observed links between aggression, status, and mating in nonhuman animals. In this series of experiments, the authors examined the effects of status, competition, and mating motives on men's and women's aggression. For men, status motives increased direct aggression (face-to-face confrontation). Men's aggression was also boosted…
Cognitive adaptations to stressful environments: When childhood adversity enhances adult executive function
Can growing up in a stressful childhood environment enhance certain cognitive functions? Drawing participants from higher-income and lower-income backgrounds, we tested how adults who grew up in harsh or unpredictable environments fared on 2 types of executive function tasks: inhibition and shifting. People who experienced unpredictable childhoods performed worse at inhibition (overriding dominant responses), but performed better at shifting (eff…
Conspicuous Consumption, Relationships, and Rivals: Women's Luxury Products as Signals to Other Women
Past research shows that luxury products can function to boost self-esteem, express identity, and signal status. We propose that luxury products also have important signaling functions in relationships. Whereas men use conspicuous luxury products to attract mates, women use such products to deter female rivals. Drawing on both evolutionary and cultural perspectives, five experiments investigated how women's luxury products function as a signaling…
Peacocks, Picasso, and parental investment: The effects of romantic motives on creativity
Four experiments explored the effects of mating motivation on creativity. Even without other incentives to be creative, romantic motives enhanced creativity on subjective and objective measures. For men, any cue designed to activate a short-term or a long-term mating goal increased creative displays; however, women displayed more creativity only when primed to attract a high-quality long-term mate. These creative boosts were unrelated to increase…
Going along versus going alone: When fundamental motives facilitate strategic (non)conformity
Three experiments examined how 2 fundamental social motives--self-protection and mate attraction--influenced conformity. A self-protective goal increased conformity for both men and women. In contrast, the effects of a romantic goal depended on sex, causing women to conform more to others' preferences while engendering nonconformity in men. Men motivated to attract a mate were particularly likely to nonconform when (a) nonconformity made them uni…
The Many Shades of Rose-Colored Glasses: An Evolutionary Approach to the Influence of Different Positive Emotions
We present an evolutionary framework for examining the influence of different positive emotions on cognition and behavior. Testing this framework, we investigate how two positive emotions-pride and contentment-influence product desirability. Three experiments show that different positive emotions (compared with a neutral control condition) have specific effects on judgment that are consistent with the proposed underlying evolved function of each …
The financial consequences of too many men: Sex ratio effects on saving, borrowing, and spending
The ratio of males to females in a population is an important factor in determining behavior in animals. We propose that sex ratio also has pervasive effects in humans, such as by influencing economic decisions. Using both historical data and experiments, we examined how sex ratio influences saving, borrowing, and spending in the United States. Findings show that male-biased sex ratios (an abundance of men) lead men to discount the future and des…
Ovulation, Female Competition, and Product Choice: Hormonal Influences on Consumer Behavior
Recent research shows that women experience nonconscious shifts across different phases of the monthly ovulatory cycle. For example, women at peak fertility (near ovulation) are attracted to different kinds of men and show increased desire to attend social gatherings. Building on the evolutionary logic behind such effects, we examined how, why, and when hormonal fluctuations associated with ovulation influenced women's product choices. In three e…
Descriptive normative beliefs and conservation behavior: The moderating roles of personal involvement and injunctive normative beliefs
There is ample evidence of the power of social influence on pro‐environmental behaviors. Beliefs about the conservation behavior of others (descriptive normative beliefs) have a strong positive correlation with one's own conservation actions. However, this relationship has not been investigated much further in terms of possible moderators or involved mechanisms of information processing. The present study examines two potential moderators and dra…
Economic decision biases and fundamental motivations: How mating and self-protection alter loss aversion
Much research shows that people are loss averse, meaning that they weigh losses more heavily than gains. Drawing on an evolutionary perspective, we propose that although loss aversion might have been adaptive for solving challenges in the domain of self-protection, this may not be true for men in the domain of mating. Three experiments examine how loss aversion is influenced by mating and self-protection motives. Findings reveal that mating motiv…
Boosting beauty in an economic decline: Mating, spending, and the lipstick effect
Although consumer spending typically declines in economic recessions, some observers have noted that recessions appear to increase women's spending on beauty products--the so-called lipstick effect. Using both historical spending data and rigorous experiments, the authors examine how and why economic recessions influence women's consumer behavior. Findings revealed that recessionary cues--whether naturally occurring or experimentally primed--decr…
The effect of unpredictable early childhood environments on parenting in adulthood
Life history theory suggests that individual differences in parenting are partially rooted in environmental conditions experienced early in life. Whereas certain conditions should promote increased investment in parenting, unpredictable and/or harsh environments should promote decreased investment in parenting, especially in men. We tested this hypothesis in 3 studies. In Study 1a, we conducted analyses on 112 parents taking part in the Minnesota…
Sex ratio and women's career choice: Does a scarcity of men lead women to choose briefcase over baby
