Life History Theory is a good candidate to produce a unified theory of economic modernity or a great reconciliation on the great enrichment, and Baumard's use of it in Psychological Origins of the Industrial Revolution is a major step toward that end.
There are, however, a couple of weak points in Baumard's theory. One is the claim that growing affluence before the Industrial Revolution caused slower life history strategies to gain ground. Baumard shows that there is an association between affluence and slow life preferences. Lower impulsivity, higher self-control, more optimism or future orientation, greater cognitive ability, and higher trust are positively associated with affluence. This is so in intranational and cross-national comparisons. But it is hard to disentangle which way the causal arrows flow. In the contemporary world, a natural experiment is provided by the extraordinary affluence of oil-exporting countries. If affluence were the main driver, we would expect them to lead the world in slow life traits.
Another point of weakness concerns the peculiarity of England. Baumard concentrates on explaining England's divergence. But England's pioneering role may have been an accident (Crafts Reference Crafts1977). France and the rest of Northwest Europe were similar to England, so any part might have pioneered industry. But, by chance, England happened to specialize in mass market goods (cotton textiles) rather than luxury items. The mass demand for cotton textiles stimulated the adoption of factories and steam power to generate large-scale production. It did not take long for other parts of Northwest Europe to follow suit. It can be added that there is evidence that slow life strategies were also widespread in other parts of Northwest Europe. France, for example, led the way in the demographic transition to lower fertility rates. This suggests that Life History Theory is better suited to explaining not the initial success of England but the swift follow-up in Western Europe and North America, and later Japan.
Nevertheless, Baumard's theory shows that Life History Theory holds great potential. Several areas look promising for further exploration. One concerns the long-term roots of slow life traits and preferences. For example, Galor and Özak (Reference Galor and Özak2016) show that there is an association between (a) areas of the world with a long-term orientation as measured by cross-national surveys and (b) areas that had suitable agro-climatic conditions for high-investment, high-return agriculture. They measure the latter using data on crop yields and the length of the growth cycle. In general, growth cycles are short near the tropics, long in higher latitudes. This suggests that long-term orientation (a key part of slow life history) slowly arose as agricultural populations psychologically adapted to longer-growth-cycle farming.
Another possible old source of slow life strategies is the peculiar family and marriage system known as the European Marriage Pattern (EMP). EMP norms included nuclear families, late marriage (so as to be able to form a new household), offspring leaving their parents’ household to set up new households, and absence of cousin marriage. This form of loose kinship requires some degree of slow life history because it means deferring marriage and investing in cooperating with non-kin, which has a less immediate but better long-term payoff than cooperation with kin. There is evidence that West Europeans psychologically adapted to a loose kinship system. Schulz et al. (Reference Schulz, Bahrami-Rad, Beauchamp and Henrich2018) gathered 20 cross-cultural measures and found that Westerners are more individualistic and have higher trust, less conformism, and less tolerance of cheating and nepotism. The authors found that this is associated closely with the length of time a population spent under the influence of the Catholic Church.
If it is true that slow life preferences arose over a long process, they might help explain other developments aside from the Industrial Revolution. Before the Industrial Revolution there was the Scientific Revolution. Without science, industry could not have happened. The keystone technologies of steam power and then, later, of electrical and chemical industries were inconceivable without scientific knowledge. Thus, the question arises whether a growing slow life history fraction of the population was responsible for the rise of science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As with the Industrial Revolution, there is a prima facie association. The slow life personality desires to cooperate, and science required trust and public sharing of information; desires learning and intellectual understanding, which was critical to science; engages in self-control and a long-term orientation, which are necessary for scientific inquiry. The rise of science also required the spread of an idea that there are things to be discovered, that not all knowledge was found by the ancients, that it is possible to accumulate knowledge. But this too would not take root unless a critical mass of people had the slow trait of an orientation toward the future rather than the present. Life History Theory could shed light on the Scientific Revolution.
Closely associated with economic modernity is state-making. The creation of a modern political order commonly accompanied the great enrichment. A strong state was particularly prominent in catchup development of countries such as Japan, Russia, South Korea, and most recently China. It is possible that Life History Theory can illuminate this question. If the political elite of a country are slow life history strategists then they are likely to have the traits of cooperativeness, self-control, prudence, long-term orientation, and cognitive ability. An effective state depends above all on the cooperativeness of the elite, willing to put aside factional interests willing also to exercise restraint in not dominating the non-elite. This may be a clue as to why state-making and the great enrichment tended to go together: they both arise from similar sources.
These indications point to Life History Theory as a relatively parsimonious way to reconcile several bodies of evidence and lines of explanation into a coherent general account of the roots of economic modernity – a great reconciliation about the great enrichment.
