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Selected Works of Liane Alampay
Article
Environmental harshness and unpredictability, life history, and social and academic behavior of adolescents in nine countries.
Psychology Department Faculty Publications
  • Lei Chang, University of Macau
  • Hui Jing Lu
  • Jennifer E Lansford, Duke University
  • Ann T Skinner, Duke University
  • Marc H Bornstein, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
  • Laurence Steinberg, Temple University
  • Kenneth A Dodge, Duke University
  • Bin-Bin Chen, Fudan University
  • Qian Tian
  • Dario Bacchini, Second University of Naples
  • Kirby Deater-Deckard, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  • Concetta Pastorelli, University of Rome La Sapienza
  • Liane Peña Alampay, Ateneo de Manila University
  • Emma Sorbring, University West
  • Suha M Al-Hassan, Hashemite University
  • Paul Oburu, Maseno University
  • Patrick S Malone, University of South Carolina
  • Laura Di Giunta, University of Rome La Sapienza
  • Liliana Maria Uribe Tirado, Universidad San Buenaventura
  • Sombat Tapanya, Chiang Mai University
Link
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2019
Disciplines
Abstract

Safety is essential for life. To survive, humans and other animals have developed sets of psychological and physiological adaptations known as life history (LH) tradeoff strategies in response to various safety constraints. Evolutionarily selected LH strategies in turn regulate development and behavior to optimize survival under prevailing safety conditions. The present study tested LH hypotheses concerning safety based on a 6-year longitudinal sample of 1,245 adolescents and their parents from 9 countries. The results revealed that, invariant across countries, environmental harshness, and unpredictability (lack of safety) was negatively associated with slow LH behavioral profile, measured 2 years later, and slow LH behavioral profile was negatively and positively associated with externalizing behavior and academic performance, respectively, as measured an additional 2 years later. These results support the evolutionary conception that human development responds to environmental safety cues through LH regulation of social and learning behaviors. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

Citation Information
Chang, L., Lu, H. J., Lansford, J. E., Skinner, A. T., Bornstein, M. H., Steinberg, L., Dodge, K. A., Chen, B. B., Tian, Q., Bacchini, D., Deater-Deckard, K., Pastorelli, C., Alampay, L. P., Sorbring, E., Al-Hassan, S. M., Oburu, P., Malone, P. S., Di Giunta, L., Tirado, L. M. U., & Tapanya, S. (2019). Environmental harshness and unpredictability, life history, and social and academic behavior of adolescents in nine countries. Developmental Psychology, 55(4), 890–903. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000655