
Janko MeđedovićInstitute of Criminological & Sociological Research
Janko Međedović
PhD
About
141
Publications
100,763
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
2,570
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
October 2010 - present
January 2010 - present
Publications
Publications (141)
Research on the links between “dark” personality traits and fertility is scarce, despite its conceptual significance – examining the links between behavioral traits and fertility is a pivotal step in analyzing the current evolution of the traits. We examined the associations between the Dark Tetrad traits (psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism,...
Estimating the links between behavioral traits and fertility (e.g., number of children) is a fundamental step in the analysis of contemporary natural selection on behavioral traits. Self-esteem and narcissism are two frequently examined personality traits with partially shared content, but their associations with fertility are rarely analyzed. We e...
The publication Prison Life Organization and Security: Criminological, Penological, Sociological, Psychological, Legal, and Security Aspects provides a comprehensive insight into the numerous dimensions that shape life in prisons, analyzing the organization and security of prison systems worldwide. The collection comprises 22 chapters divided into...
Existing research on the Dark Tetrad traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism) in the context of criminal behavior and institutional adjustment is very scarce. In the present study, we examined the associations between the Dark Tetrad, coping mechanisms (adaptive, social support, and maladaptive coping), and two indicators of p...
Kvalitet života u zatvoru ključan je za uspešno sprovođenje tretmana osuđenika, što predstavlja osnovu za njihovu resocijalizaciju, pripremu za povratak u društvo, reintegraciju i smanjenje recidivizma. Takođe, visok kvalitet zatvorskog života doprinosi efikasnijem radu zaposlenih u stručnim službama kazneno-popravnih zavoda. Na osnovu diskusije o...
Purpose
The present study aimed to investigate the extent to which violent intergroup conflict may be associated with human life history trajectories.
Methods
We examined life histories in a postconflict socioecology (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo: N = 699) and compared them with a control condition (Serbia: N = 628) using the network analysis...
The main goal of the present research was to explore the links between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism and fertility (number of children) due to its conceptual significance in estimating the adaptiveness of narcissism in an evolutionary sense. Furthermore, we aimed to explain these links via mating behavior (attachment in romantic relationships...
The Dark Tetrad (Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, and sadism) is a taxonomy of personality dispositions toward immoral, antisocial, and antagonistic behavior; still, its predictive power in the domain of criminal behavior is rarely tested. In the present research, we analyzed the associations between the Dark Tetrad and several indicators...
Sadizam je deo Mračne tetrade i opisuje osobu koja ponižava druge, uživajući u nanošenju fizičkog, psihičkog i seksualnog bola. Uzimajući u obzir štetne društvene posledice sadizma, važno je razumeti njegove ličnosne i bihejvioralne korelate. U ovom radu smo ispitivali sadizam u kontekstu sindroma životnog tempa (SŽT), koji predstavlja povezanost i...
Fundamental social motives represent an evolutionary-informed taxonomy of human motivational forces; however, it is still unknown if these motives are currently related to fitness. We used publicly available cross-cultural data to provide an answer to this question. Generalized linear mixed models with random slopes were built to estimate the relat...
Fundamental Social Motives are the most prominent taxonomy of human motives developed using an evolutionary framework. While covering several motives related to evolutionary fitness, this taxonomy does not cover an additional motivational force closely associated to fertility - reproductive motivation. In the present research, we explored the relat...
The goal of the present research was to develop a short, valid, and reliable rating measure of psychopathy: the Short Psychopathy Rating Scale (SPRS). To achieve this, we conducted three studies. In Study 1 (N = 485), the participants from a community sample rated persons they know well on items that assess psychopathy. By conducting the Factor Ana...
Vaccination hesitation and rejection is one of the major health risks in the epidemics of any infectious diseases with profound implications for public health in general. In order to provide a deeper insight into vaccine hesitation and rejection, we collected the data from individuals who did not take the COVID-19 vaccine in Serbia (N = 534), since...
In the present research, we analysed the properties of the Measuring the Quality of Prison Life (MQPL) survey in Serbia; it assesses five dimensions of prisoners’ wellbeing (Harmony, Professionalism, Security, Conditions and Family Contact, and Wellbeing and Development) composed of 21 narrow scales. The participants were 650 prisoners serving sent...
Speciesism designates a belief that humans should be treated as morally superior to other animals. This belief entails disregarding non-human animals' sentience and ability to suffer. Speciesism has been related to a more general lack of empathy and antisocial personality traits. In this study, we sought to investigate the relationship between the...
