Evolution of Vulnerability: Implications for Sex Differences in Health and Development

by David C. Geary

Biologists have known for decades that many traits involved in competition for mates or other resources and that influence mate choice are exaggerated, and their expression is influenced by the individuals’ ability to tolerate a variety of environmental and social stressors. Evolution of Vulnerability applies this concept of heightened sensitivity to humans for a host of physical, social, psychological, cognitive, and brain traits. By reframing the issue entirely, renowned evolutionary psychologist David C. Geary demonstrates this principle can be used to identify children, adolescents, or populations at risk for poor long-term outcomes and identify specific traits in each sex and at different points in development that are most easily disrupted by exposure to stressors.

Evolution of Vulnerability begins by reviewing the expansive literature on traits predicted to show sex-specific sensitivity to environmental and social stressors, and details the implications for better assessing and understanding the consequences of exposure to these stressors. Next, the book reviews sexual selection—mate competition and choice—and the mechanisms involved in the evolution of condition dependent traits and the stressors that can undermine their development and expression, such as poor early nutrition and health, parasites, social stress, and exposure to man-made toxins. Then it reviews condition dependent traits (physical, behavioral, cognitive, and brain) in birds, fish, insects, and mammals to demonstrate the ubiquity of these traits in nature. The focus then turns to humans and covers sex-specific vulnerabilities in children and adults for physical traits, social behavior, psychological wellbeing, and brain and cognitive traits. The sensitivity of these traits is related to exposure to parasites, poor nutrition, social maltreatment, environmental toxins, chemotherapy, and Alzheimer’s disease, among others. The book concludes with an implications chapter that outlines how to better assess vulnerabilities in children and adults and how to more fully understand how, why, and when in development some types of environmental and social stressors are particularly harmful to humans.

Describes evolved sex differences, providing predictions on the traits that will show sex-specific vulnerabilities Presents an extensive review of condition-dependent traits in non-human species, greatly expanding existing reviews published in scientific journals, and more critically, extending these to humans Applies condition-dependent traits to humans to identify children, adolescents, or populations at risk for poor long-term outcomes

409 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 28, 2015

About the author

David C. Geary is a cognitive developmental and evolutionary psychologist with interests in mathematical learning and sex differences. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1986 from the University of California at Riverside, he held faculty positions at the University of Texas at El Paso and the University of Missouri, first at the Rolla campus and then in Columbia. Dr. Geary is currently a Curators' Professor and a Thomas Jefferson Fellow in the Department of Psychological Sciences, and served as department chair from 2002-2005. He has published more than 240 articles and chapters across a wide range of topics, including cognitive, developmental, and evolutionary psychology, education, and medicine, including three sole-authored books, Children's mathematical development (1994), Male, female: The evolution of human sex differences (1998, now in second edition. 2010), and The origin of mind: Evolution of brain, cognition, and general intelligence (2005), and one co-authored book, Sex differences: Summarizing more than a century of scientific research (Ellis et al., 2008). He is co-editing a series of five books on Advances in Mathematical Cognition and Learning with Drs. Dan Berch and Kathy Mann Koepke. The first volume, Evolutionary origins and early development of basic number processing should be published in late 2014 or early 2015. He has given invited addresses in a variety of departments (anthropology, biology, behavior genetics, computer science, education, government, mathematics, neuroscience, physics, and psychology) and Universities throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Europe and East Asia.