Understanding human life history variation: sleep pattens, personality traits, relationship status, and hormones

Lecture by Dario Maestripieri, University of Chicago, USA

  • Date: 15 OCTOBER 2020  from 17:30 to 19:00

  • Event location: Sala Rossa, Palazzo Marchesini, via Marsala 26, Bologna - In presence and online event

  • Type: Lectures

Several lines of evidence suggest that eveningness is associated with traits that favor short-term mating such as higher extraversion, novelty-seeking, risk-taking, and short-term relationship orientation in both males and females. Night owl men also report a higher number of sexual partners than early-moning men, who instead, show personality and behavioral traits typically associated with slow life histories. Evidence also exists that autistic-like and schizotypal personality traits reflect opposite sides of a continuum of variation in personality and cognition that are best understood in reference to other slow and fast life history adaptations. Cortisol and testosterone may be some the physiological mechanisms underlying psychological and behavioral traits associated with slow and fast life histories. Both cortisol and testosterone levels differ between individuals who are single and in relationships, with cortisol being associated with some aspects of personality and stress, while men’s testosterone is more directly linked to variation in courtship activity and sexual promiscuity.

 

Dario Maestripieri

Full Professor of Comparative Human Development and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago.

He holds a Laurea in Biology and a Ph.D. in Psychobiology from the University of Rome La Sapienza. Dr. Maestripieri is a behavioral scientist interested in understanding human behavior and the human mind from a broad interdisciplinary perspective. Dr. Maestripieri is also interested in exploring and integrating the relative contributions of scientific and humanistic disciplines to the generation and transmission of new knowledge about human behavior and the human mind. Dr. Maestripieri has published 7 books and over 230 articles and book chapters. He has obtained more than $ 4 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Maestripieri was awarded the “B. Grassi Prize” from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association, and a Career Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health. He has been elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and Fellow of the Midwesten Psychological Association. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the jounal Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology published by Springer. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge (2014) and a resident Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center (2007) and at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University (2020).