This dataset was created as part of the PrisonLIFE project, funded by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia under Grant No. 7750249.
This dataset includes information about the adaptation process, translations, and content validity assessment of the Serbian version of the Measuring the Quality of Prison Life (MQPL) survey, along with details...
This chapter covers evolutionary behavioral sciences in general, both animal and human disciplines. Firstly I briefly sketch the historical development and basic research tenets of (animal) behavioral ecology. Afterward, I depict human behavioral ecology (HBE) and its conceptual foundations; I use The Tsimane Health and Life History Project as the...
Life History Theory (LHT) represents one of the most prominent conceptual frameworks in evolutionary social sciences—its basic assumptions are described in this chapter with an emphasis on the hypothesized fast-slow continuum. LHT has somewhat different usage in evolutionary psychology, compared to evolutionary biology and HBE; thus, evolutionary p...
This chapter describes the basic concepts used in evolutionary biology. Firstly, the definition of evolution is provided; afterwards, I describe what fitness is and how we can measure it. Evolutionary tradeoffs are briefly described as well. I provide descriptions of basic evolutionary processes—mutations, genetic drift, gene flow, and natural sele...
In this chapter I present the empirical data used in order to illustrate how we can empirically explore psychopathy in a behavioral ecological context. The goal of the study was to examine the associations between psychopathy traits in parental pairs and fertility-longevity tradeoff, quantity quality tradeoff, to explore interactive phenotypes on p...
In this chapter, I cover several topics related to evolutionary explanations of the processes emerging in human families. Sex differences in parental care as a part of sex roles are analyzed from a viewpoint of sexual selection. I explain the origins of markedly heightened parental care in humans and the conditions influencing parental investment—e...
This chapter is dedicated to the behavioral ecological analysis of psychopathy. Firstly I describe psychopathy as a behavioral syndrome consisting of several traits (manipulativeness, emotional superficiality, lack of behavioral control, and sometimes antisocial behavior), and the most prominent instruments for psychopathy measurement. Afterwards,...
The existence and characteristics of evolutionary tradeoffs in human populations are described in this chapter. Firstly I cover fertility-longevity tradeoff, the problems of its empirical detection and the possible explanation of this problem (a possibility of nonlinear association between these two fitness components), and the implications of the...
In this chapter I introduce the field of behavioral ecology of personality or evolutionary personality ecology. The main conceptual framework is based on three topics, sometimes called evolutionary puzzles of personality: evolutionary explanations of inter-individual differences in behavior, cross-situational and temporal consistency in behavior, a...
I used psychopathy to provide an illustration of how we can explore the evolution of behavioral traits on phenotypic data. But looking at my own work in the field, I never thought that the main contribution of my research is empirical data. I never thought that someone should teach students that psychopathy or any other behavioral trait has fitness...
Traits such as psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism are commonly used to describe the dark side of human personality. These traits, collectively known as the dark personality triad (Paulhus, 2014), have been the focus of research by psychologists seeking a more nuanced understanding of negative personality traits. To further explore this s...
The phenotypic gambit is one of the crucial assumptions in evolutionary behavioral ecology: it asserts that a phenotypic variation of a trait represents a reasonably adequate estimation of its genetic variation. This is particularly important since one of the main goals of behavioral ecology is to analyze the patterns of natural selection on phenot...
Attachment styles are frequently viewed from within the evolutionary conceptual framework; however, their associations with evolutionary fitness are very rarely empirically explored. In the present research ( N = 448), we analyzed the relations between romantic attachment (anxiety and avoidance) and various fitness indicators in Serbian adults: mat...
Body mass is widely recognized as a morphological trait which is important for fitness optimization both in humans and other animals. Here, we propose that body mass is a part of fast life history trajectory-the fitness optimization pattern which emerges from harsh environment with a function to maximize reproductive output. To test this prediction...
Dark personality traits describe amoral and antisocial behavioral dispositions and are often described by psychopathy (i.e., interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial characteristics), narcissism, Machiavellianism, and sadism. These traits are related to various socially detrimental behavioral outcomes, including criminal behavior and del...
In this study, we hypothesized that traditionalist social attitudes (conservatism, religiousness, and authoritarianism) significantly predict COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs (Hiding Information and Harmless Virus), as well as conspiracy mentality in general. We also hypothesized that these relationships are mediated by the objectivity of the media thro...
