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Topic: Westermarck effect

Related Topics

Behavioral imprinting

Genetic sexual attraction

Incest taboo

Edward Westermarck

Incest

Sexual orientation

Sexual attraction

Freud

Procreation

Electra complex

Kibbutz

Consensual crime

Compulsory military service

Pedigree collapse

Biblical references to incest

	Imprinting (psychology) - One Language (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		This phenomenon, known as the Westermarck effect, was discovered by anthropologist Edward Westermarck.
		The Westermarck effect has since been observed in many places and cultures, including in the Israeli kibbutz system, and the Shim-pua marriage customs of Taiwan, as well as in biological-related families.
		This observation is consistent with the theory that the Westermarck effect evolved to suppress inbreeding.
	www.onelang.com /encyclopedia/index.php/Westermarck_effect (669 words)

	Westermarck effect
		The Westermarck effect was discovered by anthropologist Edward Westermarck.
		When two people live in close domestic proximity[?] during the first 30 months[?] in the life of either one, both are desensitized to later close sexual attraction and bonding.
		Freud argued that members of the same family lust for one another, making it necessary for societies[?] to create incest taboos, but Westermarck argued that incest taboos arise naturally as products of response mediated by a relatively simple inherited epigenetic rule, namely the Westermarck effect.
	www.ebroadcast.com.au /lookup/encyclopedia/we/Westermarck_effect.html (83 words)

	RedOrbit - Science - The Westermarck Effect and early childhood co-socialization (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		The Westermarck Effect hypothesis that early childhood co-socialization leads to a lack of sexual interest at maturity is thus supported for female participants but not for male participants.
		The Westermarck Effect refers to the negative effect that early childhood social interaction and social proximity have on sexual interest in later life.
		The strength of the effect of daily social contact solely in early childhood is probably due to the fact that daily social contact for this group does entail co-residence.
	www.redorbit.com /news/display?id=37039 (5646 words)

	JOURNAL ON LINE
		Edward Westermarck, a Finnish anthropologist, and contemporary of Freud, presented a strikingly different hypothesis.33 Aware of the harmful effects of close inbreeding Westermarck believed that through natural selection humans had acquired an aversion to incest.
		Westermarck, presciently, hypothesized that close association from early life established a later propensity for incest avoidance.
		The most complete test of Westermarck's hypothesis is occurring in Taiwan where Stanford anthropologist, Arthur Wolf, studies "simpua" or "minor" marriage.51 In minor marriage the bride, or simpua, is usually betrothed in infancy and raised with her future husband in the groom's home.
	www.ecopsyonline.org /anno2002/numero_5/incest2.htm (673 words)

	21st Century Learning Initiative
		The effect is enhanced in some but not all societies by a third barrier: the direct observation and correct rational understanding of the ill effects of incest.
		In the case of hereditarily based incest avoidance, the proximate causes are emigration and the Westermarck effect.
		The ultimate cause is the deleterious effects of inbreeding, which by natural selection has driven the species toward emigration and the Westermarck effect.
	www.21learn.org /arch/articles/eowilson.html (5531 words)

	Spartanburg SC \| GoUpstate.com \| Spartanburg Herald-Journal (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		This phenomenon, known as the Westermarck effect, was discovered by anthropologist Edvard Westermarck.
		The Westermarck effect has since been observed in many places and cultures, including in the Israeli kibbutz system, and the Chinese Shim-pua marriage customs, as well as in biological-related families.
		Freud argued that members of the same family naturally lust for one another, making it necessary for societies to create incest taboos, but Westermarck argued the reverse, that the taboos themselves arise naturally as products of a simple inherited epigenetic response.
	www.goupstate.com /apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=NEWS&template=wiki&text=imprinting_(psychology) (966 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		Westermarck explained these taboos by proposing that they reflect an "aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living very closely together from early youth, and that, as such persons are in most cases related, this feeling displays itself chiefly as a horror of intercourse between near kin" (1903:320).
		A critical feature of the Westermarck effect is that it predicts inhibitions between individuals who are raised together, independent of their degree of relatedness.
		An olfactory mechanism for the Westermarck effect requires reference to the scent of associates, since the hypothesized aversions are not to close kin (whose MHC-based scent would be related to self) but to potentially unrelated individuals with whom one is raised or with whom one is intimate.
	www.siu.edu /departments/cola/socio/public_html/olfactory.htm (9323 words)

	Incest Encyclopedia Information @ AntiGays.com (Anti-Gays) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		In what is now a key study of the Westermarck's hypothesis, the Carlos II Habsburgs demonstrated that inbreeding aversion between siblings is predicatably linked to co-residency.
		For example, the question of the legality and morality of a widower who wished to marry his The Incest Loophole was the subject of long and fierce debate in the Westermarck effect in the v, involving, among others, parallel cousins.
		Hindus were greatly fearful of the bad effects of incest and thus practice to date strict rules of both endogamy and exogamy, i.e., marriage in the same caste (varna) but not in the same family tree (gotra) or bloodline (Pravara).
	www.antigays.com /encyclopedia/Incest (6741 words)

