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Abstracts of Papers Presented at the Human
Behavior and Evolution Conference, June, 1995, Santa Barbara, CA
University of California, Santa Barbara
June 28-July 2, 1995
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Sessions:
Evolutionary Ecology and Optimality Analyses.
Evolution & Cognition I.
Evolutionary Psychiatry I.
Darwinian Aesthetics: Human Beauty
Computational Human Evolution: From Artificial Life to Artificial Human Evolution
Arts & Cultural Processes
Evolutionary Psychiatry II.
Status, Competition, and Coalitions
Environmental "Mismatch", Stress, and Pathology
New Investigator Award plus Evolution & Cognition
Birth Order, Investment, & Family Dynamics.
Evolutionary Ecology II.
Love, Female Choice, & Mating Strategies
Literature & Arts.
Evolution & Law I.
Infidelity & Mating Conflict.
Evolution & Ethnology
Evolution & Law II.
Evolution, Politics, & Society.
Risk & Violence.
Development & Parental Investment.
Evolution of Human Culture
Menstruation & Concealed Ovulation / Medicine.
Mindreading & Memory.
Behavioral Genetics / Pedagogy.
Poster Session.
Human Behavior & Evolution Society Program
University of California, Santa Barbara
June 28-July 2, 1995
Thursday, June 29
9:00 Plenary Address. David Haig (Museum of Comparative
Zoology, Harvard) Genetic conflicts in human pregnancy
Session 1-A. Evolutionary Ecology & Optimality Analyses.
 | 10:10 Hill, K. The Cost of Reproduction: Is Intermediate Fertility Ever Optimal?
| 10:35 Towner, M. A Dynamic Model of Human Dispersal in a Land-Based Economy
| 11:00 Abbot, J. & Barrett, L. Women and Fuel in Malawi: Optimal Foraging?
| 11:25 Wara, A., Roskaft, E., & Djupvik, A. Reproductive Success in Relation to Resource-Access
in Two Different Parishes in Central Norway During the Period
1700-1900
| 11:50 Carey, A. Modernization's Effects on the Mortality Costs of Reproduction
| | | | |
Session 1-B. Evolution & Cognition I.
| 10:10 Fiddick, L., Cosmides, L. & Tooby,
J. Does the Mind Distinguish between Social Contracts and Precautions?
| 10:35 Ketelaar, T. Emotion as Mental Representations of Fitness Affordances I:
Evidence Supporting the Claim that Negative and Positive Emotions
Map onto Fitness Costs and Benefits
| 11:00 Ketelaar, T. Emotion as Mental Representations of Fitness Affordances II: Does Anger Make You More Rational?
| 11:25 Sugiyama, L., Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. Testing for Universality: Reasoning Adaptations among the Achuar of Amazonia
| 11:50 Fetzer, J. Heuristics, Evolution, and Rationality
| | | | |
Session 1-C. Evolutionary Psychiatry I.
Session 2-A. Darwinian Aesthetics: Human Beauty.
| 2:45 Singh, D. & Suwardi, L. Men's Preference for Romantic Relationships: Pretty Faces or Beautiful Bodies?
| 3:10 Johnston, V.S. & Oliver-Rodriguez, J.C. Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall...
| 3:35 Gangestad, S. & Thornhill, R. Human Sexual Selection, Developmental Stability, and Indicator Mechanisms
| 4:00 Palameta, B. & Martin, S. Male Perceptions of Female Attractiveness: The Importance of Waist-to-Hip Ratio
| 4:25 Quinsey, V. & Lalumihre, M. Pedophilia and the Design of Male Sexual Age and Gender Preferences
| | | | |
Session 2-B. Computational Human Evolution: From Artificial
Life to Artificial Human Evolution.
Session 2-C. Arts & Cultural Processes.
Session 2-D. Evolutionary Psychiatry II.
| 2:45 Sloman, L. & Hilburn-Cobb, C. Attachment Theory and the Involuntary Subordinate Strategy
| 3:10 Beahrs, J. Regressive Stabilization in Human Individuals and Societies
| 3:35 Gardner, R. & Joiner, T. Basic Plans and the Biology of Leadership
| 4:00 Brown, R.M., Dahlen, E. Mills, C., Ricks, J. & Biblarz,
A. Evaluation of an Evolutionary Model of Self-Preservation
| 4:25 Keckler, C. Modeling Stress and Arousal as Adaptations
| 5:05 Plenary Address. Vernon Smith (with Hoffman & McCabe)
(Economic Science Laboratory for Research and Education, University
of Arizona):
Behavioral foundations of reciprocity: Experimental economics and evolutionary psychology
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Friday, June 30
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| 9:00 Plenary Address.
Frank Sulloway (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): Birth order & evolutionary psychology: A meta-analytic overview
| | | | | | |
Session 3-A. Status, Competition, & Coalitions.
| 10:10 Buss, D. Human Prestige Criteria
| 10:35 Stone, V. & Kussmaul, C. Models of Intraspecific Competition: Strategies for Social Climbing
| 11:00 Patton, J. Status, Warriorship, and Alliance in the Ecuadorian Amazon
| 11:25 Kurzban, R., Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. Detecting Coalitions: Evolutionary Psychology and Social Categorization
| 11:50 Boehm, C. Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior
| | | | |
Session 3-B. Environmental "Mismatch", Stress, & Pathology.
Session 3-C. Evolution & Economics. (Organizer: Bergstrom)
Session 4-A. New Investigator Award plus Evolution & Cognition II.
Session 4-B. Birth Order, Investment, & Family Dynamics.
| 2:45 Davis-Walton, J. Born Too Late?: Parental Investment and Birth Order in Modern Canada
| 3:10 Somit, A., Peterson, S. & Arwine, A. Birth Order and Political Behavior: A Sex Related Effect
| 3:35 McAndrew, F. & Cooley, J. Birth Order and the Naming of Children:
An Examination of Naming as a Strategy of Parental Investment.
| 4:00 Daly, M., McConnell, C. & Glugosh, T. Parent's Knowledge of their Children's Beliefs and Attitudes:
An Indirect Assay of Parental Solicitude?
| 4:25 Barber, N. Effects of Parental Divorce on Sexual Strategies of Children
| | | | |
Session 4-C. Evolutionary Ecology II. (Organizer: Mace)
| 2:45 Mace, R. Reproduction and Heritable Wealth in Nomadic Pastoralists
| 3:10 Abbot, J. Do Children Pay Back Their Own Costs?
| 3:35 Sellen, D.W. Child Growth as a Proxy for Fitness Differentials among Polygynous Datoga
| 4:00 Biran, A. Child Care in a Population of Maasai Agro- Pastoralists
| 4:25 Bichakjian, B. The Nature of Language and its Biological Underpinning
| 5:05 Plenary Address.
