Center for Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology, University of Turin Turin, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2010 Aug 30;1:41. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00041. eCollection 2010.
In this paper we present a new hypothesis on the evolution of autistic-like and schizotypal personality traits. We argue that autistic-like and schizotypal traits contribute in opposite ways to individual differences in reproductive and mating strategies, and have been maintained - at least in part - by sexual selection through mate choice. Whereas positive schizotypy can be seen as a psychological phenotype oriented to high-mating effort and good genes displays in both sexes, autistic-like traits in their non-pathological form contribute to a male-typical strategy geared toward high parental investment, low-mating effort, and long-term resource allocation. At the evolutionary-genetic level, this sexual selection hypothesis is consistent with Crespi and Badcock's "imprinted brain" theory of autism and psychosis; the effect of offspring mating behavior on resource flow within the family connects sexual selection with genomic imprinting in the context of human biparental care. We conclude by presenting the results of an empirical study testing one of the predictions derived from our hypothesis. In a sample of 199 college students, autistic-like traits predicted lower interest in short-term mating, higher partner-specific investment, and stronger commitment to long-term romantic relations, whereas positive schizotypy showed the opposite pattern of effects.
本文提出了一个关于自闭症样和分裂型人格特质进化的新假设。我们认为，自闭症样和分裂型特质以相反的方式对生殖和交配策略的个体差异做出贡献，并通过性选择中的配偶选择得到了至少部分的维持。积极的分裂型特质可以被视为一种心理表型，倾向于高交配努力和两性中的良好基因表现，而非病理性的自闭症样特质则有助于男性典型的策略，即高亲代投资、低交配努力和长期资源分配。在进化遗传水平上，这个性选择假说与 Crespi 和 Badcock 的自闭症和精神病的“印记大脑”理论一致；后代交配行为对家庭内资源流动的影响将性选择与人类双亲照顾背景下的基因组印记联系起来。我们最后呈现了一项实证研究的结果，该研究检验了我们假设中的一个预测。在一个由 199 名大学生组成的样本中，自闭症样特质预测了对短期交配的兴趣较低，对特定伴侣的投资较高，对长期浪漫关系的承诺较强，而积极的分裂型特质则表现出相反的影响模式。
