Childhood Association and Sexual Attraction: A Further Test of the Westermarck Hypothesis

Wolf, Arthur P.

doi:10.1525/aa.1970.72.3.02a00010

Cited by 195 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…The idea that individuals in small-scale societies did not have ephemeral encounters with anonymous others is empirically groundless and represents a popular anthropological myth spread by those unfamiliar with the details of the ethnographic and ethno-historical record. Second, although large-scale cooperation is prevalent in many societies, people everywhere favor their kin over non-kin-showing that we can, and do, distinguish these behaviorally (Daly and Wilson, 1988;Sepher, 1983;Wolf, 1970;Westermarck, 1894). Third, lots of non-human primates also live in small-scale societies but show no generalized tendency to cooperate with all members of their group.…”

Section: Kin-based Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes and large-scale cooperation

Henrich

2004

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

906

714

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In constructing improved models of human behavior, both experimental and behavioral economists have increasingly turned to evolutionary theory for insights into human psychology and preferences. Unfortunately, the existing genetic evolutionary approaches can explain neither the degree of prosociality (altruism and altruistic punishment) observed in humans, nor the patterns of variation in these behaviors across different behavioral domains and social groups. Ongoing misunderstandings about why certain models work, what they predict, and what the place is of "group selection" in evolutionary theory have hampered the use of insights from biology and anthropology. This paper clarifies some of these issues and proposes an approach to the evolution of prosociality rooted in the interaction between cultural and genetic transmission. I explain how, in contrast to non-cultural species, the details of our evolved cultural learning capacities (e.g., imitative abilities) create the conditions for the cultural evolution of prosociality. By producing multiple behavioral equilibria, including group-beneficial equilibria, cultural evolution endogenously generates a mechanism of equilibrium selection that can favor prosociality. Finally, in the novel social environments left in the wake of these cultural evolutionary processes, natural selection is likely to favor prosocial genes that would not be expected in a purely genetic approach.

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Section: Kin-based Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes and large-scale cooperation

Henrich

2004

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

906

714

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“…The simple rule bif we grew up together, then you are kinQ is ubiquitous across species (Porter, 1987;Wilson, 1987). Unrelated people who grow up together seem to view one another as kin despite knowledge to the contrary, and as a result, find each other unattractive as sexual partners (Lieberman, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2003;Shepher, 1971;Wolf, 1970). People also report higher perceived kinship for genetically unrelated step-kin than for acquaintances (Burnstein et al, 1994).…”

Section: Proximate Mechanisms Of Nepotistic Discriminationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does attitude similarity serve as a heuristic cue for kinship? Evidence of an implicit cognitive association

Park

Schaller

2005

Evolution and Human Behavior

124

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Using methods of experimental cognitive psychology, we tested the hypothesis that attitude similarity serves as a heuristic cue signaling kinship, which may motivate kin-recognition responses (e.g., prosocial behavior) even to unrelated individuals. The experiment employed a reaction-time methodology to assess cognitive associations between specific target individuals and kinship cognitions. Results revealed that, relative to targets with dissimilar attitudes, attitudinally similar targets were automatically linked to kinship cognitions. This effect was especially strong among perceivers who more strongly trusted their intuitions, indicating that the similarity-kinship connection is based on heuristic impressions, not rational decision making. Additional results showed that the activation of kinship cognitions was correlated with perceivers' willingness to help similar others. These findings add to our understanding of proximate mechanisms linked to kin selection processes and implicate the role of kinship processes in prosocial behavior toward unrelated strangers as well. D

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“…Our brains are not pre-wired to represent our family-tree. The evidence instead suggests that a simple heuristic, namely "Do not have sex with anybody who grew up in the same household as you", does the job to a high-enough degree of approximation (Shepher, 1971(Shepher, , 1983Wolf, 1970Wolf, , 1995. Similarly, if humans do engage in reciprocity, there is no reason to suppose that it will not be based upon some similar heuristic (possibly, ironically enough, one that makes use of linguistic markers like, say, accent (Nettle and Dunbar, 1997)).…”

Section: Why Talk?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Evolution of Language, and the Language of Social Evolution

Scott‐Phillips

2007

Evol Psychol

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Recent years have witnessed an increased interest in the evolution of the human capacity for language. Such a project is necessarily interdisciplinary. However, that interdisciplinarity brings with it a risk: terms with a technical meaning in their own field are used wrongly or too loosely by those from other backgrounds. Unfortunately, this risk has been realized in the case of language evolution, where many of the terms of social evolution theory (reciprocal altruism, honest signaling, etc.) are incorrectly used in a way that suggests that certain key fundamentals have been misunderstood. In particular the distinction between proximate and ultimate explanations is often lost, with the result that several claims made by those interested in language evolution are epistemically incoherent. However, the correct application of social evolution theory provides simple, clear explanations of why language most likely evolved and how the signals used in languagewords -remain cheap yet arbitrary.

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Childhood Association and Sexual Attraction: A Further Test of the Westermarck Hypothesis

Cited by 195 publications

References 8 publications

Cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes and large-scale cooperation

Cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes and large-scale cooperation

Does attitude similarity serve as a heuristic cue for kinship? Evidence of an implicit cognitive association

The Social Evolution of Language, and the Language of Social Evolution

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