Abstract
We propose a hierarchical model of multilevel selection to explain the various direct and indirect causal pathways through which life history (LH) selection influences social evolution and development. This multilevel selection model describes a hierarchical cascade of consequences wherein natural selective pressures generate both individual and social sequelae, which in turn produce social selective pressures that generate sexual sequelae, which in turn produce sexual selective pressures that generate further sexual sequelae. Thus, the generative natural selective pressures constrain (but do not determine) the social selective pressures, which then constrain the sexual selective pressures that drive both LH evolution and development. Further, as in Bronfenbrenner’s (The ecology of human development: experiments by nature and design. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1979) ecological systems theory, the directionalities of these probabilistic transactions among levels may also operate in the opposite direction, from the lower to the higher levels of the hierarchy.
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Figueredo, A., Patch, E., Ceballos, C. (2015). A Life History Approach to the Dynamics of Social Selection. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Welling, L., Shackelford, T. (eds) Evolutionary Perspectives on Social Psychology. Evolutionary Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12697-5_28
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