Steven Pinker (Dept of Brain & Cognitive Sciences, MIT): The Language Instinct
| 7:30 Keynote Address. Richard Dawkins (Dept. of Zoology, Oxford
University):
Animal Models of Past and Present Worlds
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Saturday, July 1
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| 9:00 Plenary Address. John Hartung (SUNY Brooklyn Medical
School): A Light Unto The Nations: Judeo-Christianity, Morality, & Group Selection
| | | | | | | |
Session 5-A. Love, Female Choice, & Mating Strategies
Session 5-B. Literature & Arts. (Organizer: Scalise Sugiyama)
Session 5-C. Evolution & Law I. (Organizer: Goodenough)
| 10:10 Grady, M. Products Liability and Evolution
| 10:35 Fisher, H. Human Divorce Patterns:
How Neural Mechanisms in the Brain Influence Divorce and Interact
with American Divorce Law
| 11:00 Rodgers, W. Deception, Self-Deception and Myth: Settlement of Complex Environmental Disputes
| 11:25 McGuire, M. Comparative Studies of Uncertainty and the Law
| 11:50 Masters, R. Kin Recognition, Emotion, and Ethnocentrism
| 1:35 Plenary Address. Pascal Boyer (C.N.R.S., Lyon, France):
Adapted Mind, Evolved Ontology, and Acquired Culture
| | | | | |
Session 6-A. Infidelity & Mating Conflict.
| 2:45 Brown, S. & Kenrick, D. Paternal Certainty and Female Dominance: Should Males Prefer Submissive Females?
| 3:10 Shackelford, T. & Buss, D. Cues to Infidelity
| 3:35 Buunk, B. & van en Eijnden, R. Context Effects on Willingness to Engage in Extrapair Copulations
| 4:00 Ast, D. & Gross, M. Status Dependent Sexual Deception: Which Men Lie?
| 4:25 Heilmann, M. If We All Want Honest Mates, Why Do We Deceive Them Constantly?
| | | | |
Session 6-B. Evolution & Ethnology.
Session 6-C. Evolution & Law II.(Organizer: Goodenough)
Session 6-D. Evolution, Politics, & Society.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Session 7-A. Risk & Violence.
| 9:00 Dyson-Hudson, R. & Dyson-Hudson,
N. South Turkana Homicide: A Proximate View
| 9:25 Walker, P. Documenting Patterns of Violence in Earlier Societies: The
Problems and Promise of Using Bioarchaeological Data Testing Evolutionary
Theories
| 9:50 Wilson, M. & Daly, M. Risk-taking and Homicide
| 10:15 Atzwanger, K. Biological Aspects of Aggressive Driving Behavior
| 10:40 Lewis, B., Linder, D., & Kenrick, D. Arousal and Attraction: Reproductive Potential Versus Threat Assessment
| | | | |
Session 7-B. Development & Parental Investment.
Session 7-C. Evolution of Human Culture.(Organizer: Palmer)
Session 8-A. Menstruation & Concealed Ovulation / Medicine.
Session 8-B. Mindreading & Memory.
| 11:20 Johnson, C. Cognition in the Wild: Gaze-Mediated Social Interaction in Pygmy Chimpanzees
| 11:45 Stone, V. Neurological Models of Facial Expression Recognition
| 12:10 Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. The Evolution of Memory, Modularity, and Information Integrity
| 12:35 Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. Episodic Memory, Theory of Mind, and their Breakdown
| 1:00 Schmidt, K. L. & Allen, J. S. Schizophrenia and Nonverbal Social Behavior in Papua New Guinea
| | | | |
Session 8-C. Behavioral Genetics / Pedagogy.
| 11:20 Rowe, D. & Vazsonyi, A. Between and Within Sex Variation: Are the Causes Alike?
| 11:45 Burgess, R. & Molenaar, P. Evolution, Development, & Chaos: The role of nonlinear epigenetic processes
| 12:10 McDonald, K. Eugenics as a Component of Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy
| 12:35 Squires, A. Selective fosterage, impulse to teach, and gene/culture interaction
| 1:00 Shellberg, T. Filling Two Voids with One Clone: Teaching Freshmen Evolution and Behavior
| | | | |
List of Posters (Alphabetical by first author):
| Anderson, J. & Crawford, C. Costs and benefits of female infanticide in an uncertain world
| Anderson, J. & Crawford, C. Socioecological correlates of son and daughter preference: A cross-cultural analysis
| Brown, W. & Palameta, B. Altruism facilitates the formation of social support networks
| Flood, A. & Crawford, C. A re-examination of Singh's waist-hip ratio figures: A check of validity and generalizability
| Gorry, A. Intergenerational female competition: Older
women's attempts to manipulate the reproductive interests of younger
women
| Harms, W. A scheme for formalizing evolutionary epistemology
| Hasegawa, T., Hiraiwa-Hasegawa, M., & Kajikawa, S. Chimpanzee males cry pant-hoots for power
| Janicki, M. Detecting helpers and non-helpers: Their importance in reasoning about social exchange
| Kemmerer, D. & McNamara, P. Parent-offspring conflict as a selection pressure for the evolution of early language acquisition
| LaRue, L. Evolved fur attractiveness
| Lindberg, T., Crawford, C. & McFarland, C. The frequentist reasoning hypothesis: How significant is the effect?
| Mealey, L. Evolution of sociopathy
| Mills, M. An experimental publication utilizing the Web
to facilitate scholarly communication and peer review: The Journal
of Evolutionary Psychology
| O'Meara, T. Causation and the tabula rasa mind
| Pound, N. Sexual jealousy and mate retention tactics
| Roswell, L., Woods, S. & Bailey, K. Disorder profiling: Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa
| Salmon, C. Closeness, identity, and social relationships
| Scheib, J. Mate selection theory: investigating women's choices of donors at a Canadian sperm bank
| Segal, N. & Blozis, S. Bereavement in monozygotic and dizygotic twins: An evolutionary perspective
| Semeniuk, R. & Crawford, C. The relationship of psychological health and differential parental investment in humans
| Stewart, S., Krajnak, K. & Lee, T. Effects of photoperiod on ovulation in the female meadow vole
| Surbey, M. & Nagata, B. Human mate selection: When big and brawny isn't always better
| Tilley, C. & Palmer, C. Sexual access to females as a motivation for joining gangs
| Walters, S. Fluctuating asymmetry as a measure of human developmental stability
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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Abstracts of Papers Presented at the Human Behavior and Evolution
Conference, June, 1995, Santa Barbara, CA
Animal Models of Past and Present Worlds
Richard Dawkins
Department of Zoology,
Oxford University
An animal is a model of its world. More precisely, because of
the way natural selection works, ananimal is a composite model
of the worlds of its ancestors, and its DNA is a digital description
ofthe environments in which its ancestors survived. At the same
time and in a different language, theanimal's nervous system can
be read as a description of present and past worlds. Brains construct,and
continuously update, virtual reality models of the world. Highly
social and cultural animalsmove through a partially shared virtual
world. Genes are selected to survive, not just in the realworld,
but in the virtual worlds synthesized in brains.
