Abstract
This paper investigates hypotheses drawn from two sources: (1) Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper’s (1991) attachment theory model of the development of reproductive strategies, and (2) recent life history models and comparative data suggesting that environmental risk and uncertainty may be potent determinants of the optimal tradeoff between current and future reproduction. A retrospective, self-report study of 136 American university women aged 19–25 showed that current recollections of early stress (environmental risk and uncertainty) were related to individual differences in adult time preference and adult sexual behavior, and that individual differences in time preference were related to adult attachment organization and sexual behavior. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that perceptions of early stress index environmental risk and uncertainty and mediate the attachment process and the development of reproductive strategies. On this view individual differences in time preference are considered to be part of the attachment theoretical construct of an internal working model, which itself is conceived as an evolved algorithm for the contingent development of alternative reproductive strategies.
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The research for this study was supported in part by the Agricultural Experiment Station, University of California, Davis. The preparation of this paper was supported by the Departments of Anthropology and Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia, and a grant from the Australian Research Council. I thank Jay Belsky, Barry Bogin, Andrea Wiley, Victoria K. Burbank, Eric Charnov, Len Freedman, Rick Grosberg, Linc Schmitt, Emily Rousham, Sally Stanley, Neil Pelkey, Keith Barton, Martin Daly, Bryan Vila and the anonymous reviewers for their help in developing the ideas presented here. An early version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, Northwestern University, June 26, 1996.
James S. Chisholm is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia. He is a biosocial anthropologist whose interests lie in the fields of human behavioral biology, evolutionary ecology, and life history theory, where he focuses on infant social-emotional development, the development of reproductive strategies, and the integration of evolutionary and cultural psychology. His latest book, Death, Hope, and Sex, will be published in 1999 by Cambridge University Press.
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Chisholm, J.S. Attachment and time preference. Hum Nat 10, 51–83 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-999-1001-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-999-1001-1