Recently, I contacted Joseph Carroll about the theory of evolutionary literary criticism. Carroll sent me several of his papers that explore his own version of the theory. I have read a couple of his essays in the past, and I thought I ought to examine his theory more carefully, since he was kind enough to share his publications with me. In my recent book chapter, I mentioned that I support the ideas of William Flesch regarding evolutionary literary criticism, and Flesch is a critic of Carroll.
In the Carroll's essay entitled "Minds and Meaning in Fictional Narratives: An Evolutionary Perspective," I was immediately struck by the centrality of Life History Theory to Carroll's version of evolutionary literary criticism, or as he calls it, Literary Darwinism. I am not well versed in life history theory. Previously, I had obtained recent editions of the two major evolutionary psychology textbooks on the market: the better known textbook by David Buss and the British one by Workman and Reader. In a previous blog entry, I discussed the fact that, for Buss, status and dominance hierarchies are important to his framework for evolutionary psychology. He has an entire chapter on the topic, while Workman and Reader do not even have dominance in the index to their book. I prefer the framework presented by David Buss regarding status hierarchies.
I searched the two textbooks for life history theory. Workman and Reader have a significant section of their book devoted to it, while Buss only has a cursory discussion. Therefore, I studied the Workman and Reader treatment of life history theory, in order to prepare myself for my analysis of Carroll's version of evolutionary literary theory.
What I read there made me seriously question the life history theory. The basic idea behind life history theory is that organisms can change their behavior over the course of their lives depending on what is age-appropriate. Do I focus on feeding and growth, or do I focus on reproduction at this stage in my life? Life history can explain the fact that juvenile animals play, while adults do not. The theory is that juveniles are practicing skills in a safe environment which they will use later when they are adults and are playing for keeps.
Workman and Reader move from this foundation to discuss the fact that some species of animal, such as fish who spawn multitudes of small fry, follow a high-quantity and low-investment strategy of reproduction, while others, such as orcas, polar bears, and humans, follow a low-quantity and high-parental-investment strategy.
This distinction is combined with the Attachment Theory of John Bowlby. In the 1950s, Bowlby had developed a theory that some children are raised in an environment in which they are emotionally attached to their parents in a strong, healthy bond, while other children grow up poorly attached, which may lead them to become insecure. Personally, I detect some moral judgment in attachment theory, blaming the supposedly detached mother, or the lack of an at-home father, for the child's emotional problems.
Attachment theory has been combined with life history theory by Jay Belsky. Belsky hypothesizes that children who are emotionally well-connected to their parents are more trusting and are more likely to follow a low-quantity, high-parental-investment strategy when they begin raising their own children. Children who are raised in an insecure environment, such as with a "harsh" mother or an absent father, are more likely to follow a high-quantity, low-investment strategy of bearing children. Again, this feels very judgmental, providing scientific cover for a lack of broader social support for poor children in large families.
According to Workman and Reader, one hypothesis generated by this theory is that girls from homes with absent fathers reach puberty more quickly than girls from two-parent homes.
Now, here is the part that is causing me to seriously question the Life History Theory, though it is perhaps unfair to reject a larger theory because of short-comings with a smaller hypothesis. Workman and Reader say, on the one hand, that "the weight of the evidence currently supports the [early puberty] hypothesis" (148), but then they immediately present a study that seems to invalidate the hypothesis.
Workman and Reader admit that a major weakness in Belsky's theory of early puberty is to suppose that the phenomenon is caused by the environmental factors. Both the low parental investment and the earlier puberty by girls could be produced by an underlying genetic cause. Then they report on a study, by Mendle et al. (2006), where the daughters of identical twins were studied. The family of the one twin was disrupted while the family of the other twin was not. The data ... drum roll please ... show that "there was no difference in pubertal timing between the two groups" (149). This result strongly suggests that the simplistic model of Belsky's environmental causation is wrong.
In a subsequent study, Tither and Ellis (2008) tried to salvage Belsky's hypothesis by comparing daughters of different ages within the same disrupted families. They found that younger daughters, who may have had more time to internalize the stress of the disruption, reached puberty earlier than older sisters. The differences were significant but the effect sizes were very small (an average shift of only a few months).
To me, this research agenda looks weak, and it casts a shadow over the whole linkage of the attachment environment to reproductive strategy. From what I have read so far, I am unimpressed by life history theory. Based on a citation analysis in Google Scholar, it seems that life history theory is not main stream among psychologists in general or even among evolutionary psychologists in particular. Again, I prefer the approach found in David Buss's textbook. We will see where my investigation leads me next.
Citations:
Buss, David M. (2019). Evolutionary Psychology: the new science of the mind. 6/e. New York: Routledge.
Carroll, Joseph. (2018). "Minds and Meaning in Fictional Narratives: An Evolutionary Perspective." Review of General Psychology, 22 (2): 135–146.
Mendle, J., Turkheimer, E., et al. (2006). "Family Structure and Age at Menarche: A Children-of-twins Approach." Developmental Psychology, 42: 533-542.
Tither, J. M. and B. J. Ellis. (2008). "Impact of fathers on daughters' age of menarche: A genetically and environmentally controlled sibling study." Developmental Psychology, 44: 1409-1420.
Workman and Reader. Evolutionary Psychology: An Introduction. 4/e. Cambridge, 2021.
