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1.
Trivers’s theory of parental investment suggests that adults should decide whether or not to invest in a given infant using
a cost-benefit analysis. To make the best investment decision, adults should seek as much relevant information as possible.
Infant facial cues may serve to provide information and evoke feelings of parental care in adults. Four specific infant facial
cues were investigated: resemblance (as a proxy for kinship), health, happiness, and cuteness. It was predicted that these
cues would influence feelings of parental care for both sexes, but that resemblance would be more important for men than women
because of the importance of paternity uncertainty in the ancestral environment. Seventy-six men and 76 women participated
in a hypothetical adoption task in which they made judgments of infant faces. Average zero-order, partial, and component score
correlations all revealed that men placed primary emphasis on cues of resemblance, while women placed primary emphasis on
cues of health and cuteness (cues of infant quality). The correlations also showed that men placed a significantly greater
emphasis on cues of resemblance than did women.
This research was supported by a Queen’s University Graduate Award (first author) and a Senior Research Fellowship from the
Ontario Mental Health Foundation (second author).
Anthony Volk is a Ph.D. candidate at Queen’s University, studying parental investment.
Vernon L. Quinsey is a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Queen’s University. His research focuses on forensic and
evolutionary psychology.
An erratum to this article is available at . 相似文献
2.
Recent evidence suggests that the ratio of the lengths of the second and fourth fingers (2D:4D) may reflect degree of prenatal
androgen exposure in humans. In the present study, we tested the hypotheses that 2D:4D would be associated with ratings of
men’s attractiveness and with levels of behavioral displays during social interactions with potential mates. Our results confirm
that male 2D:4D was significantly negatively correlated with women’s ratings of men’s physical attractiveness and levels of
courtship-like behavior during a brief conversation. These findings provide novel evidence for the organizational effects
of hormones on human male attractiveness and social behavior.
This work was supported by a Hind’s Fund Research Grant from the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago
to J.R.R. and by NIH grants R01-MH62577 and K02-MH63097 to D.M.
James Roney, Ph.D., is now an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research
interests are in human evolutionary psychology and behavioral endocrinology. Dario Maestripieri, Ph.D., is an associate professor
of Human Development at the University of Chicago. He has broad research interests in behavior, development, and evolution. 相似文献
4.
5.
Although facial features that are considered beautiful have been investigated across cultures using the framework of sexual
selection theory, the effects of head hair on esthetic evaluations have rarely been examined from an evolutionary perspective.
In the present study the effects of six hair-styles (short, medium-length, long, disheveled, knot [hair bun], unkempt) on
female facial attractiveness were examined in four dimensions (femininity, youth, health, sexiness) relative to faces without
visible head hair (“basic face”). Three evolutionary hypotheses were tested (covering hypothesis, healthy mate theory, and
good genes model); only the good genes model was supported by our data. According to this theory, individuals who can afford
the high costs of long hair are those who have good phenotypic and genetic quality. In accordance with this hypothesis, we
found that only long and medium-length hair had a significant positive effect on ratings of women’s attractiveness; the other
hairstyles did not influence the evaluation of their physical beauty. Furthermore, these two hairstyles caused a much larger
change in the dimension of health than in the rest of the dimensions. Finally, male raters considered the longer-haired female
subjects’ health status better, especially if the subjects were less attractive women. The possible relationships between
facial attractiveness and hair are discussed, and alternative explanations are presented. 相似文献
6.
