Evolutionary perspectives on the mechanistic underpinnings of personality

Chapter 19 - Evolutionary perspectives on the mechanistic underpinnings of personality. Aaron W. Lukaszewski. The Handbook of Personality Dynamics and Processes, 2021, Pages 523-550. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-813995-0.00019-4

Abstract: Evolutionary theory is the organizing framework for the life sciences because of its unique value in deriving falsifiable predictions about the causal structure of organisms. This chapter outlines the relationships of evolutionary principles to the study of phenotypic variation and defines two distinct paradigms for personality science. The first of these, dimensional cost-benefit analysis (DCBA), entails analyzing the reproductive cost-benefit tradeoffs along inductively derived personality dimensions (e.g., the Big Five) to derive predictions regarding adaptively patterned variation in manifest trait levels. The second paradigm, ground-up adaptationism (GUA), requires building models of specific psychological mechanisms, from the ground-up, including their variable parameters that result in manifest behavioral variation. After evaluating the strengths and limitations of these paradigms, it is concluded that (1) inductively derived dimensions of person description should not serve as the field's explanatory targets; (2) GUA represents the most powerful available framework for elucidating the psychological mechanisms, which comprise human nature and produce its diverse range of behavioral variants; and (3) the goals of adaptationist evolutionary psychology are the same as those guiding personality psychology's next era: to identify the mechanisms that comprise the mind, figure out how they work, and determine how they generate behavioral variation.

Keywords: AdaptationismDifferential psychologyEvolutionEvolutionary psychologyIndividual differencesPersonalitySocial cognition