Life History Test (K-SF-42)

Life history theory comes from evolutionary biology. It describes how organisms divide limited energy between their own survival and upkeep, finding mates, and raising offspring. Applied to people, researchers place individuals on a continuum: a fast strategy puts more into mating and reproducing early, while a slow strategy invests more in long-term survival, close relationships, and offspring. To measure this, Aurelio José Figueredo of the University of Arizona and colleagues introduced the K-SF-42 in 2017, a 42-item short form of the 199-item Arizona Life History Battery (ALHB). It takes six items from each of the battery's seven subscales, choosing the items that worked well in student samples from Australia, Italy, Mexico, Singapore, and the United States at once. This test asks all 42 published items, word for word, and scores them into the seven published subscales.

The test organizes your responses into seven key areas, all scored toward a slower life history profile. Planning and Control measures active problem-solving, persistence, and self-directed effort during setbacks. Parental Care looks back at the time, guidance, and affection received from biological parents during upbringing. Family Support and Friend Support evaluate recent emotional closeness, practical encouragement, and perceived appreciation from relatives and peers. Romantic Security reflects comfort with emotional intimacy and freedom from attachment anxiety or avoidance in relationships. Finally, Altruism reflects active assistance given to kin, friends, and community members, while Religiosity captures spiritual dedication and guidance drawn from personal faith.

In a Japanese validation by Kawamoto and colleagues, 1,440 adults aged 20 to 59 took the K-SF-42. All seven areas correlated positively, and one higher-order factor explained 81% of their shared reliable variance. Each area also went with what it should: planning and control with self-control, regular exercise, and less procrastination; parental care with caring rather than over-protective parenting; family and friend support with the support people felt they had; romantic security with less attachment anxiety and avoidance and more interest in long-term relationships; altruism with helping behavior; and religiosity with spirituality.

How well life history theory explains differences between individual people is debated. Manson (2015) found in two samples of U.S. adults that people with "slower" scores were consistently higher in extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, so much of what these questionnaires capture overlaps with ordinary personality traits. One of the seven areas is itself secure romantic attachment, and most of the rest is warm relationships and support. Zietsch and Sidari (2020) argue that the fast-slow continuum was found by comparing species and does not automatically carry over to individuals within one species; they also note that questionnaire measures of life history do not fit a single fast-slow dimension, and that positively valued traits may correlate partly because of how people answer questionnaires. Richardson and colleagues (2017) found two independent dimensions in national data, mating competition and a broad "Super-K" factor, rather than one. So read your result as a profile of planning, relationships, giving, and faith, not as a reading of your biology.

The averages on your chart come from the 1,440 Japanese adults in Kawamoto and colleagues' study, the published adult sample that reports averages for all seven areas (the K-SF-42's own paper reports none). Each published average is rescaled to 0 to 100, and the overall marker, about 46%, is the plain mean of the seven. They are approximate reference points, not percentiles, and they come from one country: the authors note that most Japanese people consider religion unimportant to them, so religiosity in that sample is low, and takers elsewhere will often score above it.

This test is provided for educational and illustrative purposes only. A slower or faster life history score is neither inherently healthy nor morally superior, as different adaptations suit different life environments. The test is based on the published K-SF-42 instrument and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Aurelio José Figueredo, his collaborators, or their institutions. It does not provide medical, biological, or psychological diagnoses. If you have concerns about your relationships or well-being, consider consulting a qualified mental health professional.

References

• Figueredo, A. J., Garcia, R. A., Menke, J. M., Jacobs, W. J., Gladden, P. R., Bianchi, J., Patch, E. A., Beck, C. J. A., Kavanagh, P. S., Sotomayor-Peterson, M., Jiang, Y., & Li, N. P. (2017). The K-SF-42: A New Short Form of the Arizona Life History Battery. Evolutionary Psychology, 15(1), 1474704916676276.
• Kawamoto, T., Kiire, S., Zambrano, R., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., & Figueredo, A. J. (2022). Development and validation of a Japanese translation of the K-SF-42. PLOS ONE, 17(9), e0274217.
• Manson, J. H. (2015). Life History Strategy and the HEXACO Personality Dimensions. Evolutionary Psychology, 13(1), 48-66.
• Richardson, G. B., Sanning, B. K., Lai, M. H. C., Copping, L. T., Hardesty, P. H., & Kruger, D. J. (2017). On the Psychometric Study of Human Life History Strategies: State of the Science and Evidence of Two Independent Dimensions. Evolutionary Psychology, 15(1), 1474704916666840.
• Zietsch, B. P. & Sidari, M. J. (2020). A critique of life history approaches to human trait covariation. Evolution and Human Behavior, 41(6), 527-535.

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