(PDF) The pandemic exposes human nature: 10 evolutionary insights

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The pandemic exposes human nature: 10 evolutionary insights
Steven Pinker
2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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The pandemic exposes human nature: 10
evolutionary insights
Benjamin M. Seitza,1, Athena Aktipisb, David M. Bussc, Joe Alcockd, Paul Bloome, Michele Gelfandf,
Sam Harrisg, Debra Liebermanh, Barbara N. Horowitzi,j, Steven Pinkerk, David Sloan Wilsonl,
and Martie G. Haseltona,1

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Edited by Michael S. Gazzaniga, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, and approved September 16, 2020 (received for review
June 9, 2020)

Humans and viruses have been coevolving for millennia. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
(SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19) has been particularly successful in evading our evolved
defenses. The outcome has been tragic—across the globe, millions have been sickened and hundreds
of thousands have died. Moreover, the quarantine has radically changed the structure of our lives, with
devastating social and economic consequences that are likely to unfold for years. An evolutionary perspective can help us understand the progression and consequences of the pandemic. Here, a diverse
group of scientists, with expertise from evolutionary medicine to cultural evolution, provide insights about
the pandemic and its aftermath. At the most granular level, we consider how viruses might affect social
behavior, and how quarantine, ironically, could make us susceptible to other maladies, due to a lack of
microbial exposure. At the psychological level, we describe the ways in which the pandemic can affect
mating behavior, cooperation (or the lack thereof), and gender norms, and how we can use disgust to
better activate native “behavioral immunity” to combat disease spread. At the cultural level, we describe
shifting cultural norms and how we might harness them to better combat disease and the negative social
consequences of the pandemic. These insights can be used to craft solutions to problems produced by the
pandemic and to lay the groundwork for a scientific agenda to capture and understand what has become,
in effect, a worldwide social experiment.

COVID-19 evolution evolutionary medicine evolutionary psychology cultural evolution

“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light
of evolution” (1), and nothing about the human response to COVID-19 will either. The evolutionary
arms race between humans and viruses has existed
for millennia. Our bodies, packed with nutrients and
the machinery of cellular reproduction, are irresistible targets for exploitation by smaller and fasterevolving organisms (2). Whereas viruses benefit
from rapid replication rate and mutation potential,
allowing them to quickly adapt to exploit their hosts,
humans are not left defenseless. Natural selection

has endowed us with a complex physiological immune system (3) that targets viruses at a cellular
level and a behavioral immune system (4) that modulates human behavior to reduce the risk of contagion. Moreover, our ability to communicate and
develop vast repositories of information, paired with
intelligence and innate curiosity, allowed us to engineer extraordinary tools such as modern medicine.
And, we have developed cultural systems of coordination that can allow us to erect walls for limiting the
spread of disease.

Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095; bDepartment of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
85287; cDepartment of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712; dDepartment of Emergency Medicine, University of New
Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131; eDepartment of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520; fDepartment of Psychology, University of
Maryland, College Park, MD 20742; gMaking Sense Media, New York, NY 10022; hDepartment of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
33124; iDivision of Cardiology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095; jDepartment of Human
Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; kDepartment of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138;
and lDepartment of Biological Sciences, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY 13902
Author contributions: A.A. and J.A. provided Insight 1; B.N.H. provided Insight 2; D.L. provided Insight 3; D.M.B. provided Insight 4; M.G.H.
provided Insight 5; P.B. provided Insight 6; S.H. provided Insight 7; D.S.W. provided Insight 8; M.G. provided Insight 9; S.P. provided Insight 10;
A.A. and D.M.B. provided extensive suggestions and advice; and B.M.S. and M.G.H. organized the initiative and composed the Introduction and
concluding remarks. All authors contributed to writing and revising the manuscript. Whereas all authors agreed on the final manuscript, not every
author agrees on every point in the paper.
The authors declare no competing interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Published under the PNAS license.
To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email:
[email protected]
or
[email protected]
First published October 22, 2020.

www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2009787117

PNAS | November 10, 2020 | vol. 117 | no. 45 | 27767–27776

PERSPECTIVE

PERSPECTIVE

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An evolutionary perspective can help us understand the nature
of the virus, our own nature in responding to its threats, and the
interactions between these. Of course, no one theory can entirely
make sense of the complexity of the COVID-19 pandemic—a cascade of global events characterized by confusion as much as by
illness and death. But an evolutionary approach to the pandemic
provides a lens through which we can see which strategies a virus
might use, which strategies we possess, and which strategies we
need to acquire. The insights and research questions produced by
this evolutionary approach could provide essential knowledge
that could allow us to better cope with the ongoing pandemic
and its downstream consequences.
For instance, as we describe below, severe acute respiratory
syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) may be under evolutionary
pressures to alter human behavior by increasing our extraverted
tendencies—thereby creating a conduit for viral transmission from
one person to another. In this respect, our own social strategies,
the features that define much of what it is to be human, make us a
prime target for viral exploitation. Beyond the virus−host dynamics, understanding how evolution has shaped our social minds
gives us clues about how well-intentioned policies asking us to
isolate and distance will profoundly affect our families, work lives,
relationships, and gender roles. Finally, evolutionary principles
can be applied to understand how the spread and severity of
COVID-19 intersects with nationwide compassion (or lack
thereof) and societal norms.
We asked 10 evolutionary scientists, including evolutionary
medicine researchers, theoretical evolutionary biologists, and
evolutionary psychologists, to share their insights about the
evolutionary pressures on the virus, our human response to the
pandemic, and how an evolutionary approach can help us cope
with COVID-19. The sections that follow do not necessarily represent a consensus of all of the authors but rather a set of novel
perspectives and potential approaches—from neuron to nation—
that we believe should be on the forefront of the scientific
agenda.

Insight 1: The Virus Might Alter Host Sociability
All agents of infection are under evolutionary pressure to manipulate host physiology and behavior in ways that enhance their
survival and transmission to the next host. Physiologically, it is
clear that SARS-CoV-2 affects the human body in ways that enhance the evolutionary success of the virus, by hijacking cells to
create copies of itself. But, as we move from the physiological to
the behavioral, it becomes less clear whether SARS-CoV-2 hijacks
the neural machinery of hosts for its own ends, or whether its effects on host behavior and psychology might simply be byproducts of the viral infection or immune response. The approach we take in this section is uniquely evolutionary in that the
fitness interests of the virus take center stage in deriving hypotheses about the influence of SARS-CoV-2 on human physiology and behavior.
There are two possibilities for how SARS-CoV-2 might be altering human behavior. First, it may be suppressing feelings of
sickness during times of peak transmissibility. SARS-CoV-2 is
characterized by a high rate of viral shedding, and the peak of viral
shedding—and therefore transmissibility—occurs 1 d to 2 d before the onset of symptoms (5). It is possible that SARS-CoV-2 has
been particularly successful because it is highly infectious before
symptoms appear. Suppressing sickness-related behavior of hosts
is one way that viruses can increase their fitness. Hosts that are
infected but do not feel sick are more likely to go about their usual

