Petr Tureček

Charles University in Prague | CUNI · Department of Philosophy and History of Science

In non-genetic systems, such as culture, inheritance is often non-particulate. Owing to blending and consequent loss of variability, however, selection in such systems has been considered ineffective. The issue of loss of variability was solved by the Galton-Pearson model, which assumes a constant offspring variability and predicts gradual adaptati...

For decades, scientists have been baffled by the unique pattern of human fur. Although we can find distant parallels in other primates and even ungulates, humans are the only bald animals that retained rich, constantly growing hair on their heads. On top of that, the human mane is sexually dimorphic. It covers the face except for the ocular and for...

Sexual selection, including mate choice and intrasexual competition, is responsible for the evolution of some of the most elaborated and sexually dimorphic traits in animals. Although there is clear sexual dimorphism in the shape of human faces, it is not clear whether this is similarly due to mate choice, or whether mate choice affects only part o...

Sympatric speciation is typically presented as a rare phenomenon, but urban subcultures frequently emerge even in absence of geographic isolation. Is there perhaps something that culture has but biological inheritance does not that would account for this difference? We present a novel model that combines assortative interaction and multidimensional...

We experimentally investigated whether appeals to moral principles—as operationalized by the theory of Morality-as-Cooperation—increase pandemic-related public health behavior. Participants (from the USA and India) were presented with persuasive messages, asked about their intentions to follow pandemic-related restrictions, were asked to donate to...

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is the herpetic virus, which infects 45–100% of people worldwide. Many reports suggest that CMV could impair the cognitive functions of infected subjects. Here we searched for indices of effects of CMV on infected subjects’ intelligence and knowledge. The Intelligence Structure Test I S T 2000 R was used to compare the cogniti...

The recent changes in COVID-19 symptoms suggest convergent evolution of respiratory diseases. This process is analogous to the emergence of animal mimetic complexes and complements previously identified types of mimicry. A novel pathogen might go unnoticed or insufficiently counteracted if it resembles a disease that the host already faced on multi...

Biosocial impact of facial dominance and sex-typicality is well-evidenced in various human groups. It remains unclear, though, whether perceived sex-typicality and dominance can be consistently predicted from sexually dimorphic facial features across populations. Using a combination of multidimensional Bayesian approach and geometric morphometrics,...

Spatial separation is often included in models of ethnic divergence but it has also been realised that urban subcultures can, and frequently do, emerge in sympatry. Previous research tended to attribute this phenomenon to the human tendency to imitate self-similar individuals and actively differentiate oneself from individuals recognized as members...

The aim of this study is to examine, to what extent the chance of survival of children under 5 years of age was influenced by a biological parent’s death in the region of western Bohemia. Young children’s mortality is considered in relation to family structure, since persons raising the child in its early childhood significantly influenced the qual...

Do appeals to moral values increase compliance with COVID-19 public health measures? According to the theory of ‘Morality as cooperation’, morality consists of a collection of cooperative principles that help us get along, work together and promote the common good. We experimentally investigated whether messages that appeal to these moral principle...

The present research focused on how environmental harshness may affect heterosexual women's preferences of potential male mates’ facial characteristics, namely masculinity-femininity. The evidence on this issue is mixed and mostly from Western samples. We aimed to provide causal evidence using a sample of Turkish women and Turkish male faces. A vid...

Human childrearing is characterized by cooperative care and grandmothers are usually the most prominent alloparents. Nevertheless, it has been argued that limited resources may intensify competition among kin. The effect of grandmothers’ presence on child survival may thus crucially depend on the family’s socioeconomic status. We evaluate the impac...

Despite intensive research, evolutionary psychology has not yet reached a consensus regarding the association between sexual dimorphism and attractiveness. This study examines associations between perceived and morphological facial sexual dimorphism and perceived attractiveness in samples from five distant countries (Cameroon, Colombia, Czechia, Ir...

Historically, multiple coronavirus strains had spread in human populations. They tend to cause symptoms usually described as the common cold. Other serologically different pathogens are known for causing similar symptoms, for instance, various rhinoviruses, influenza viruses, adenoviruses, enteroviruses, and several sources of bacterial sinusitis....

We provide a formal account of an interface that bridges two different levels of dynamic processes manifested by mimicry: prey–prey interactions and predators' perception. Mimicry is a coevolutionary process between an animate selective agent and at least two similar organisms selected by agent's perception-driven actions. Attractor field model exp...

Men look different than women, well that is not a big surprise, but we wanted to study the phenomena of sexual dimorphism of human faces more thoroughly. Every human face can be represented as a position in a 144-dimensional space. That is a start. We collected face shapes in 8 different cultures, In Cameroon, Namibia, Brazil, Colombia, Czech Repub...

