Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T05:52:41.252Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Psychological origins of the Industrial Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2018

Nicolas Baumard
Nicolas Baumard*
Affiliation:
Institut Jean Nicod, Département d'Etudes Cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL Research University, 75005 Paris, France. [email protected]://nicolasbaumards.org
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Since the Industrial Revolution, human societies have experienced high and sustained rates of economic growth. Recent explanations of this sudden and massive change in economic history have held that modern growth results from an acceleration of innovation. But it is unclear why the rate of innovation drastically accelerated in England in the eighteenth century. An important factor might be the alteration of individual preferences with regard to innovation resulting from the unprecedented living standards of the English during that period, for two reasons. First, recent developments in economic history challenge the standard Malthusian view according to which living standards were stagnant until the Industrial Revolution. Pre-industrial England enjoyed a level of affluence that was unprecedented in history. Second, behavioral sciences have demonstrated that the human brain is designed to respond adaptively to variations in resources in the local environment. In particular, Life History Theory, a branch of evolutionary biology, suggests that a more favorable environment (high resources, low mortality) should trigger the expression of future-oriented preferences. In this paper, I argue that some of these psychological traits – a lower level of time discounting, a higher level of optimism, decreased materialistic orientation, and a higher level of trust in others – are likely to increase the rate of innovation. I review the evidence regarding the impact of affluence on preferences in contemporary as well as past populations, and conclude that the impact of affluence on neurocognitive systems may partly explain the modern acceleration of technological innovations and the associated economic growth.

Keywords

cultural evolutionLife History Theorypsychology of poverty
Type
Target Article
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 42 , 2019 , e189
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramson, S. & Boix, C. (2014) The roots of the industrial revolution: Political institutions or (socially embedded) know-how? Unpublished typescript, Princeton University.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S. & Robinson, J. (2005) The rise of Europe: Atlantic trade, institutional change, and economic growth. The American Economic Review 95(3):546–79.Google Scholar
Acemoglu, D. & Robinson, J. (2012) Why nations fail: The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty. Crown.Google Scholar
A'Hearn, B., Baten, J. & Crayen, D. (2009) Quantifying quantitative literacy: Age heaping and the history of human capital. The Journal of Economic History 69(3):783–808.Google Scholar
Akee, R., Copeland, W., Costello, E. J. & Simeonova, E. (2018) How does household income affect child personality traits and behaviors? American Economic Review 108(3):775–827.Google Scholar
Allen, R. C. (2001) The great divergence in European wages and prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War. Explorations in economic history 38(4):411–47.Google Scholar
Allen, R. C. (2009a) How prosperous were the Romans? Evidence from Diocletian's Price Edict (AD 301). In: Quantifying the Roman economy: Methods and problems, ed. Bowman, A. & Wilson, A., pp. 327–45. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Allen, R. C. (2009b) The British industrial revolution in global perspective. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Allen, R. C. (2017a) Real wages once more: A response to Judy Stephenson. Working Paper 20170006, New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science, revised July 2017.Google Scholar
Allen, R. C., Bassino, J.-P., Ma, D., Moll-Murata, C. & Van Zanden, J. L. (2011) Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738–1925: In: Comparison with Europe, Japan, and India. The Economic History Review 64(s1):8–38.Google Scholar
Andersen, T. B., Jensen, P. S. & Skovsgaard, C. V. (2016) The heavy plow and the agricultural revolution in Medieval Europe. Journal of Development Economics 118:133–49.Google Scholar
Andrews, C., Nettle, D., Reichert, S., Bedford, T., Monaghan, P. & Bateson, M. (2018) A marker of biological ageing predicts adult risk preference in European starlings, Sturnus vulgaris. Behavioral Ecology 29(3):589–97.Google Scholar
Bassino, J.-P., Broadberry, S. N., Fukao, K., Gupta, B. & Takashima, M. (2015) Japan and the Great Divergence, 725–1874. CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP10569. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2602806.Google Scholar
Baten, J., Ma, D., Morgan, S. & Wang, Q. (2010) Evolution of living standards and human capital in China in the 18–20th centuries: Evidences from real wages, age-heaping, and anthropometrics. Explorations in Economic History 47(3):347–59.Google Scholar
Baten, J. & Sohn, K. (2013) Back to the “normal” level of human-capital driven growth? A note on early numeracy in Korea, China, and Japan, 1550–1800. University of Tuebingen Working Papers in Economics and Finance 52, University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences.Google Scholar