27768 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2009787117

activities, which allows them to come in contact with others whom
they might infect. If they do not display symptoms of infection, the
human behavioral immune system fails to activate in others (see
Insight 3: Activating Disgust Can Help Combat Disease Spread),
silently spreading to new hosts.
The second possibility of how SARS-CoV-2 could affect host
behavior is by contributing to mood disorders, such as mania, that
could increase activity levels and decrease feelings of sickness, at
least temporarily, during times of peak transmissibility. This could
potentially lead to a “tug-of-war” over host behavior, with the
virus “pulling for” greater host activity and sociability and the host
fighting against this to reduce activity and instead prioritize
healing. If sometimes the virus is winning and other times the host
immune system is able to regain control, this could manifest as a
mood disorder with periods of high activity/sociability and depression/fatigue, respectively. There is a long history of case reports of mood disorders following infection with common
respiratory viruses, and research suggests that people with a
history of influenza and infection by previous strains of coronavirus
are more likely to have mood disorders (6). Other viruses have
been associated with mood disorders, including HIV (7), the 1918
influenza virus (8), and Borna disease virus (9), although causality is
impossible to establish with this evidence. One study administered the influenza vaccine as a proxy for infection and found a
significant change in social behavior—for the 48 h after receiving
the vaccine (during the time of peak transmissibility), people
interacted with others more (from 51 to 101 people) and in larger
groups (from 2.4 to 5.5) than in the 48 h before receiving it (10).
This study suggests exposure to viral antigens can have effects on
host social behavior and is consistent with what would be
expected if viruses alter host behavior to enhance viral
transmission.
Viruses, in general, and SARS viruses, in particular, are known
to interfere with the normal host immune response, which includes disrupting interferon (IFN) signaling (11). IFNs are molecules that help coordinate many aspects of the host’s response to
infection. Administration of IFN alpha (e.g., during treatment for
chronic hepatitis C) is associated with depressed mood and social
withdrawal (12), suggesting that inhibiting IFN signaling could be
a mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2 might alter social behavior. It
is also possible that SARS-CoV-2 might indirectly reduce IFN
levels through exhausting CD8 T cells (13) which typically manufacture IFN gamma. However, viral effects on the sociality of the
host could simply be a by-product of the virus interfering with host
antiviral immunity, rather than a viral adaptation to alter host
sociality.
No studies have yet looked at changes in social behavior with
exposure to SARS-CoV-2. However, there is ample evidence that
SARS-CoV-2 has neurological effects (14). SARS-CoV-2 seems to
have a predilection for infecting neural tissue and causing neurological symptoms, found in up to 36% of patients in initial reports (15). SARS-CoV-2 has been recovered in the spinal fluid of
COVID-19 patients (16), suggesting that the virus can directly invade the brain and nervous system.
SARS-CoV-2’s neural effects may be a result of evolutionary
adaptations of the virus itself, by-products of other effects of
the virus, or the host’s counterresponse to the virus. Possibly,
the host’s immune response to SARS-CoV-2 creates neuroinflammation that then influences host cognition and behavior in
ways that have nothing to do with enhancing the fitness of the
virus. However, if SARS-CoV-2 is manipulating host behavior for its
own benefit, this affects how we treat and manage it. Similarly, if

Seitz et al.

SARS-CoV-2 is affecting host social behavior, this would also affect epidemiological models, because contact rates change over
the course of disease progression (10). By understanding how
SARS-CoV-2 is evolving and having behavioral and psychological
effects on us that enhance its transmission, we will be better able
to shape its evolutionary trajectory so it becomes less harmful and
less lethal.
Scientific Agenda. Along with physiological symptoms, catalog
neurological, psychological, and behavioral symptoms of COVID19, and create a repository of associated biological samples.
Identify whether certain suites of symptoms are associated with
particular genetic variants of SARS-CoV-2, and whether natural
selection is favoring variants that are associated with more
neurological symptoms.

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Insight 2: “Generation Quarantine” May Lack Critical
Microbial Exposures
The pandemic has focused the world’s attention on microbial influences on human life. Whereas the emphasis has been on the
SARS-CoV-2 virus, quarantine has temporarily halted the regular
exposure to novel pathogens that is characteristic of human social
interaction. An evolutionary perspective reminds us we must
consider the potential trade-offs of this intervention. Children and
adolescents whose immune systems and brains are actively shaped by microbial exposures may be most impacted by this
change. For some, decreased exposure to novel microbes will be
beneficial. Viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, that cross the blood–
brain barrier can cause neuroinflammation (17) or encephalitis
(18); pathogenic exposures during critical neurodevelopmental
windows have been linked to neurological impairment and
disorders, including schizophrenia (19) and autism spectrum
disorder (20).
Although reduced exposure to neuropathic viruses during
quarantine may protect some, normal brain development requires
adequate and diverse microbial exposure. During development,
communication between the gut microbiota of a young animal
and the microglial brain cells that shape networks through myelinization and selective synaptic pruning influence its future cognitive, motor, and affective characteristics (17). Young animals
experimentally deprived of normal microbiota develop into adults
with altered cognition and anxiety (21), and an irregular host
microbiome is implicated in developing some neurodegenerative
diseases (22).
The adaptive benefits of microbe exposures on developing
brains and immune systems may include enhanced coordination
between protective behaviors and immunologic responses. Adolescence prepares animals for a range of dangers they may encounter in adulthood, including exposure to new pathogens.
Predispersal exposures to microbes prime developing immune
systems for anticipated novel microbial threats. This is why adolescents leaving for college receive vaccinations to prime their
immune systems for pathogens they may encounter for the first
time. Similarly, the immune systems of adolescent animals are
primed by low-level exposures to microbes from the outside
world through brief forays, practice dispersals, into the outside
world, including play with conspecifics and other social activities
(23, 24). But the risk-taking, neophilia, and drive to be sexual and
socialize that characterize adolescence and promote dispersal are
influenced by microbiota now fundamentally altered for many
millions of adolescents around the world. COVID-19 has temporarily ended practice dispersals, physical peer-to-peer play, sexual

Seitz et al.

activity, and other activities which would otherwise bring millions
of adolescents into contact with novel microbes.
Although there may be fewer cases of virally induced neuropathology, such policies will also result in a generation whose
neurodevelopment will have been influenced disproportionally
more by the microbial environment of their natal family in quarantine than by the outside world. The impact that reduced exposure to the microbial outside world will have on “generation
quarantine” will likely vary based on duration of quarantine and an
individual’s developmental stage—but is otherwise unknown.
Following the neurodevelopmental consequences of quarantine
will add to our understanding of how microbial environments
shape young individuals into the adults they ultimately become.
Scientific Agenda. Conduct comparative analyses of gut microbiota of quarantined and postquarantined infants, children, and
adolescents from a range of countries with variation in duration of
mandatory quarantine. Assess the impact of microbiota on measures of neurodevelopment, cognition, and affective states.

