Calibration and fitness-linked correlates of personality in Conambo, Ecuador

Abstract

We present a study testing the existence and correlates of personality concepts in the village of Conambo, Ecuador, which is home to horticultural-foragers located in the Sápara Territory of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Lexical terms to describe the three focal personality concepts from the HEXACO taxonomy—Sociability, Immodesty, and Un-emotionality—were interpreted from Spanish into the Indigenous languages of Achuar and Quichua. These terms were employed in a photo ranking task wherein 76 adult community members ranked the relative standing of same-sex others on each personality concept. Inter-ranker agreement was high for Sociability and Immodesty, but low for Un-emotionality. We tested the associations among individual differences in (i) Sociability and Immodesty, (ii) hierarchical status and fertility, which are hypothesized fitness-linked benefits of high Sociability and Immodesty, and (iii) physical strength, which is a hypothesized calibrator of status-oriented personality strategies. Using Bayesian models and psychological networks including age controls, we found good evidence that men's physical strength associated positively with Sociability, Immodesty, and status. Among both sexes, Sociability and Immodesty exhibited strong positive correlations with status, but evidence was weaker that the personality traits associated with fertility. Status associated positively with fertility among both sexes. We conclude that two personality concepts imported from the HEXACO and Big Five taxonomies, Sociability and Immodesty, exist with common meaning in the minds of Conambo villagers and appear adaptively patterned in relation to physical strength and fitness-linked outcomes. We argue that the photo ranking task employed in this research produces personality assessments with high validity and should therefore be adopted in future studies of individual differences in face-to-face groups.