Life History Theory and Social Psychology

While occupying a relatively brief space in the history of scientific inquiry, many social psychologists have nonetheless recognized the need to integrate the field’s myriad findings into a coherent, meta-theoretical framework. Chester et al. (2012), consistent with the spirit of this movement, have answered this call by utilizing a Life History Theory (LHT) framework to understand the relationship between attachment bonds formed during early critical developmental periods and later reactions to social rejection experiences in adulthood. While attachment theory and social exclusion research are well-developed phenomena in their own right, the utilization of LHT clarifies how these areas of inquiry are interrelated. As the authors note, LHT has been successfully used across the biological sciences to explain how specific developmental periods require organisms to differentially allocate limited resources to navigate various aspects of survival and reproduction. At its core, LHT is a motivational framework, whereby motivational “states” are determined by the specific problems and opportunities associated with an organism’s current developmental stage and local ecology. In the current paper, Chester and colleagues provide a theoretical framework and supporting evidence indicating early life stages can critically influence, via calibration processes, responses in subsequent developmental periods. Consistent with the notion that evolution is incapable of forward-thinking, the authors argue that early social experiences provide the data that calibrates organisms’ systems for responding to their future social environments (see Figure 1). Specifically, children’s early attachment experiences calibrate their social pain system response, which partially determines the intensity of reactions to rejection experiences in adulthood. Although intense reactions to social rejection can be adaptive, specifically by helping an organism secure subsequent social belonging, the intensity of these responses is only beneficial provided social opportunity is actually available; otherwise, such chronic and intense responses to social rejection can negatively impact other vital systems (e.g., biological immune system). Whereas consistently unavailable attachment in childhood (avoidant attachment) communicates an environment in which social exclusion is likely to be normative, variable attachment opportunity in childhood (anxious attachment) indicates that social belonging opportunities will be unpredictable. Based on these early experiences, the authors provide evidence that avoidantly attached individuals show a blunted response to social rejection (reduced activation of dACC and insula), whereas anxiously attached individuals show a heightened response to social rejection. For avoidantly attached individuals, social resources have been consistently unavailable and calibration of the social pain system to respond intensely to social rejection would have numerous costs (e.g., suppression of immune system), with very few opportunities (social inclusion). Conversely, anxiously attached individuals, Life history theory and social psychology