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Life History Theory is a good candidate to produce a unified theory of economic modernity or a great reconciliation on the great enrichment, and Baumard's use of it in Psychological Origins of the Industrial Revolution is a major step toward that end.
There are, however, a couple of weak points in Baumard's theory. One is the claim that growing affluence before the Industrial Revolution caused slower life history strategies to gain ground. Baumard shows that there is an association between affluence and slow life preferences. Lower impulsivity, higher self-control, more optimism or future orientation, greater cognitive ability, and higher trust are positively associated with affluence. This is so in intranational and cross-national comparisons. But it is hard to disentangle which way the causal arrows flow. In the contemporary world, a natural experiment is provided by the extraordinary affluence of oil-exporting countries. If affluence were the main driver, we would expect them to lead the world in slow life traits.
Another point of weakness concerns the peculiarity of England. Baumard concentrates on explaining England's divergence. But England's pioneering role may have been an accident (Crafts Reference Crafts1977). France and the rest of Northwest Europe were similar to England, so any part might have pioneered industry. But, by chance, England happened to specialize in mass market goods (cotton textiles) rather than luxury items. The mass demand for cotton textiles stimulated the adoption of factories and steam power to generate large-scale production. It did not take long for other parts of Northwest Europe to follow suit. It can be added that there is evidence that slow life strategies were also widespread in other parts of Northwest Europe. France, for example, led the way in the demographic transition to lower fertility rates. This suggests that Life History Theory is better suited to explaining not the initial success of England but the swift follow-up in Western Europe and North America, and later Japan.
Nevertheless, Baumard's theory shows that Life History Theory holds great potential. Several areas look promising for further exploration. One concerns the long-term roots of slow life traits and preferences. For example, Galor and Özak (Reference Galor and Özak2016) show that there is an association between (a) areas of the world with a long-term orientation as measured by cross-national surveys and (b) areas that had suitable agro-climatic conditions for high-investment, high-return agriculture. They measure the latter using data on crop yields and the length of the growth cycle. In general, growth cycles are short near the tropics, long in higher latitudes. This suggests that long-term orientation (a key part of slow life history) slowly arose as agricultural populations psychologically adapted to longer-growth-cycle farming.
Another possible old source of slow life strategies is the peculiar family and marriage system known as the European Marriage Pattern (EMP). EMP norms included nuclear families, late marriage (so as to be able to form a new household), offspring leaving their parents’ household to set up new households, and absence of cousin marriage. This form of loose kinship requires some degree of slow life history because it means deferring marriage and investing in cooperating with non-kin, which has a less immediate but better long-term payoff than cooperation with kin. There is evidence that West Europeans psychologically adapted to a loose kinship system. Schulz et al. (Reference Schulz, Bahrami-Rad, Beauchamp and Henrich2018) gathered 20 cross-cultural measures and found that Westerners are more individualistic and have higher trust, less conformism, and less tolerance of cheating and nepotism. The authors found that this is associated closely with the length of time a population spent under the influence of the Catholic Church.
If it is true that slow life preferences arose over a long process, they might help explain other developments aside from the Industrial Revolution. Before the Industrial Revolution there was the Scientific Revolution. Without science, industry could not have happened. The keystone technologies of steam power and then, later, of electrical and chemical industries were inconceivable without scientific knowledge. Thus, the question arises whether a growing slow life history fraction of the population was responsible for the rise of science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As with the Industrial Revolution, there is a prima facie association. The slow life personality desires to cooperate, and science required trust and public sharing of information; desires learning and intellectual understanding, which was critical to science; engages in self-control and a long-term orientation, which are necessary for scientific inquiry. The rise of science also required the spread of an idea that there are things to be discovered, that not all knowledge was found by the ancients, that it is possible to accumulate knowledge. But this too would not take root unless a critical mass of people had the slow trait of an orientation toward the future rather than the present. Life History Theory could shed light on the Scientific Revolution.
Closely associated with economic modernity is state-making. The creation of a modern political order commonly accompanied the great enrichment. A strong state was particularly prominent in catchup development of countries such as Japan, Russia, South Korea, and most recently China. It is possible that Life History Theory can illuminate this question. If the political elite of a country are slow life history strategists then they are likely to have the traits of cooperativeness, self-control, prudence, long-term orientation, and cognitive ability. An effective state depends above all on the cooperativeness of the elite, willing to put aside factional interests willing also to exercise restraint in not dominating the non-elite. This may be a clue as to why state-making and the great enrichment tended to go together: they both arise from similar sources.
These indications point to Life History Theory as a relatively parsimonious way to reconcile several bodies of evidence and lines of explanation into a coherent general account of the roots of economic modernity – a great reconciliation about the great enrichment.