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Genetic Conflicts in Human Pregnancy
David Haig
Museum of Comparative Zoology,
Harvard University
26 0xford Street,
Cambridge MA 02138
Pregnancy has commonly been viewed as a cooperative interaction
between a mother and her fetus. However, the effects of natural
selection on genes expressed in fetuses may be opposed bythe effects
of natural selection on genes expressed in mothers. In this sense,
a genetic conflict canbe said to exist between maternal and fetal
genes. Fetal genes will be selected to increase thetransfer of
nutrients to the fetus, and maternal genes will be selected to
limit transfers in excess ofsome maternal optimum. Thus, a process
of evolutionary escalation is predicted in which fetalactions
are opposed by maternal countermeasures. The phenomenon of genomic
imprinting meansthat a similar conflict exists within fetal cells
between genes that are expressed whenmaternally-derived and genes
that are expressed when paternally-derived. My talk will review
evidence for both kinds of conflict.
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The Natural Origins of Understanding Other Minds
Alan M. Leslie
Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science
Psychology Building,
Busch Campus,
Piscataway, NJ 08855-1179
One of the most remarkable conceptual achievements of young children
is recognizing mentalstates in other people (so-called "theory
of mind"). This ability, which is probably a speciescharacteristic,
constitutes a major upgrade over infra human social exchange.
There are at least three basic mental states that are recognized
early in development: believing, desiring, and pretending. A cognitive
model must account for how young children are able (a) to attend
tomental states in the first place, and (b) subsequently to learn
more about them. More than tenyears ago, I outlined a model which
postulated the existence of what came to be called the Theory
of Mind Mechanism (ToMM). There were two key claims. First, normal
development in thisdomain depends upon a specialized (and probably
innate) data structure (the"metarepresentation") that
is functional at least by the end of the second year of life.
Second,children with the neurodevelopmental disorder known as
autism suffer a specific impairment toToMM which deprives these
children of a normal social life. Since then a wealth of experimentaldata
has accumulated which supports and extends the theory of ToMM.
I will outline some ofthese theoretical ideas and dip into some
of these data.
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Behavioral Foundations of Reciprocity: Experimental Economics
and Evolutionary Psychology Vernon Smith
Economic Science Laboratory,
University of Arizona,
Tucson, AZ 85721,
Smith@econlab.arizona.edu
Laboratory experiments generally support the proposition that
in private property regimes noncooperative behavior in large group
markets yields efficient social outcomes.Experiments, however,
regularly fail to support noncooperative predictions in small
group anonymous interaction games, and public good environments.
Thus, subjects in the latterfrequently achieve more efficient
outcomes -- they collect more money from the experimenter -- than
noncooperative theory predicts. Subject behavior exhibits a "habit
ofreciprocity" even in single play games. We present the
results from a variety of suchexperiments, and relate them in
a preliminary way to the work of evolutionary psychologists.Our
objective is to develop a research program that would combine
the evolutionary and experimental economics themes. (Paper by:
Elizabeth Hoffman (Iowa State University), KevinMcCabe (University
of Minnesota), & Vernon Smith)
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Birth Order and Evolutionary Psychology: A Meta-analytic Overview
Frank J. Sulloway
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Program in Science,
Technology and Society.
Building E51-006,
Cambridge, MA 02139
Research in behavioral genetics has established that siblings
are surprisingly different in theirpersonalities. These findings
indicate that nonshared family influences play a much greater
role inpersonality development than do shared influences. Birth
order -- a nonshared influence -- isimportant in personality development
because it creates systematic differences in the familyexperience.More
than a thousand publications exist on the topic of birth order
and personality. Some psychologists have criticized this research
as being poorly designed, laden with artifacts, andgrossly inflated
in its claims. A meta-analytic review of this literature shows
otherwise: Significant birth-order differences exist for each
of the Big Five personality dimensions. Strategic differences
in sibling behavior are visible most clearly during periods of
intense social conflict. These differences are consistent with
a Darwinian perspective on sibling strategies, including the role
of competition for parental investment.
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The Bathwater and the Baby : What the Culture Concept Can and
Cannot Do for Human Behavioral Ecology
Lee Cronk
Department of Anthropology,
Texas A&M University College Station,
Texas 77843-4352
Among cultural anthropologists, "culture" amounts to
a one-word theory of behavior: people dowhat they do because their
culture makes them do it. However, as research by many HBESmembers
has shown, much human behavior can be understood without reference
to culture.Empirically, culture often utterly fails as an explanation
of behavior because people routinely failto follow its dictates.
On the other hand, culture is pervasive in human affairs and truly
makeshuman social life quite different from social life for other
species. How best, then, to incorporatethe concept of culture
into human behavioral ecology? Two existing approaches to this
question,the cultural and reproductive success hypothesis and
cultural transmission models, are alsoweakened by discrepancies
between culture and behavior. Another way to incorporate culture
intohuman behavioral ecology is to see it as the context of human
action and as a tool people use insocial manipulation. The study
of signal systems is a key to an understanding of socialmanipulation
and to the incorporation of culture into human behavioral ecology.
Examples of thismanipulation of culture for reproductive benefit
include Yanomamo kin term manipulation and thederogation of sexual
competitors. The human behavioral ecological study of social manipulationin
cultural contexts needs to be expanded. Audience effects are one
phenomenon that might becreatively used in the field to explore
such issues.
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The Language Instinct Steven Pinker Department of Brain &
Cognitive Sciences,
MIT
Cambridge, MA 02139
What is the evolutionary status of human language? I discuss how
language works, how it isdistributed among people and societies,
and how it may have evolved. In particular, I presentevidence
that language (a) is built on two principles: A dictionary of
memorized symbols, and aset of generative rules organized into
several modules; (b) reliably develops throughout thespecies across
a wide range of environments, largely independent of general intelligence,
andtherefore seems to be an innate specialization; has no known
homologues in other living primate species; and (d) is a product
of gradual natural selection for the communication of propositional
messages.
