Is your kid a "dove"—cautious and submissive when confronting new environments, or perhaps you have a "hawk"—bold and assertive in unfamiliar settings?
These basic temperamental patterns are linked to opposite hormonal responses to stress—differences that may provide children with advantages for navigating threatening environments, researchers report in Development and Psychopathology.
"Divergent reactions—both behaviorally and chemically—may be an evolutionary response to stress," says Patrick Davies, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester and the lead author of the study. "These biological reactions may have provided our human ancestors with adaptive survival advantages. For example, dovish compliance may work better under some challenging family conditions, while hawkish aggression could be an asset in others."
This evolutionary perspective, says Davies, provides an important counterpoint to the prevailing idea in psychology that "there is one healthy way of being and that all behaviors are either adaptive or maladaptive."