Baten, J. & Van Zanden, J. L. (2008) Book production and the onset of modern economic growth. Journal of Economic Growth 13(3):217–35.Google Scholar
Bateson, M., Brilot, B. O., Gillespie, R., Monaghan, P. & Nettle, D. (2015) Developmental telomere attrition predicts impulsive decision-making in adult starlings. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 282(1799):20142140.Google Scholar
Baumard, N., André, J.-B. & Sperber, D. (2013) A mutualistic approach to morality: The evolution of fairness by partner choice. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36(1):59–78.Google Scholar
Baumard, N. & Chevallier, C. (2015) The nature and dynamics of world religions: A life-history approach. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 282(1818).Google Scholar
Baumard, N., Huillery, E. & Zabrocki, L. (2018) The origins of love and asceticism: How economic prosperity changed human psychology in Medieval Europe. Working paper.Google Scholar
Baumard, N., Hyafil, A., Morris, I. & Boyer, P. (2015) Increased affluence explains the emergence of ascetic wisdoms and moralizing religions. Current Biology 25(1):10–15.Google Scholar
Béaur, G. (2017) Niveau de vie et révolution des objets dans la France d'Ancien Régime. Meaux et ses campagnes aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Revue dhistoire moderne contemporaine 4(64–4):25–58.Google Scholar
Belsky, J., Steinberg, L., Houts, R. M. & Halpern-Felsher, B. L. (2010) The development of reproductive strategy in females: Early maternal harshness → earlier menarche → increased sexual risk taking. Developmental Psychology 46(1):120.Google Scholar
Benenson, J. F., Pascoe, J. & Radmore, N. (2007) Children's altruistic behavior in the dictator game. Evolution and Human Behavior 28(3):168–75.Google Scholar
Blaine, T. & Boyer, P. (2018) Origins of sinister rumors: A preference for threat-related material in the supply and demand of information. Evolution and Human Behavior 39(1):67–75. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.10.001.Google Scholar
Blair, C., Granger, D. A., Willoughby, M., Mills-Koonce, R., Cox, M., Greenberg, M. T., Kivlighan, K. T., Fortunato, C. K. & FLP Investigators. (2011) Salivary cortisol mediates effects of poverty and parenting on executive functions in early childhood. Child Development 82(6):1970–84.Google Scholar
Blair, C. & Raver, C. C. (2012) Child development in the context of adversity: Experiential canalization of brain and behavior. American Psychologist 67(4):309.Google Scholar
Bloom, N., Jones, C. I., Van Reenen, J. & Webb, M. (2017) Are ideas getting harder to find? National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 23782.Google Scholar
Boehm, J. K., Chen, Y., Williams, D. R., Ryff, C. & Kubzansky, L. D. (2015) Unequally distributed psychological assets: Are there social disparities in optimism, life satisfaction, and positive affect? PLoS One 10(2):e0118066.Google Scholar
Boix, C. & Stokes, S. C. (2003) Endogenous democratization. World Politics 55(4):517–49.Google Scholar
Bosker, M., Buringh, E. & van Zanden, J. L. (2013) From Baghdad to London: Unraveling urban development in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, 800–1800. Review of Economics and Statistics 95(4):1418–37.Google Scholar
Bowman, A. & Wilson, A., eds. (2011) Settlement, urbanization, and population. Oxford University Publication on Demand.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (1985) Culture and the evolutionary process. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Boyer, P. (2001) Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Briers, B., Pandelaere, M., Dewitte, S. & Warlop, L. (2006) Hungry for money: The desire for caloric resources increases the desire for financial resources and vice versa. Psychological Science 17(11):939–43.Google Scholar
Broadberry, S. (2016) When and how did the great divergence begin. Presented at the Fifth Asian Historical Economics Conference, Seoul, South Korea, September 2–3, 2016Google Scholar
Broadberry, S., Campbell, B. M. S., Klein, A., Overton, M. & van Leeuwen, B. (2015) British economic growth, 1270–1870. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Broadberry, S. N., Guan, H. & Li, D. D. (2018) China, Europe and the Great Divergence: A study in historical national accounting, 980–1850. The Journal of Economic History 78(4):955–1000.Google Scholar
Brumbach, B. H., Figueredo, A. J. & Ellis, B. J. (2009) Effects of harsh and unpredictable environments in adolescence on development of life history strategies. Human Nature 20(1):25–51.Google Scholar
Buringh, E. & Van Zanden, J. L. (2009) Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and printed books in Europe, a long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries. The Journal of Economic History 69(2):409–45.Google Scholar
Carey, B. (2005) British abolitionism and the rhetoric of sensibility: Writing, sentiment and slavery, 1760–807. Springer.Google Scholar
Carver, C. S., Johnson, S. L., McCullough, M. E., Forster, D. E. & Joormann, J. (2014) Adulthood personality correlates of childhood adversity. Frontiers in Psychology 5:1357.Google Scholar
Cascio, E. L. & Malanima, P. (2009) GDP in pre-modern agrarian economies (1–1820 AD) A revision of the estimates. Rivista di storia economica 25(3):391.Google Scholar
Cecchi, F. & Duchoslav, J. (2018) The effect of prenatal stress on cooperation: Evidence from violent conflict in Uganda. European Economic Review 101:35–56.Google Scholar
Chanda, A. & Putterman, L. (2007) Early starts, reversals and catch-up in the process of economic development. The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 109(2):387–413.Google Scholar