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A Light Unto The Nations : Judeo-Christianity, Morality &
Group Selection
John Hartung Department of Anesthesiology,
State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn,
New York 11203 (Hartung@medlib.hscbklyn.edu)
Understanding natural selection should result in the realization
that humans have no more inherentpropensity to be moral than do
cats, dogs and blue-green algae. Nevertheless, people whoseunderstanding
of natural selection is or was otherwise admirable, including
A. R. Wallace, C.Darwin, V. C. Wynne-Edwards, and a growing number
of HBES stalwarts, have put forth modelsand conjectures which
enable them to perceive human nature as either inherently moral
orcomprised of naturally selected components that serendipitously
generate morality. These effortsare made, in part, because they
bolster hope for advancing morality by inferring or assuming that
anatural foundation for morality already exists and merely needs
to be built upon -- a hope that ishoped will become a self-fulfilling
prophecy.Empirical support for inherent morality is often gleaned
from the observation that humans naturally generate religions
and those religions approach or equal Judeo-Christianity as a
forcewhich, at least in its original intent, advances morality.
Unfortunately, the illusion that Judeo-Christianity was originally
other than a scheme to magnify, through group cooperation, theinherent
selfishness and amorality of Jews and Christians, is based upon
commonly perpetrated misreadings of The Holy Scriptures. Because
false hope jeopardizes true hope, attachment to thisillusion,
and to intellectual contrivances which explain it and other presumptive
evidence ofinherent morality, threatens the very endeavor which
it seeks to advance. Motivated by thatrealization, and the realization
that morality can be, and can only be, accomplished by humandesign,
a more sober reading of The Bible will be presented.
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Adapted Mind, Evolved Ontology and Acquired Culture
Pascal Boyer C.N.R.S.M.R.A.S.H.,
14 av. Berthelot 69363 Lyon, France
Cultural acquisition does not involve much active "transmission"
of contents, nor does it imply acontent-independent capacity for
"imitation" of behavior. Cultural representations are
mostlyacquired by attending to particular cues and deriving content-specific
inferences from them. Thecore architecture underlying early conceptual
development can be construed as an "evolvedontology"
which directs those inferences. It consists of specialized inference
engines which areonly triggered by particular aspects of the natural
and social environment. Domain-specificengines make certain types
of cultural representations more likely than others to be acquired.
Thisaccounts for the stability and recurrence of those representations
in acquired culture. The pointapplies not only to domains such
as kinship categories or naive theories of the natural world,
buteven to apparently "unconstrained" domains like religious
categories.
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From the Neanderthal to the Modern Mind (or how evolutionary psychology
and human ecology need Paleolithic archaeology)
Steven Mithen Department of Archaeology,
University of Reading, U K
Attempts to identify the critical features of the modern mind
often rely upon comparisons with ourclosest living relative, the
chimpanzee. Comparisons are made, for instance, with regard to'linguistic'
and toolmaking capacities in the belief that these will help us
understand how our ownabilities in these areas evolved. Unfortunately
these comparisons are of little value as over 6million years have
elapsed since modern humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor.More
useful comparisons can be made with the minds of recent, but extinct,
relatives, such as H.erectus, archaic H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis.
This requires the development of acognitive archaeology. I argue
that by using the theoretical structure of evolutionary psychologysubstantial
progress can indeed be made in elucidating the cognitive architecture
of extincthominids, which in turn brings the defining feature
of the modern mind into sharper focus. This feature appears to
be one of effortless fluidity between cognitive domains which
had originallyevolved as specialized and relatively independent
modules. While this cognitive fluidity -dependent upon a series
of specialized cognitive domains - leads to the remarkable adaptivesuccess
of modern humans epitomized by global colonization, as well as
our achievements in boththe sciences and arts, it also appears
responsible for the less appealing aspects of human nature,such
as a propensity for racist thinking in certain socioeconomic contexts.
Moreover, while the evolution of a cognitively fluid mentality
can be explained by reference to biological evolution, its existence
seriously complicates attempts to explain modern behavior by the
use of evolutionary theory. Evolutionary psychologists and human
ecologists need to know a little Paleolithicarchaeology!
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Women and fuelwood in Malawi: optimal foraging?
Joanne Abbot and Louise Barrett
Dept of Anthropology,
UCL,
Gower St, London WC1E 6BTE
mail: j.abbot@ucl.ac.uk
Data are presented for women's fuelwood collection from Lake Malawi
National Park. Acost-benefit analysis is used to determine the
interplay between ecological constraints, behavioraldecisions
and risk factors (the penalties incurred for illegal resource
use). Optimality modeling isused to analyze the decision making
associated with the observed patterns of women's fuelwoodcollection.
The implications of this research for the conservation of forest
resources areaddressed.
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The Tragedy of the Moderns: From Prudent Predators To Tragic Despoilers
Wayne E. Allen
Department of Anthropology
University of California - Santa Barbara,
CA 93106
e-mail: 6500wea@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu
Discussions of biophilia and resource sustainability frequently
invoke indigenouspeoples as exemplars of these phenomena, often
with little scientific explanation ofthe evolutionary mechanisms
or processes involved. Darwinian evolution, formal microeconomics
and optimal foraging theory are predicated on the assumption thatindividuals
are self-interested. Hardin (1968) stated that when confronted
withresources in an "open-access commons," individuals
should pursue their self-interests to a point that eventually
results in a "tragedy of the commons." Hardinfailed
to take into account, though, inclusive fitness and the possibility
that theactors utilizing the commons might all be kin. My research
among the Dene of northern Canada reveals that prudent predation
of a commons is possible as longas the necessary propinquity conditions
(social & spatial) are present for thecalibration of evolved
behavioral mechanisms during ontogeny. Hardin's characterization
is apt for a human nature that has been calibrated by modernurban
contexts where most exchanges occur between strangers, but not
one thatwas typical of our species for 99% of our evolution in
hunter-gatherer socioecological contests
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Costs and benefits of female infanticide in an uncertain world.
