Westermarck effect The Westermarck effect, or reverse sexual imprinting, is a hypothetical psycholo gical effect through which people

who live in close domestic proximity during th e first few years of their lives become desensitized to later sexual attraction. This phenomenon, one explanation for the incest taboo, was first hypothesized b y Finnish anthropologist Edvard Westermarck in his book The History of Human Mar riage (1891). Observations interpreted as evidence for the Westermarck effect ha ve since been made in many places and cultures, including in the Israeli kibbutz system, and the Chinese Shim-pua marriage customs, as well as in biological-rel ated families. In the case of the Israeli kibbutzim (collective farms), children were reared so mewhat communally in peer groups, based on age, not biological relation. A study of the marriage patterns of these children later in life revealed that out of t he nearly 3,000 marriages that occurred across the kibbutz system, only fourteen were between children from the same peer group. Of those fourteen, none had bee n reared together during the first six years of life. This result suggests that the Westermarck effect operates during the period from birth to the age of six.[ 1] When proximity during this critical period does not occur for example, where a b rother and sister are brought up separately, never meeting one another they may find one another highly sexually attractive when they meet as adults, according to the hypothesis of genetic sexual attraction. This supports the theory that th e populations exhibiting the Westermarck effect became predominant because of th e deleterious effects of inbreeding on those that didn't. Contents [hide] * 1 Westermarck and Freud * 2 Criticisms * 3 References * 4 Notations Westermarck and Freud[edit] Freud argued that as children, members of the same family naturally lust for one another (See Oedipus complex), making it necessary for societies to create ince st taboos,[2] but Westermarck argued the reverse, that the taboos themselves ari se naturally as products of innate attitudes. Steven Pinker wrote on the subject: The idea that boys want to sleep with their mothers strikes most men as the sill iest thing they have ever heard. Obviously, it did not seem so to Freud, who wro te that as a boy he once had an erotic reaction to watching his mother dressing. But Freud had a wet-nurse, and may not have experienced the early intimacy that would have tipped off his perceptual system that Mrs. Freud was his mother. The Westermarck theory has out-Freuded Freud. Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works Criticisms[edit] Sociologists and anthropologists have criticized the validity of research presen ted in support of the Westermarck effect and the contention that it serves as an ultimate demonstration for the viability of natural selection theory in explain ing human behaviour. For example, a 2009 study by Eran Shor and Dalit Simchai de monstrated that although most peers who grew up closely together in the Israeli kibbutzim did not marry one another, they did report substantial attraction to c o-reared peers. The authors conclude that the case of the kibbutzim actually pro vides little support for the Westermarck Effect and that childhood proximity can not in itself produce sexual avoidance without the existence of social pressures and norms.[3] References[edit] 1. ^ Shepher, Joseph (1983). Incest: A Biosocial View. Studies in anthropology. New York: Academic Press. ISBN0-12-639460-1. LCCN81006552. 2. ^ Freud, S. (1913) Totem and Taboo in The Standard edition of the Complete Ps ychological works of Sigmund Freud, Vol XIII 3. ^ Shor, Eran; Simchai, Dalit (2009). "Incest Avoidance, the Incest Taboo, and Social Cohesion: Revisiting Westermarck and the Case of the Israeli Kibbutzim".

American Journal of Sociology 114 (6): 1803 1842. Notations[edit] * Paul, Robert A. (1988). Psychoanalysis and the Propinquity Theory of Incest Av oidance. The Journal of Psychohistory 3 (Vol. 15), 255 261. * Spain, David H. (1987). The Westermarck Freud Incest-Theory Debate: An Evaluatio n and Reformation. Current Anthropology 5 (Vol. 28), 623 635, 643 645. * Westermarck, Edvard A. (1921). The history of human marriage, 5th edn. London: Macmillan. * Lieberman, D., Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2007). The architecture of human kin detection, Nature, 445, 727-731