Chisholm James S. Quinlivan Julie A. Petersen Rodney W. Coall David A. 《Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)》2005,16(3):233-265
Life history theory suggests that in risky and uncertain environments the optimal reproductive strategy is to reproduce early
in order to maximize the probability of leaving any descendants at all. The fact that early menarche facilitates early reproduction
provides an adaptationist rationale for our first two hypotheses: that women who experience more risky and uncertain environments
early in life would have (1) earlier menarche and (2) earlier first births than women who experience less stress at an early
age. Attachment theory and research provide the rationale for our second two hypotheses: that the subjective early experience
of risky and uncertain environments (insecurity) is (3) part of an evolved mechanism for entraining alternative reproductive
strategies contingent on environmental risk and uncertainty and (4) reflected in expected lifespan. Evidence from our pilot
study of 100 women attending antenatal clinics at a large metropolitan hospital is consistent with all four hypotheses: Women
reporting more troubled family relations early in life had earlier menarche, earlier first birth, were more likely to identify
with insecure adult attachment styles, and expected shorter lifespans. Multivariate analyses show that early stress directly
affected age at menarche and first birth, affected adult attachment in interaction with expected lifespan, but had no effect
on expected lifespan, where its original effect was taken over by interactions between age at menarche and adult attachment
as well as age at first birth and adult attachment. We discuss our results in terms of the need to combine evolutionary and
developmental perspectives and the relation between early stress in general and father absence in particular.
This work was supported by The University of Melbourne Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
James S. Chisholm is Professor in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia. He is an
anthropologist whose interests lie in the fields of human behavioral biology, evolutionary ecology, life history theory, and
parental investment theory, where he focuses on infant social-emotional development, the development of reproductive strategies,
and the integration of evolutionary, developmental, and cultural psychology and public health.
Julie A. Quinlivan is Associate Professor in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Melbourne and Head of the Maternity
Care Program at the Royal Women’s Hospital, Melbourne. Her interests are teenage pregnancy, domestic violence, child abuse
prevention, and high-risk pregnancy.
Rodney W. Petersen is Senior Lecturer in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Melbourne and Senior Consultant in
Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Royal Women’s Hospital and Sunshine Hospital in Melbourne. His interests are in psychosocial
aspects of women’s health and cancer.
David A. Coall is a Ph.D. student in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia. His main
interest lies in the application of evolutionary theory within an epidemiological framework. He is currently working on the
synthesis of life history theory, parental investment theory, and parent-offspring conflict theory in exploring factors that
influence variation in human birth weight and placental weight. 相似文献
7.
The claim that men prefer women with low waist-to-hip ratios (WHR) has been vigorously disputed. We examine self-report data
from 359 primiparous Polish women (with normal singleton births and healthy infants) and show that WHR correlates with at
least one component of a woman’s biological fitness (her first child’s birth weight, a variable that significantly affects
infant survival rates). However, a woman’s Body Mass Index (BMI) is a better predictor of her child’s neonatal weight in small-bodied
women (<54 kg). The failure to find a preference for low WHR in some traditional populations may thus be a consequence of
the fact that, even in western populations, body mass is a better predictor of fitness in those cases characterized by low
maternal body weight.
Boguslaw Pawłowski Ph.D., D.Sc., is a researcher and lecturer in biological anthropology at the University of Wrocław, Poland.
His research interests focus on mechanisms of human evolution (with special attention to the evolution of subcutaneous fat
tissue distribution) and human mate choice.
Robin Dunbar Ph.D., FBA is British Academy Research Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Liverpool, England,
and co-Director of the British Academy Centenary Research Project. His research interests focus on the evolutionary and environmental
determinants of social and reproductive strategies, with particular references to humans, nonhuman primates, and ungulates. 相似文献
8.
David C. Geary M. Catherine DeSoto Mary K. Hoard Melanie Skaggs Sheldon M. Lynne Cooper 《Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)》2001,12(4):299-320
The relation between sex hormones and responses to partner infidelity was explored in two studies reported here. The first
confirmed the standard sex difference in relationship jealousy, that males (n=133) are relatively more distressed by a partner’s sexual infidelity and females (n=159) by a partner’s emotional infidelity. The study also revealed that females using hormone-based birth control (n=61) tended more toward sexual jealousy than did other females, and reported more intense affective responses to partner infidelity
(n=77). In study two, 47 females were assessed four times across one month. Patterns of response to partner infidelity did not
vary by week of menstrual cycle, but significant relations between salivary estradiol level and jealousy responses were obtained
during the time of rising and high fertility risk. The implications, at least for females, are that any evolved psychological,
affective, or behavioral dispositions regarding reproduction-related relationships are potentially moderated by estradiol,
and that the use of synthetic hormones may disrupt this relation.
