Abstract

A central dilemma facing societies of all scales concerns the distribution of power, assets, access, and rights. Such material and political arrangements and the relationships they engender are so fundamental to the challenge of human sociality that the psychology for navigating them has deep evolutionary, developmental, and cross-cultural roots. I will present a stream of research exploring the extent to which preferences toward the distribution of resources in society are grounded in universal representations and motives concerning basic social relationships, whose manifestation is dependent on socio-ecological context. On this account, what socioeconomic arrangements are seen as just, in addition to what political institutions are needed to enact them, depend on whether, when, and how one views politics through the lenses of hierarchy, equality, communality, parochialism, or proportionality. I will first review published evidence from developmental and political psychology in support of this overall conceptual framework, before presenting data from nationally representative samples administered the Between-Groups Relational Orientations (BRO) scale, designed to measure the application of core relational preferences to societal resource distribution. Finally, I will consider how tapping this full set of core relational preferences expands the focus of evolutionary political psychology from the dominance concerns that preoccupy males, to consider exclusion concerns that may be particularly important to females.

Reference

Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington (London School of Economics), “Politics at the interface of culture and evolution”, IAST General Seminar, Toulouse: IAST, March 26, 2021, 11:30–12:30, room Zoom room.