It seems plausible that people vary in risk aversion (which seems to underlie your model) and that could be a reason for different strategies. But is there any evidence that this variance is discontinuous, or even bimodal? And is there evidence that the traits you mention are correlated with resource abundance?
If you’re right, we would expect to see more monogamy, planning and philosophy in poor societies, families and areas than in rich ones. That should be easy to get stats on, but I would guess that the relationship would be the opposite from a traditional biological perspective. People in poor environments expect shorter lives, and therefore it is adaptive to take more risks. Of course, if the data supports you, that just makes your idea even more interesting!
Note that cultural evolution in Europe & Asia is traditionally explained by the increase in resource availability that came with division of labor made possible by immigration into environments where tropical diseases couldn’t thrive, allowing large cities to be built (see Jared Diamond).
This paper on human mating strategies shows that mating strategies do change somewhat with resources. For example that there are polyandrous mating strategies in resource starved areas such as the himalayas, where one woman is shared by many brothers. This is a safe (Winter) strategy compared to a poor man trying to provide for one women and not having enough resources to. And polygynous strategies in societies where men can get the resources to keep many women. So these relationships are being regulated by what one or both of partners thinks they can get away with resource wise.
We are now in a stage where many women don’t need men to provide resources (or can make the state force the men to provide for the child while not being attached) and we are seeing a distinct breakdown in the (previously) traditional monogamy in developed countries.
It seems plausible that people vary in risk aversion (which seems to underlie your model) and that could be a reason for different strategies. But is there any evidence that this variance is discontinuous, or even bimodal? And is there evidence that the traits you mention are correlated with resource abundance?
If you’re right, we would expect to see more monogamy, planning and philosophy in poor societies, families and areas than in rich ones. That should be easy to get stats on, but I would guess that the relationship would be the opposite from a traditional biological perspective. People in poor environments expect shorter lives, and therefore it is adaptive to take more risks. Of course, if the data supports you, that just makes your idea even more interesting!
Note that cultural evolution in Europe & Asia is traditionally explained by the increase in resource availability that came with division of labor made possible by immigration into environments where tropical diseases couldn’t thrive, allowing large cities to be built (see Jared Diamond).
This paper on human mating strategies shows that mating strategies do change somewhat with resources. For example that there are polyandrous mating strategies in resource starved areas such as the himalayas, where one woman is shared by many brothers. This is a safe (Winter) strategy compared to a poor man trying to provide for one women and not having enough resources to. And polygynous strategies in societies where men can get the resources to keep many women. So these relationships are being regulated by what one or both of partners thinks they can get away with resource wise.
We are now in a stage where many women don’t need men to provide resources (or can make the state force the men to provide for the child while not being attached) and we are seeing a distinct breakdown in the (previously) traditional monogamy in developed countries.