David C. Geary is the Frederick A. Middlebush Professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
He has published nearly 100 articles and chapters across a wide range of topics, including cognitive and developmental psychology,
education, evolutionary biology, and medicine. His two books, Children’s Mathematical Development (1984) and Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences (1988), have been published by the American Psychological Association.
M. Catherine DeSoto recently completed her Ph.D. in psychological sciences at the University of Missouri at Columbia and is
currently assistant professor of psychobiology at the University of Northern Iowa. Her research primarily focuses on the interface
between biology and behavior, including the relation between sex hormones and personality disorders.
Mary K. Hoard is completing her Ph.D. studies in psychological sciences at the University of Missouri at Columbia and is currently
a research specialist in the Department of Psychological Sciences. Her research interests focus on children’s cognitive development,
as well as the relation between sleep and cognitive and psychological functioning.
Melanie Skaggs Sheldon is a graduate student in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri at
Columbia. Her research interests include social cooperation, sexual behavior, and personality, as understood from an evolutionary
perspective.
M. Lynne Cooper is a professor of psychological sciences and director of the training program in social psychology at the
University of Missouri at Columbia. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Personality and the author of more than 60 articles and chapters in the areas of personality and social psychology. Her primary research
efforts involve directing a longitudinal study of risky sexual behavior of adolescents and young adults. 相似文献
9.
We summarize the ethnographic literature illustrating that “abnormal birth” circumstances and “ill omens” operate as cues
to terminate parental investment. A review of the medical literature provides evidence to support our assertion that ill omens
serve as markers of biological conditions that will threaten the survival of infants. Daly and Wilson (1984) tested the prediction
that children of demonstrably poor phenotypic quality will be common victims of infanticide. We take this hypothesis one stage
further and argue that some children will be poor vehicles for parental investment yet are not of demonstrably poor quality
at birth. We conclude that when people dispose of infants due to “superstitious beliefs” they are pursuing an adaptive strategy
in eliminating infants who are poor vehicles for parental investment.
Catherine Hill lectures in biological anthropology/human sciences at Durham University’s University College, Stockton. She
trained in biological anthropology at University College, London. Her current research interests include human and nonhuman
primate socioecology and human resource ecology and development issues.
Helen Ball lectures in biological anthropology/human sciences at Durham University’s University College, Stockton. She trained
in biological anthropology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her current research interests include nonhuman
primate behavior and socioecology, reproductive biology, and evolutionary issues. 相似文献
10.
In this paper I examine the intracultural variability of parental and alloparental caregiving among the Aka foragers of the
Central African Republic. It has been suggested that maternal kin offer higher frequencies of allocare than paternal kin and
that maternal investment in infants will decrease when alloparental assistance is provided. Behavioral observations were conducted
on 15 eight- to twelve-monthold infants. The practice of brideservice and the flexibility of Aka residence patterns offered
a means to test the effect of maternal residence on parental and alloparental investment. There was significant variation
in the frequency of investment and who supplied care to infants depending on whether mothers resided with their kin or their
husbands’ kin. However, in spite of the variation in allocare, when all categories of caregivers were examined collectively,
infants received similar overall levels of care.
Courtney L. Meehan is a Ph.D. student in cultural anthropology at Washington State University. Her research interests include
parenting, alloparenting, female social networks, and female-female cooperation and competition. 相似文献
11.
Thomas W. McDade 《Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)》2001,12(1):9-25
Lactation constitutes a major focus for research in international health because of its dramatic impact on child survival;
evolutionary biology has investigated lactation as an important aspect of parenting strategy, with implications for understanding
parent-offspring conflict. These perspectives are brought together in an attempt to develop integrated models for an issue
of key international health concern: the duration of exclusive breast-feeding and the timing of weaning. This analysis highlights
the relevance of evolutionary theory for practical problems in public health, and it suggests the utility of public health
outcomes for addressing evolutionary questions.
