Environmental experience is not free of genetic influence. Through genetically-influenced behaviours, genes can influence exposure to certain environments: gene-environment correlation. Particular genotypes may also be more or less sensitive to the effects of the environment: gene-environment interaction. Embedding measured environmental experiences and the childhood outcomes they correlate with into genetically sensitive designs is a powerful approach to unravelling the mechanisms at the interface between nature and nurture. This thesis explored children’s environmental experience using data spanning 14 years of the population-based Twins Early Development Study (TEDS). Bivariate twin model fitting showed a significant genetic component linking children’s heritable experience of the chaotic home and their academic achievement. Genes confound a previously assumed environmental effect. The continuous moderation model revealed greater variation in the IQ of children from low socioeconomic status (SES) families. This greater variation was the result of SES moderation of the environmental, not genetic, effect on IQ. Longitudinal twin model fitting showed a bi-directional cross-lagged effect between disruptive behaviour and children’s experience of the chaotic home. The effect of household chaos on disruptive behaviour was environmentally mediated, and in the reverse process, disruptive behaviour did not account for the heritable component of home chaos. Multivariate twin modelling revealed a substantial common genetic liability between behaviour (internalizing, externalizing, and cognitive ability) and the psychosocial experience of peer victimization. Statistical genetic techniques using whole-genome data confirmed that victimization is a typical complex trait with a common genetic liability. The approach taken here was to explore gene-environment mechanisms at the interface between nature and nurture using a variety of childhood experiences rather than focusing on one particular environment. The examples of home chaos, SES, and peer victimization highlight the ubiquity of gene-environment interplay in a range of childhood experiences. Child-driven effects on the environment result in a genetic component to experience.

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Evolutionary theory has formed the foundation of much of the current research into human mate-choice behaviour. How attractive we find other people greatly influences our decisions as to who we choose to mate with. A number of traits have been found to influence human mate choice preferences and decisions, and most of them relate in various ways to factors that underpin attractiveness. A number of key traits have been identified that influence both perceptions of health (honest signals) and attractiveness, but relatively little is known about the relative importance of multiple traits and how they co-vary. The aim of this thesis was to combine, using one set of stimuli, the main factors that are known to influence judgements of facial and bodily attractiveness in order to examine the relative importance of each. The aim of the' first study was to determine the relative contributions of the face and the body to overall attractiveness, and to identify which physical attributes most influence attractiveness judgements. To do this, more than 20 known correlates of attractiveness were quantified in both males and females and participants of both genders rated the faces and bodies of the stimuli donors. The physical traits were compared in the faces and bodies ranked highest and lowest in attractiveness to see whether attractive and unattractive people differed significantly in any physical measure. In the second part of this thesis eye-tracking technology was used to explore whether patterns of visual inspection of faces and bodies corresponded with the results of behavioural studies. For the eye-tracking component of the study, an independent set of male and female participants' visual attention was recorded while they visually inspected and then rated the images for attractiveness. Comparisons of males and females' eye movements were made in order to see where each gender directed their attention in an attractiveness rating task and to interpret these with regard to different pressures on each gender regarding mate choice. Comparisons were also made to explore whether male and female stimuli attract visual attention to different areas. In a third study, another independent group of volunteers rated the attractiveness of isolated parts of the images (regions of interest). The results from the studies highlighted the relative importance of face over body attractiveness on overall attractiveness. Important physical traits were statistically identified as predictors for female attractiveness with the most important being femininity and Body Mass Index; however the results were not so obvious for male attractiveness. Analysis of visual attention to face, body and full stimuli supported the key importance of the face in attractiveness judgments as a relatively large proportion of fixations were directed at the face. However, other than this evidence for the importance of the face, patterns of eye movements to stimuli were selective but were not directed at the specific contributors to attractiveness that were predicted. Despite differences in the importance of different regions of faces and bodies, and differences in perceived attractiveness of different parts, it was also revealed that attractiveness can be perceived accurately by viewing isolated segments of people's faces and bodies. The findings of this thesis provide support for redundant signalling theory of attractiveness whereby attractiveness is proposed to result from the chooser considering the overall quality of a potential mate by weighing up multiple traits that signal an individual's underlying quality (Moller & Pomiankowski, 1993). The results also support honest signalling theory because separate parts of faces and bodies without reference to the whole stimuli corresponded to independent ratings of attractiveness category i.e. high attractiveness people are made up of high attractiveness parts, whereas low attractiveness people have low attractiveness parts.

The biologist E.O. Wilson suggested that spirituality can be understood as “just one more Darwinian enabling device”. In opposing this reductionism, the current enquiry develops a model of a relationship between spirituality and evolutionary theory which offers an understanding of spirituality based on evolutionary theory without reducing the former to the latter. For the purposes of this enquiry, “spirituality” is taken to entail an awareness of and response both to a transcendent dimension to human existence, and to the ethical dimension. Its universality is suggested by the ubiquity of religion in human history and prehistory, although in contemporary Western society spirit¬uality is no longer the prerogative of the specific canonical religions. From a theological perspective, an understanding of the universality of spirituality despite the diversity of religious traditions is provided by the approach of religious pluralism. The model also draws on Alvin Plantinga’s model of our being endowed with a sensus divinitatis, but modifies it in two ways: i) rather than our having an inbuilt sense of the divine as God, the current enquiry proposes that we have an inbuilt sense of the transcendent (termed the sensus transcendentis); ii) this sensus transcendentis is a product of evolutionary processes. The discipline of evolutionary psychology holds that the human mind is best understood as a suite of “mental modules”, psychological adaptations which evolved in response to the challenges posed by the total environment (physical, social and biotic) during the long reaches of human evolution. In the proposed model, the sensus transcendentis is one such module, opening us to meaning, purpose and value which transcend the material environment whilst being embedded within it. Evidence is provided to support the contentions both that we possess a sensus transcendentis, and that it has evolutionary origins. Possible implications for theology and for religious faith arising from the proposed model are discussed. Key words: adaptation, altruism, evolution, evolutionary psychology, Hick, mental module, Plantinga, religious pluralism, sensus divinitatis, sensus transcendentis.