We asked the unvaccinated participants (N=534) why they did not take the vaccine, what could motivate them to take a vaccine and their future vaccination intentions, and analyzed the associations between these measures and several contextual and dispositional constructs including conspiracy ideation, concerns about contracting a disease and having...
This study aimed to examine the role of socio-political attitudes and motivational tendencies supposed to mark closed-mindedness, as well as other relevant variables of individual differences (Disintegration, i.e., proneness to psychotic-like experiences/behaviors and Death Anxiety), in the Militant Extremist Mindset (MEM). A community sample of 60...
Previous studies showed the existence of general factors in cognitive abilities, personality traits, and psychopathology symptoms. We hypothesized a similar factor on the apex of social attitudes' hierarchy; furthermore, we assumed that this factor reflects a conservatism-liberalism dimension. This hypothesis is tested by factorizing the space of "...
Social attitudes like religiousness and conservatism have been rarely examined in a life history framework. However, there are two competing hypotheses regarding the role of religiousness in human life history: in evolutionary psychological research it is thought to indicate slow life history while the behavioral ecological framework highlights its...
Mating patterns are crucial for understanding selection regimes in current populations and highly implicative for sexual selection and life history theory. However, empirical data on the relations between mating and reproductive outcomes in contemporary humans are lacking. In the present research we examined the sexual selection on mating (with an...
One of the key life history assumptions is that mortality rates are positively associated with fast life history dynamics. Since the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated mortality rates throughout the world, we tested this assumption using reproductive motivation (desired number of children and desired age of first reproduction) as a key output measure u...
Empirical data on the relations between mating and reproductive success are rare for humans, especially for industrial and post-industrial populations. Existing data show that mating (and especially long-term mating) can be beneficial for fitness, especially that of males. This finding is in line with the hypothesis of sexual selection operating in...
In this study, we hypothesized that traditionalist social attitudes (conservatism, religiousness, and authoritarianism) significantly predict COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, as well as conspiracy mentality in general. We also hypothesized that these relationships are mediated by the objectivity of the media individuals inform themselves from, and the...
This study aimed to examine the role of socio-political attitudes and motivational tendencies supposed to mark closed-mindedness, as well as other relevant variables of individual differences (Disintegration, i.e., proneness to psychotic-like experiences/ behaviors and Death Anxiety), in the Militant Extremist Mindset (MEM). A community sample of 6...
This study investigates group differences in Militant Extremist Mindset (MEM) measures of Pro-violence, Divine Power, Utopianism, Vile World, and West, together with several variables building its nomological network. The study was based on groups from domicile population living within and outside the conflict zone and a sample of refugees/asylum s...
Mračna Tetrada je psihološki koncept koji opisuje amoralnu i antisocijalnu strnau ljudske ličnosti pomoću četiri crte - Makijavelizma, narcizma, psihopatije i sadizma. Cilj ovog istraživanja bio je ispitati vezu između dimenzija Mračne Tetrade ličnosti, nepovoljnog sredinskog okuženja tokom razvoja i konzumacije psihoaktivnih supstanci (PAS). Koriš...
The examination of multiple life history indicators is essential to evolutionary sciences. However, the statistical analysis of life history parameters’ covariation is not apparently clear, due to the statistical limitations of “classic” procedures, like Factor Analysis, and conceptual problems in interpreting covariation between life history indic...
The roles of conspiracy beliefs and political trust for public health behaviour have seldomly been studied prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we tested whether conspiracy beliefs affect containment-related behaviour in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and whether this relationship is mediated by political trust, preference for saving t...
Ethos of Conflict (EOC) represents a set of societal beliefs regarding violent intergroup conflict. One of the important topic in intergroup conflict research is the political socialization of beliefs regarding conflict - the intergenerational transmission of the conflict-related beliefs from parents to children. However, the empirical data on this...
Football supporters represent a specific social group which is prone to violence and ideologically based extremist behavior. In the present study we explored whether football supporters in Serbia are characterized by Militant Extremist Mind-Set (MEM), a set of beliefs characterized by terrorists and ideological extremists. MEM is constituted of thr...
This study investigates the attitudinal and motivational bases of militant extremist beliefs in a postconflict society ( N = 600; 51% female). Militant extremist mindset (MEM) measures of proviolence, divine power, utopianism, vile world, and West, together with the Ethos of Conflict- Grudge Scale (EOC-grudge), were used to assess militant-extremis...