Insight 3: Activating Disgust Can Help Combat Disease
Spread
Disgust is a physical and social protective system that is a product
of, and sheds light on, our evolutionary past. Disgust protects
across three domains, all of which relate to pathogen exposure
(25, 26). First, disgust is part of our food psychology and motivates
avoidance of foods harboring, for instance, signs of toxins and
microorganisms. Second, disgust is part of our sexual psychology
and motivates avoidance of sexual partners (e.g., family members)
judged to potentially risk the immunocompetence and, hence,
health and viability of offspring. Last, and most pertinent, disgust
is part of our physical contact psychology and motivates avoidance of individuals displaying signs of infection, surfaces revealing
microbial infestation, and the skin, mouth, anus, and bodily fluids
of unknown others. Together, consumption, coitus, and contact
are all behaviors regulated by disgust and—because of the link to
disease—all associated with one or more historical foodborne,
sexually transmitted, or contact-facilitated pandemics.
Motivations to physically distance and to cleanse after contact
with potentially contaminated surfaces are native to the contact
disgust system but are strongest when there are clear signs of
disease—blood, guts, bodily fluids, yellow eyes, pale skin, lesions,
or a runny nose. In the COVID-19 pandemic, this is not what most
people see. Family, friends, coworkers, and strangers look
healthy—as they can be asymptomatic for days, not knowing they
are infected (27). Without ecologically valid cues to infection, the
contact avoidance function of disgust remains idle, posing an
acute challenge to lawmakers enacting rules enforcing distancing.
Given that valued relationships are often marked by gentle
physical contact (e.g., hugs, handshakes, kisses), it is difficult to
dissuade people from reaffirming their “close relationships,” especially during a time when such relationships are sorely needed.
Disgust might therefore be important, although sometimes less
potent than other emotions, such as empathy, to persuade people
to distance.
One way to improve the public’s response to the next pandemic would be to appeal to several emotions and include information successful in triggering our ancient psychology of
disease avoidance. In addition to statistics and the fear and anxiety they might evoke, images of individuals who are ill and display signs of sickness or images that clearly show pathogens on
common surfaces might activate the disgust system and further

PNAS | November 10, 2020 | vol. 117 | no. 45 | 27769

motivate adherence to mitigation guidelines (28). There are
drawbacks to this approach too; vile disease images could be
potentially traumatic, and personal disgust can influence moral
sentiments in nefarious ways (26). Ultimately, the decision to distance will reside with the individual, so the more tactics we can use
to motivate this behavior, the better, and disgust—along with fear
and empathy—is an important emotion in this effort.
Scientific Agenda. Compare efficacy of disgust-eliciting messaging versus non−disgust-eliciting messaging on public health
behaviors, such as handwashing, wearing masks, and maintaining
safe distances. Gauge public opinion on the acceptability of using
disgust-eliciting messaging directed at children versus adults.

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Insight 4: The Mating Landscape Is Changing, and There
Will Be Economic Consequences from a Decrease in Birth
Rates
Differential reproduction is the key to change over time. Humans
have an evolved menu of mating strategies as products of successful reproduction, including long-term pair bonds, short-term
casual sex, and everything in between (29). The COVID-19 pandemic is influencing these mating strategies and will have a profound impact on the global mating and economic landscape.
Short-term mating is the most obvious strategy to be affected.
Novel sex partners are potential virus vectors, rendering the costs
of casual sex steeper. In-person sex is being replaced, perhaps
temporarily, with online versions—sexting, video cams, and virtual
sex. For those who risk in-person sex, the use of condoms, although effective against many sexually transmitted infections, will
not prevent contracting COVID-19, since transmission can occur
through contact with an infected person’s mouth, nose, skin, or
breath. An evolutionary perspective predicts that those who
pursue a fast life history strategy—marked by short-term mating
pursuit, frequent partner switching, deceptive mating tactics, and
steep future discounting (30)—are most likely to risk in-person sex
during the pandemic and become potential superspreaders.
Although the pandemic-related costs of short-term mating
should make a long-term pair-bonding strategy more attractive,
the pandemic also temporarily shrinks the market for long-term
partners. Singles in search of a commitment must settle for online
preliminaries or dating at a safe social distance. Touch and scent
are central to mating compatibility (31), but distance deprives
individuals of this vital information. Mating at a distance exacerbates the tendency of people to interpolate positive values for
qualities for which they lack reliable information, such as honesty,
emotional stability, and sexual history. This overidealization creates unrealistic expectations that risk being shattered when an
eventual meeting takes place in real life. Unless virus test certificates become common, romantic consummation will be delayed
for all but the medically uninformed and the high risk-takers—trends
that may, in turn, bias birth outcomes.
The economic recession brought on by the global pandemic
could bring about dramatic changes to long-term mating opportunities and reproductive outcomes. An evolutionary perspective predicts that women will be reluctant to commit to men
lacking financial stability, given the priority they place on this
quality in long-term mating (32). It also predicts that men, in turn,
will postpone marriage until they feel they have adequate resources to attract women of adequate or commensurate mate
value (33). As marriage rates plummet and people postpone reproduction, at least for a period of time (34), some nations already
on the cusp of population replacement level will fall dangerously

27770 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2009787117

below it as people opt to avoid bringing a baby into a virusplagued world. Birth-rate drops, in turn, have cascading consequences for economic outcomes—job opportunities, the ability of
countries to provide safety nets to an aging demographic, and a
global economic contraction.
Scientific Agenda. Use data from dating apps, sexually transmitted infection rates, and surveys to understand shifts in mating
behaviors as waves of outbreak, lockdowns, and economic
downturns occur. Monitor birth-rate change in populations with
birth rates at or below replacement level. Investigate associations
between people’s decisions to remain single or to delay having
children with fears about the pandemic and dissatisfaction with
mating options due to resource loss and other factors.

Insight 5: Gender Norms Are Backsliding, and Gender
Inequality Is Increasing
With schools shut down, families have unanticipated needs for
childcare. Who is picking up this slack? In April of 2020, women
lost more jobs than men, in part because more women than men
are employed in hospitality and service industries that lost customers. However, at that same time, women more than men felt
more pressured to quit their jobs in order to manage added
household responsibilities of childcare and education, and worried more that declines in their productivity during the pandemic
would negatively impact their careers (35). Before the pandemic,
women already felt more stressed than men by competing family
and job roles (36). With children at home, that stress seems to lead
women to become homemakers and makeshift teachers.
Gendered work trends have a quantitative signature in academia. In medicine and Earth sciences, a declining proportion of
women posted preprints in March and April of 2020 compared
with the same months in 2019 (37). In medicine, compared to
submission rates in 2019, proportionately fewer women have
submitted papers about COVID-19 (38). This is happening at a
time when men are showing heightened productivity (37).
The default explanation in social science is to blame outdated
gender stereotypes and lack of empowerment for women (39).
However, women’s and men’s evolved preferences play an important role. One of the insights from evolutionary approaches
to understanding sex differences is that women are far more
limited in the number of offspring they can produce in their
lifetimes than are men (40), and women, like females across
primate species, have evolved to contribute a higher level of
obligatory investment in each offspring through pregnancy and
lactation (41). Therefore, throughout evolutionary history, a
woman’s reproductive fitness hinged on the success of each
individual offspring to a greater extent than a man’s. As a result
(or in concert), women evolved stronger motivations to attend to
the details of childcare and may feel pressured to accept more
childcare and homemaking responsibility when others, such as
teachers and childcare workers—or extended kin, who might
otherwise help out—cannot.
Evolutionary reasoning predicts women will leave the workplace or sacrifice their productivity more than men will. This could
result in a large-scale backslide toward “traditional” gender
norms. With the loss of their own economic autonomy, many
women will come to rely on male partners as breadwinners, exacerbating the structural problems underlying gender inequality.
This may shift families toward traditional structures and conceptions of gender—a shift toward social conservatism, which might