Charnov, E. L. (1991) Evolution of life history variation among female mammals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 88(4):1134–37.Google Scholar
Chisholm, J. S., Quinlivan, J. A., Petersen, R. W. & Coall, D. A. (2005) Early stress predicts age at menarche and first birth, adult attachment, and expected lifespan. Human Nature 16(3):233–65. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-005-1009-0.Google Scholar
Clark, G. (2007) A farewell to alms: A brief economic history of the world. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, G. & Cummins, N. (2015) Malthus to modernity: Wealth, status, and fertility in England, 1500–1879. Journal of Population Economics 28(1):3–29.Google Scholar
Clark, P. (2000) British clubs and societies 1580–1800: The origins of an associational world. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, P. & Cohen, J. (1996) Life values and adolescent mental health. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Comin, D., Easterly, W. & Gong, E. (2010) Was the wealth of nations determined in 1000 BC? American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 2(3):65–97.Google Scholar
Cronqvist, H., Previtero, A., Siegel, S. & White, R. E. (2015) The fetal origins hypothesis in finance: Prenatal environment, the gender gap, and investor behavior. The Review of Financial Studies 29(3):739–86.Google Scholar
Cummins, N. (2017) Lifespans of the European elite, 800–1800. The Journal of Economic History 77(2):406–439.Google Scholar
Currie, J. & Vogl, T. (2013) Early-life health and adult circumstance in developing countries. Annual Review of Economics 5(1):1–36.Google Scholar
Curry, O. S., Price, M. E. & Price, J. G. (2008) Patience is a virtue: Cooperative people have lower discount rates. Personality and Individual Differences 44(3):780–85.Google Scholar
Dang, J., Xiao, S., Zhang, T., Liu, Y., Jiang, B. & Mao, L. (2016) When the poor excel: Poverty facilitates procedural learning. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 57(4):288–91.Google Scholar
David, P. A., Johansson, S. R. & Pozzi, A. (2010) The demography of an early mortality transition: Life expectancy, survival and mortality rates for Britain's royals,1500–1799. Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers, No. 083, University of Oxford, Department of Economics. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1641447.Google Scholar
Davis, D. B. (1999) The problem of slavery in the age of revolution, 1770–1823. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
de la Croix, D. & Licandro, O. (2015) The longevity of famous people from Hammurabi to Einstein. Journal of Economic Growth 20(3):263–303.Google Scholar
de Pleijt, A. M. & Van Zanden, J. L. (2016) Accounting for the “Little Divergence”: What drove economic growth in pre-industrial Europe, 1300–1800? European Review of Economic History 20(4):387–409.Google Scholar
de Vries, J. (1994) The industrial revolution and the industrious revolution. The Journal of Economic History 54(02):249–70.Google Scholar
de Vries, J. (2008) The industrious revolution: Consumer behavior and the household economy, 1650 to the present. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Del Giudice, M. (2009) Sex, attachment, and the development of reproductive strategies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32(1):1–21.Google Scholar
Deng, K. & O'Brien, P. (2016) Nutritional standards of living in England and the Yangtze Delta (Jiangnan), circa 1644–circa 1840: Clarifying data for reciprocal comparisons. Journal of World History 26(2):233–67.Google Scholar
Diamond, J. M. (2011) Guns, germs, and steel. Books on Tape.Google Scholar
Dittmar, J. (2011) The welfare impact of a new good: The printed book. Department of Economics, American University.Google Scholar
Droomers, M., Schrijvers, C. T., Stronks, K., van de Mheen, D. & Mackenbach, J. P. (1999) Educational differences in excessive alcohol consumption: The role of psychosocial and material stressors. Preventive Medicine 29(1):1–10.Google Scholar
Duckworth, A. L., Kim, B. & Tsukayama, E. (2013) Life stress impairs self-control in early adolescence. Frontiers in Psychology 3:608.Google Scholar
Dutta, R., Levine, D. K., Papageorge, N. W. & Wu, L. (2018) Entertaining Malthus: Bread, circuses, and economic growth. Economic Inquiry 56(1):358–80.Google Scholar
Eisner, M. (2001) Modernization, self-control and lethal violence. The long-term dynamics of European homicide rates in theoretical perspective. British Journal of Criminology 41(4):618–38.Google Scholar
Eisner, M. (2003) Long-term historical trends in violent crime. Crime and Justice 30:83–142.Google Scholar
Eisner, M. (2014) From swords to words: Does macro-level change in self-control predict long-term variation in levels of homicide? Crime and Justice 43(1):65–134.Google Scholar
Elias, N. (1982) The civilizing process, vol. 2. Blackwell. Available at: http://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/toc/z2010_1372.pdf.Google Scholar
Ellis, B. (2004) Timing of pubertal maturation in girls: An integrated life history approach Psychological Bulletin 130(6):920Google Scholar
Ellis, B. J., Figueredo, A. J., Brumbach, B. H. & Schlomer, G. L. (2009) Fundamental dimensions of environmental risk: The impact of harsh versus unpredictable environments on the evolution and development of life history strategies. Human Nature 20:204–68.Google Scholar
