Exam 10: Kin and Family Relationships

In all societies, certain people make it their business to know _____ and educate others, especially their relatives, about exactly how they are related to one another.

There is everywhere a _____ correlation between the average or characteristic of kinship categories and the levels of solidarity and cooperation among those so related.

Why is the prevalence of altruism a problem for traditional evolutionary theory? How does Hamilton explain altruism in evolutionary terms? According to Hamilton's theory, under what conditions would we expect to observe altruistic behavior? Does Hamilton provide a complete account of altruism?

Because it is easier to know who the mother of an infant was than the father, it is more likely that more _____ behaviors will be shown by the mother.

In all societies, one's beliefs about one's genealogical links are core components of the phenomenology of _____. Who I am is strongly related to who my relatives are. The idea of tribe is also related to one's core identity.

Genes that support altruistic behavior will be more likely to be passed on when the benefit and degree of relationship are _____ the cost.

All cultures extend kinship terms to non-kin, using them figuratively rather than literally, for evocative and propagandistic purposes. In such cases, the people in those cultures

Humans are an exception to the typical mammalian style of _____. For over 95% of mamal species, the female provides almost all the care for the offspring, with the male contributing little more than sperm, and this is true even for chimpanzees and bonobos, the two species most closely related to humans.

A variety of studies have suggested that we tend to marry others who are, overall, _____ to ourselves.

Hamilton's _____ theory predicts that altruism will be expressed for those whom one is most closely related to and that conflict will increase and cooperation will decrease with decreasing relatedness.

Trivers (1974) addressed the question of _____, which considers the situation in which a mother and child are both seeking to optimize their resources; one clear example is weaning, in which the mother wishes to wean the child before the child wants to be weaned.

_____ refers to the set of terms we use to denote genetic relationships; cross-culturally, these terms appear to be derived from three basic principles: genealogical distance, social rank, and group membership.

In all societies, people are motivated to inquire how new acquaintances might be related to people they already know and feel they _____ when such links are uncovered.

Discuss the cooperative breeding model. What drove the evolution of such a model, and what are the consequences of it?

The _____ is a cognitive phenomenon in which there is a nonlogical reversal in a decision depending on whether the potential outcome is described in positive or negative terms.

In studies of helping behavior among kin, it was found that individuals were more likely to help someone _____ in a life-and-death situation, but more likely to help someone _____ in an everyday situation.

Based on Hamilton's theory, we would expect to see altruistic _____ family relations dominating kin relationships because they tend to support the success of the infant's development.

It is hypothesized that altruistic nuclear families will dominate kin relationships in order to

In addition to self-preservation, family relationships appear to influence who you choose to partner with in later life and the nature of those relationships. On a social level, genetic _____ strategy, as suggested by Hamilton (1996), is at the basis of a variety of processes, including who helps whom and to what extent, who shows violence to whom, and what categories of relationship take precedence over others.

In humans, there are data to suggest that genetic factors that influence _____ characteristics may be important markers for indexing relationships.