Judith L. Anderson and Charles B. Crawford
Department of Psychology,
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6,
Canada e-mail: judith_anderson@SFU.CA
The rationale for female infanticide is often assumed to be increased
production of sons, resulting in an improvement in parental "utility"
(usually fitness). The goals of this study were (1)to identify
the conditions under which numbers of sons are most efficiently
increased by female infanticide,compared with the fitness costs
of infanticide, and (2)to investigate the consistency of outcomesof
infanticide, given stochasticity in production, sex, and survival
of subsequent offspring. UsingMonte Carlo simulation, we found
that benefit/cost ratios are influenced strongly by sex-specific
juvenile survival and fertility characteristics of the mother.
At rates of female infanticide between.1 and .4, stochastic factors
produce highly variable outcomes. We conclude that the assumption
simplicit in optimality hypotheses concerning female infanticide
should be examined carefully.
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Socioecological correlates of son and daughter preference: A cross
cultural analysis
Judith L. Anderson and Charles B. Crawford
Department of Psychology,
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, British Columbia V5A lS6,
Canada e-mail: judith_anderson@SFU.CA
The goal of this analysis was to identify socioecological characteristics
of cultures that predictparental sex bias in the Standard Cross
cultural Sample. Independent variables included measuresof sexual
selection on males, economic contributions of women, types of
warfare, familyboundaries, value of children, and participation
of women in public life. Dependent variablesincluded psychological
and behavioral measures of parental sex bias. Though all the categories
ofindependent variables were correlated with some measures of
parental sex bias, warfare andfamily boundaries variables produced
the widest associations. Attitudes toward sons and daughters did
not consistently predict sex-biased parental behaviors. We conclude
that successfulapplication of sex allocation theory to humans
will require models of specific parental behaviorsrather than
generalizations about "parental investment".
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A model to test the paternity confidence hypothesis for concealed
ovulation
Kermyt G. Anderson
Department of Anthropology
kganders@unm.edu
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
Hypotheses abound to explain the evolution of concealed ovulation
in humans. The paternityconfidence hypothesis, one of the most
widely cited, suggests that the trait evolved because itincreased
the paternity confidence of males to the extent that they were
selected to invest in theoffspring of their mates. A model is
developed to test this hypothesis, beginning with theassumption
that male and female strategies are frequency-dependent: the success
of a newstrategy depends on what other individuals in the population
are doing. The results of this modelsuggest that females with
concealed ovulation, and the males who mate with them, benefit
mostwhen they are at a relatively low frequency in the population.
At higher frequencies femalesbenefit less from concealed ovulation,
and are unlikely to invade the general population. These results
suggest that increased paternity confidence might not have been
the driving force behindthe evolution of concealed ovulation.
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Female reproductive synchrony and the emergence of male investment
C. Arthur and C. Power
Department of Anthropology,
University College London,
Gower St., London WC1E 6BT
e-mail ucsaccp@ucl.ac.uk
Extreme reproductive synchrony of females effectively guarantees
male parental investment sinceit reduces philandering opportunities
to zero. But for evolving female hominids, with high infantmortality,
strict birth synchrony would be a costly strategy. A simple model
(varying interbirthinterval, female reproductive lifespan, infant
mortality rates) is used to assess the costs ofsynchrony to females.
A strategy of seasonally based synchrony would incur low costs,
whilereducing payoffs to males of philandering. A second model
(varying group size, male rank, IBI and infant mortality) assesses
costs to males of pursuing fidelity or philandering strategies
where females randomize or synchronize (within birth season) their
reproductive cycles. Preliminary results suggest that female reproductive
synchrony would have been required to force theemergence of investment
by higher-ranking males.
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Status dependent sexual deception: Which men lie?
Debora Ast and Mart R. Gross
Department of Zoology,
University of Toronto
ast@zoo.utoronto.ca
Individuals in many species adopt alternative behavioral tactics
based on condition dependent decisions. This study examines the
status of males using two alternative tactics, honesty anddeception,
to obtain sex. In human society, our legal and moral systems are
designed to discourage tactics such as deception. Low and high
status males are predicted to be more likely touse deception than
middle status males, for whom the cost of violating moral rules
is greater. Our results from a university student survey support
this prediction. We also propose that emotional feedback following
different sexual behaviors provides an assay of the relative fitnessconsequences
of each behavior. We find that deceptive sex provides less positive
emotionalreturns for middle status males than for high and low
status males. Adherence to moral codes willbe facultative, based
on the status dependent net benefit an individual receives from
doing so.
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Biological Aspects of Aggressive Driving Behavior
Klaus Atzwanger
Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for Urban Ethology
c/o Human biology
Althanstr aBe 14, A- 1090
Vienna, Austria
Aggressive car driving seems to be one of the fields of industrial
societies, where aggressivebehavior is tolerated. Biological theories
predict more risk taking behavior in younger man than inwoman,
more aggression in anonymous situations, and dominance display
behavior of higherranking Individuals. In an empirical experiment,
drivers were videotaped when they drove upclose to another car.
Their gender, race, driving behavior and the type and value of
their car werecoded. Men drove close up faster than women. Individuals,
who drove alone, were moreaggressive than those who had others
joining them. Drivers of cars with higher status drove closerup
than others. Fast driving close up was used to drive away others.
Estimating ones social statusdepending on ones cars value seems
to lead to dominance behavior of car drivers.
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The epidemiology of "selfish" memes
Robert Aunger
Department of Anthropology
Northwestern University
rau806@lulu.acns.nwu.edu
Dawkins and Sperber (among others) have recently argued that cultural
beliefs can be seen as"mental viruses." Like RNA, such
beliefs are replicating chunks of information that spread epidemiologically
through inter-personal contact or via intermediary vectors such
as mass mediaIn this paper, I use the epidemiological approach
to describe the cultural evolution of food taboosin a population
of horticulturalists and foragers in Zaire. I call these beliefs
"selfish" because insufficient numbers they can reduce
their hosts' fertility (by causing nutritional deficits). Inparticular,
I investigate whether variability in the prevalence of food taboos
in this population is afunction of their virulence (i.e., nutritional
cost to the host). I then infer that the units oftransmission
are likely to be food-specific rules, based on the pattern of
interpersonal transmissionof these beliefs (as determined by phylogenetic
analysis). Finally, since interview recall dataexhibits variability
within food-specific taboo rules, I argue that the units of meaning
in such rules are smaller than the amount of information typically
transmitted between people. The idiosyncratic process of mentally
incorporating these multi-memes rules therefore might accountfor
the high degree of intra-cultural variation observed in this belief
system.