Espín, A. M., Brañas-Garza, P., Herrmann, B. & Gamella, J. F. (2012) Patient and impatient punishers of free-riders. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 279(1749):4923–28.Google Scholar
Fariss, C. J. (2014) Respect for human rights has improved over time: Modeling the changing standard of accountability. American Political Science Review 108(2):297–318.Google Scholar
Fessler, D. M., Pisor, A. C. & Navarrete, C. D. (2014) Negatively-biased credulity and the cultural evolution of beliefs. PLoS One 9(4):e95167.Google Scholar
Figueredo, A. J., Vásquez, G., Brumbach, B. H., Schneider, S. M., Sefcek, J. A., Tal, I. R., Hill, D., Wenner, C. J. & Jacobs, W. J. (2006) Consilience and life history theory: From genes to brain to reproductive strategy. Developmental Review 26(2):243–75.Google Scholar
Fogel, R. W. (1964) Railroads and American economic growth: Essays in econometric history. Johns Hopkins Press.Google Scholar
Forss, S. I. F., Schuppli, C., Haiden, D., Zweifel, N. & van Schaik, C. P. (2015) Contrasting responses to novelty by wild and captive orangutans. American Journal of Primatology 77(10):1109–21.Google Scholar
Frankenhuis, W. E. & de Weerth, C. (2013) Does early-life exposure to stress shape or impair cognition? Current Directions in Psychological Science 22(5):407–12.Google Scholar
Frankenhuis, W. E., Panchanathan, K. & Nettle, D. (2016) Cognition in harsh and unpredictable environments. Current Opinion in Psychology 7:76–80.Google Scholar
Galor, O. (2011) Unified growth theory. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Galor, O. & Moav, O. (2002) Natural selection and the origin of economic growth. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 117(4):1133–91.Google Scholar
Gangadharan, L., Islam, A., Ouch, C. & Wang, L. C. (2017) The long-term effects of genocide on social preferences and risk. Working paper. Available at: http://users.monash.edu/~asaduli/pub/Conflict_March2017.pdf/.Google Scholar
Gergaud, O., Laouenan, M. & Wasmer, E. (2017) A brief history of human time. Exploring a database of “notable people.” Working paper. Available at: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01440325/.Google Scholar
Gordon, R. J. (2012) Is U.S. economic growth over? Faltering innovation confronts the six headwinds. National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working Paper No. 18315. Available at: https://www.nber.org/papers/w18315.Google Scholar
Griskevicius, V., Ackerman, J. M., Cantú, S. M., Delton, A. W., Robertson, T. E., Simpson, J. A., Thompson, M. E. & Tybur, J. M. (2013) When the economy falters, do people spend or save? Responses to resource scarcity depend on childhood environments. Psychological Science 24(2):197–205.Google Scholar
Guégan, J.-F., Thomas, F., Hochberg, M. E., de Meeûs, T. & Renaud, F. (2001) Disease diversity and human fertility. Evolution 55(7):1308–14.Google Scholar
Harris, A. C. & Madden, G. J. (2002) Delay discounting and performance on the prisoner's dilemma game. Psychological Record 52(4):429–40.Google Scholar
Haslam, M. (2013) “Captivity bias” in animal tool use and its implications for the evolution of hominin technology. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 368(1630):20120421.Google Scholar
Haushofer, J. (2013) The psychology of poverty: Evidence from 43 countries. Working paper. Available at: http://www.princeton.edu/joha/publications/Haushofer_2013.pdf.Google Scholar
Haushofer, J. & Fehr, E. (2014) On the psychology of poverty. Science 344(6186):862–67. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1232491.Google Scholar
Heinonen, K., Räikkönen, K., Matthews, K. A., Scheier, M. F., Raitakari, O. T., Pulkki, L. & Keltikangas-Järvinen, L. (2006) Socioeconomic status in childhood and adulthood: Associations with dispositional optimism and pessimism over a 21-year follow-up. Journal of Personality 74(4):1111–26.Google Scholar
Henry, L. & Houdaille, J. (1979) Célibat et âge au mariage aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles en France. II. Âge au premier mariage. Population (French edition) 34(2):403–42.Google Scholar
Hersh, J. & Voth, H.-J. (2009) Sweet diversity: Colonial goods and the rise of European living standards after 1492. Working paper. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1462015.Google Scholar
Holland, J., Silva, A. S. & Mace, R. (2012) Lost letter measure of variation in altruistic behaviour in 20 neighbourhoods. PLoS One 7(8):e43294.Google Scholar
Hörl, M., Kesternich, I., Smith, J. P. & Winter, J. K. (2016) Early-life circumstances predict measures of trust among adults: Evidence from hunger episodes in post-war Germany. The Scandinavian Journal of Economics. Published early online. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/sjoe.12329.Google Scholar
Houston, A. I. & McNamara, J. M. (1999) Models of adaptive behaviour: An approach based on state. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Howes, A. (2016a) The improving mentality: Innovation during the British industrial revolution, 1651–1851. Working paper.Google Scholar
Howes, A. (2016b) The relevance of skills to innovation during the British Industrial Revolution, 1651–851. Working paper. Available at: http://www.eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Howes.pdf.Google Scholar
Humphries, J. & Weisdorf, J. (2016) Unreal wages? A new empirical foundation for the study of living standards and economic growth in England, 1260–1860. Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)Google Scholar
