01:920:240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Incest, Natural Selection, Westermarck Effect
27 Aug 2016
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Cultural view: incest is natural, need culture to suppress desires, incest is common. Biological view: incest is unnatural, people naturally abhor incest, incest is rare. Westermarck hypothesis: if you grew up together, mechanisms develop that make them indifferent to each other. Westermarck evidence: rats compare unrelated rats that grew up together with related rats that didn"t grow up together. Rats preferred unknown siblings but not their unrelated. No incest in non-human primates: many primates migrate from group after puberty, ^ natural selection has helped to develop this. Mechanism is not present if you didn"t live together from an early age. Israeli kibbutzim (1950s/1960s: kids raised by community almost none are sexually attracted to each other and not a single marriage. Marriage in 19th century taiwan: minor marriage betrothed at very young age and live in same household. Lower fertility and higher divorce: major marriage betrothed at early age and live apart until become adults.
