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Extrinsic Mortality

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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science
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Synonyms

Extrinsic mortality; Extrinsic morbidity-mortality; Extrinsic risk; Nonsenescent-related mortality; Environmental harshness; Mortality risk; Perceived social threat; Extrinsic, age-independent environmental mortality; Extrinsic environmental hazards.

Definition

Extrinsic mortality is the age-specific risk of death caused by external forces that is equally shared by all members of a population (Quinlan 2007). Extrinsic mortality is determined by nonintrinsic environmental stressors that are not under individual control (e.g., war, nonlethal injuries, violence, and disease; Machluf and Bjorklund 2015). Organisms experiencing high extrinsic mortality are unable to reduce their mortality risk through increasing resource allocation to somatic maintenance, growth, or defense (Ellis et al. 2009; Placek and Quinlan 2012).

Introduction

Extrinsic mortality is commonly conflated with environmental harshness –environments producing greater possibility of death or disability (Ellis et...

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Correspondence to Sandeep Mishra .

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Wuth, A., Mishra, S. (2019). Extrinsic Mortality. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2365-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2365-1

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