Individuals living in either harsh or favorable environments display well-documented psychological and behavioral differences. For example, people in favorable environments tend to be more future-oriented, trust strangers more, and have more explorative preferences. To account for such differences, psychologists have turned to evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology, in particular, the literature on life-history theory and pace-of-life syndrome. However, critics have found that the theoretical foundations of these approaches are fragile and that differences in life expectancy cannot explain vast psychological and behavioral differences. In this article, we build on the theory of optimal resource allocation to propose an alternative framework. We hypothesize that the quantity of resources available, such as income, has downstream consequences on psychological traits, leading to the emergence of behavioral syndromes. We show that more resources lead to more long-term orientation, more tolerance of variance, and more investment in low marginal-benefit needs. At the behavioral level, this translates, among others, into more large-scale cooperation, more investment in health, and more exploration. These individual-level differences in behavior, in turn, account for cultural phenomena such as puritanism, authoritarianism, and innovation.

中文翻译：

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收入和财富对行为策略、人格特质和偏好的影响


生活在恶劣或有利环境中的个体表现出有据可查的心理和行为差异。例如，处于有利环境中的人往往更加面向未来，更加信任陌生人，并且具有更多探索性偏好。为了解释这些差异，心理学家转向了进化生物学和行为生态学，特别是有关生活史理论和生活节奏综合症的文献。然而，批评者发现这些方法的理论基础很脆弱，预期寿命的差异无法解释巨大的心理和行为差异。在本文中，我们基于最优资源分配理论提出了一个替代框架。我们假设可用资源的数量（例如收入）会对心理特征产生下游影响，导致行为综合症的出现。我们表明，更多的资源会导致更长期的导向、更大的方差容忍度以及对低边际效益需求的更多投资。在行为层面，这意味着更大规模的合作、更多的健康投资和更多的探索。这些个体层面的行为差异反过来又解释了清教主义、威权主义和创新等文化现象。