In the present research, we examined the role of intelligence in reproductive ecology with the hypothesis that intelligence has some characteristics of a slow life-history behavioral trait. We did this by analyzing the associations between intelligence, environmental harshness in childhood (parental investment, family dysfunction and economic pover...
In evolutionary psychology, it is customary to measure life-history via psychometric inventories such as the Arizona Life History Battery (ALHB). This approach has been criticized due to its questionable validity: it is argued that these measures are not congruent with biological life history events such as the number of children, age at first birt...
The HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised (HEXACO-PI-R) has evolved into one of the most heavily applied measurement tools for the assessment of basic personality traits. Correspondingly, the inventory has been translated to several languages for use in cross-cultural research. However, formal tests examining whether the different language versions...
State-dependent behaviour models of personality predict that fitness consequences of personality depend on various states. Hence, personality traits may be adaptive only in certain conditions. In the present research, we tested the state-dependent personality model of Big Five personality traits using harsh and unpredictable environments as the ext...
The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries (N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower stat...
Football (soccer) fans, particularly those with active involvement in supporting clubs, are especially prone to violence and criminal behavior. However, there is a gap in literature regarding individual characteristics which lead to criminal behavior in this group. In the present research, we examined the Dark Tetrad traits (narcissism, Machiavelli...
One of the key features of personality is the existence of inter-individual differences in motivation, emotions and behavior. Individual differences may be maintained in a population if personality traits are linked to states – conditions which affect the fitness-related outcomes of personality. We tested this assumption using the participants' sex...
Previous research suggested that psychopathy is related to diminished physical and mental health. However, this link could be specific to psychopathic lifestyle and antisocial behavior, while manipulative characteristics and emotional superficiality could be unrelated or even positively related to physical and mental health. Furthermore, psychopath...
In recent years there have been attempts to explain religiousness from an evolutionary viewpoint. However, empirical data on this topic are still lacking. In the present study, the behavioural ecological theoretical framework was used to explore the relations between religiousness, harsh environment, fitness (reproductive success and parental inves...
One of the major evolutionary puzzles of personality is the existence of inter-individual variation in behavior. The variation in personality may be maintained by natural selection if various states moderate the link between personality and fitness-if personality traits have beneficial contribution to fitness in certain conditions but detrimental i...
In their recent paper, Lukaszewski et al. proposed a socioecological hypothesis for analyzing the covariations between the Big Five personality traits. The hypothesis states that the shared variance between the personality traits is higher in less complex societies marked by lower economic development, urbanization, and niche diversity. We welcome...
In order to assess the potential of psychopathy to increase evolutionary fitness, we examined the relations between psychopathy and fitness indicators (number of children and grandchildren, problems in physical health both in parents and offspring) in a sample of post-reproductive individuals (N = 187; Mage = 66.52). Specifically, we explored the p...
Objective
The examination of ultimate factors that maintain genetic (and consequently phenotypic) variance in a behavioral trait represents one of the key goals of evolutionary ecology of personality. One of these factors are adaptive trade-offs: if a trait is involved in a trade-off, than natural selection cannot deplete its genetic variance. We u...
After almost 20 years since the end of the armed conflicts in former Yugoslavia, we are witnesses to the fact that the main causes of the conflicts have not been overcome. Reconciliation between ethnic groups that had been in conflict by means of economic and political cooperation, must have a psychological foundation. This study investigates the r...
In the present work we describe the further development of the Short Psychopathy Rating Scale (SPRS), a 9 item inventory for measuring three psychopathy traits: Deceitfulness, Emotional coldness and Recklessness. We administered this inventory on a sample of 210 students (76% females, Mage=21.21; SD=2.10) who rated their parents on psychopathic tra...
Previous theoretical accounts have predicted that warfare and intergroup conflict are environmental factors that contribute to the emergence of a fast life-history strategy. However, this assumption has never been directly empirically tested. We examined youth who grew up in a territory that experienced violent intergroup conflict and compared them...
Psychopathy may be related to some adaptive outcomes in the workplace environment. This phenomenon is called corporate psychopathy and it is based on the assumption that the corporate environment positively selects for psychopathic features, especially in top management. We tested the hypothesis of positive relations between psychopathy traits and...
