No evidence for a relationship between MHC heterozygosity and life history strategy in a sample of North American undergraduates

Although allelic diversity at the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) has implications for adaptive immunity, mate choice, and social signalling, how diversity at the MHC influences the calibration of life history strategies remains largely uninvestigated. The current study investigated whether greater MHC heterozygosity was associated with markers of slower life history strategies in a sample of 789 North American undergraduates. Contrary to preregistered predictions and to previously published findings, MHC heterozygosity was not related to any of the psychological life history-relevant variables measured (including short- vs. long-term sexual strategy, temporal discounting, the Arizona life history battery, past and current health, disgust sensitivity, and Big Five personality traits). Further, no meaningful effects emerged when analysing women and men separately. Possible reasons for why the current results are inconsistent with previous work are discussed.

• Publication year

  2020

• Venue

  Scientific Reports

• Publication date

  2020-06-23

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/s41598-020-67406-7PMID 32576939PMCID 7311407
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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