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have consequences for attitudes about premarital and extramarital sex (42).
Women and men in traditional families prefer norms that activate moral judgments that can insulate those family structures,
including negative attitudes about promiscuity (43). A consequence of the pandemic, therefore, could be a reduction in tolerance across a range of issues, including nonmonogamous
mating arrangements, legal abortion, and rights for sexual
minorities—who violate traditional gender roles and are also
stereotyped as promiscuous (44).
The looming recession will increase competition among
women for access to desirable mates (see Insight 4: The Mating
Landscape Is Changing, and There Will Be Economic Consequences from a Decrease in Birth Rates). There will also be greater
competition among men as they strive to secure increasingly rare
positions of status and wealth. These changes could contribute to
gender norms that emphasize attractiveness for women and status
competition for men. For instance, in cities and nations with
greater economic inequality, women self-sexualize more in social
media posts (45). For men, economic inequality at both the crosscultural level and neighborhood level is associated with increased
rates of male-on-male homicide, which seems to be driven by
men’s concerns with social status rather than a purely instrumental
need to survive (46). Participants in a US online survey completed
in January 2020 (prior to the US outbreak) and then later in March/
April 2020 showed modest shifts upward in traditional gender
stereotypes and endorsement of traditional gender roles (47),
consistent with gender norms changing in response to COVID-19.
Collectively, these forces produced by the pandemic are likely
to lead to a backslide in economic independence for women.
Nonetheless, it is possible that the pandemic might have some
positive effects on gender equality. The acceptability of remote
work could allow women to continue working when previously
they would have left the workforce to care for young children.
Moreover, if more mothers and fathers are at home during work
hours, uneven housework could become more obvious and fixable. Whether the pandemic is beneficial or harmful for men and
women remains unknown—but evolutionary thinking provides
important insight into where to look and what questions to ask.
Scientific Agenda. Track and compare shifts in women’s and
men’s workforce participation and their link to increased childcare
pressure. Examine whether changes in income inequality increase
gendered tactics of competition that reinforce traditional gender
roles, which further predict reductions in women’s workforce
participation. Investigate how support for new childcare needs
could lessen gendered productivity declines and endorsement of
traditional gender norms.

Insight 6: An Increase in Empathy and Compassion Is Not
Guaranteed
There is anecdotal evidence that, in previous crises, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and terrorist attacks, the common
reaction—contrary to popular belief—is not a descent into savagery. Rather, in cases such as Hurricane Katrina and the London
Blitz, there is an outpouring of solidarity and mutual aid (48).
Barriers of class and race are temporarily suspended, and the
benefit of the collective becomes priority (49).
With respect to the current crisis, some psychologists are optimistic (e.g., ref. 50), seeing an outburst of prosocial and altruistic
behavior—“catastrophe compassion,” as one scholar puts it (51).
Among other considerations, the adoption of social distancing

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practices by billions of individuals is interpreted as “perhaps the
most populous act of cooperation in history” (51). This interpretation is said to be supported by recent studies suggesting that
the motivation to engage in these practices is increased by appeals to public health, more so than appeals to personal health
(52), and increased, as well, by empathy inductions (53).
This is all consistent with a Rousseauian perspective: Human
nature is fundamentally kind, and, stripped of the constraints of
civilization, we are more equal, more generous, and mentally
healthier. But there are also reasons to favor a less rosy view.
Research on the behavioral immune system suggests that disease
threat makes people intolerant and punitive toward outgroups
(54). Nations with a history of high levels of infectious disease have
lower rates of extraversion (55), and experimentally inducing disease threat spurs social withdrawal (56).
Moreover, it’s unclear whether behaviors such as social distancing actually do reflect cooperative motives, as opposed to
concerns about oneself, concerns about close family members,
and worries about social shaming and legal sanctions. None of the
studies cited as supporting altruistic motives look at actual social
distancing; instead (for obvious practical reasons), they look at
people’s expressed willingness to engage in social distancing,
and hence the findings can be readily explained by a social
desirability bias.
In fact, there is no evidence, to our knowledge, for any overall
increase in kindness, empathy, and compassion right now relative
to nonpandemic times. One study, specifically designed to explore this issue, does find that people claim to experience more
interdependence with neighbors and humanity now than in prepandemic times—but also finds that they are less likely to agree
that helping someone in need “is the right thing to do” (57).
Furthermore, at least in the United States—although less so in
countries such as Canada—this pandemic is not bringing people
together; rather, responses reflect the partisan divide that so
characterizes recent times, with conservatives and liberals having
different views about wearing masks, the wisdom of a continuing
lockdown, and much else.
Finally, the analogy with previous disasters might not be apt.
We are not sifting through rubble to rescue those trapped in fallen
buildings; we are not crammed into the London underground at
midnight, tending the injured while the Luftwaffe drops bombs
from above. We are in isolation. Quarantine exerts a serious
psychological cost (58), and, as social animals, the benefits of
shared experience and mutual suffering may not hold when we
are, for the most part, alone. Or perhaps this is too grim an assessment; perhaps Zoom and social media are sufficient to evoke
in us feelings of warmth and solidarity. The most prudent conclusion here, given the lack of consistent evidence, is to admit that
we don’t yet know—but we should find out.
Scientific Agenda. Track changes in prosociality, empathy, and
xenophobia over the course of the pandemic and how they interact with perceived disease threat. Compare these attitudes to
before the pandemic and to past nondisease tragedies. Document and investigate cross-country variability in these patterns
(see Insight 9: Cultural Evolutionary Forces Impact COVID-19
Severity).

Insight 7: We Have Not Evolved to Seek the Truth
Humans evolved in small groups under threat of starvation, predation, and exploitation by outsiders—and generally lived brief
lives, favoring short-term strategies for consuming resources that

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could support successful reproduction (59). We have not evolved
to think clearly about long-term threats like pandemics—which
are statistically abstract and global. And yet, for at least a century,
we’ve understood that the threat of a deadly pandemic is real and
ever present (60). How should we have responded to this
knowledge?
We should have prepared for the next pandemic in advance.
But, to do this, we would have had to feel the need to
prepare—and been willing to incur actual costs in the face of what
could have seemed, in the absence of dead and dying people,
like nothing more than morbid speculation.
Unfortunately, most of us are terrible at weighing risks presented as abstract probabilities (61). We also heavily discount the
well-being of our future selves (62), along with that of distant
strangers (63) and future generations (64), and in ways that are
both psychologically strange and, in a modern environment,
ethically indefensible. We’re highly susceptible to conspiracy
thinking (65), and display an impressive capacity to deceive ourselves, before doing the hard work of deceiving others (66).
These predispositions likely endowed our ancestors with advantages (67, 68), but they also suggest that our species is not wired
for seeking a precise understanding of the world as it actually is.
Thus, our conversation about most things tends to be a tissue
of false certainties and unhedged bets. We look for evidence to
support our current beliefs, while ignoring the rest (69). When we
encounter friends or family in thrall to some fresh piece of misinformation, we often lack the courage to correct them. Meanwhile,
behind a screen of anonymity, we eagerly confront the views of
complete strangers online. Paradoxically, the former circumstance
presents an opportunity to actually change opinion, while the
latter is more likely to further entrench people in their misinformed
views (70). Although these predispositions did not cause
SARS-CoV-2 to first enter the human population, they are, at least
in part, responsible for the pandemic that ensued.
Scientific Agenda. Evaluate methods to combat shortcomings in
reasoning due to mismatches between the demands of the ancestral past and the present, conspiracy thinking, and the spread
of misinformation, both in face-to-face communication and on
social networks, particularly as they relate to the pandemic and
health-relevant information.