Inglehart, R. (1977) The silent revolution: Changing. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Inglehart, R. & Welzel, C. (2005) Modernization, cultural change, and democracy: The human development sequence. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jacquet, P. O., Safra, L., Wyart, V., Baumard, N. & Chevallier, C. (2019) The ecological roots of human susceptibility to social influence: A pre-registered study investigating the impact of early life adversity. Royal Society Open Science 6(1):180454. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k48mr0c.Google Scholar
Jedwab, R. & Vollrath, D. (2015) Urbanization without growth in historical perspective. Explorations in Economic History 58:1–21.Google Scholar
Jones, B. F. (2009) The burden of knowledge and the “death of the renaissance man”: Is innovation getting harder? The Review of Economic Studies 76(1):283–317.Google Scholar
Kasser, T., Ryan, R. M., Couchman, C. E. & Sheldon, K. M. (2004) Materialistic values: Their causes and consequences. In: Psychology and consumer culture: The struggle for a good life in a materialistic world, ed. Kasser, T. & Kanner, A. D., pp. 11–28. American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Kasser, T., Ryan, R. M., Zax, M. & Sameroff, A. J. (1995) The relations of maternal and social environments to late adolescents’ materialistic and prosocial values. Developmental Psychology 31(6):907.Google Scholar
Kelly, M. & Ó Gráda, C. (2013) Numerare est errare: Agricultural output and food supply in England before and during the industrial revolution. The Journal of Economic History 73(4):1132–63.Google Scholar
Kelly, M. & Ó Gráda, C. (2014) Living standards and mortality since the Middle Ages. The Economic History Review 67(2):358–81.Google Scholar
Kelly, M. & Ó Gráda, C. (2016) Adam Smith, watch prices, and the industrial revolution. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 131(4):1727–52.Google Scholar
Kelly, M., Mokyr, J. & Ó Gráda, C. (2014) Precocious Albion: A new interpretation of the British industrial revolution. Annual Review of Economics 6(1):363–89.Google Scholar
Kenrick, D. T., Griskevicius, V., Neuberg, S. L. & Schaller, M. (2010) Renovating the pyramid of needs: Contemporary extensions built upon ancient foundations. Perspectives on Psychological Science 5(3):292–314.Google Scholar
Kesternich, I., Siflinger, B., Smith, J. P. & Winter, J. K. (2015) Individual behaviour as a pathway between early-life shocks and adult health: Evidence from hunger episodes in post-war Germany. The Economic Journal 125(588):F372–F393.Google Scholar
Kiecolt, K. J., Hughes, M. & Keith, V. M. (2009) Can a high sense of control and John Henryism be bad for mental health? The Sociological Quarterly 50(4):693–14.Google Scholar
King, P. (1997) Pauper inventories and the material lives of the poor in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In: Chronicling poverty, ed. Hitchcock, T., King, P. & Sharpe, P., pp. 155–91. Springer.Google Scholar
Kocher, M. G., Myrseth, K. O. R., Martinsson, P. & Wollbrant, C. E. (2013, March 28) Strong, bold, and kind: Self-control and cooperation in social dilemmas. ESMT Working Paper No. 12-01 (R1). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1988286 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1988286.Google Scholar
Kortenkamp, K. V. & Moore, C. F. (2006) Time, uncertainty, and individual differences in decisions to cooperate in resource dilemmas. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 32(5):603–15.Google Scholar
Laland, K. N. & Williams, K. (1998) Social transmission of maladaptive information in the guppy. Behavioral Ecology 9(5):493–99.Google Scholar
Lawrance, E. C. (1991) Poverty and the rate of time preference: Evidence from panel data. Journal of Political Economy 99(1):54–77.Google Scholar
Legleye, S., Janssen, E., Beck, F., Chau, N. & Khlat, M. (2011) Social gradient in initiation and transition to daily use of tobacco and cannabis during adolescence: A retrospective cohort study. Addiction 106(8):1520–31.Google Scholar
Li, B. & Luiten van Zanden, J. (2012) Before the great divergence? Comparing the Yangzi Delta and The Netherlands at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Journal of Economic History 72(4):956–89.Google Scholar
Lindert, P. H. (2016) Purchasing power disparity before 1914. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper No. 22896. Available at: https://www.nber.org/papers/w22896.Google Scholar
Little, L. K. (1983) Religious poverty and the profit economy in medieval Europe. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Lundberg, J., Bobak, M., Malyutina, S., Kristenson, M. & Pikhart, H. (2007) Adverse health effects of low levels of perceived control in Swedish and Russian community samples. BMC Public Health 7(1):314.Google Scholar
Maddison, A. (2007) The world economy: Vol. 1: A millennial perspective, Vol. 2: Historical statistics. Academic Foundation.Google Scholar
Malanima, P. (2011) The long decline of a leading economy: GDP in central and northern Italy, 1300–1913. European Review of Economic History 15(2):169–219.Google Scholar
Malanima, P. (2013) When did England overtake Italy? Medieval and early modern divergence in prices and wages. European Review of Economic History 17(1):45–70.Google Scholar
Mani, A., Mullainathan, S., Shafir, E. & Zhao, J. (2013) Poverty impedes cognitive function. Science 341(6149):976–80. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1238041.Google Scholar
Martin, A. L. (2009) Alcohol, violence, and disorder in traditional Europe, vol. 2. Truman State University Press.Google Scholar