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Mismatch Theory and Paleopsychopathology
Kent G. Bailey
Virginia Commonwealth University
806 West Franklin Street
Richmond, VA 23284-2018
Mismatch theory is based on five basic assumptions: human nature
evolved in prior ancestral environments (EEAs), most human evolution
ceased with sapiens around 40,000 years ago,massive cultural and
technological change has occurred in these 40,000 years, human
beings inmodern environments are often mismatched with their evolved
natures, and the frequency andmagnitude of mismatch for a particular
individual is correlated with both physical andpsychological pathology.
The concept of nature- culture reconciliation will offered as
analternative to traditional mismatch theory and applied to forms
of psychopathology involving fearand aversion to strangers.
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Information and Society: Towards a New Academic Discipline.
Steven Bankes
RAND, 1700 Main Street,
P.O. Box 2138
Santa Monica, CA 90407-213R
e mail: bankes@rand.org
Since the 1970s, extensive intellectual ferment has occurred around
the idea that all organizedsystems, including living organisms
as well as societies, depend at their core on how informationis
generated, transmitted, processed. ant utilized. This is leading
to an information-processingview of human organization and society.
This view, if it can be consolidated into a coherent discipline,
would provide the basis that is now missing for reasoning about
direct and indirecteffects of information and information technology.
This field would complement studies of human institutions based
on the flows of capital (economics) or power (political science),
by studying thehuman impacts of information: its generation, storage,
processing, and communication to effect control.Changing technology
and its effects on society has provided ample evidence of the
role ofinformation plays in social behavior. However, identifying
and exploiting the effects ofinformation and information technology
is made difficult by the lack of theoretical frameworks for reasoning
about the role of information in human societies, institutions,
and organizations.Information flows and relationships are considered
in various social science disciplines, but always peripherally.
As the information revolution unfolds, we are gaining perspectives
on the effects ofinformation and information technology that do
not fit well into the standard academic disciplines and research
fields.In order to reason cogently about the effects of information,
new models of institutions,organizations, and societies are needed.
By considering information stocks, flows and relationships as
central, these models would provide a better understanding of
how informationflows interact to structure and support the functioning
of human collectives. Computer modeling
methodologies developed by researchers in Artificial Life can
be readily adapted to the needs ofresearch into information effects
in human societies. The resulting Artificial Societies may provide
a new basis for reasoning about the nature of the human phenomenon.
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Effects of Parental Divorce on Sexual Strategies of Children
Nigel Barber
Birmingham-Southern College
Birmingham, AL 35254
The literature on children of divorce focuses on the emotional,
attitudinal, and sexual problems ofthese young people. Belsky,
Steinberg, and Draper (1991) interpreted these social problems
aspart of an adaptive environmental switching mechanism according
to which low levels of parentalinvestment result in an opportunistic
interpersonal style, particularly in relation to mating.Preliminary
data indicates that the above model applies to male children of
divorce, but notfemales. Results are discussed in terms of an
alternative genetic model according to which divorceis (1) highly
heritable and (2) based on low need for social approval.
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Regressive stabilization in Human Individuals and Societies
John O. Beahrs, M.D. (116A-OPC)
Portland D.V.A. Medical Center,
P.O. Box 1036,
Portland, OR 97207and
Department of Psychiatry,
Oregon Health Sciences University
Regressive dependency is a destabilizing relational process in
which disadvantaged and/ordistressed subordinates accept material
and/or emotional support from dominants, but respondwith increasing
distress, regressive behavior, and acting out against the dependency
that they evermore desperately seek. Many adaptive schemata contribute:
parent-child conflict, thepsychological trauma response, and selective
affiliation. Concurrent with parents' physicaldominance over children
is a deeper level at which this asymmetry is reversed the coercive
effectof infants' helpless distress on caregivers, who are shaped
to depend on offspring's response fortheir own well-being. Conflicting
power asymmetries become destabilizing, as growing offspringlearn
to willfully use passive control toward instrumental ends. Maturation
requires that childrenlose the ensuing dominance struggle in order
to seek new territory and win the "game of life."Helper-client
relationships re-enact these dynamics. When both are traumatized,
attributesconcealed by shared self deception may reverse the desired
outcome. Clients'' intact but hiddencompetencies enable more potent
passive control strategies, and helpers' beneffectance concealsprofound
dependency on others' appreciation, increasing their vulnerability.
When passive control prevails, regressive dependency results.
Enmeshed dyads seek affiliative relief from in-groups whounite
against perceived enemies by legitimizing the passive control.
This leads to a polarizingeffect that extends regressive destabilization
to the greater societal milieu. To avoid collective regression
requires that helpers retain firm active control, hold their clientele
accountable for the consequences of their actions, and encourage
autonomous
individuation.
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Primogeniture, Monogamy, and Reproductive Success in a Stratified
Society
Ted Bergstrom
Economics Dept,
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
e-mail tedb@umich.edu
This paper constructs and tests a formal model of a stratified
society in which there is primogeniture and where the nobility
practice monogamous marriage with a double standard of sexual
fidelity. The model formalizes ideas presented in a series of
papers by Laura Betzig. Withinthe model, one can determine the
reproductive values of the male and female nobility relative tothat
of commoners. The hypothesis that preferences have evolved to
favor maximization of reproductive value has testable implications
about the size of brides' dowries relative to the valueof their
husbands' estates and about the issue of female succession in
the absence of a male heir.The hypothesis is tested against fragmentary
data from ancient civilizations and quite detailed information
about the British aristocracy in the late medieval and early modern
periods.
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Law Makers as Gene Replicators
Laura Betzig
Evolution & Human Behavior Program
Museum of Zoology/
University of Michigan/
Ann Arb or
Ml/48109-1079/USA
Laura.L.Betzig@um.cc.umich.edu
Why do people make laws? For two possible reasons. One is: To
reproduce. The other is: Tomake sure competitors don't. In the
history of the West, law makers have done both. Secularlaw--of
the sort that Roman emperors or English kings imposed on their
subjects-- consistently punished celibacy. It said, in effect,
"You must make more children." Religious law--of the
sortthat medieval church men imposed on lay men--consistently
punished polygamy. It said, "Youcan't make more children.."
Secular and religious law were, in other words, diametricallyopposed.
Why? Because the first was a kind of between-family competition;
and the second was akind of within-family competition. Kings and
emperors wanted competing families--Englishbarons, or the old
Roman republican aristocracy--to leave too many heirs. That way,
their wealthwould disperse. Church men wanted lay men--the elder
brothers who'd come into their fathers'estates--to leave no heirs
at all. That way, they might succeed to their fathers' estates
themselves.Law-making emperors, church men, and kings all got
richer; and law-abiding senators, lay men,and barons all got poorer.