We live in an epoch in which a violent clash exists. Humans typically believe that they are radically different from their surroundings. Yet, human knowledge has advanced to the point that has enabled the realisation that humans have evolved from their surroundings through a very gradual process of evolution; a process which has been ongoing since the Big Bang. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the nature of this violent clash. There are three interrelated aspects to this exploration. Firstly, I will be considering why contemporary humans typically consider themselves to be radically different from their surroundings; this entails a consideration of how the human perceptual apparatus works and of how conceptions of their surroundings are formed within humans. Secondly, I will be considering the likelihood that humans are actually very similar to their surroundings; this entails an exploration of various phenomena such as mind, consciousness, naturalness, awareness, the senses, perception and 'what-it-is-likeness'. Thirdly, I will be considering whether the human species has a special place in the evolutionary process.

In my current evolutionary anthropological research I have collected data about cultural rituals that might support the theory concerning the role of precautionary mechanisms in transmitting and shaping religious/cultural rituals. The research was conducted in South Africa, and more specifically with the amaZulu people in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, many of whom are still relying on oral transmission of their practices and are also living in a conflict area. The data collection employed two methods. First, a questionnaire regarding people's inferences about the outcome of failing to perform each of the life-stage rituals, which are at the center of the Zulu life cycle. Second, a method borrowed from economics and social psychology called 'Budget-Allocation', which elicits subjects' implicit judgements about the salience of potential threat domains. These two sets of collected data were specifically chosen because they could be integrated for the purpose of testing whether a correlation between salient potential-threat domains and inferences about the effect of performance of the religious rituals. This study has established that precautionary themes are strongly prevalent (over 90% in average) in Zulu rituals and that there is a correlation between the extent to which people were preoccupied with the different potential-threat domains and the extent to which those domains were mentioned in regard to their religious rituals. These results support previous theoretical work on the relationship between precautionary cognitive mechanisms and religious rituals and provides a springboard for future studies meant to attain an understanding of the connection between precaution systems and cultural rituals as well as the types of mechanisms complicit (aside from memory etc) in the cultural transmission of these forms across generations.

Within marketing, postmodern perspectives relate conspicuous consumption and status to the realisation of self-identity. The consumption of goods and their symbolic meaning allow an individual to reinforce, create and maintain his or her identity. Notions of conformity and consumption of visible goods could be attributed to social identity theory, where identity shifts from context to context. The consumption or rejection of certain goods thus reinforces an individual’s shifting identity among various contexts, such as home, school or work. It is the view of evolutionary psychology that theories such as social identity theory and consumer culture theory provide a proximal explanation of consumer behaviour, yet beyond these explanations are thought to be universal and ultimate drivers of behaviour. Evolutionary psychology presents cost signalling theory to help explain why individuals compete for status. However, existing evolutionary theories are still incomplete, particularly in explaining the paths in which individuals take to achieve status within a peer group. This research explores how and why people engage in pro-environmental behaviour. A review of the literature indicates that a desire for status is the main underlying driver motivating this type of behaviour, however the literature further indicates that theory on status is still incomplete in terms of understanding the path a person takes to achieve higher status. Therefore the gap this thesis aims to fill is to clarify the path an individual takes to achieve higher status within the context of pro-environmental behaviour. In order to identify how and why people engage in pro-environmental behaviour and strategies for status this research uses netnography to explore hierarchy negotiation within an online community of pro-environmental behaviourists called the Litterati. The Litterati is an Instagram community consisting of over 15,000 members worldwide, whom pick up and photograph litter. The main Litterati site and associated social media pages provide the visible conditions necessary for people to compete for higher status through cost signalling. The research findings are presented as three levels. The first level addressed observed empirical events, consisting of the observed tactics used within the Litterati for gaining status. The observed tactics among the Litterati are the use of visual appeal, time, humour and reciprocity. The next level addresses events, which are not wholly observable. This consists of the themes or patterns arising from the retroductive analysis of the interviews and participant observation and how they relate to status strategies. The main themes that help explain the paths to status are self-efficacy; community; and reciprocity or validation. The third level applies evolutionary theories of status and cost signalling to explain the underlying causes of the observed behaviours. The two strategies for status, Dominance and Prestige are presented as manifestations of the dynamic relationships between each level of the findings. This research contributes to exiting theory by clarifying the path an individual takes to achieve higher status, with the analysis demonstrating that Dominance and Prestige are not as distinct as the extant literature would suggest. Additionally, this research indicates that behaviour online influences behaviour offline provided there is a strong sense of community and feelings of self-efficacy are promoted through social modelling and social persuasion. The sense of validation participants reported through the community membership led to an increase in their uptake of pro-environmental behaviours offline, including changes in their consumption decisions. The wider implications of these findings indicate online communities of ethical consumption, such as the Litterati, promote a feeling of passive activism, where discussion of social change and interaction result in behaviour change.

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