McCloskey, D. N. (2006) The bourgeois virtues: Ethics for an age of commerce. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCloskey, D. N. (2010) Bourgeois dignity: Why economics can't explain the modern world. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCloskey, D. N. (2016a) Bourgeois equality: How ideas, not capital or institutions, enriched the world. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McCloskey, D. N. (2016b) Bourgeois equality: Ideas, not capital, changed the world. Available at: http://reason.com/archives/2016/05/12/bourgeois-equality.Google Scholar
McCullough, M. E., Pedersen, E. J., Schroder, J. M., Tabak, B. A. & Carver, C. S. (2013) Harsh childhood environmental characteristics predict exploitation and retaliation in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 280(1750):20122104.Google Scholar
Mell, H., Safra, L., Algan, Y., Baumard, N. & Chevallier, C. (2018) Childhood environmental harshness predicts coordinated health and reproductive strategies: A cross-sectional study of a nationally representative sample from France. Evolution and Human Behavior 39(1):1–8.Google Scholar
Mesoudi, A. (2011) Variable cultural acquisition costs constrain cumulative cultural evolution. PLoS One 6(3):e18239.Google Scholar
Milanovic, B., Lindert, P. H. & Williamson, J. G. (2011) Pre-industrial inequality. The Economic Journal 121(551):255–72.Google Scholar
Mittal, C., Griskevicius, V., Simpson, J. A., Sung, S. & Young, E. S. (2015) Cognitive adaptations to stressful environments: When childhood adversity enhances adult executive function. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 109(4):604–21.Google Scholar
Mokyr, J. (2009a) Intellectual property rights, the industrial revolution, and the beginnings of modern economic growth. American Economic Review 99(2):349–55.Google Scholar
Mokyr, J. (2009b) The enlightened economy: An economic history of Britain 1700–1850. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Mokyr, J. (2016) A culture of growth: The origins of the modern economy. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Moran, N. A. (1992) The evolutionary maintenance of alternative phenotypes. The American Naturalist 139(5):971–89.Google Scholar
Morris, I. (2013) The measure of civilization: How social development decides the fate of nations. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Moya, A. (2018) Violence, psychological trauma, and risk attitudes: Evidence from victims of violence in Colombia. Journal of Development Economics 131:15–27.Google Scholar
Mullainathan, S. & Shafir, E. (2013) Scarcity: Why having too little means so much. Macmillan.Google Scholar
Murray, D. R., Trudeau, R. & Schaller, M. (2011) On the origins of cultural differences in conformity: Four tests of the pathogen prevalence hypothesis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 37(3):318–29.Google Scholar
Nettle, D. (2009a) An evolutionary model of low mood states. Journal of Theoretical Biology 257(1):100–103.Google Scholar
Nettle, D. (2010a) Dying young and living fast: Variation in life history across English neighborhoods. Behavioral Ecology 21(2):387–95.Google Scholar
Nettle, D. (2010b) Why are there social gradients in preventative health behavior? A perspective from behavioral ecology. PLoS One 5(10):e13371.Google Scholar
Nettle, D. (2011) Large differences in publicly visible health behaviours across two neighbourhoods of the same city. PLoS One 6(6):e21051.Google Scholar
Nettle, D. (2014) What the future held: Childhood psychosocial adversity is associated with health deterioration through adulthood in a cohort of British women. Evolution and Human Behavior 35(6):519–25.Google Scholar
Nettle, D. (2017) Let them eat cake! In: Hanging on to the edges: Essays on science, society and the academic life. Open Book. Available at: http://books.openedition.org/obp/7743.Google Scholar
Nettle, D. (2019) State-dependent cognition and its relevance to cultural evolution. Behavioural Processes 161:101–107. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2018.01.018.Google Scholar
Nettle, D. & Bateson, M. (2012) The evolutionary origins of mood and its disorders. Current Biology 22(17):R712–21.Google Scholar
Nettle, D., Colléony, A. & Cockerill, M. (2011) Variation in cooperative behaviour within a single city. PLoS One 6(10):e26922.Google Scholar
Nettle, D., Frankenhuis, W. E. & Rickard, I. J. (2013) The evolution of predictive adaptive responses in human life history. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 280(1766):20131343.Google Scholar
Nicholas, S. & Steckel, R. H. (1991) Heights and living standards of English workers during the early years of industrializations, 1770–1815. The Journal of Economic History 51(04):937–57.Google Scholar
Nordhaus, W. D. (1996) Do real-output and real-wage measures capture reality? The history of lighting suggests not. In: The economics of new goods, ed. Bresnahan, T. F. & Gordon, R. J., pp. 27–70. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Norris, P. & Inglehart, R. (2011) Sacred and secular: Religion and politics worldwide. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
North, D. C. (1991) Institutions. Journal of Economic Perspectives 5(1):97–112.Google Scholar
North, D. C. & Weingast, B. R. (1989) Constitutions and commitment: The evolution of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth-century England. The Journal of Economic History 49(4):803–32.Google Scholar
Ober, J. (2015) The rise and fall of classical Greece. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Olsson, O. & Hibbs, D. A. Jr. (2005) Biogeography and long-run economic development. European Economic Review 49(4):909–38.Google Scholar