Thomas McDade received his Ph.D. degree in anthropology from Emory University in 1999 and is currently an assistant professor
in the anthropology department at Northwestern University. His research interests include biocultural perspectives on issues
related to health and human development, with current attention focused on the cultural and evolutionary ecology of human
immune function. 相似文献
12.
Steven W. Gangestad 《Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)》1993,4(3):205-235
Sexual selection processes have received much attention in recent years, attention reflected in interest in human mate preferences.
Among these mate preferences are preferences for physical attractiveness. Preferences in and of themselves, however, do not
fully explain the nature of the relationships that individuals attain. A tacit negotiation process underlies relationship
formation and maintenance. The notion that preferences for physical attractiveness evolved under parasite-driven “good genes”
sexual selection leads to predictions about the nature of trade-offs that individuals make between mates’ physical attractiveness
and investment potential. These predictions and relevant data are explored, with a primary emphasis on women’s preferences
for men’s qualities. In addition, further implications of trade-offs are examined, most notably (a) the impact of environmental variations on the nature of mating and (b) some effects of trade-offs on infidelity and male attempts to control women.
The ideas in this paper were substantially influenced by discussions with Kim Hill and Hilly Kaplan following a preliminary
presentation of work contained herein at a UNM Human Evolutionary Ecology Program colloquium.
Steven W. Gangestad is an associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico. His recent research includes
work focused on sexual selection in humans and its implications for general relationship phenomena. His other recent research
concerns the impact of developmental instability on functional asymmetries, interpersonal orientations, and individual differences
in the control of emotional expression. 相似文献
13.
Jonathan Gottschall Rachel Berkey Mitchell Cawson Carly Drown Matthew Fleischner Melissa Glotzbecker Kimberly Kernan Tyler Magnan Kate Muse Celeste Ogburn Stephen Patterson Christopher Skeels Stephanie St. Joseph Shawna Weeks Alison Welsh Erin Welch 《Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)》2003,14(4):365-382
Literary scholars are generally suspicious of the concept of universals: there are presently no candidates for literary universals
that a high proportion of literary scholars would accept as valid. This paper reports results from a content analysis of patterns
of characterization in folktales from 48 culture areas, aimed at identifying patterns of characterization that apply across
regions of the world and levels of cultural complexity. The search for these patterns was guided by evolutionary theory and
the findings are consistent with previous research on patterns of altruism, sex differences in mate preferences, sex differences
in reproductive strategy, and differing emphases on male and female physical attractiveness. World literature, especially
originally oral literature, represents a vast and neglected repository of information that researchers can use to more precisely
map the contours of human nature.
Jonathan Gottschall received his Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University and now teaches at St. Lawrence University in
Canton, New York. His research focuses on integrating Darwinian approaches to human behavior and psychology with literary
studies. The other authors are undergraduate students at St. Lawrence University. 相似文献
14.
Hillard S. Kaplan Jane B. Lancaster Sara E. Johnson John A. Bock 《Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)》1995,6(4):325-360
Our objective is to test an optimality model of human fertility that specifies the behavioral requirements for fitness maximization
in order (a) to determine whether current behavior does maximize fitness and, if not, (b) to use the specific nature of the behavioral deviations from fitness maximization towards the development of models of evolved
proximate mechanisms that may have maximized fitness in the past but lead to deviations under present conditions. To test
the model we use data from a representative sample of 7,107 men living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, between 1990 and 1993.
The model we test proposes that low fertility in modern settings maximizes number of grandchildren as a result of a trade-off
between parental fertility and next generation fertility. Results do not show the optimization, although the data do reveal
a trade-off between parental fertility and offspring education and income.