Earlier research suggested that militant extremists could have certain aspects of psychopathic and psychotic characteristics. Relying on these studies, we investigated whether the Militant Extremist Mind-Set (MEM) could be explained by psychopathy, sadism, and Disintegration (psychosis proneness), as subclinical manifestations of amoral, antisocial...
In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that psychopathy emerges as an adaptive behavioral response to a harsh environment: psychopathy could represent a mediator in the link between a harsh environment and fast life history pathway. We measured environmental harshness, psychopathy (boldness, meanness, and disinhibition), and a wide range of...
One of the most prominent models of psychopathy operationalizes this construct as consisting of four factors: interpersonal, affective, lifestyle and antisocial traits. These traits show different relationship patterns with other constructs, and these relations may differ in men and women. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the relati...
We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings, with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance, to examine variation in effect magnitudes across samples and settings. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples that comprised 15,305 participants from 36 countries and territories....
Previous research has suggested that psychopathy may be involved in mating-parenting trade-off; furthermore, a harsh environment could facilitate this trade-off in psychopathy. We integrated these two hypotheses into a single research design. We hypothesized that psychopathy elevated mating but decreased parenting effort; in addition, we predicted...
There is an ongoing debate regarding the content of psychopathy, especially about the status of antisocial behavior and disinhibition characteristics as core psychopathy features. Psychopathic Personality Traits Scale (PPTS) represents a novel model of psychopathy based on core psychopathy markers such as Interpersonal manipulation, Egocentricity a...
We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance to examine variation in effect magnitudes across sample and setting. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples and 15,305 total participants from 36 countries and territories. Using co...
We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings, with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance, to examine variation in effect magnitudes across samples and settings. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples that comprised 15,305 participants from 36 countries and territories....
The goal of the present research was to construct a short, reliable and valid scale for the rating assessment of psychopathy. By using existing models of psychopathy we constructed Short Psychopathy Rating Scale which measures three psychopathy traits: 1) Deceitfulness-lying and conning followed by high self-esteem (5 items); 2) Emotional coldness-...
Previous research has revealed the importance of body mass for biological fitness. However, studies that explore body mass index (BMI) in life-history perspective are still scarce. In the present research, we tested the hypothesis that a harsh environment facilitates faster growth, thus resulting in higher BMI; consequently, higher BMI should be re...
Personality research has a long and fruitful history in psychology. In the past 15 years, this topic emerged as an important subfield in behavioral ecology as well. A large amount of empirical data has been
gathered, and promising theoretical models have been developed. Despite all of this, there is almost no communication between personality resea...
The Triarchic personality model of psychopathy represents one of the most prominent operationalizations of psychopathy. According to this model, psychopathy is characterized by Meanness, Boldness and Disinhibition. The instrument which measures these three dimensions is labeled as Triarchic Personality Measure (TriPM). The goal of the present study...
HEXACO personality framework represents one of the most prominent models of human personality traits. Despite of this, there are no empirical studies that estimate the fitness outcomes of HEXACO traits, although this topic represents a basic foundation for the study of the contemporary evolution of personality. In the present research we explored t...
The space of immoral, deceitful and antisocial personality dispositions has been usually depicted by the Dark Triad concept, consisted of psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism. Recently, a trait of sadism (enjoyment in pain of others) has been added into the concept, thus forming the Dark Tetrad. In the present research, we tried to expand t...
In behavioral ecology, state-dependent models are frequently used for the
explanation of inter-individual variance in personality traits. Environmental characteristics are
one of the external states which could influence this variance. The model predicts that
environmental harshness should be related to fast life-history personality traits and that...
Recently there have been attempts to measure psychopathy via existing personality inventories. The aim of the present research was to explore whether six-factors personality structure (measured by HEXACO-PI-R) can be used for the assessment of the psychopathy model consisted of four traits: interpersonal, affective, lifestyle and antisocial (measur...
Previous research has shown that since the beginning of the 1990s, differentiation in the ideological orientations of political parties in Serbia has been increased. Comparing three samples, we explored the temporal stability of relations between evaluations of Serbian political parties (DSS, DS, SRS, SPS, SNS, and LDP) and lexically derived ideolo...
Recently, attempts have been made to determine the evolutionary status of psychopathy. However, there is still a gap in empirical literature regarding the connection between psychopathy and fitness. In the present study, we explored the relations between the four-factor model of psychopathy and reproductive success as a fitness indicator in a sampl...