Pamuk, Ş. & Shatzmiller, M. (2014) Plagues, wages, and economic change in the Islamic Middle East, 700–1500. The Journal of Economic History 74(1):196–229.Google Scholar
Pedersen, E. J., Forster, D. E. & McCullough, M. E. (2014) Life history, code of honor, and emotional responses to inequality in an economic game. Emotion 14(5):920.Google Scholar
Pender, J. L. (1996) Discount rates and credit markets: Theory and evidence from rural India. Journal of Development Economics 50(2):257–96.Google Scholar
Pepper, G. V. & Nettle, D. (2017) The behavioural constellation of deprivation: Causes and consequences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40:e314.Google Scholar
Petersen, M. B. & Aarøe, L. (2015) Birth weight and social trust in adulthood: Evidence for early calibration of social cognition. Psychological Science 26(11):1681–92.Google Scholar
Pfister, U. (2011) Economic growth in Germany, 1500–1850. Paper presented at the Conference on Quantifying Long Run Economic Development, Venice, March 22–24, 2011.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (2011a) The better angels of our nature: The decline of violence in history and its causes. Penguin.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (2018) Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Penguin.Google Scholar
Pomeranz, K. (2009) The great divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Poortinga, W., Dunstan, F. D. & Fone, D. L. (2008) Health locus of control beliefs and socio-economic differences in self-rated health. Preventive Medicine 46(4):374–80.Google Scholar
Promislow, D. E. & Harvey, P. H. (1990) Living fast and dying young: A comparative analysis of life-history variation among mammals. Journal of Zoology 220(3):417–37.Google Scholar
Przeworski, A., Limongi, F. & Giner, S. (1995) Political regimes and economic growth. In: Democracy and development, ed. Bagchi, A. K., pp. 3–27. Springer.Google Scholar
Quinlan, R. J. (2003) Father absence, parental care, and female reproductive development. Evolution and Human Behavior 24(6):376–90.Google Scholar
Quinlan, R. J. (2007) Human parental effort and environmental risk. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 274(1606):121–25.Google Scholar
Quinlan, R. J. & Quinlan, M. B. (2007) Parenting and cultures of risk: A comparative analysis of infidelity, aggression, and witchcraft. American Anthropologist 109(1):164–79.Google Scholar
Ridolfi, L. (2017) The French economy in the longue durée: A study on real wages, working days and economic performance from Louis IX to the Revolution (1250–1789). European Review of Economic History 21(4):437–38.Google Scholar
Rieucau, G. & Giraldeau, L.-A. (2011) Exploring the costs and benefits of social information use: An appraisal of current experimental evidence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 366(1567):949–57.Google Scholar
Robb, K. A., Simon, A. E. & Wardle, J. (2009) Socioeconomic disparities in optimism and pessimism. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine 16(4):331.Google Scholar
Roff, D. (1993) Evolution of life histories: Theory and analysis. Springer Science and Business Media.Google Scholar
Rudaizky, D., Basanovic, J. & MacLeod, C. (2014) Biased attentional engagement with, and disengagement from, negative information: Independent cognitive pathways to anxiety vulnerability? Cognition and Emotion 28(2):245–59.Google Scholar
Safra, L., Algan, Y., Tecu, T., Grèzes, J., Baumard, N. & Chevallier, C. (2017) Childhood harshness predicts long-lasting leader preferences. Evolution and Human Behavior 38(5):645–51.Google Scholar
Safra, L., Grèzes, J., Chevallier, C. & Baumard, N. (2019) Tracking the rise of trust in history using machine learning and paintings. Manuscript in preparation.Google Scholar
Safra, L., Tecu, T., Lambert, S., Sheskin, M., Baumard, N. & Chevallier, C. (2016) Neighborhood deprivation negatively impacts children's prosocial behavior. Frontiers in Psychology 7:1760.Google Scholar
Scheidel, W. (2010) Real wages in early economies: Evidence for living standards from 1800 BCE to 1300 CE. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 53(3):425–62.Google Scholar
Scheidel, W. & Friesen, S. J. (2009) The size of the economy and the distribution of income in the Roman Empire. Journal of Roman Studies 99:61–91.Google Scholar
Schmitt, D. P. (2008) Evolutionary perspectives on romantic attachment and culture: How ecological stressors influence dismissing orientations across genders and geographies. Cross-Cultural Research 42(3):220–47.Google Scholar
Schofield, R. S. (1973) Dimensions of illiteracy, 1750–1850. Explorations in Economic History 10(4):437–54.Google Scholar
Schroeder, K. B., Pepper, G. V. & Nettle, D. (2014) Local norms of cheating and the cultural evolution of crime and punishment: A study of two urban neighborhoods. PeerJ 2:e450.Google Scholar
Serafinelli, M. & Tabellini, G. (2017) Creativity over time and space. CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP12365. Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3053893.Google Scholar
Sheldon, K. M. & Kasser, T. (2008) Psychological threat and extrinsic goal striving. Motivation and Emotion 32(1):37–45.Google Scholar
Silva, A. S. & Mace, R. (2014) Cooperation and conflict: Field experiments in Northern Ireland. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 281:20141435.Google Scholar
Silva, A. S. & Mace, R. (2015) Inter-group conflict and cooperation: Field experiments before, during and after sectarian riots in Northern Ireland. Frontiers in Psychology 6:1790.Google Scholar
