title: Knowing your neighbourhood: local ecology and personal experience predict neighbourhood perceptions in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
abstract: Evolutionary theory predicts that humans should adjust their life-history strategies in response to local ecological threats and opportunities in order to maximize their reproductive success. Cues representing threats to individuals' lives and health in modern, Western societies may come in the form of local ages at death, morbidity rate and crime rate in their local area, whereas the adult sex ratio represents a measure of the competition for reproductive partners. These characteristics are believed to have a strong influence over a wide range of behaviours, but whether they are accurately perceived has not been robustly tested. Here, we investigate whether perceptions of four neighbourhood characteristics are accurate across eight neighbourhoods in Belfast, Northern Ireland. We find that median age at death and morbidity rates are accurately perceived, whereas adult sex ratios and crime rates are not. We suggest that both neighbourhood characteristics and personal experiences contribute to the formation of perceptions. This should be considered by researchers looking for associations between area-level factors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology , University College London , 14 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW , UK.
authors.forename: James
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-2808-2004
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gilbert
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University College London, 14 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW, UK; Demography Unit, Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-1639-3307
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Uggla
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University College London, 14 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW, UK; Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, 222 Tianshui South Road, Lanzhou, Gansu Province 73000, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Ruth
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6137-7739
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mace
keywords: ecological perceptions; life-history theory; morbidity risk; mortality risk