Journal
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST
Volume 61, Issue 6, Pages 622-631Publisher
AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.61.6.622
Keywords
personality; evolutionary psychology; five-factor model
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
A comprehensive evolutionary framework for understanding the maintenance of heritable behavioral variation in humans is yet to be developed. Some evolutionary psychologists have argued that heritable variation will not be found in important, fitness-relevant characteristics because of the winnowing effect of natural selection. This article propounds the opposite view. Heritable variation is ubiquitous in all species, and there are a number of frameworks for understanding its persistence. The author argues that each of the Big Five dimensions of human personality can be seen as the result of a trade-off between different fitness costs and benefits. As there is no unconditionally optimal value of these trade-offs, it is to be expected that genetic diversity will be retained in the population.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available