Simpson, J. A., Collins, W. A. & Salvatore, J. E. (2011) The impact of early interpersonal experience on adult romantic relationship functioning: Recent findings from the Minnesota longitudinal study of risk and adaptation. Current Directions in Psychological Science 20(6):355–59.Google Scholar
Smith, G. D. & Egger, M. (1993) Socioeconomic differentials in wealth and health. British Medical Journal 307(6912):1085.Google Scholar
Sperber, D. (1996) Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach, first ed., vol. 323. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Squicciarini, M. P. & Voigtländer, N. (2015) Human capital and industrialization: Evidence from the age of enlightenment. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 130(4):1825–83. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjv025.Google Scholar
Stearns, S. C. (1992) The evolution of life histories, vol. 249. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stearns, S. C. & Koella, J. C. (1986) The evolution of phenotypic plasticity in life-history traits: Predictions of reaction norms for age and size at maturity. Evolution 40(5):893–913.Google Scholar
Stephens, D. W. (1981) The logic of risk-sensitive foraging preferences. Animal Behaviour 29(2):628–29.Google Scholar
Stephens, W. B. (1990) Literacy in England, Scotland, and Wales, 1500–1900. History of Education Quarterly 30(4):545–71.Google Scholar
Stephenson, J. Z. (2017) “Real” wages? Contractors, workers, and pay in London building trades, 1650–1800. The Economic History Review 71:106–32. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ehr.12491/full.Google Scholar
Stringhini, S., Sabia, S., Shipley, M., Brunner, E., Nabi, H., Kivimaki, M. & Singh-Manoux, A. (2010) Association of socioeconomic position with health behaviors and mortality. JAMA 303(12):1159–66.Google Scholar
Sunderland, D. (2007) Social capital, trust and the industrial revolution: 1780–1880. Routledge.Google Scholar
Swift, J. (1704/2018) Battle of the books. Alma Books.Google Scholar
Thomas, K. (1971) Religion and the decline of magic: Studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. Penguin.Google Scholar
Twenge, J. M. & Kasser, T. (2013) Generational changes in materialism and work centrality, 1976–2007: Associations with temporal changes in societal insecurity and materialistic role modeling. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 39(7):883–97.Google Scholar
Van Neuss, L. (2015) Why did the industrial revolution start in Britain? Available at: http://orbi.ulg.be/handle/2268/188592.Google Scholar
van Schaik, C. P., Burkart, J., Damerius, L., Forss, S. I. F., Koops, K., van Noordwijk, M. A. & Schuppli, C. (2016) The reluctant innovator: Orangutans and the phylogeny of creativity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371(1690). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0183.Google Scholar
van Zanden, J. L. (2009) The skill premium and the “Great Divergence.” European Review of Economic History 13(1):121–53.Google Scholar
Voth, H.-J. (2000) Time and work in England 1750–1830. Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Webb, E., Thomson, S., Nelson, A., White, C., Koren, G., Rieder, M. & Van Uum, S. (2010) Assessing individual systemic stress through cortisol analysis of archaeological hair. Journal of Archaeological Science 37(4):807–12.Google Scholar
Webster, M. M. & Hart, P. J. (2006) Subhabitat selection by foraging threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus): Previous experience and social conformity. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 60(1):77–86.Google Scholar
Weir, D. (1997) Economic welfare and physical well-being in France, 1750–1990. In: Health and welfare during industrialization, ed. Steckel, R. H. & Floud, R., pp. 161–200. University of Chicago Press. Available at: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c7431.pdf.Google Scholar
West, S. A., Griffin, A. S. & Gardner, A. (2007) Evolutionary explanations for cooperation. Current Biology 17(16):R661–72.Google Scholar
Wilkinson, R. G. & Pickett, K. (2010) The spirit level: Why equality is better for everyone. Penguin.Google Scholar
Wootton, D. (2015) The invention of science. A new history of the scientific revolution. Allen Lane/Penguin.Google Scholar
Wrigley, E. A. (1997) English population history from family reconstitution 1580–1837. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wrigley, E. A. (2013) Energy and the English industrial revolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 371(1986):20110568.Google Scholar
Wrigley, E. A. & Schofield, R. S. (1983) English population history from family reconstitution: Summary results 1600–1799. Population Studies 37(2):157–84.Google Scholar
Wu, J., Balliet, D., Tybur, J. M., Arai, S., Van Lange, P. A. & Yamagishi, T. (2017) Life history strategy and human cooperation in economic games. Evolution and Human Behavior 38(4):496–505.Google Scholar
Xu, T. (2017) The production and circulation of manuscripts and printed books in China compared to Europe, ca. 581–1840. Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics No. 53. Available at: http://technologygovernance.eu/files/main/2013070208164949.pdf.Google Scholar
Xu, Y., van Leeuwen, B. & van Zanden, J. L. (2015) Urbanization in China, ca. 1100–1900. CGEH Working Paper series, vol. 63.Google Scholar
Yesuf, M. & Bluffstone, R. (2008) Wealth and time preference in rural Ethiopia Available at: https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-08-16-efd.html.Google Scholar