We propose that two characteristics of modern economies have led to a period of sustained fertility reduction and to a corresponding
lack of association between income and fertility. The first is the direct link between costs of investment and wage rates
due to the forces of supply and demand for labor in competitive economies. The second is the increasing emphasis on cumulative
knowledge, skills, and technologies in the production of resources. Together they produce historically novel conditions. These
two features of modern economies may interact with evolved psychological and physiological mechanisms governing fertility
and parental investment to produce behavior that maximizes the economic productivity of lineages at the expense of fitness.
If cognitive processes evolved to track diminishing returns to parental investment and if physiological processes evolved
to regulate fertility in response to nutritional state and patterns of breast feeding, we might expect non-adaptive responses
when returns from parental investment do not diminish until extremely high levels are reached. With high economic payoffs
from parental investment, people have begun to exercise cognitive regulation of fertility through contraception and family
planning practices. Those cognitive processes maynot have evolved to handle fitness trade-offs between fertility and parental investment.
A preliminary presentation of this data was published in R. I. M. Dunbar, ed.,Human Reproduction Decisions: Biological and Social Perspectives. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Support for the research project, “Male Fertility and Parenting in New Mexico,” began
with two seed grants from the University of New Mexico’s Biomedical Research Grants Program, 1988 and 1989, and one from the
University of New Mexico Research Allocations Committee, 1988. Further seed money as well as interim funding came from the
William T. Grant Foundation (#89130589 and #91130501). The major support for the project came from the National Science Foundation
from 1990 to 1993 (#BNS-9011723 and #DBS-911552). Both National Science Foundation grants included Research Experience for
Undergraduates supplements.
Hillard S. Kaplan is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. His earlier research and publications
focused on food sharing, time allocation, parental investment, and reproductive strategies among Ache hunter-gatherers in
Paraguay, Machiguenga and Piro forager-horticulturalists in Peru, and villagers of several ethnicities in Botswana. New research
and theory concern fertility, parental investment, and mating strategies in developed and developing nations. This research
formulates a new theory of reproductive decision-making and the demographic transition, integrating human capital and parental
investment theory in a synthesis of economic and evolutionary approaches.
Jane B. Lancaster is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. Her research and publications are on human
reproductive biology and behavior, especially human parental investment; women’s reproductive biology of pregnancy, lactation,
and child-spacing; and male fertility and investment in children. Current research with Hillard S. Kaplan is on male life
history strategies among a large sample of men in New Mexico. She has coedited three books on human parental investment:School-Age Pregnancy and Parenthood (with B. Hamburg),Parenting across the Life Span (with J. Altmann, A. Rossi, and L. Sherrod), andOffspring Abuse and Neglect (with R. Gelles). She is scientific editor of a quarterly journal,Human Nature: An Interdisciplinary, Biosocial Perspective published by Aldine de Gruyter. She is also a council member of the newly formed Human Behavior and Evolution Society.
John A. Bock is Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Epidemiology and Population Health at the National Centre for Epidemiology
and Population Health, The Australian National University. His research focuses on the allocation of parental investment and
the determinants of children’s activities, integrating aspects of economic and evolutionary theory. He has ongoing field research
with Bantu and Bushmen agro-pastoralists and forager-horticulturalists in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. He is also collaborating
with Lancaster and Kaplan on the determinants of progeny distribution and homosexuality among New Mexican men.
Sara E. Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of New Mexico. Her major research trajectory focuses on trade-offs
in life history characters. Her research experience includes participation in a study of variation in growth and development
among children in a multi-ethnic community in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, in addition to her dissertation work on individual
variation in growth and mortality among juvenile baboons. She is collaborating with Lancaster and Kaplan on the association
between survival and fertility among Albuquerque men. 相似文献
15.
Investment in children is examined using a nationally representative sample of 11,211 black (African) households in South
Africa. I randomly selected one child from each household in the sample and calculated the average genetic relatedness of
the other household members to the focal child. Using multivariate statistical analysis to control for background variables
such as age and sex of child, household size, and socioeconomic status, I examine whether the coefficient of relatedness predicts
greater household expenditures on food, on health care, and on children’s clothing. I also test whether relatedness is associated
with health and schooling outcomes. The results are consistent with an inclusive fitness model: Households invest more in
children who are more closely related. Two exceptions were found: in rural areas, genetic relatedness was negatively associated
with money spent on food and on health care. Explanations for these results are discussed.
