Sleep and risk-taking propensity in life history and evolutionary perspectives

Tradeoffs between time allocated to sleeping versus waking result from variations in local ecologies and should correlate to alterations in behavioral life history strategies.  It was predicted that firefighters who sleep less, with lower overall sleep quality, would exhibit greater motivation for risk-taking, an important component of fast life histories.  Firefighters completed evolutionarily relevant questionnaires on five domains of risk-taking propensity that were correlated to sleep quantity and quality variables.  Multiple linear regression analysis indicated that self-reported measures of sleep quantity, sleep latency, and psychological and physical sleep quality were occasionally and variably related to within-group competition, between-group competition, reproduction, environmental challenge, and mating and resource allocation for mate attraction risk domains in predicted directions

Sleep and risk-taking propensity in life history and evolutionary perspectives

Tradeoffs between time allocated to sleeping versus waking result from variations in local ecologies and should correlate to alterations in behavioral life history strategies.  It was predicted that firefighters who sleep less, with lower overall sleep quality, would exhibit greater motivation for risk-taking, an important component of fast life histories.  Firefighters completed evolutionarily relevant questionnaires on five domains of risk-taking propensity that were correlated to sleep quantity and quality variables.  Multiple linear regression analysis indicated that self-reported measures of sleep quantity, sleep latency, and psychological and physical sleep quality were occasionally and variably related to within-group competition, between-group competition, reproduction, environmental challenge, and mating and resource allocation for mate attraction risk domains in predicted directions

Sleep-Wake State Tradeoffs, Impulsivity and Life History Theory

Evolutionary ecological theory predicts that sleep-wake state tradeoffs may be related to local environmental conditions and should therefore correlate to alterations in behavioral life history strategies. It was predicted that firefighters who slept more and reported better quality sleep on average would exhibit lower impulsivity inclinations related to slower life history trajectories. UPPS impulsivity scores and self-reported sleep averages were analyzed and indicated a negative association between sleep variables and urgency and a positive association with premeditation. Perseverance, and in some cases premeditation, however, disclosed an unpredicted marginally significant positive association between increased and emergency nighttime waking-related sleep deprivation. Sensation seeking was not associated with sleep variables, but was strongly associated with number of biological children. This research contributes to understanding the implications of human sleep across ecological and behavioral contexts and implies further research is necessary for constructing evolutionarily oriented measures of impulsivity inclination and its meaning in the context of life history strategies

Why Do Men Marry and Why Do They Stray?

Humans are quite unusual compared to other great apes in that reproduction typically takes place within long-term, iteroparous pairings—social arrangements that have been culturally reified as the institution of marriage. With respect to male behaviour, explanations of marriage fall into two major schools of thought. One holds that marriage facilitates a sexual division of labour and paternal investment, both important to the rearing of offspring that are born helpless and remain dependent for remarkably long periods (provisioning model). And the other suggests that the main benefits which men receive from entering into marriage derive from monopolizing access to women\u27s fertility (mating effort model). In this paper, we explore extramarital sexual relationships and the conditions under which they occur as a means of testing predictions derived from these two models. Using data on men\u27s extramarital sexual relationships among Tsimane forager–horticulturists in lowland Bolivia, we tested whether infidelity was more common when men had less of an opportunity to invest in their children or when they risked losing less fertility. We found that Tsimane men appear to be biasing the timing of their affairs to when they are younger and have fewer children, supporting the provisioning model