Despite recent advances in a number of fields, most research in the social and behavioral sciences is biased toward a small subset of humanity, in its methods, samples, and concepts. Moreover, it is not clear that this select set of humanity represents the full range of human experiences. Our group has used a range of methodological approaches to assess the robustness of key findings in the social and behavioral sciences about social behavior and fertility.
Cross-population analyses provide an important tool for understanding the roots of cross-cultural variation in social behavior. However, two human populations can often share common cultural, religious, linguistic, political and historical origins. In such cases, these populations are pseudo-replicates and do not represent independent observations for statistical analyses. This can lead to pseudo-replication, or the artificial inflation of the number of samples or observations. Analyses that do not take such pseudo-replication into account may come to spurious conclusions. Our group has explored the robustness of the parasite stress hypothesis for between-group differences when units are the result of cultural, geographical, and temporal pseudo-replication.
Relevant Publications
Cross-cultural generalizability of concepts and findings in the social and behavioral sciences
- Tiokhin L*, Hackman J*, Shirajum Munira, Khaleda Jesmin, Hruschka DJ (2019). Generalizability is not optional: Insights from a cross-cultural study of social discounting. Royal Society Open Science. 6, 181386.
- Hruschka DJ, Sear R, Hackman JV*, Drake A* (2019). Worldwide fertility declines do not rely on stopping at ideal parities. Population Studies. 73, 1-17.
- Hruschka DJ. (2010) Friendship: Development, Ecology and Evolution of a Social Relationship. University of California Press.
Robustness in the face of pseudo-replication
- Tiokhin L*, Hruschka DJ (2017). No evidence that Ebola outbreak influenced voting preferences in 2014 elections, after controlling for autocorrelation in time series. Psychological Science. 28 (9), 1358-1360.
- Hruschka DJ, Hackman J* (2014). When are cross-group differences a product of a human behavioral immune system? Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. 8:4, 265-273.
- Hruschka DJ,Henrich J (2013). Institutions, parasites and the persistence of in-group preferences. PLOS ONE. 8:5,e63642.
- Hackman J*, Hruschka DJ.(2013). Fast life histories, not pathogens, account for U.S. state-level variation in homicide, maltreatment, family ties, and religiosity. Evolution and Human Behavior. 34:2, 118-124.