Preliminary versions of this paper were presented at the 2003 Human Behavior and Evolution Society annual meeting in Lincoln,
Nebraska, and at the 2003 Human Behavioral Ecology Workshop in Bangor, Maine.
Kermyt G. Anderson is Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. He received his
Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in 1999 and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Population Studies Center at
the University of Michigan for three years. His research focuses on biosocial models of fertility, parental investment, paternity
confidence, marriage/divorce, and children’s outcomes. He is currently involved in a long-term longitudinal survey of young
adults in Cape Town, South Africa, and in several projects examining the effects of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. 相似文献
16.
James J. McKenna 《Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)》1990,1(2):145-177
This paper and its subsequent parts (Part II and Part III) build on an earlier publication (McKenna 1986). They suggest that
important clinical data on the relationship between infantile constitutional deficits and microenvironmental factors relevant
to SIDS can be acquired by examining the physiological regulatory effects (well documented among nonhuman primates) that parents
assert on their infants when they sleep together.
I attempt to show why access to parental sensory cues (movement, touch, smell, sound) that induce arousals in infants while
they sleep could possibly help one of many different subclasses of infants either to override certain kinds of sleep-induced
breathing control errors suspected to be involved in SIDS or to avoid them altogether. I do not suggest that solitary nocturnal
sleep “causes” SIDS, that all parents should sleep with their infants, or that traditional SIDS research strategies should
be abandoned. However, using evolutionary data, I do suggest that an adaptive fit exists between parent-infant sleep contact
and the natural physiological vulnerabilities of the neurologically immature human infant, whose breathing system is more
complex than that of other mammals owing to its speech-breathing abilities. This “fit” is best understood, it is argued, in
terms of the 4–5 million years of human evolution in which parent-infant contact was almost certainly continuous during at
least the first year of an infant’s life. Thus, to dismiss the idea that solitary sleep has no physiological consequences
for infants does not accord with scientific facts.
James J. McKenna is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Pomona
College. He also has an appointment as an Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, Child Psychiatry,
and Human Behavior at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine. His primary research interests and many of
his publications concern aspects of primate parenting and infant development among both human and nonhuman primates. For the
past seven years he has been investigating from an anthropological perspective possible environmental correlates of the sudden
infant death syndrome (SIDS) and has just finished a preliminary study on the physiological correlates of human parent-infant
co-sleeping. His earlier monograph on the subject (cited in this paper) has received much international attention. He and
his colleagues (Mosko and Dungy) are the first to have used standard polysomnographic techniques to document simultaneously
human parent-infant co-sleeping. He has won three awards for distinguished teaching at Pomona College. 相似文献
17.
Cooperation towards public goods relies on credible threats of punishment to deter cheats. However, punishing is costly, so
it remains unclear who incurred the costs of enforcement in our evolutionary past. Theoretical work suggests that human cooperation
may be promoted if people believe in supernatural punishment for moral transgressions. This theory is supported by new work in cognitive psychology and by anecdotal ethnographic
evidence, but formal quantitative tests remain to be done. Using data from 186 societies around the globe, I test whether
the likelihood of supernatural punishment—indexed by the importance of moralizing “high gods”—is associated with cooperation.
Dominic Johnson is a fellow in the Princeton University Society of Fellows. He holds a D.Phil. in biology from Oxford University
and a Ph.D. in political science from Geneva University. His research revolves around the evolutionary biology of human behavior
and how this impacts on conflict, cooperation, politics, and religion. His recent book, Overconfidence and War: The Havoc and Glory of Positive Illusions, was published in 2004 by Harvard University Press. 相似文献
18.