Insight 8: Combating the Pandemic Requires Its Own
Evolutionary Process
Some of the insights above point to flaws in our human nature that
contributed to the pandemic and may make navigating it more
difficult. But humans are paradoxical creatures. On one hand, we
are products of genetic evolution in ancestral environments that
bear little resemblance to modern environments. These “evolutionary mismatches” are likely responsible for our frequent lack of
alarm in response to the pandemic. On the other hand, we constructed those modern environments, so our capacity for rapid
cultural evolution—via behaviors, values, and technologies—must
be acknowledged along with our genetic human natures.
This duality is captured by the label dual inheritance theory,
which posits both a genetic stream and a cultural stream of inheritance that have been coevolving with each other for as long as
we have been a species (71). The slower process of genetic evolution often follows where the faster process of cultural evolution
leads, as we know from classic examples such as lactose tolerance
in adults (a genetic adaptation) in cultures that keep livestock (a
cultural adaptation) (72).

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How can we use our knowledge of dual inheritance theory to
make cultural evolution take place faster and at a larger scale than
ever before—even so fast that it can keep pace with the genetic
evolution of the virus? One way is to focus on the three ingredients that define a Darwinian process—selection, variation, and
replication—and manage them at a systemic scale. In other words,
we must identify a systemic target of selection (such as reducing
transmission of the virus), orient variation around the target (including monitoring unplanned variation and controlled experiments), and identify and replicate best practices. Cultivating
cultural evolution in this manner must be done realizing that such
practices are likely to be sensitive to context, requiring adaptive
adjustments at a finer scale (73), and that measuring efficacy will
be difficult and not entirely objective.
Cultural evolution must be well monitored; otherwise, it will
still take place but will result in outcomes that contribute to
problems rather than solutions (e.g., conspiracy thinking and
distrust of health experts). A key insight of evolutionary thinking is
that—in contrast to the metaphor of the invisible hand—the
pursuit of lower-level interests, such as short-term individual,
corporate, partisan, or nationalistic interests, is far more likely to
undermine than contribute to the global common good (74).
Human cooperation in all its forms requires identifying the most
relevant group, establishing norms that define the welfare of the
group, and establishing mechanisms that reward good behavior
and punish bad behavior. For the first time in history, we have the
technological means to function as a global village of nations, but
this requires scaling up the same mechanisms that make cooperation possible at all levels. The challenges of scaling up might
be daunting, but the first step is to establish the theoretical
necessity of doing so.
While it is new to describe it in formal evolutionary terms,
managed cultural evolution with systemic goals in mind has taken
place at subglobal scales throughout history and in the present,
providing many positive examples to learn from. For instance,
some of the best change methods in the corporate world employ
rapid cycles of variation, selection, and replication with various
production goals in mind (75). The same methods can be applied
to a global pandemic and other global challenges by becoming
more expansive about the production goals.
Scientific Agenda. Treat differences in nation/state responses to
COVID-19 as natural experiments in evolutionary processes by
documenting different phylogenies of responses, measuring the
efficacy of each, and then replicating successful approaches in
necessary areas and future pandemics.

Insight 9: Cultural Evolutionary Forces Impact COVID-19
Severity
Evolutionary principles can be applied to understand cultural
adaptations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Human groups under collective threat experience evolutionary pressures to tighten
social norms and punish people who deviate from norms. Accordingly, we can predict that societies worldwide will tighten in
response to the pandemic. From an evolutionary perspective,
strict norms and punishments that deter free riders are essential to
helping groups coordinate their social action to survive, and thus
would be adaptive in times of threat. Consistent with this reasoning, nations with histories of ecological and human-made
threats (e.g., natural disasters, disease prevalence, resource
scarcity, and invasions) tend to be tight (i.e., have stricter norms
and little tolerance for deviance), whereas groups with less threat

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tend to be loose (i.e., have weaker norms and more permissiveness) (76). Variation in tightness in nonindustrial societies is also
related to collective threats such as pathogen prevalence, population pressure, scarcity, and warfare (77).
Evolutionary game-theoretic (EGT) models also confirm that
differences in normative tightness evolve as a cultural adaptation
to threat. These models of cultural dynamics are useful for understanding how human behaviors evolve over time, with the aim
of illuminating evolutionary stable states. With respect to culture,
a stable state represents the behavioral norms that are adaptive
and can be expected to remain in the population under certain
conditions. EGT models show that, as societal threats increase,
agents who abided by cooperative norms and punished others for
deviating thrived and had an advantage over agents that did not
adhere to and enforce norms (78). Technically speaking, as threat
increases, agents operate in a space of lower payoffs, which increases the selection pressure they face to engage in coordinated
and cooperative interactions. Accordingly, groups require stronger norms and punishment of deviance to survive under high
threat (78). Indeed, experimentally priming humans with collective
threat leads to an increase in desired tightness—either from God
or government (79, 80).
While tightening is an evolutionary adaptation to threat, potential “evolutionary mismatches” may interfere with this evolved
response, with tragic consequences, as we have seen in the
spread of COVID-19 in certain nations. For instance, because
environmental changes like COVID-19 can occur very rapidly—
but evolution is a gradual process—there are, inevitably, periods
when populations need to “catch up,” often with deleterious
consequences.
The varying reactions of nations around the world to early
stages of the pandemic reveal potential evolutionary mismatches,
wherein some loose societies have had a delayed and often
conflicted reaction to tightening norms. Countries that are tight
(e.g., South Korea, Japan, China) have been highly effective at
limiting COVID-19 cases and deaths (81). By contrast, loose cultures (e.g., Spain, Brazil, and the United States) have had an explosion of cases and deaths in early stages. EGT models also
illustrate that loose cultures take far longer to cooperate when
under threat than tight cultures (82). Because people in loose
cultures have generally experienced fewer ecological threats,
they may be more likely to underestimate the risk of COVID-19
than those in tight cultures. Likewise, because loose cultures prioritize freedom over rules, they may experience psychological
reactance when tightening is required. The situation is compounded when governmental leaders minimize threat signals.
Thus artificially diminishing the intensity of the threat can reduce
the tightening response, which reinforces the evolutionary mismatch. Research is sorely needed on how to prevent such mismatches and increase norm-abiding behaviors during future
waves of the pandemic and future collective threats.
Tight−loose theory also makes predictions about other societal dynamics that may occur as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Research has shown that, as groups tighten to deal with
coordination needs, they also experience a number of trade-offs
associated with order versus openness. Tightness is associated
with more monitoring, synchrony, and self-control, which is critical
for coordinating in the face of threat (83). Yet tightness is also
associated with higher ethnocentrism and lower tolerance of
people from stigmatized groups (80), as well as lower creativity
(84). Finding ways to maximize both openness and order—that is,

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to be “culturally ambidextrous”—is a key challenge for human
societies now and in the future.
Scientific Agenda. Assess changes in nation/community tightness−looseness before and after pandemic as a function of disease severity. Determine how cultures can quickly (and possibly
temporarily) adopt tight norms in the face of fast-acting threats
and avoid potential mismatches that occur in the absence of
sufficiently strong cues of disease (see Insight 3: Activating Disgust Can Help Combat Disease Spread).

