A life-history model of human fitness indicators

Recent adaptationist accounts of human mental and physical health have reinvigorated the debate over the evolution of human intelligence. In the tradition of strong inference the current study was developed to determine whether either Miller's (1998, 2000a) Fitness Indicator Theory or Rushton's (1985, 2000) Differential-K Theory better accounts for general intelligence ("g") in an undergraduate university population (N = 192). Owing to the lengthy administration time of the test materials, a newly developed 18-item short form of the Ravens Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM-18; Sefcek, Miller, and Figueredo 2007) was used. A significant, positive relationship between K and F (r =.31, p < .001) emerged. Contrary to predictions, no significant relationships were found between "g" and either K or F (r = -.09, p ≥ .05 and r =.11, p ≥ .05, respectively). Though generally contrary to both hypotheses, these results may be explained in relation to antagonistic pleiotropy and a potential failure to derive correct predictions for within-species comparisons directly from the results of between-species comparisons.