Developmental psychology has long focused on how individuals shape, and are shaped by, their environments (Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, Reference Bronfenbrenner and Ceci1994; Scarr & McCartney, Reference Scarr and McCartney1983). Ko & Neuberg offer an insightful approach to understanding how these interactions are influenced by evolved developmental stages that alter the perceptions, goal valuations, and behavioral responses to environmental cues. While an admirable overview of the link between environmental affordances and human lifespan development, their paper did not have room for elaborating on potential mechanisms that could account for developmental changes in perception, motivation, and behavior. There is a psychological construct that involves all three of those domains and also features a focus on individual x environment interactions: personality.

Arguably the best current model of personality, which also features strong ties to evolutionary theory, is the HEXACO (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness; Ashton & Lee, Reference Ashton and Lee2020). The creators of the HEXACO argue that its six personality factors represent adaptive trade-offs to different environmental conditions (a.k.a. affordances; Ashton & Lee, Reference Ashton and Lee2007). HEXACO personality has also been linked to several aspects of life history theory, including perceptions and behavior related to somatic, mating, and parental investment (Brazil & Volk, Reference Brazil and Volk2022; Franklin-Luther & Volk, Reference Franklin-Luther and Volk2022). Thus, HEXACO personality may offer an excellent model for (at least partially) mediating the intersection of ecological affordances, individual differences, and lifespan development from an adaptive perspective (Volk, Dane, & Puchalski, Reference Volk, Dane and Puchalski2025; Volk & Puchalski, Reference Volk and Puchalski2025).

I recently argued that personality appears to reliably change over the lifespan in response to different pressures and affordances associated with different adaptive pressures at different life stages (Volk, Reference Volkin press). While the number of developmental stages remains to be determined (e.g., is middle childhood a separate stage from early childhood? Del Giudice, Reference Del Giudice2014), I called for young adult (including adolescents), middle adult, older adult, and senescent stages of personality change (Volk, Reference Volkin press). Using data from hundreds of thousands of English and Korean individuals (from Ashton & Lee, Reference Ashton and Lee2016; Lee & Ashton, Reference Lee and Ashton2023), as well as our own longitudinal data (Brazil et al., Reference Brazil, Farrell, Spadafora, de Vries and Volk2025a), I found in each of these stages HEXACO personality changes coincided with the different adaptive goals and demands of each life stage (they were also broadly mirrored in Big Five data; Volk, Reference Volkin press). For example, adolescents and young adults displayed abrupt, but transient, changes towards more antisocial personality traits. I argued that rather than being maladaptive, these changes reflect adaptive prioritizing of one’s own interests at a point in the lifespan when one must break away from one’s natal family and start one’s own new mating trajectory (Brazil et al., Reference Brazil, Farrell, Spadafora, de Vries and Volk2025a). HEXACO data also shed light on some of the more specific suppositions in Ko & Neuberg’s paper, such as whether there are different levels of Emotionality over the lifespan (sentimentality is low and anxiety is high during adolescence/young adulthood, whereas the opposite is true in older adulthood; Volk, Reference Volkin press). There is also evidence that, as Ko & Neuberg suggest, adults are lowest in Agreeableness in the mid-parenting years, supporting their idea that parents are less forgiving of societal rule-breaking at a time when they are both most formidable and have children to protect (Volk, Reference Volkin press). In late adulthood, there appears to be a shift in personality traits that reflects less competitive and more alliance-building/caring motives that would align with the tasks of grandparenting and being social arbiters (Volk, Reference Volkin press).

Further in line with Ko and Neuberg’s paper is the argument that personality development and evolution involve exactly the sort of environmental-individual calibrations that their affordances theory suggests (Volk & Puchalski, Reference Volk and Puchalski2025). Particularly within the context of violence and antisociality, a growing body of evidence has emphasized the adaptive intersectionality of environmental affordances (both benign and harsh) with HEXACO personality and bullying (Farrell & Volk, Reference Farrell and Volk2017; Farrell et al., Reference Farrell, Eriksson, Cino and Vaillancourt2025; Provenzano et al., Reference Provenzano, Farrell, Volk, Dane and Marini2018; Volk et al., Reference Volk, Schiralli, Xia, Zhao and Dane2018; Reference Volk, Provenzano, Farrell, Dane and Shulman2021a), cooperative versus coercive social strategies (Volk et al., Reference Volk, Schiralli, Spadafora, Buchner and Dane2021b), psychopathy (Brazil et al., Reference Brazil, Farrell, Boer and Volk2025b), strength (Lukaszewski et al., Reference Lukaszewski, Lewis, Durkee, Sell, Sznycer and Buss2020; Reference Lukaszewski, Patton, Durkee, Zerbe and Bowser2023), and dark personality traits (Volk, Dane, & Puchalski, Reference Volk, Dane and Puchalski2025). In contrast to Ko and Neuberg’s suggestion that danger should increase anxiety in girls, the gender-equity paradox shows that women in more gender-equal countries (that are safer for women) show higher levels of Emotionality in general and anxiety in particular (Lee & Ashton, Reference Lee and Ashton2020). In contrast, sex differences in Honesty-Humility show that the bias towards male competitiveness remains stable across gender norms (Lee & Ashton, Reference Lee and Ashton2020). Thus, personality can offer important insights into responses to environmental affordances. Ko and Neuberg’s focus on ecological affordances dovetails nicely with recent calls for more top-down approaches to personality and individual x environment interactions (Lukaszewski et al., Reference Lukaszewski, Lewis, Durkee, Sell, Sznycer and Buss2020; Maestripieri & Boutwell, Reference Maestripieri and Boutwell2022; Volk & Puchalski, Reference Volk and Puchalski2025). I argue that this new evolutionary personality research offers the possibility of personality as a mediating gene x environment psychological mechanism that helps enact and calibrate perceptions, motives, and behavior across the lifespan, similar to what Ko and Neuberg propose.

Beyond personality, I do have two suggestions that might help strengthen this interesting program of research. The first is to continue emphasizing how their approach is compatible, rather than competitive, with existing theories of development like Gibson’s (Reference Gibson, Shaw, Bransford, Shaw and Bransford1977) Theory of Affordances, Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Theory (Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, Reference Bronfenbrenner and Ceci1994), and Belsky’s Differential Susceptibility (Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & Van IJzendoorn, Reference Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenburg and Van IJzendoorn2007), as well as newer theories such as Walasek, Panchanathan, & Frankenhuis’s (Reference Walasek, Panchanathan and Frankenhuis2024) view of adolescence as a critical period. Rather than discouraging or competing with these developmental theories, I believe their work helps provide structure and testable hypotheses to many existing developmental theories. The second is to encourage the challenging, but necessary, work of examining affordances within the environments in which we evolved by using hunter-gatherer, historical, and archaeological data (e.g., Volk, Reference Volk2023). The present manuscript generally does that well, but it is important to continue emphasizing the need for this work in ongoing psychological studies of life history. Alongside other concerns about the use of life history theory on humans (Volk, Reference Volk2025), ensuring a strong awareness of ancestral affordances would help further strengthen this interesting and novel contribution.