Insight 10: Human Progress Continues
Evolutionary reasoning makes several predictions about the future
humans will face in the wake of the pandemic––from shifts away
from economic independence for women to birth rates dipping
below thresholds needed to maintain some human populations.
These are some depressing possibilities that invite a conclusion
that humanity is spiraling downward to a new low point. Those
who deny the possibility of social progress might feel vindicated
by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, because it shows that life has
gotten worse rather than better. But has it?
Many people have trouble reconciling the demonstrable fact
of human progress—that, over time, we have become healthier,
better fed, richer, safer, and better educated—with the constraints of human biology. Some fear that, if the mind has evolved
as a complex structure, then progress would be impossible, because “you can’t change human nature.” Therefore, either there
cannot be such a thing as progress or there cannot be such a thing
as human nature.
But these are confusions which arise from misconceptions of
human nature and of human progress (85, 86). Among the adaptations making up human nature is the triad of faculties that
adapt us to the “cognitive niche” (87): know-how, which allows us
to understand the physical world and try out new ways to manipulate it to our advantage; language, which allows us to share
and recombine these ideas; and sociality, which gives us the
motive to coordinate ideas and actions with our fellows for mutual
benefit. Among the brainchildren of these faculties are inventions
that magnify their own power, including the printed and electronic word and institutions of science and governance, which
allow knowledge to accumulate over generations. When people
deploy knowledge to improve their lives, retaining and combining
the innovations that work and discarding those that don’t,
progress can take place.
That’s all that progress consists of. It is not, contrary to conceptions of Herbert Spencer and other Victorians (88, 89), a
mystical evolutionary force that propels us ever upward. On the
contrary, the forces of nature tend to grind us down, including the
inexorable increase in physical disorder and the evolutionary
conflicts between parasites and hosts, predators and prey, and
conspecifics and one another. It’s only the application of hardwon knowledge that allows us to eke out local and provisional
advances against the constant challenges to our well-being.
Among these challenges are outbreaks of infectious disease.
Bouts of outbreak over millennia were the selective pressure that
led to the evolution of our innate, adaptive, and behavioral
immune systems.
Yet it was our cognitive adaptations that led to the recent
conquest of the infectious diseases that felled our ancestors in
great numbers. They allowed us to discover vaccination, sanitation, antisepsis, antibiotics, antivirals, and other advances in

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public health and medicine that have dramatically extended life
expectancy.
So it should come as no surprise, and is no refutation of the fact
or the possibility of progress, that another infectious pathogen has
launched an offensive against us; that is in the very nature of life.
Yet the biology of Homo sapiens gives us good reasons to expect
that the disease will be subdued in its turn—not as an inevitable
step in some march of progress, but if (and only if) we redouble
the commitment, which human evolution enables but does not
guarantee, to the development and application of scientific
knowledge to improve human well-being.
Scientific Agenda. Identify the social norms, common beliefs,
reigning ideologies, and sociological and political institutions
across countries and historical periods that foster the discovery
and application of scientific knowledge to solve perennial
human problems.

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Conclusion
COVID-19 has brought radical change, through deaths, stress of
extended quarantine, confusion that slowed adequate responding, social unrest at a massive scale, and a long and uncertain
social and economic aftermath. This radical change is global—no
human, anywhere, is unaffected by COVID-19.
To understand the virus and our response to it, we need to
understand how viruses and humans evolve. We know that there is
a long history of the coevolution of viruses and humans. Viruses
evolve to exploit their hosts to encourage their own replication,
but they also depend on hosts to survive. Humans can tolerate
some manipulation by viruses, but we have also evolved to
combat them. This delicate coevolutionary dance is why we often
seem to be running as fast as we can, just to stay in the same
place (90).

However, humans also possess the tool of scientific insight that
gives us a broader view than what the virus can see. Perhaps this
can help us stay one step ahead. By understanding the nature of
viral strategies, we can better anticipate the spread of COVID-19
and try to block it. Likewise, by understanding human nature, we
can try to activate evolved motivational systems that will help fight
the virus, such as providing cues that trigger our behavioral immune system. Understanding human nature will also enhance our
ability to address the aftermath of COVID-19, as it has disrupted
so many of our fundamental human activities, such as mating,
parenting, and simply maintaining social contact.
Herein, we have described 10 insights offered by a broad
range of evolutionary thinkers, with expertise ranging from evolutionary medicine to broadscale cultural evolution. These insights
offer possibilities for guiding science to address the spread of
COVID-19 and its inevitable aftermath. However, these insights
represent only a limited snapshot of this historic moment, and a
selection of topics, although important, that an evolutionary
perspective on the pandemic can provide.
The objective in providing these insights is to help make sense
of the vast confusion that mars this pandemic and to illuminate
paths for research. In addition to insights that can produce immediate action, the pandemic has provided us with unique opportunities to witness human nature as it unfolds, from changes in
patterns of reproduction, shifting social norms, and curiosities of
cognition that can warp our recognition of threat. This paper is a
call to action in science—both in the application of existing
knowledge about viral and human nature and also as an opportunity to make discoveries that would not be possible except
when a global social experiment is underway.

Data Availability.
There are no data underlying this work.