Caretaker-infant attachment is a complex but well-recognized adaptation in humans. An early instance of (or precursor to)
attachment behavior is the dyadic interaction between adults and infants of 6 to 24 weeks, commonly called "babytalk." Detailed
analysis of 1 minute of spontaneous babytalk with an 8-week infant shows that the poetic texture of the mother’s speech—specifically
its use of metrics, phonetics, and foregrounding—helps to shape and direct the baby’s attention, as it also coordinates the
partners’ emotional communication. We hypothesize that the ability to respond to poetic features of language is present as
early as the first few weeks of life and that this ability attunes cognitive and affective capacities in ways that provide
a foundation for the skills at work in later aesthetic production and response. By linking developmental social processes
with formal cognitive aspects of art, we challenge predominant views in evolutionary psychology that literary art is a superfluous
byproduct of adaptive evolutionary mechanisms or primarily an ornament created by sexual selection.
David S. Miall is Professor of English at the University of Alberta in Canada. He is the author of essays on British Romantic
writers, empirical studies of readers’ responses to literature, hypertext and literary computing. Ellen Dissanayake is Visiting
Scholar at the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington. Her most recent book is Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began (2000). 相似文献
19.
Catherine A. Salmon 《Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)》1999,10(2):183-197
Previous research indicates that birth order is a strong predictor of familial sentiments, with middleborns less family-oriented
than first- or last-borns. In this research, effects of sex and birth order on the actual frequency of contact with maternal
and paternal kin were examined in two studies. In Study 1, one hundred and forty undergraduates completed a questionnaire
relating to the amount of time they spent in contact with specific relatives, while in Study 2, one hundred and twelve undergraduates
completed the same questionnaire with the addition of two questions relating to the subjects’ parents’ birth orders. Subjects
were more likely to have frequent contact with maternal, as opposed to paternal, kin and women experienced more frequent contact
than men with relatives in general. The birth order of subjects did not appear to have a significant influence on contact
but the birth order of the subjects’ parents did, with the offspring of middleborn mothers having relatively little contact
with maternal grandparents and the offspring of middleborn fathers having relatively little contact with paternal grandparents.
These sex and birth order differences are discussed in relation to possible differences in how women and men use kinship ties
and in terms of how birth order may influence parental solicitude.
Catherine Salmon recently received her Ph.D. in psychology from McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario. Her interest in kinship
and family relationships has grown out of her own large extended family and many visits to Utah as well as exposure to evolutionary
thinking about the family in the lab of Martin Daly and Margo Wilson. Her other current research interests focus on female
sexuality and the evolutionary study of literature. 相似文献
20.
Cooperation can evolve in the context of cognitive activities such as perception, attention, memory, and decision making,
in addition to physical activities such as hunting, gathering, warfare, and childcare. The social insects are well known to
cooperate on both physical and cognitive tasks, but the idea of cognitive cooperation in humans has not received widespread
attention or systematic study. The traditional psychological literature often gives the impression that groups are dysfunctional
cognitive units, while evolutionary psychologists have so far studied cognition primarily at the individual level. We present
two experiments that demonstrate the superiority of thinking in groups, but only for tasks that are sufficiently challenging
to exceed the capacity of individuals. One of the experiments is in a brain-storming format, where advantages of real groups
over nominal groups have been notoriously difficult to demonstrate. Cognitive cooperation might often operate beneath conscious
awareness and take place without the need for overt training, as evolutionary psychologists have stressed for individual-level
cognitive adaptations. In general, cognitive cooperation should be a central subject in human evolutionary psychology, as
it already is in the study of the social insects.
David Sloan Wilson is an evolutionary biologist interested in a broad range of issues relevant to human behavior. He has published
in psychology, anthropology, and philosophy journals in addition to his mainstream biological research. He is author of Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and co-author with philosopher Elliott Sober of Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (Harvard University Press, 1998).
John J. Timmel received his Ph.D. from Binghamton University in 2001.
Ralph R. Miller is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Binghamton University. His research interests include information
processing in animals, with an emphasis on elementary, evolutionarily derived, fundamentals of learning and memory that might
be expected to generalize across species, including humans. 相似文献