And men who got rich in the ancient, medieval, or modern West--likemen
who've got rich almost anywhere else--probably had sex with more
women, and probablyfathered more children.
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THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE AND ITS BIOLOGICAL UNDERPINNING
Bernard H. Bichakjian
U. of Nijmegen,
The Netherlands.
E-mail: Bichakjian@let.kun.nlIf
psychology is recovering from a period when the establishment
had imposed a taboo on linkinghuman behavior to its biological
underpinning, linguistics is still feeling the full weight of
a similaryoke. This paper will break the taboo, and, leaving from
the observation that languages are sets ofsounds and strategies,
it will argue instead that these features have been shaped and
continue tobe shaped by the selection pressures that weigh on
their biological underpinning. The role of biology was not to
produce once and for all a machine, frozen in time and universal
in space,which cultures would use in their own idiosyncratic ways
to churn sentences. Biology has neverstopped being active, and
it continues to this day to remodel linguistic features as the
biochemicalprocesses that produce their anatomical correlates
interact with the selection pressures that weighupon them. The
pressures vary, and the responses differ as well -- hence the
diversity of languages-- but everywhere linguistic features have
been driven by the selection pressures that theirbiological underpinning
have had to bear. Only as we recognize this interaction are we
in aposition to understand the shape of linguistic features and,
thereby, the nature of language.
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Child care in a population of Maasai agro-pastoralists.
Adam Biran
Dept of Anthropology,
UCL,
Gower St, London WC1E 6BT, UK
Email: ucsamab@ucl.ac.uk
Observational data on child care from a study of thirty-nine Maasai
infants are presented. Thesedata are used in combination with
records of the biological relationships between infants andpotential
caretakers. Factors affecting the probability of an infant receiving
care and theprobability of a potential carer providing care to
an infant are examined. The results are discussedin the context
of evolutionary theory.
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EVOLUTION OF EGALITARIAN BEHAVIOR
Christopher Boehm Director,
Jane Goodall
Research Center Department of Anthropology,
USC,
LA, CA 90089
The chimpanzee "waa-bark" is explored as a species-specific
signal of defiance used bysubordinates to protest domination (video
examples). Coalition behavior by chimpanzees isexamined as a possible
pre-adaptation for egalitarian behavior among foragers: chimpanzeecoalitions
range from pairs of males seeking dominance to entire communities
hunting, mobbingpredators, or (rarely) manipulating the roles
of alpha-types. Egalitarian society is taken to be theresult of
a whole-community coalition suppressing male status rivalry, and
the politicalintelligence and social dynamics involved with forager
egalitarian behavior are dissected. Suchbehavior involves a coalition
of the entire group that moralistically labels would be alpha-maletypes
as deviants and sanctions them accordingly. It is suggested that
chimpanzees are not likelyto effectively neutralize alpha-male
dominance as humans do, and that the acquisition of moralitywas
more important to human leveling of hierarchical tendencies than
was language, per se.
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Evolution, Ethics & Artificial Life.
John Bragin
UCLA Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life
Los Angeles, California 90095-1567
e-mail: johnb@ess.ucla.edu
Many researchers in Artificial Life claim to be not only modeling
or simulating life, but to besynthesizing it as well. What is
or might be the moral status of such entities produced in test-tubes,
computers, and robot labs? Debate on this question is an extension
of two other questions:"What is life?" and "What
is the basis for or justification of ethical precepts?" When
organicspecies--including humans--were considered to be the products
of divine special creation, theanswers to these two questions
were dear. But Darwinian evolutionary theory has replacedNatural
Theology and most biologists and philosophers no longer believe
that religiousor non-religious Vitalist concepts do any work in
science or ethics. Since Darwin's time somephilosophers and biologists
doing philosophy have sought evolutionary characterizations of
theorigin, nature, justification, and applicability of human ethical
capacities and precepts. Others haveargued against any inference
from "what is" to "what ought to be." The
advent of what somehumans call living entities--even when produced
by humans themselves--appears only toexacerbate ethical problems.
What, for example, would it mean for a human to cause pain to
an Artificial Life entity? This talk will review various ideas
on the question "What is Life?" and thendiscuss whether
deontological, utilitarian, or other views of morality can help
with the problem ofethics and Artificial Life.
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Paternal Certainty and Female Dominance: Should Males Prefer Submissive
Females?
Stephanie L. Brown & Douglas T. Kenrick
Arizona State University,
Tempe, AZ 85287
Email: asslb@asuvm.inre.asu.edu
Previous research on male mate selection criteria finds no relationship
between female dominanceand attractiveness. This is surprising,
because paternal certainty depends on sexual control. Thepresent
study re-tested the hypothesis that males should be attracted
to submissive females bymanipulating dominance as a power differential
rather than a personality trait. Two hundred maleand female undergraduates
from Arizona State University rated either a male or female target
whowas described to be either the subjects' supervisor, co-worker,
or assistant. Contrary to previouswork on female dominance, the
gender x dominance interaction indicated that males were mostattracted
to the female target when she was in the submissive role. Our
analyses include tests ofalternative explanations in an attempt
to converge on the possible role of paternal certainty inproducing
this effect
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Evaluation of an Evolutionary Model of Self-Preservation
R. Michael Brown, Eric Dahlen, Cliff Mills, Jennifer Ricks, Arturo
Biblarz
Department of Psychology,
Pacific Lutheran University
BROWNRM@PLU.EDU
According to deCatanzaro's (1991) mathematical model of self-preservation,
staying alive actuallymay reduce inclusive fitness in an individual
who is low in reproductive potential and, at the sametime, poses
such a burden to close kin that it costs them opportunities for
reproduction. We tested
predictions generated from this model using 175 university students
as subjects and variablesconstructed from a questionnaire. The
criterion variables were separate measures of hopelessness,depression,
suicidal ideation, and suicidal behavior. The predictor variables
were separatemeasures of reproductive potential of the individual,
reproductive potential of the individual's kin,relationships with
parents, relationships with friends, and locus of control. Multiple
regression analyses showed that burdensomeness to kin was the
best predictor of both hopelessness anddepression, as predicted
by deCatanzaro's model. Moreover, discriminant analysis showed
thatreproductive value of kin significantly differentiated suicide
attempters from nonattempters.
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Altruism Facilitates the Formation of Social Support Networks
William Michael Brown and Boris Palameta.
