“Individuals perceive and respond to groups based on their prioritized goals, which shift systematically as they progress through life stages. The same group can be perceived as posing an opportunity at one life stage, but as posing a threat at other stages with different goal priorities.” The above was copied from the abstract of the target article, with one change. “Ecological affordances” and “ecologies” were simply replaced with the word “groups.” Have we lost anything, scientifically, from the original?

This is not just semantics. It has implications for what individual psychology should be like. For instance, should individual psychology be perceiving and storing information about ecologies or about groups? Take the dimension of relatedness – the prevalence of genetic kin in one’s environment. Indeed, people across societies respond to the general prevalence (or absence) of kin as representing certain opportunities and threats (e.g., Sng et al., Reference Sng, Choi and Ackerman2024), and we agree that these affordances change depending on a perceiver’s life stage. Yet, as the target article also acknowledges, there are as many affordances as there are types of kin. Kin can pose a certain degree of physical threat in cultures with corporal punishment of children (Gershoff, Reference Gershoff2002) or even violent threats in cultures of honor when one has engaged in behaviors that threaten the reputation of the group (e.g., Ashokkumar & Swann, Reference Ashokkumar and Swann2023). In the former, such threats typically come from one’s parents, while in the latter, they are particularly likely to come from close adult male relatives (e.g., brothers, fathers). Kin can also pose care obligations in groups with cultural values of filial piety (Kyeong et al., Reference Kyeong, Yu, Tiemeier, Bakermans-Kranenburg and Setoh2025), where the well-being of older and aging relatives (both male and female) is sometimes prioritized above one’s own welfare. To further complicate matters, the same group can simultaneously pose both opportunities and threats. In honor cultures, one’s adult male relatives could pose potential physical threats to oneself, but the same relatives could also protect oneself from physical assault by others. Indeed, people carry simultaneous threat and opportunity perceptions of a wide variety of groups (Lassetter, Hehman, & Neel, Reference Lassetter, Hehman and Neel2021). Given that a broad ecological conception (e.g., relatedness) may miss the distinct affordances both between groups (different types of kin) and within a single group (same kin posing opportunities and threats), the question arises of whether our psychology should really have evolved to be attuned to and to think about ecology or groups.

Perhaps one solution is simply that the two are not mutually exclusive, and the role of ecological versus group perception varies depending on the ecological dimension of interest. For example, for certain ecological dimensions like seasonality (Hohm et al., Reference Hohm, Wormley, Schaller and Varnum2024), it is unclear how group perception might be applicable, and a perception of ecology (temperature and weather changes) should be the focus. On the other hand, for an ecological dimension like relatedness, a psychology attuned to different kin groups seems likely, especially when different kin can pose quite unique affordances as elaborated above. More broadly, the term “ecology” can be more explicitly distinguished as physical ecologies (environmental properties that do not involve people, like weather) versus social ecologies (environmental properties that involve people in some way, like relatedness or sex ratios). This distinction is likely more continuous than categorical, with a psychology of groups applying particularly when thinking about ecologies towards the social end of the spectrum.

Beyond the specific ecological dimension, the outcomes of interest may also matter. For instance, when our psychology is faced with the choice of whether one should sacrifice oneself to defend one’s group, the general prevalence of kin (ecological relatedness) and ultimately the number of shared genes that might benefit from such sacrifice should matter. And it does (Sng, Choi, & Ackerman, Reference Sng, Choi and Ackerman2024). But when our psychology is assessing whether to commit a behavior that might damage family honor, it should be more important to be attuned to the specific types of kin that are present (e.g., male relatives who might engage in honor violence) than simply the general prevalence of kin.

A third possibility speaks directly to the target article’s thesis. Whether ecology or group perception matters may also differ across developmental life stages. For example, in resource allocation tasks, 4-year-olds generally do not prefer to share more with their own siblings over strangers (Lu & Chang, Reference Lu and Chang2016), but 5-year-olds do differentiate between the two (also see Spokes & Spelke, Reference Spokes and Spelke2016). This suggests that considering family members (beyond immediate caregivers) as a privileged group emerges as a more stable behavioral tendency starting about the age of 5, but whether this emerges as a psychology distinguishing among many different kin groups is unclear. Yet one would expect such a psychology to be particularly important at later life stages when different types of kin begin to pose unique affordances (e.g., adult male relatives as potential aggressors in honor cultures, aging relatives as needing care in cultures of filial piety).

Hence, whether a psychology of ecology or groups matters more might depend on the ecological dimension, the outcome of interest, and also an individual’s developmental life stage. We believe that the target article outlines a rich and integrative perspective that is both novel and generative. We are empathetic to the ecological perspective, as our past work has also conceptualized affordances along ecological lines (e.g., Sng et al., Reference Sng, Neuberg, Varnum and Kenrick2018). Our purpose in posing the question of “groups or ecology” is not because we relish unleashing a Pandora’s box, but because we believe that there lies insight at the bottom of the box. We hope the target article’s authors agree.