	Nadine Gordimer + Edward Westermarck + Thomas Chatterton
		It was on this date, November 20, 1923, that South African novelist and short-story writer Nadine Gordimer was born the daughter of a Jewish-Lithuanian emigrant in Springs, outside of Johannesburg.
		It was Westermarck who noted, "It has taken nearly 2000 years for the married woman to get back that personal independence which she enjoyed under the later Roman Law, but lost through the influence which Christianity exercised on European legislation.
		He did not write specifically on religion, but Westermarck was known to his friends as an Agnostic, and was an honorary associate of the British Rationalist Press Association until his death on 3 September 1939.
	www.ronaldbrucemeyer.com /rants/1120almanac.htm (762 words)

	Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		The evidence indicates that it is due to the innate aversion to sex that arises from the so-called Westermarck effect--namely, individuals who are intimately associated during the first 30 months of life are desensitized to later close sexual bonding.
		Note that if children are reared apart during the first 30 months or more of their lives and then brought back together again, they would have no barrier to forming sexual bonds, except being told that this is prohibited by custom and law.
		So-called normal genes might be identified only on the basis of one or two effects they have--the effect on, say, some kind of cognitive test or performance in sports or whatever.
	www.2think.org /hii/wilson.shtml (1793 words)

	The Enigma of the Incest Taboo
		It is especially too much to expect when one considers that incest (and particularly sexual abuse) is far more common in humans than in other animals, (6)to whom we cannot attribute such awareness.
		Edward Westermarck developed a theory in the late 19th and early 20th century that tried to answer this question.
		Westermarck claimed that this sexual aversion resulted in the incest taboo.
	serendip.brynmawr.edu /sci_cult/evolit/s05/web3/avaidya.html (1845 words)

	Steve Sailer: iSteve.com Blog Archives: Boring but Right
		Westermarck argued in the early 20th century for what is called (not by him) the "Westermarck effect": individuals raised together from infancy display a lack of erotic interest in one another when they reach sexual maturity.
		Westermarck argued that the effect is an adaptation to prevent the harmful genetic effects of close inbreeding -- since those raised together are commonly siblings -- but that it incidentally reduces sexual activity even among non-siblings raised together.
		And Westermarck also did a huge amount of what is basically evolutionary psychology both on human marriage and sexuality, and on morality.
	isteve.blogspot.com /2005/04/boring-but-right.html (661 words)

	Do Unto Others Project-Church of the Science of God
		The total effect is that early mortality of children born of incest is about twice that of outbred children, and among those that survive, genetic defects such as dwarfism, heart deformities, severe mental retardation, deaf-mutism, enlargement of the colon, and urinary tract abnormalities are ten times more common.
		The Westermarck effect is also consistent with the principle of graded effect in psychology.
		Up front is the Westermarck effect, the ancient sexual desensitization found in all other primates thus far, and thus likely to be universal in humans.
	www.dountoothers.org /avoidincest12-05.html (3148 words)

	Vidya Prasarak Mandal - vpmthane.com (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		The Westermarck Effect, named after Finnish anthropologist Edward Westermarck, was discovered almost a century ago.
		When 2 people live in close domestic proximity during the first 30 months of the life of either one, both are desensitized to later close sexual attraction and bonding.
		The Westermarck Effect has been well documented in anthropological studies.
	www.vpmthane.com /news_2004_05_11_science_terms.htm (521 words)

	Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo (Wolf, Durham)
		That inbreeding produces offspring with lower fitness is now common knowledge, as is the existence of a natural aversion to mating with childhood associates, the "Westermarck Effect".
		Examination of their effects on fertility and divorce rates, and the variation of these with the ages of wives and husbands at adoption, suggests a slight modification of the Westermarck hypothesis:
		He also explains why the case studies that are evidence for the Westermarck Effect — situations where there is avoidance of childhood associates even without social taboos — are necessarily counterexamples to it being the cause of the incest taboo.
	dannyreviews.com /h/Incest.html (805 words)

	Conceptual Adaptations 2: The Family
		Since the Westermarck effect is cue-based, the infant's psychology may have been left in partial doubt as to who his mother was.
		She points out that women acquire aversions to food that are highest in toxins and tend not to develop aversions to foods that are more apt to be toxin-free.
		The most striking kin-selection effect is reflected in parents' eagerness to take care of their offspring.
	cogweb.ucla.edu /ep/Conceptual-2.html (5030 words)

	Professor Trimbak Takes Edward O. Wilson to School: Notes for a Lermon on Scientolatry
		He was enthralled by this so-called Westermarck effect because it inclined people to good behavior, or more accurately, toward the avoidance of bad behavior.
		It was a bizarre anti-God quasi-cult singlehandedly invented by a Viennese atheist which made people obsessed with their unconscious mind, especially effects of relationships they had when they were infants.
		By translating the Westermarck effect into incest taboos, humans appear to pass from pure instinct to pure rational choice.
	www.beachwalla.net /trimbak/11.php (2260 words)