Psychology Department,
St. Thomas University
Fredericton, N.B., Canada,
E3B 5G3e-mail: PALAMETA@STtHOMASU.CA
Altruism may be stable if based on Tit-for-Tat strategies. However,
detection of cheating is notalways possible. People recognized
to possess an altruistic predisposition may be preferredpartners
in cooperative ventures, because they are less likely to cheat.
If this is true, altruism mayfacilitate the formation of social
support networks. A study was conducted over a 4-month periodto
investigate whether altruism facilitated the formation of social
support networks in 118 femalefirst year university students.
Scores were obtained from self-report questionnaires involvingmeasures
of socially desirable responding, altruism, social support, and
relationship quality at thebeginning of the school year and then
again toward the end. The result of stepwise multipleregression
analysis indicated that the variables most strongly related to
social support werefriendship quality, overall relationship quality
and altruism. Comparisons of the cross-laggedpartial correlations
revealed that altruism preceded social support, suggesting a causal
linkbetween the two variables. This implies the discovery of a
mechanism that allows altruismbetween unrelated individuals to
be an evolutionarily stable strategy.
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EVOLUTION, DEVELOPMENT, & CHAOS: The role of nonlinear epigenetic
processes.
Robert L. Burgess,
Penn State University,
110 Henderson Building South,University Park, PA
(RLB8@psuvm.psu.edu)
Peter C.M. Molenaar,
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Increasingly, evolutionists recognize the value of examining linkages
between thosespecies-typical traits that are shared by all normal
humans as well as those features of the geneticsystem that vary
between individuals. In this paper, we address some of the key
issues, focusingparticularly on how the powerful class of nonlinear
reaction-diffusion models used bymathematical biologists can explain
emergent organismic properties and how the methods ofdevelopmental
behavior genetics enable the decomposition of phenotypical longitudinal
trajectories into underlying genetic, environmental, AND epigenetic
processes, with the latter constituting an important "third
source" of developmental differences.
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.
Human Prestige Criteria
David M. Buss
Department of Psychology
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1109
Prestige, status and reputation influence a host of survival and
reproductive problems, includingaccess to mates, food, territory,
desirable alliances, preferred coalitions, and favorable treatmentfrom
others. Relatively little is known, however, about the evolutionary
psychology of prestige,status, and reputation, and in particular,
about what causes prestige to increase or decrease. Thi spaper
offers a theory of "prestige criteria," defined as the
content dimensions along which prestigecan be increased or decreased.
New data from Ethiopia, Germany, Poland, China, Guam, USA,and
Hungary (Transylvanian Gypsies) are presented to test facets of
the theory. Many prestigecriteria appear to be universally sex-
linked. Having sex with three partners in the course of oneweekend,
for example, damages a woman's prestige more than a man's prestige
in all cultures.Discussion elaborates an evolutionary psychological
theory of human prestige, status, andreputation
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Context Effects on Willingness to Engage in Extrapair Copulations
Bram P. Buunk & Regine van en Eijnden
Department of Psychology
University of Groningen,
Grote Kruisstraat 2/l9712 TS Groningen,
The Netherlands
Mating strategies are to some extent frequency dependent. Evolved
gender differences in sexualitysuggest that among men the perceived
prevalence of extrapair copulations in the populationswould be
more strongly related to one's own willingness to engage in extrapair
copulations than among women. Study 1 provided correlational evidence
for this prediction. Study 2 showed thatamong men, but not among
women, exposure to a message that 47% of the 0population hadengaged
in extrapair copulations led to a higher inclination to become
involved in EPC's oneself than exposure to a massage that only
3.8% had done so. This effect was especially found amon gmen who
were before already open to short-term mating.
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Modernization's Effects on the Mortality
Costs of Reproduction
Arlen D. Carey
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Central Florida
Orlando, FL 32816-1360;
e-mail: carey@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu
The sex mortality differentials of the 1940-1980 Mexican American
population of Bexar County,Texas, are analyzed using advanced
life table techniques and a quality data set that captures thepopulation's
mortality transition. In 1940, young adult females were at a survival
disadvantage ofmore than 1.5 years when compared to their male
counterparts, due largely to high rates ofmaternal-related mortality.
By 1980, female deaths from such causes were nearly eliminated,
whilemales' reproductive mortality costs had increased considerably.
These changes were responsiblefor much of the almost 4 year increase
in females' overall longevity advantage.
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An Evolutionary Theory of Literary Figuration
Joseph Carroll
English Department,
Univ. of Missouri--St. Louis
St. Louis, MO 63132
(314) 432-5583
sjccarr at umslvma.umsl.eduI
put forward two hypotheses on literature, one about cause and
the other about function. The causal hypothesis is that the structure
of meaning in all literary texts is the direct result of authoridentity,
which is itself produced by the interaction of innate characteristics
and environmentalinfluences, including cultural influences. The
second hypothesis is that literary texts are particularforms of
cognitive maps; that is, like other forms of cognitive activity,
their primary function is tolocate the organism within its environment.
One main purpose of literature is to let us know whatit feels
like to experience given environments from given points of view.
I argue thatrepresentations of characters, settings, or actions
constitute a single, continuous scale with realismat one end of
the scale and symbolism at the other, and I delineate a specific
system of categories for the analysis of meaning in all literary
figurations. To illustrate this system, I compare thethematic
structure of three world views: Christianity, scientific materialism,
and postmodernism.
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Estimating Variance in RS by Sex Among Tribesmen Using Field Census
Data
Napoleon A. Chagnon
Anthropology Department
UCSB
Collecting genealogical and completed fertility data on males
and females in tribal populations canbe a time-consuming and costly
procedure, especially among peoples like the Yanomamo Indiansof
Venezuela who are often reluctant to provide reliable information
about deceased kin andancestors. Recent field studies in remote,
essentially uncontacted Yanomamo villages resulted inrather complete
and reliable census data of living residents in these villages,
but to calculatevariance in RS among them would take years and
many return field trips. This paper exploresways of estimating
variance in male and female RS by simply counting the numbers
of parents ofboth sexes that were involved in reproducing the
living residents and then comparing these resultsto those obtained
in other villages for whose residents the PI has more reliable
measures of completed fertility.
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Honing Ockham's Razor: Fundamentals of Visual Art
Kathryn Coe
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona 85287-2702
E-Mail: ICMKC@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU
The focus of this paper is on an elusive concept, namely the visual
arts, which Diamond (1992)referred to as "perhaps the noblest
human invention": (p. 139) and which a number of scholarshave
argued is crucial to the happiness and well-being of individuals
and to cooperation ingroups. Although it may be true that visual
art is important, as it is found i |
