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Journal article
Desire for social status affects marital and reproductive attitudes: A life history mismatch perspective
Current research in ecological and social psychology, Vol.4, 100125
2023
Abstract
•Attending closely to cues of one's status within a group, and engaging efforts to increase or maintain status when cues suggested that status was lacking or waning, ensured having sufficient status that was crucial for the access to resources and reproductive success.•Cues within modern, economically advanced societies, chronically induce people to prioritize attaining social status at the cost of marriage and reproduction.•We argue that modern desire for social status hijack psychological mechanisms governing life history strategy, leading to maladaptive delays in marriage and reproduction.•A heightened desire to acquire higher social status led to preferences for investing heavily in fewer children rather than spreading one's resources across multiple children (i.e., offspring quality over quantity), and for delayed marriage and reproduction.•A slower reproductive life history strategy mediated the effects of desire for social status on delayed marriage and reproduction.
Modern low fertility is an unresolved paradox. Despite the tremendous financial growth and stability in modern societies, birth rates are steadily dropping. Almost half of the world's population lives in countries with below-replacement fertility and is projected for a continued decline. Drawing on life history theory and an evolutionary mismatch perspective, we propose that desire for social status (which is increasingly experienced by individuals in industrialized, modern societies) is a key factor affecting critical reproductive preferences. Across two experimental studies (total N = 719), we show that activating a desire for status can lead people to prefer reproductive tradeoffs that favor having fewer children, thereby predicting preferences for delaying both marriage and having a first child. These data support an evolutionary life history mismatch perspective and suggest a complementary explanation for declining fertility rates in contemporary societies, especially developed and economically advanced ones.
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Details
- Title
- Desire for social status affects marital and reproductive attitudes: A life history mismatch perspective
- Authors/Creators
- Amy J. Lim - Discipline of Psychology, Murdoch University, SingaporeNorman P. Li - Singapore Management UniversityZoi Manesi - Singapore Management UniversitySteven L. Neuberg - Arizona State UniversityMark van Vugt - Vrije Universiteit AmsterdamAndrea L. Meltzer - Florida State UniversityKenneth Tan - Singapore Management University
- Publication Details
- Current research in ecological and social psychology, Vol.4, 100125
- Publisher
- Elsevier B.V
- Identifiers
- 991005585957807891
- Copyright
- © 2023 The Authors.
- Murdoch Affiliation
- School of Psychology
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article
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