The cognitive ecology of Mexico: Climatic and socio-cultural effects on life history strategies and cognitive abilities

• Differential-K theory predicts that colder environments should lead to slower life history and more intelligent individuals.
• Social privilege theory predicts that resource discrepancies fuel group disparities in cognitive abilities and behaviors.
• We attempt to integrate both approaches.
• Results reveal that state-level cognitive abilities in Mexico were predicted by both socioeconomic and ecological factors.

The purpose of the present study is to test an integrated model of human ecology, which takes into consideration variables and predictions derived from both life history and social privilege paradigms. Population-level statistics were collected from an assortment of Mexican national agencies on thirty-one Mexican States and the Federal District (N = 32). The integrated model of human cognitive ecology specifically described how biodiversity impacts state-level life history strategies and cognitive abilities in Mexico. Results from the sequential canonical cascade analysis supported the three following hypotheses: (1) regional climatic factors affected regional life histories; (2) both regional life histories and climatic factors affected regional levels of human capital; and (3) both regional levels of human capital and regional climatic factors affected regional mean cognitive abilities. The integrated model of human cognitive ecology explained a preponderance of the pooled multivariate variance (V = .66) in cognitive abilities. Implications and future directions within life history and intelligence research are discussed.