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This project aims to apply life history theory to explain the heterogeneity and sex differences in BPD symptoms. We will utilize Structural Equation Models informed by life history theory and sexual selection theory, and cross-sectional data drawn from the second wave of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions in 2004-2005. Our focus is on explaining whether a reproduction-oriented life history strategy is associated with BPD symptoms and whether these associations differ between men and women.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of social information on sense of agency in healthy adults and patients with Borderline Personality Disorder.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of social information on sense of agency in healthy adults and patients with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Previous work has shown that various dimensions of early life adverse experiences, such as deprivation, threat and uncertainty are associated with both physical and mental health outcomes later in life. However, the concepts and operationalizations of uncertainty vary greatly and more precision is needed in order to characterize how environmental uncertainty impacts development. In this study, we aim to explore how two possibly distinct types of environmental uncertainty, i.e., unpredictability and volatility, contribute to the development of psychopathology in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study cohort.

Cooperation is a universal phenomenon, it is present in all human cultures from hunter-gatherers to industrialized societies, and it constitutes a fundamental aspect of social relationships. Although humans cooperate universally, there is variability in the amount of resources people invest in cooperative activities. Recent findings indicate that this variability may be partly explained as a contextually appropriate response to environmental conditions. Specifically, adverse environments seem to be associated with less cooperation and recent findings suggest that this effect is partly mediated by differences in individuals’ life-history strategy. In this paper, we set out to replicate and extend these findings by measuring actual cooperative behavior in three economic games - a Dictator game, a Trust game and a Public Goods game – on a nationally representative sample of 717 people.

There is considerable variability in the degree to which individuals rely on their peers to make decisions. Although theoretical models predict that environmental risks shift the cost-benefit trade-off associated with social information use, this idea has received little empirical support. Here we aim to test the effect of childhood environmental adversity on humans’ susceptibility to follow others’ opinion in the context of a standard face evaluation task. Results collected in a pilot study involving 121 adult participants tested online showed that susceptibility to social influence and childhood environmental adversity are positively associated. Computational analyses further confirmed that this effect is not explained by the fact that participants exposed to early adversity produce noisier decisions overall but that they are indeed more likely to follow the group’s opinion. To test the robustness of these findings, a pre-registered direct replication using an optimal sample size was run. The results obtained from 262 participants in the pre-registered study did not reveal a significant association between childhood adversity and task performance but the meta-analysis ran on both the pilot and the pre-registered study replicated the initial finding. The present work provides experimental evidence for an association between individuals’ past ecology and their susceptibility to social influence.