	The Wilson Quarterly
		The rule is called the Westermarck effect, after the Finnish anthropologist Edward A. Westermarck, who first reported it in 1891.
		In as many as a third of human societies there exists in addition a third, cultural barrier: incest is proscribed due to the direct recognition that children with congenital disabilities are a frequent product of incestuous unions.
		Thus, the incest taboos and myths that pervade cultures everywhere appear likely to have arisen from the Westermarck effect, but also, in a minority of societies, from a direct perception of the destructive effects of inbreeding.
	www.naturalism.org /OffSite_Stored_Pages/WQ-WILSON.htm (4276 words)

	Letters: Love, or biology? - Salon
		This tendency is usually moderated by the Westermarck effect, in which people who grow up together from an early age (even if not related) will preferentially seek out others as mates.
		Anecdotally, the Israeli kibbutz system promoted a Westermarck effect in which (unrelated) young men and women who worked together on the farms for a long period showed no romantic interest in each other.
		This effect is particularly pronounced in groups like the Amish and Chassidim who practice severe inbreeding.
	letters.salon.com /mwt/broadsheet/2006/12/13/mhc/view/?show=all (758 words)

	HBES2002 submitted abstract 358 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		More than a century ago Westermarck proposed that, as a result of the detrimental effects of inbreeding, natural selection has produced a psychological mechanism that generates sexual aversion between individuals who interacted frequently during the childhood of one or both of them.
		We therefore developed a new method of testing the Westermarck Hypothesis, one which can be widely employed, is not contingent on naturally-occurring experiments or special circumstances, and does not rely on subjects whose behavior deviates from social norms.
		Taken as a whole, these findings lend support both to Westermarck's inbreeding avoidance hypothesis and his hitherto-neglected explanation of the origin of taboos, thereby constituting a first step toward uniting individual and cultural levels of analysis.
	www.rci.rutgers.edu /~hbes/abstracts/358.html (239 words)

	Human Science, Pseudo-Science, and Anthropological Ethics in the Yanomami Controversy, Part I by Terence Turner (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		In effect, what selectionists habitually do is to redescribe the phenomena under investigation in their terms, and then use the metaphor of selection as a trick which appears to convert a description of what is going on into an explanation for it.
		As Nicastro recounts, "the audience [of] faculty and students interested in issues of primate behavior and evolution, was stunned," and Rodman himself was "momentarily thrown by the question." He never did answer it properly.
		The logically analogous case would be to criticize the extremists for their misuse of Marx’s ideas: as I have done often enough; and as Marx himself did often enough.
	members.aol.com /archaeodog/darkness_in_el_dorado/documents/0291.htm (2975 words)

	Sturdy and Serviceable - Memo to SPN fandom
		If children born with this type of heritable birth defect die (or are killed) before they reproduce, the ultimate effect of inbreeding will be to decrease the frequency of defective genes in the population.
		Finally, Claude Lévi-Strauss has argued that the incest taboo is in effect a prohibition against endogamy, and the effect is to encourage exogamy.
		The Westermarck effect, in which people raised together below a certain age develop sexual repulsion, that really does seem to be universal and incredibly strong.
	brown-betty.livejournal.com /222030.html (1558 words)

	Edvard Westermarck Summary
		Westermarck, Edward Alexander(1862–1939) Edward Alexander Westermarck is best known as an anthropologist and sociologist; he is important in philosophy, however, as an exponent of a subjectivist theory of ethics, which he illustrated and supported...
		He is known for first noting the Westermarck effect in which infants raised toge...
		In the following excerpt, Moore disagrees with Westermarck's notion that moral indignation can be consistent from one individual to the next.
	www.bookrags.com /Edvard_Westermarck (175 words)

	The Westermarck Symposium, Nov 19-22, 1998, Helsinki (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
		The symposium provides a forum for papers that further the analysis of a number of themes that were important in Edward Westermarck's work.
		In the spirit of Westermarck, the symposium is multidisciplinary.
		Advisory Board and an Organizing Committee and in cooperation with the departments of sociology at the University of Helsinki, University of Turku, and Åbo Akademi University.
	www.helsinki.fi /~jtakala/Westermarck.symposium.html (486 words)

	Ethical Relativism and Absolute Taboos
		Edward Westermarck proffered an opposite view that the domestic proximity of the members of the family breeds sexual repulsion (the epigenetic rule known as the Westermarck effect) to counter naturally occurring genetic sexual attraction.
		That we choose to ignore the first and substantiate the second demonstrates the pernicious and corrupting effect of political correctness.
		Claims of the type "trait A and trait B are concordant" should be investigated by scientists, regardless of how politically incorrect they are.
	samvak.tripod.com /taboo.html (2451 words)

	pinkjellybeans
		Westermarck believed children brought up in ‘family’; situations tended ‘instinctively’ not to find each other sexually alluring and just as well.
		It’s extremely possible this is a ‘T.O.E. Effect’ (if a thing must be attributed to an individual or have a name and be a theory).
		He: “The Westermarck effect besides!” Flirting with every male and female in the room, he is bathed in confidence (and bathed in shavings from the electrical ‘nose hair/ear Shaver)
	www.pinkjellybeans.com /page/2 (4724 words)

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