The evolution of the Behavioural Approach System (BAS): Cooperative and competitive resource acquisition strategies
Introduction
The Behavioural Approach System (BAS) is one of the three major systems in the neuropsychological theory of personality known as the reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST), which includes two additional defensive systems: the Fight–Flight–Freeze System (FFFS), responsible for the active avoidance of, and escape from, aversive stimuli; and the Behavioural Inhibition System (BIS), responsible for passive avoidance and the detection and resolution of goal-conflict. It is assumed that the BAS represents a general domain approach mechanism designed to solve the important evolutionary adaptive problem of attaining critical resources, such as food, water, sex and social status (Berridge, 2004, Berridge and Robinson, 2003, Kenrick and Shiota, 2008). In general terms, the BAS mediates reactions to reward and non-punishment. Its outputs serve to motivate approach behaviours toward biological reinforcers and to engage in activities that lead to consummatory behaviour (Corr, 2008, Gray and McNaughton, 2000). Despite the popularity and long history of this theory, the obvious evolutionary importance of the BAS has not yet been explored empirically.
Section snippets
Evolutionary explanations of individual differences
Within evolutionary psychology, individual differences in personality and/or temperament are interpreted as variations in adaptive mechanisms that evolved to provide solutions to problems concerning reproduction and survival (Buss, 2008, Buss, 2009). Since environmental conditions were not equal for the entire human population, it may be assumed that some phenotypic variations were more adaptive in one environment than in another. Thus, there is no “gold standard” for a personality trait that
Participants and procedure
A total of 394 (208 male and 186 female) participants (MAGE = 27.99; SD = 9.70, range from 16 to 54) completed three questionnaires online using LimeSurvey web application. Only complete data were recorded. The Ethics Committee of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka gave approval for the study
Measures
We administered two RST questionnaires: Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory Personality Questionnaire (RST-PQ; Corr & Cooper, 2016), and the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward
Results
Descriptive statistics for AIM-Q and results of SCA are shown in Table 1, while zero order correlation matrices between and within questionnaires are available in Supplementary materials. All analyses were conducted using R version 3.2.2 (R Development Core Team, 2013), using package psych version 1.5.8 (Revelle, 2015).
Using set correlation, all canonical variates in the data set were taken into account in one index to provide an overall estimate of association. The overall relationship between
Discussion
In order to provide an evolutionary account of the BAS, we examined the relationships between inter-individual variation on different BAS scales and different types of motives, including (a) motives facilitating individual integrity, (b) motives facilitating competition for resources and mates, and (c) motives facilitating cooperation. Overall, the BAS scales correlated with both resource acquisition strategies and, additionally, with the integrity motives. More specifically, discrete motives
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