ANT331H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Margo Wilson, Sociobiology, Reciprocal Altruism
Document Summary
Human sociobiology" is a fashionable label for the use of evolutionary biological theory in the study of human social behaviour. Role of human sociobiology is to examine how the diversity of human societies reflects the adaptation of individuals to their social and ecological environments. It is explicitly darwinian: behaviour is viewed as adaptive, and potentially shaped by natural selection, if an individual, as a consequence of this behaviour, accrues relative reproductive. If a particular pattern of behaviour causes a person to more descendants than those who do not exhibit such behaviour, it will come to predominate, or be naturally selected, irrespective of the mechanism of transmission from parents to offspring. Humans are particularly prone to favour their kin, to use wealth and status to their reproductive advantage, and to marry and raise offspring in ways that can be predicted from evolutionary principles.