Although the ratio of males to females in a population is known to influence behavior in nonhuman animals, little is known about how sex ratio influences human behavior. We propose that sex ratio affects women's family planning and career choices. Using both historical data and experiments, we examined how sex ratio influences women's career aspirations. Findings showed that a scarcity of men led women to seek high-paying careers and to delay sta…
They All Look the Same to Me (Unless They're Angry): From Out-Group Homogeneity to Out-Group Heterogeneity
People often find it more difficult to distinguish ethnic out-group members compared with ethnic in-group members. A functional approach to social cognition suggests that this bias may be eliminated when out-group members display threatening facial expressions. In the present study, 192 White participants viewed Black and White faces displaying either neutral or angry expressions and later attempted to identify previously seen faces. Recognition …
Peacocks, Picasso, and parental investment: The effects of romantic motives on creativity
Four experiments explored the effects of mating motivation on creativity. Even without other incentives to be creative, romantic motives enhanced creativity on subjective and objective measures. For men, any cue designed to activate a short-term or a long-term mating goal increased creative displays; however, women displayed more creativity only when primed to attract a high-quality long-term mate. These creative boosts were unrelated to increase…
Going along versus going alone: When fundamental motives facilitate strategic (non)conformity
Three experiments examined how 2 fundamental social motives--self-protection and mate attraction--influenced conformity. A self-protective goal increased conformity for both men and women. In contrast, the effects of a romantic goal depended on sex, causing women to conform more to others' preferences while engendering nonconformity in men. Men motivated to attract a mate were particularly likely to nonconform when (a) nonconformity made them uni…
The Constructive, Destructive, and Reconstructive Power of Social Norms
Despite a long tradition of effectiveness in laboratory tests, normative messages have had mixed success in changing behavior in field contexts, with some studies showing boomerang effects. To test a theoretical account of this inconsistency, we conducted a field experiment in which normative messages were used to promote household energy conservation. As predicted, a descriptive normative message detailing average neighborhood usage produced eit…
Blatant benevolence and conspicuous consumption: When romantic motives elicit strategic costly signals
Conspicuous displays of consumption and benevolence might serve as "costly signals" of desirable mate qualities.If so, they should vary strategically with manipulations of mating-related motives.The authors examined this possibility in 4 experiments.Inducing mating goals in men increased their willingness to spend on conspicuous luxuries but not on basic necessities.In women, mating goals boosted public-but not private-helping.Although mating mot…
The dawn of evolutionary consumer behavior– a review of “The evolutionary bases of consumption”
Normative Social Influence is Underdetected
The present research investigated the persuasive impact and detectability of normative social influence. The first study surveyed 810 Californians about energy conservation and found that descriptive normative beliefs were more predictive of behavior than were other relevant beliefs, even though respondents rated such norms as least important in their conservation decisions. Study 2, a field experiment, showed that normative social influence prod…
A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels
Two field experiments examined the effectiveness of signs requesting hotel guests' participation in an environmental conservation program. Appeals employing descriptive norms (e.g., "the majority of guests reuse their towels") proved superior to a traditional appeal widely used by hotels that focused solely on environmental protection. Moreover, normative appeals were most effective when describing group behavior that occurred in the setting that…
Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual differences in three functional domains of disgust
What is the function of disgust? Whereas traditional models have suggested that disgust serves to protect the self or neutralize reminders of our animal nature, an evolutionary perspective suggests that disgust functions to solve 3 qualitatively different adaptive problems related to pathogen avoidance, mate choice, and social interaction. The authors investigated this 3-domain model of disgust across 4 studies and examined how sensitivity to the…
Aggress to impress: Hostility as an evolved context-dependent strategy
Given the high costs of aggression, why have people evolved to act aggressively? Comparative biologists have frequently observed links between aggression, status, and mating in nonhuman animals. In this series of experiments, the authors examined the effects of status, competition, and mating motives on men's and women's aggression. For men, status motives increased direct aggression (face-to-face confrontation). Men's aggression was also boosted…
Women's preferences for masculinity in male faces are predicted by pathogen disgust, but not by moral or sexual disgust
Intrasexual competition and eating restriction in heterosexual and homosexual individuals☆
Renovating the Pyramid of Needs: Contemporary Extensions Built Upon Ancient Foundations
Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, proposed in 1943, has been one of the most cognitively contagious ideas in the behavioral sciences. Anticipating later evolutionary views of human motivation and cognition, Maslow viewed human motives as based in innate and universal predispositions. We revisit the idea of a motivational hierarchy in light of theoretical developments at the interface of evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology. After con…
Influence of different positive emotions on persuasion processing: A functional evolutionary approach
Much research has found that positive affect facilitates increased reliance on heuristics in cognition. However, theories proposing distinct evolutionary fitness-enhancing functions for specific positive emotions also predict important differences among the consequences of different positive emotion states. Two experiments investigated how six positive emotions influenced the processing of persuasive messages. Using different methods to induce em…
