Access to resources shapes maternal decision making: evidence from a factorial vignette experiment.

The central assumption of behavioral ecology is that natural selection has shaped individuals with the capacity to make decisions that balance the fitness costs and benefits of behavior. A number of factors shape the fitness costs and benefits of maternal care, but we lack a clear understanding how...

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Autor principal:	Geoff Kushnick
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2013
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/ae2810ed53c64699875aa285bdd2c1f2
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:ae2810ed53c64699875aa285bdd2c1f22021-11-18T08:54:50ZAccess to resources shapes maternal decision making: evidence from a factorial vignette experiment.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0075539https://doaj.org/article/ae2810ed53c64699875aa285bdd2c1f22013-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/24069427/?tool=EBIhttps://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203The central assumption of behavioral ecology is that natural selection has shaped individuals with the capacity to make decisions that balance the fitness costs and benefits of behavior. A number of factors shape the fitness costs and benefits of maternal care, but we lack a clear understanding how they, taken together, play a role in the decision-making process. In animal studies, the use of experimental methods has allowed for the tight control of these factors. Standard experimentation is inappropriate in human behavioral ecology, but vignette experiments may solve the problem. I used a confounded factorial vignette experiment to gather 640 third-party judgments about the maternal care decisions of hypothetical women and their children from 40 female karo Batak respondents in rural Indonesia. This allowed me to test hypotheses derived from parental investment theory about the relative importance of five binary factors in shaping maternal care decisions with regard to two distinct scenarios. As predicted, access to resources--measured as the ability of a woman to provide food for her children--led to increased care. A handful of other factors conformed to prediction, but they were inconsistent across scenarios. The results suggest that mothers may use simple heuristics, rather than a full accounting for costs and benefits, to make decisions about maternal care. Vignettes have become a standard tool for studying decision making, but have made only modest inroads to evolutionarily informed studies of human behavior.Geoff KushnickPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 8, Iss 9, p e75539 (2013)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Geoff Kushnick Access to resources shapes maternal decision making: evidence from a factorial vignette experiment.
description	The central assumption of behavioral ecology is that natural selection has shaped individuals with the capacity to make decisions that balance the fitness costs and benefits of behavior. A number of factors shape the fitness costs and benefits of maternal care, but we lack a clear understanding how they, taken together, play a role in the decision-making process. In animal studies, the use of experimental methods has allowed for the tight control of these factors. Standard experimentation is inappropriate in human behavioral ecology, but vignette experiments may solve the problem. I used a confounded factorial vignette experiment to gather 640 third-party judgments about the maternal care decisions of hypothetical women and their children from 40 female karo Batak respondents in rural Indonesia. This allowed me to test hypotheses derived from parental investment theory about the relative importance of five binary factors in shaping maternal care decisions with regard to two distinct scenarios. As predicted, access to resources--measured as the ability of a woman to provide food for her children--led to increased care. A handful of other factors conformed to prediction, but they were inconsistent across scenarios. The results suggest that mothers may use simple heuristics, rather than a full accounting for costs and benefits, to make decisions about maternal care. Vignettes have become a standard tool for studying decision making, but have made only modest inroads to evolutionarily informed studies of human behavior.
format	article
author	Geoff Kushnick
author_facet	Geoff Kushnick
author_sort	Geoff Kushnick
title	Access to resources shapes maternal decision making: evidence from a factorial vignette experiment.
title_short	Access to resources shapes maternal decision making: evidence from a factorial vignette experiment.
title_full	Access to resources shapes maternal decision making: evidence from a factorial vignette experiment.
title_fullStr	Access to resources shapes maternal decision making: evidence from a factorial vignette experiment.
title_full_unstemmed	Access to resources shapes maternal decision making: evidence from a factorial vignette experiment.
title_sort	access to resources shapes maternal decision making: evidence from a factorial vignette experiment.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2013
url	https://doaj.org/article/ae2810ed53c64699875aa285bdd2c1f2
work_keys_str_mv	AT geoffkushnick accesstoresourcesshapesmaternaldecisionmakingevidencefromafactorialvignetteexperiment
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Access to resources shapes maternal decision making: evidence from a factorial vignette experiment.

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