What explains this evolutionary puzzle? Why would same families kill their own kin, against their genetic interests? open.substack.com/pub/dralicee... - ThreadSky

draliceevans.bsky.social • 165 days ago

What explains this evolutionary puzzle?

Why would same families kill their own kin, against their genetic interests?

https://open.substack.com/pub/draliceevans/p/does-cousin-marriage-motivate-honour?r=zccyx&utm_medium=ios

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aksoyundan.bsky.social•165 days ago

Hi @draliceevans.bsky.social we have a forthcoming AmSocRev paper on this: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/j63k9 Two puzzles (1) why families kill their own (2) why norm breaking happen given costs. Our answer is a community equilibrium + uncertainty. Everyone punishes everyone else or get punished themselves.

lolgreece.bsky.social•165 days ago

I'm not sure this is against genetic interests. If enforcing cousin marriage and directing inheritance through this is a big component of this, then this sort of practice may pass their genes on to more surviving grandchildren and great grandchildren than just letting people marry love matches.

lolgreece.bsky.social•165 days ago

To be clear that's no defence of the practice. IMO even cousin marriage should be illegal, let alone killing people for refusing forced marriages

t0nyyates.bsky.social•165 days ago

This may not always be a good question to ask. There are so many examples of things humans and human societies have done that are against immediate genetic self interest. I don't think we should presume that we are observing the optimal response to some evolutionary challenge.

lolgreece.bsky.social•165 days ago

Even if we did, this is not the right timescale

wanderinggaia.bsky.social•165 days ago

Because for humans group individual survival is strongly tied to group survival. Hence social norms that can be costly to individuals will be upheld. Eg this

j2bryson.bsky.social•163 days ago

More proximately, one of my friends married abroad ignoring her arranged partner, then it became impossible for either of her brothers to marry (they’d stayed in the village).

punshhh.bsky.social•165 days ago

It’s a failing of ritual ideology, often linked to religious ideology. In this case probably a strong part played by tribal misogyny as well.

fabschmidt.bsky.social•165 days ago

Yep, not everything is evolution. In fact, humans have existed for long enough now in complex societies to develop their own stupid ways of behaving, not directly linked to evolution directly.

punshhh.bsky.social•165 days ago

Yes, I was thinking of the weird ceremonial behaviours practiced in isolated tribal communities.

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