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44 D. Pinsof, M. Haselton, The political divide over same-sex marriage: Mating strategies in conflict? Psychol. Sci. 27, 435–442 (2016).
45 K. R. Blake, B. Bastian, T. F. Denson, P. Grosjean, R. C. Brooks, Income inequality not gender inequality positively covaries with female sexualization on social
media. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 115, 8722–8727 (2018).
46 M. Daly, M. Wilson, S. Vasdev, Income inequality and homicide rates in Canada and the United States. Can. J. Criminol. 43, 219–236 (2001).
47 D. L. Rosenfeld, A. J. Tomiyama, Can a pandemic make people more socially conservative? Longitudinal Evidence from COVID-19. PsyArXiv:10.31234/osf.io/
zg7s4 (22 April 2020).
48 R. Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster (Penguin, 2010).
49 C. Fritz, Disasters and Mental Health: Therapeutic Principles Drawn from Disaster Studies (University of Delaware, 1996).
50 J. J. Van Bavel et al., Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response. Nat. Hum. Behav. 4, 460–471 (2020).
51 J. Zaki, Catastrophe compassion: Understanding and extending prosociality under crisis. Trends Cogn. Sci. 24, 587–589 (2020).
52 J. Jordan, E. Yoeli, D. Rand, Don’t get it or don’t spread it? Comparing self-interested versus prosocially framed COVID-19 prevention messaging. PsyArXiv:
10.31234/osf.io/yuq7x (3 April 2020).
53 S. Pfattheicher, L. Nockur, R. Böhm, C. Sassenrath, M. B. Petersen, The emotional path to action: Empathy promotes physical distancing during the COVID-19
pandemic. Psychol. Sci., 10.1177/0956797620964422 (2020).
54 M. Schaller, S. L. Neuberg, “Danger, disease, and the nature of prejudice(s)” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, M. Zanna, J. Olson, Eds. (Academic,
2012), Vol. vol. 46, pp. 1–54.
55 M. Schaller, D. R. Murray, Pathogens, personality, and culture: Disease prevalence predicts worldwide variability in sociosexuality, extraversion, and openness to
experience. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 95, 212–221 (2008).
56 C. R. Mortensen, D. V. Becker, J. M. Ackerman, S. L. Neuberg, D. T. Kenrick, Infection breeds reticence: The effects of disease salience on self-perceptions of
personality and behavioral avoidance tendencies. Psychol. Sci. 21, 440–447 (2010).
57 J. Ayers et al., How is the COVID-19 pandemic affecting cooperation? PsyArXiv:10.31234/osf.io/pk6jy (26 May 2020).
58 S. K. Brooks et al., The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: Rapid review of the evidence. Lancet 395, 912–920 (2020).
59 J. Tooby, L. Cosmides, The past explains the present. Emotional adaptations and the structure of ancestral environments. Ethol. Sociobiol. 11, 375–424 (1990).
60 A. Lakoff, Unprepared : Global Health in a Time of Emergency (University of California Press, 2017).
61 G. Gigerenzer, The bias bias in behavioral economics. Rev. Behav. Econ. 5, 303–336 (2018).
62 G. Ainslie, Breakdown of Will (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
63 P. Singer, The Life You Can Save (Random House, 2009).
64 T. Ord, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (Hachette, 2020).
65 J.-W. van Prooijen, M. van Vugt, Conspiracy theories: Evolved functions and psychological mechanisms. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 13, 770–788 (2018).
66 W. von Hippel, R. Trivers, The evolution and psychology of self-deception. Behav. Brain Sci. 34, 16–56 (2011).
67 D. D. P. Johnson, D. T. Blumstein, J. H. Fowler, M. G. Haselton, The evolution of error: Error management, cognitive constraints, and adaptive decision-making
biases. Trends Ecol. Evol. 28, 474–481 (2013).
68 M. G. Haselton, D. Nettle, D. R. Murray, “The evolution of cognitive bias” in The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, D. M. Buss, Ed. (John Wiley, 2015), pp.
1–20.
69 R. Kurzban, C. A. Aktipis, Modularity and the social mind: Are psychologists too self-ish? Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 11, 131–149 (2007).
70 N. Epley, T. Gilovich, The mechanics of motivated reasoning. J. Econ. Perspect. 30, 133–140 (2016).
71 R. Boyd, P. J. Richerson, Culture and the Evolutionary Process (University of Chicago Press, 1985).
72 C. Holden, R. Mace, Phylogenetic analysis of the evolution of lactose digestion in adults. 1997. Hum. Biol. 81, 597–619 (2009).
73 D. S. Wilson, S. C. Hayes, A. Biglan, D. D. Embry, Evolving the future: Toward a science of intentional change. Behav. Brain Sci. 37, 395–416 (2014).
74 D. S. Wilson, J. M. Gowdy, Human ultrasociality and the invisible hand: Foundational developments in evolutionary science alter a foundational concept in
economics. J. Bioeconomics 17, 37–52 (2015).
75 P. W. B. Atkins, D. S. Wilson, S. Hayes, Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups (Context, 2019).
76 M. J. Gelfand et al., Differences between tight and loose cultures: A 33-nation study. Science 332, 1100–1104 (2011).
77 J. C. Jackson, M. Gelfand, C. R. Ember, A global analysis of cultural tightness in non-industrial societies. Proc. Biol. Sci. 287, 20201036 (2020).
78 P. Roos, M. Gelfand, D. Nau, J. Lun, Societal threat and cultural variation in the strength of social norms: An evolutionary basis. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process.
129, 14–23 (2015).
79 N. Caluori, J. C. Jackson, K. Gray, M. Gelfand, Conflict changes how people view God. Psychol. Sci. 31, 280–292 (2020).
80 J. C. Jackson et al., Ecological and cultural factors underlying the global distribution of prejudice. PLoS One 14, e0221953 (2019).
81 R. Hannah et al, Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19)–the data. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data. Accessed 11 September 2020.
82 X. Pan, D. Nau, M. J. Gelfand, "Cooperative norms and the growth of threat: Differences across tight and loose cultures" in 2020 7th International Conference on
Behavioral, Economic and Socio-Cultural Computing (BESC) (IEEE, 2020).

Seitz et al.

PNAS | November 10, 2020 | vol. 117 | no. 45 | 27775

Downloaded from https://www.pnas.org by 65.112.8.57 on December 17, 2025 from IP address 65.112.8.57.

83 M. Gelfand, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World (Scribner, 2018).
84 R. Y. J. Chua, Y. Roth, J. F. Lemoine, The impact of culture on creativity. Adm. Sci. Q. 60, 189–227 (2015).
85 S. Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (Penguin, 2018).
86 S. Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Viking, 2002).
87 J. Tooby, I. DeVore, “The reconstruction of hominid behavioral evolution through strategic modeling” in The Evolution of Human Behavior: Primate Models, W.
Kinzey, Ed. (SUNY Press, 1987), pp. 183−237.
88 S. Montgomery, D. Chirot, The Shape of the New: Four Big Ideas and How They Made the Mdoern World, (Princeton University Press, 2015).
89 R. Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (Transaction, 1980).
90 M. Ridley, The Red Queen : Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (Viking, 1993).