Descriptive normative beliefs and conservation behavior: The moderating roles of personal involvement and injunctive normative beliefs
There is ample evidence of the power of social influence on pro‐environmental behaviors. Beliefs about the conservation behavior of others (descriptive normative beliefs) have a strong positive correlation with one's own conservation actions. However, this relationship has not been investigated much further in terms of possible moderators or involved mechanisms of information processing. The present study examines two potential moderators and dra…
Going green to be seen: Status, reputation, and conspicuous conservation
Why do people purchase proenvironmental "green" products? We argue that buying such products can be construed as altruistic, since green products often cost more and are of lower quality than their conventional counterparts, but green goods benefit the environment for everyone. Because biologists have observed that altruism might function as a "costly signal" associated with status, we examined in 3 experiments how status motives influenced desir…
The Many Shades of Rose-Colored Glasses: An Evolutionary Approach to the Influence of Different Positive Emotions
We present an evolutionary framework for examining the influence of different positive emotions on cognition and behavior. Testing this framework, we investigate how two positive emotions-pride and contentment-influence product desirability. Three experiments show that different positive emotions (compared with a neutral control condition) have specific effects on judgment that are consistent with the proposed underlying evolved function of each …
Peacocks, Porsches, and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous consumption as a sexual signaling system
Conspicuous consumption is a form of economic behavior in which self-presentational concerns override desires to obtain goods at bargain prices. Showy spending may be a social signal directed at potential mates. We investigated such signals by examining (a) which individuals send them, (b) which contexts trigger them, and (c) how observers interpret them. Three experiments demonstrated that conspicuous consumption is driven by men who are followi…
Environmental contingency in life history strategies: The influence of mortality and socioeconomic status on reproductive timing
Why do some people have children early, whereas others delay reproduction? By considering the trade-offs between using one's resources for reproduction versus other tasks, the evolutionary framework of life history theory predicts that reproductive timing should be influenced by mortality and resource scarcity. A series of experiments examined how mortality cues influenced the desire to have children sooner rather than later. The effects of morta…
The influence of mortality and socioeconomic status on risk and delayed rewards: A life history theory approach
Why do some people take risks and live for the present, whereas others avoid risks and save for the future? The evolutionary framework of life history theory predicts that preferences for risk and delay in gratification should be influenced by mortality and resource scarcity. A series of experiments examined how mortality cues influenced decisions involving risk preference (e.g., $10 for sure vs. 50% chance of $20) and temporal discounting (e.g.,…
Let's get serious: Communicating commitment in romantic relationships
Are men or women more likely to confess love first in romantic relationships? And how do men and women feel when their partners say "I love you"? An evolutionary-economics perspective contends that women and men incur different potential costs and gain different potential benefits from confessing love. Across 6 studies testing current and former romantic relationships, we found that although people think that women are the first to confess love a…
Ovulation, Female Competition, and Product Choice: Hormonal Influences on Consumer Behavior
Recent research shows that women experience nonconscious shifts across different phases of the monthly ovulatory cycle. For example, women at peak fertility (near ovulation) are attracted to different kinds of men and show increased desire to attend social gatherings. Building on the evolutionary logic behind such effects, we examined how, why, and when hormonal fluctuations associated with ovulation influenced women's product choices. In three e…
The evolutionary basis of risky adolescent behavior: Implications for science, policy, and practice
This article proposes an evolutionary model of risky behavior in adolescence and contrasts it with the prevailing developmental psychopathology model. The evolutionary model contends that understanding the evolutionary functions of adolescence is critical to explaining why adolescents engage in risky behavior and that successful intervention depends on working with, instead of against, adolescent goals and motivations. The current article articul…
Evolution, stress, and sensitive periods: The influence of unpredictability in early versus late childhood on sex and risky behavior
According to a recent evolutionary life history model of development proposed by Ellis, Figueredo, Brumbach, and Schlomer (2009), growing up in harsh versus unpredictable environments should have unique effects on life history strategies in adulthood. Using data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, we tested how harshness and unpredictability experienced in early childhood (age 0-5) versus in later childhood (age 6-16) un…
The financial consequences of too many men: Sex ratio effects on saving, borrowing, and spending
The ratio of males to females in a population is an important factor in determining behavior in animals. We propose that sex ratio also has pervasive effects in humans, such as by influencing economic decisions. Using both historical data and experiments, we examined how sex ratio influences saving, borrowing, and spending in the United States. Findings show that male-biased sex ratios (an abundance of men) lead men to discount the future and des…
Psychology (41 works) · Social Psychology (35 works) · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (30 works) · Developmental psychology (20 works) · Economics (15 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Biology (11 works) · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification (11 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (10 works) · Evolutionary psychology (9 works)