This is freaking fascinating:
The new theory, proposed by the researchers and driven by ideas from evolutionary psychology, holds that drug attitudes are really driven by people’s reproductive strategies.
When the Penn researchers questioned almost 1,000 people in two subject populations (undergraduate students and Internet users) a clear winner emerged between the competing theories: differences in reproductive strategies are driving individuals’ different views on recreational drugs.
Researcher Robert Kurzban said that while many factors predict to some extent whether people are opposed to recreational drugs, the most closely related predictors are people’s views on sexual promiscuity. “This provides evidence that views on sex and views on drugs are very closely related,” he explained. “If you were to measure people’s political ideology, religiosity and personality characteristics, you can predict to some degree how people feel about recreational drugs. But if, instead, you just measure how people feel about casual sex, and ignore the abstract items, the predictions about people’s views on drugs in fact become quite a bit better.”
Somewhat controversially, the study also concludes that considering morality from the standpoint of strategic reproductive interests is a potentially useful way to understand why humans care about third-party behavior.
Nice website as well.
