Abstract
What is the origin of individual differences in ideology and personality? According to the parasite stress hypothesis, the structure of a society and the values of individuals within it are both influenced by the prevalence of infectious disease within the society's geographical region. High levels of infection threat are associated with more ethnocentric and collectivist social structures and greater adherence to social norms, as well as with socially conservative political ideology and less open but more conscientious personalities. Here we use an agent‐based model to explore a specific opportunities‐parasites trade‐off (OPTO) hypothesis, according to which utility‐maximizing agents place themselves at an optimal point on a trade‐off between (a) the gains that may be achieved through accessing the resources of geographically or socially distant out‐group members through openness to out‐group interaction, and (b) the losses arising due to consequently increased risks of exotic infection to which immunity has not been developed. We examine the evolution of cooperation and the formation of social groups within social networks, and we show that the groups that spontaneously form exhibit greater local rather than global cooperative networks when levels of infection are high. It is suggested that the OPTO model offers a first step toward understanding the specific mechanisms through which environmental conditions may influence cognition, ideology, personality, and social organization.
Highlights
What gives rise to different cultures, attitudes, and politico-economic systems in different regions of the globe? What might cause such attitudes and systems to change over time, and what might speed up or slow down such change? Here we adopt the framework of the parasite stress hypothesis, according to which many core human values and cultural patterns at least partly reflect adaptive responses, by a behavioral immune system, to the threat of infectious disease (e.g., Schaller & Park, 2011; Thornhill & Fincher, 2014)
We focus on the effects of parasite stress on political ideology, on personality, and on the consequences of individual differences in openness to out-group interactions for the structure of mutually cooperative social groups
The model illustrates mechanisms by which the development of cooperation with out-groups, in turn associated with more liberal ideology and open personality styles, may be facilitated when levels of infection are low
Summary
What gives rise to different cultures, attitudes, and politico-economic systems in different regions of the globe? What might cause such attitudes and systems to change over time, and what might speed up or slow down such change? Here we adopt the framework of the parasite stress hypothesis, according to which many core human values and cultural patterns at least partly reflect adaptive responses, by a behavioral immune system, to the threat of infectious disease (e.g., Schaller & Park, 2011; Thornhill & Fincher, 2014). We seek to understand the mechanisms that may underlie earlier findings that high levels of parasitic infection within a region are associated with less open personalities (e.g., Schaller & Murray, 2008; Thornhill, Fincher, Murray, & Schaller, 2010), greater xenophobia and in-group orientation (see Fincher & Thornhill, 2012, for a review), and more conservative political voting patterns (e.g., Brown et al, 2015; see Fincher & Thornhill, 2012, for a review). In this article we illustrate, using an agent-based model, the operation of the OPTO mechanism and show how the attitudes and values of rational individuals might come to differ as a function of infection-related threat (parasite stress) within their environment. We use the model to show how evolved social groups may come to be more inwardlooking and xenophobic when prevailing levels of infection are high
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