PSYC 3100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Phenotype, Matrilocal Residence

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3100
• Professor: Pat Barclay

Document Summary

Early childhood association & the westermarck hypothesis. Why people don"t commit incestno sexual attraction to those who you grow up with. Used to think it was only social taboos,but social taboos are not the only reason! Non-human animals do not have social taboos - yet non-human animals seem to avoid having sex with siblings. The hypothesis - avoid mating who we grew up with complete lack of sexual attraction. 1. we should predict that if two people are raised together - sexual attraction will be lowered or prevented. Prediction - if non-kin are raised together, they will be averse to mating with each other. Prediction siblings raised apart will be less adverse to mating with each other. How do we measure? we can look at siblings who do have sex with each other as adults and those who don"t. Longer period apart during childhood will correlate with adult sexual behaviour (the probability of mating with each other)