27776 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2009787117

Seitz et al.
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December 17, 2025
Steven Pinker
Harvard University, Faculty Member
I am a cognitive scientist interested in all aspects of language, mind, and human nature. My research has concentrated on visual cognition (imagery, attention, shape recognition), psycholinguistics (the acquisition of syntax and morphology, conceptual semantics, regular and irregular phenomena in language), and social community.
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Jerome Santolini
Antioxidants & Redox Signaling
Significance: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), affects every aspect of human life by challenging bodily, socioeconomic, and political systems at unprecedented levels. As vaccines become available, their distribution, safety, and efficacy against emerging variants remain uncertain, and specific treatments are lacking. Recent Advances: Initially affecting the lungs, COVID-19 is a complex multisystems disease that disturbs the whole-body redox balance and can be long-lasting (Long-COVID). Numerous risk factors have been identified, but the reasons for variations in susceptibility to infection, disease severity, and outcome are poorly understood. The reactive species interactome (RSI) was recently introduced as a framework to conceptualize how cells and whole organisms sense, integrate, and accommodate stress. Critical Issues: We here consider COVID-19 as a redox disease, offering a holistic perspective of its effects on the human body, considering the vulnerability of complex interconnected systems with multiorgan/multilevel interdependencies. Host/viral glycan interactions underpin SARS-CoV-2's extraordinary efficiency in gaining cellular access, crossing the epithelial/endothelial barrier to spread along the vascular/lymphatic endothelium, and evading antiviral/antioxidant defences. An inflammation-driven ''oxidative storm'' alters the redox landscape, eliciting epithelial, endothelial, mitochondrial, metabolic, and immune dysfunction, and coagulopathy. Concomitantly reduced nitric oxide availability renders the sulfur-based redox circuitry vulnerable to oxidation, with eventual catastrophic failure in redox communication/regulation. Host nutrient limitations are crucial determinants of resilience at the individual and population level. Future Directions: While inflicting considerable damage to health and well-being, COVID-19 may provide the ultimate testing ground to improve the diagnosis and treatment of redox-related stress diseases. ''Redox phenotyping'' of patients to characterize whole-body RSI status as the disease progresses may inform new therapeutic approaches to regain redox balance, reduce mortality in COVID-19 and other redox diseases, and provide opportunities to tackle Long-COVID. Antioxid. Redox Signal. 00, 000-000.
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Testing the Disgust-Based Mechanism of Homonegative Attitudes in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Natalia Frankowska
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
Negative attitudes and stigmatization can originate from the perception of a disease-related threat. Following the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is often suggested that incidents of discriminatory behavior are the result of defense mechanisms aimed at avoiding pathogens. According to the behavioral immune system theory, people are motivated to distance themselves from individuals who show signs of infection, or who are only heuristically associated with a disease, primarily because of the disgust they evoke. In this paper we focus on negative attitudes toward gay men and lesbians who are among social groups that have been persistently framed as “unclean.” In our correlational study (N = 500 heterosexual participants; Polish sample data collected during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Poland, in March/April 2020) we tested moderation models derived from the behavioral immune system theory. Specifically, we investigated whether perceived vulnerability to disease and perceived thr...
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Sociality and disease: behavioral perspectives in ecological and evolutionary immunology
Rebeca Rosengaus
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
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Total SciComm: A Strategy for Communicating Open Science
Ho Manh Tung
Publications, 2021
This paper seeks to introduce a strategy of science communication: Total SciComm or all-out science communication. We proposed that to maximize the outreach and impact, scientists should use different media to communicate different aspects of science, from core ideas to methods. The paper uses an example of a debate surrounding a now-retracted article in the Nature journal, in which open data, preprints, social media, and blogs are being used for a meaningful scientific conversation. The case embodied the central idea of Total SciComm: the scientific community employs every medium to communicate scientific ideas and engages all scientists in the process.
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Media trust among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine
Сергей (Sergii) Тукаев (Tukaiev)
Current Issues of Mass Communication, 2022
The worldwide pandemic exacerbated the new role of the media. If pre-viously the discussion was on whether new or traditional media hadprimacy in popularity and exposure, nowadays the question is whethercommunicating health issues through social and traditional media leads to a better understanding of their content and more trust in both types of media. We surveyed Ukrainian university students to examine their a tti-tude towards information on coronavirus presented in the media. Resultsshowed that although students generally prefer to use Internet news, trustin traditional media increased during the pandemic. Furthermore, weexamined a general psychological portrait of young people derived fromtrust in the media. In the group of students who trust media information,we found indifference (39% of respondents) and helplessness(24.4%). In the group, convinced that the media were hiding the actual situation,anger p revailed(32.4%). The third group, confident that the media exag-gerate ev...
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The Principal's Strategy for Strengthening National Identity in Globalization Era
agus suprijono
IJORER : International Journal of Recent Educational Research
National identity is interesting to be discussed, considering the loss of national boundaries since technological advances increasingly affect daily life. National identity is essential to be implemented from an early age, primarily through the role of education. The focus of this study is to reveal the Principal's strategy for strengthening national identities. This study was conducted using a quantitative approach through a survey of 50 elementary school principals spread over 18 subdistricts in the Sidoarjo Regency. Two things can be concluded from this study. First, national identity is essential for the young generation of mid-globalization. This study shows that every respondent realizes the importance of principal secondary schools developing straightforward policy programs about internalizing national identity. Those policy programs must integrate extracurricular activities, extracurricular activities, building school culture, and various participation activities. Second...
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Pandemic Leadership: Sex Differences and Their Evolutionary–Developmental Origins
Marco Varella
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global societal, economic, and social upheaval unseen in living memory. There have been substantial cross-national differences in the kinds of policies implemented by political decision-makers to prevent the spread of the virus, to test the population, and to manage infected patients. Among other factors, these policies vary with politicians' sex: early findings indicate that, on average, female leaders seem more focused on minimizing direct human suffering caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, while male leaders implement riskier short-term decisions, possibly aiming to minimize economic disruptions. These sex differences are consistent with broader findings in psychology, reflecting women's stronger empathy, higher pathogen disgust, health concern, care-taking orientation, and dislike for the suffering of other peopleas well as men's higher risk-taking, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, and focus on financial indicators of success and status. This review article contextualizes sex differences in pandemic leadership in an evolutionary framework. Evolution by natural selection is the only known process in nature that organizes organisms into higher degrees of functional order, or counteracts the unavoidable disorder that would otherwise ensue, and is therefore essential for explaining the origins of human sex differences. Differential sexual selection and parental investment between males and females, together with the sexual differentiation of the mammalian brain, drive sex differences in cognition and behavioral dispositions, underlying men's and women's leadership styles and decision-making during a global pandemic. According to the sexually dimorphic leadership specialization hypothesis, general psychobehavioral sex differences have been exapted during human evolution to create sexually dimorphic leadership styles. They may be facultatively co-opted by societies and/or followers when facing different kinds of ecological and/or sociopolitical threats, such as disease outbreaks or intergroup aggression. Early evidence indicates that against the invisible viral foe that can bring nations to their knees, the strategic circumspection of empathic feminine health "worriers" may bring more effective and humanitarian outcomes than the devil-may-care incaution of masculine risk-taking "warriors".
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Exploring Large Digital Bodies for the Study of Human Behavior
Joelson Moura
Evolutionary Psychological Science
Internet access has become a fundamental component of contemporary society, with major impacts in many areas that offer opportunities for new research insights. The search and deposition of information in digital media form large sets of data known as digital corpora, which can be used to generate structured data, representing repositories of knowledge and evidence of human culture. This information offers opportunities for scientific investigations that contribute to the understanding of human behavior on a large scale, reaching human populations/individuals that would normally be difficult to access. These tools can help access social and cultural varieties worldwide. In this article, we briefly review the potential of these corpora in the study of human behavior. Therefore, we propose Culturomics of Human Behavior as an approach to understand, explain, and predict human behavior using digital corpora.
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COVID-19 related misconceptions among older adults in Bangladesh: findings from a cross-sectional study
ARM Mehrab Ali
F1000Research
Background The COVID-19 has been appeared as the most remarkable global calamity of this century. Just as the COVID-19 spread throughout the world, so as the rumour and misconceptions related to it. The present study aimed to explore the prevalence of COVID-19 related misconceptions and its correlates among the older adults in Bangladesh. Methods The study followed a cross-sectional design and was conducted among 1032 participants aged 60 years and above from Bangladesh. Information was collected on 14 different locally relevant misconceptions related to the spread, prevention, and treatment of COVID-19, scored each misconception as one, and obtained a cumulative score, ranging from 0 to 14, with a higher score indicating a higher level of misconceptions. A multiple linear regression model explored the factors associated with misconceptions. Results The most common misconceptions were, all returning migrants carrying COVID-19 (45.5%), wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) in o...
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