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Prior research indicates that being reared in stressful environments is associated with earlier onset of menarche in girls. In this research, we examined (a) whether these effects are driven by exposure to certain dimensions of stress (harshness or unpredictability) during the first 5 years of life and (b) whether the negative effects of stress on the timing of menarche are buffered by secure infant-mother attachment. Results revealed that (a) exposure to greater harshness (but not unpredictability) during the first 5 years of life predicted earlier menarche and (b) secure infant-mother attachment buffered girls from this effect of harsh environments. By connecting attachment research to its evolutionary foundations, these results illuminate how environmental stressors and relationships early in life jointly affect pubertal timing.

Research in marketing often begins with two assumptions: that consumers are able to choose among desirable products, and that they have sufficient resources to buy them. However, many consumer decision journeys are constrained by a scarcity of products and/or a scarcity of resources. We review research in marketing, psychology, economics and sociology to construct an integrative framework outlining how these different types of scarcity individually and jointly influence consumers at various stages of their decision journeys. We outline avenues for future research and discuss implications for developing consumer-based marketing strategies., Author(s): Rebecca Hamilton [sup.1] , Debora Thompson [sup.1] , Sterling Bone [sup.2] , Lan Nguyen Chaplin [sup.3] , Vladas Griskevicius [sup.4] , Kelly Goldsmith [sup.5] , Ronald Hill [sup.6] , [...]

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 lifespan compared to people who grew up in richer environments when faced with a current stressor. We document that experiencing a stressor leads people from resource-poor childhoods to believe they will die sooner because they respond to stressors in a more pessimistic way. We further show that subjective life expectancy is an important psychological mechanism that directly contributes to multiple consumer decisions, including desire for long-term care insurance, decisions about retirement savings, and preference for long-term bonds. Overall, the present work opens future research avenues by showing how, why, and when subjective life expectancy influences consumer behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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) uniquely predicted sexual and risky behavior at age 23. Findings showed that the strongest predictor of both sexual and risky behavior was an unpredictable environment between ages 0 and 5. Individuals exposed to more unpredictable, rapidly changing environments during the first 5 years of life displayed a faster life history strategy at age 23 by having more sexual partners, engaging in more aggressive and delinquent behaviors, and being more likely to be associated with criminal activities. In contrast, exposure to either harsh environments or experiencing unpredictability in later childhood (age 6-16) was, for the most part, not significantly related to these outcomes at age 23. Viewed together, these findings show that unpredictable rather than merely harsh childhood environments exert unique effects on risky behavior later in life consistent with a faster life history strategy. The findings also suggest that there is a developmentally sensitive period for assessing environmental unpredictability during the first 5 years of life. (Contains 8 tables and 5 footnotes.)