Fearful apes or nervous goats? Another look at functions of dispositions or traits


Krstić V.
1 May 2023Cambridge University Press

Behavioral and Brain Sciences
2023#46

In his article, Grossmann argues that, in the context of human cooperative caregiving, heightened fearfulness in children and human sensitivity to fear in others are adaptive traits. I offer and briefly defend a rival hypothesis: Heightened fearfulness among infants and young children is a maladaptive trait that did not get deselected in the process of evolution because human sensitivity to fear in others mitigates its disadvantageous effects to a sufficient extent.



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School of Sciences and Humanities, Nazarbayev University, Astana, 1000, Kazakhstan

School of Sciences and Humanities

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