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Definition
Pathogenic infections maim and kill. Often, other people are the source of these infections. It seems simple to avoid the costs of infection and then avoid those people carrying an infectious agent. But determining who is infected is difficult and uncertain. The permanence of this problem has led to the evolution of behaviors designed to avoid infection while maximizing reproductive success. The pathogen-stress theory is a body of ideas and findings about how humans solve this problem and the implications of this resolution for shaping human behavior and solving societal issues. This entry presents a few key findings that examine how managing pathogen stress has shaped human personality.
Introduction
Infectious diseases have been, and continue to be, important in shaping human evolution. Geneticists who study recent evolutionary changes in the human genome report that parasites account for more evolutionary action across the genome than other...
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References
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Fincher, C.L., Thornhill, R. (2017). Pathogen-Stress Theory. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1556-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1556-1
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