Sexual selection, including mate choice and intrasexual competition, is responsible for the evolution of some of the most elaborated and sexually dimorphic traits in animals. Although there is sexual dimorphism in the shape of human faces, it is not clear whether this is similarly due to mate choice, or whether mate choice affects only part of the...

It has been hypothesised that the strength of association between sex typicality and attractiveness follows an adaptive pattern across cultures. Such pattern allows for adjustment of individual preferences for facial cues associated with direct (parenting) and indirect (biological quality) benefits from mating with a potential mate according to env...

Statistically, the concentration of antibodies against parasites decreases with the duration of infection. This can result in false negative outcomes of diagnostic tests for subjects with old infections. When a property of seronegative and seropositive subjects is compared under these circumstances, the statistical tests can detect no difference be...

Perceived vocal attractiveness and measured sex-dimorphic vocal parameters are both associated with underlying individual qualities. Research tends to focus on speech but singing is another highly evolved communication system that has distinct and universal features with analogs in other species, and it is relevant in mating. Both speaking and sing...

Background No serological assay has 100% sensitivity. Statistically, the concentration of specific antibodies against antigens of parasites decreases with the duration of infection. This can result in false negative outputs of diagnostic tests for the subjects with old infectiong, e.g., for individuals infected in childhood. When a property of sero...

In non-genetic systems, such as culture, inheritance is often non-particulate. Owing to blending and consequent loss of variability, however, selection in such systems has been considered ineffective. The issue of loss of variability was solved by the Galton–Pearson model, which assumes a constant offspring variability and predicts gradual adaptati...

In mate choice, individuals consider a wide pool of potential partners. It has been found that people have certain preferences, but intraindividual stability of mate choice over time remains little explored. We tested individual consistency of mate choice with respect to a number of demographic, physical, and personality characteristics. Only mothe...

Partner preferences are formed by several mechanisms, including an imprinting-like effect (parent-similarity) and homogamy (self-similarity). It is still unknown, however, whether these preferences remain stable throughout an individual's lifetime. We have therefore tested the consistency of mate choice in eye and hair colour both in a shortand lon...

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is the herpetic virus, which infects 45–100% people worldwide. Many reports suggest that CMV could impair cognitive functions of infected subjects. Here we searched for indices of effects of CMV on infected subjects’ intelligence and knowledge. The Intelligence Structure Test I-S-T 2000 R was used to compare IQ of 148 CMV-infe...

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is the herpetic virus, which infects 45 – 100% people worldwide. Many reports suggest that CMV could impair cognitive functions of infected subjects. Here we searched for indices of effects of CMV on infected subjects’ intelligence and knowledge. The Intelligence Structure Test I-S-T 2000 R was used to compare IQ of 148 CMV-in...

Cultural traits lack the phenotype-genotype duality of biological systems and can be of a non-particulate nature. It has been argued that in systems with non-particulate inheritance blending of exceptional traits causes a loss of populational variability, prerequisite for natural selection. Models introducing constant error term to deal with this p...

Body constitution plays an important role in human mate choice. Cross-cultural research reports that women on average prefer men with muscular physique. It is still unclear, however, what mechanisms influence the inter-individual variation in mate preferences and choices of partner's physique. In this study, we tested the mechanisms of an imprintin...

Majority of research on attractiveness is restricted to faces of European origin. The perception of attractiveness may, however, vary across communities due to variations in both facial morphology and local standards of beauty. We investigated the relative contribution of four facial markers of attractiveness based on 100 female facial portraits (s...

Robust evidence shows that voice quality affects various social interactions, including mate preferences. Previous research found that male voices perceived as attractive are characterized by low voice pitch, lower or sexually typical formants and relatively high breathiness. These features tend to be seen as markers of an individual's quality as a...

It was previously suggested that people prefer and choose romantic partners with self-similar (homogamy) and/or their parents-similar (imprinting-like effect) eye and hair colour. Effect of both mechanisms might differ to some degree according to mating context (i.e. long-term and short-term mating). However, are people even consistent in their mat...

In this paper we try to propose the idea of evolutionary monism. It was previously suggested that biological and cultural evolution are classes of mutually exclusive processes. Nowadays the view that culture (e.g. as a special adaptive structure which allows to cope with variable environment) is unilaterally dependent on previously evolved biologic...

Cultural traits lack the phenotype-genotype duality of biological systems and can be of a non-particulate nature. However, several objections are questioning the validity of selection in systems with non-particulate inheritance. Consequent to this, the majority of models of cultural evolution employ discrete traits. Here, using computer simulations...

Previous studies suggest that birth order influences certain psychological traits (e.g. openess to experience) and social interactions in adults. It was also speculated that the birth ordercould affect romantic relationship functioning. More specifically, couples, whose birth order duplicates interpersonal patterns that spouses come from (e.g. a co...