Naive evo-psych seems to imply that having a big family should make me more attractive, for two reasons: 1) it’s evidence that my genes cause many surviving kids, 2) more people will share resources to help my kids survive. But that doesn’t seem to work in real life. Why?
“Real life” doesn’t even remotely resemble the ancestral environment. In the modern world, a big family is evidence about your cultural background, especially the relationship between your cultural background and contraception, and that might be a turn-off for some. This is the same kind of phenomenon that makes having extra fat evidence, in the ancestral environment, that you were good at acquiring food and other resources, but in the modern world it’s evidence that you’re poor or lack access to good food or lack self-control or whatever.
I mean, I’d rather say “evo-psych has a certain domain of applicability, and also it’s not the only force that shapes human behavior, and also most people who try to apply evo-psych don’t understand the evolutionary-cognitive boundary, and...”
It seems a little presumptuous to say “if I naively apply this idea, I get something that looks wrong, therefore this is a dumb idea” instead of saying “if I naively apply this idea, I get something that looks wrong, therefore I may have applied it in a dumb way.” Have you read an actual textbook on evolutionary psychology?
Nope. I was kind of hoping some expert would answer.
To reformulate the question, is there some easy way to see that my prediction is wrong without going out and checking? The arguments in your first comment apply to all of evo-psych equally. Your second comment mentioned the “evolutionary-cognitive boundary” which doesn’t seem to be what I want, unless I’m missing something...
It was an example of how people can incorrectly apply evolutionary psychology. Anyway, despite my previous comment, it’s not clear to me that your prediction is in fact wrong.
Do you (not) observe this both with males and females?
Baboons are supposed to be a good model for human social structure, though not as smart as apes. They are matrilocal, so they don’t know how big the male’s family was. The female’s status is largely determined by alliances, which are made of family blocks. They do get some grooming work out of allies. They might be able to get work out of low status females, who love to hold high status babies, but the mothers don’t trust them, perhaps out of fear for the baby, perhaps out of fear of status contagion. Anyhow, since (2) is true, it’s hard to measure (1). But it is probably better to look at anthropological evidence than baboons.
Large families mean low infant mortality and low maternal mortality. Low infant mortality might be due to good genes, or good provisioning. A woman from a large family might provide genetic protection against maternal mortality, but not a man from a large family. If infant mortality is due to bad infant genes, siblings testify to this kind of gene, but it might not be different from other kinds of robustness that can be measured in adulthood. If it’s paternal provisioning, then maybe it’s evidence that the man inherited dad strategy genes (vs cad strategy), but hunter-gatherer couplings probably were not long term so the large family is not highly informative. The farming environment seems like it should select for the behavior you suggest, but people usually assume it didn’t last very long so didn’t shape much.
Why does evo. psych imply this result? The fact that you can spawn healthy children may make you more attractive to an additional potential mate, but the potential mate must also consider whether you can provide resources to support additional children.
more people will share resources to help my kids survive. (emphasis added)
This seems like the opposite of what evo. psych would predict. Your relatives might be willing to provide you more support if you have more kids, but why would strangers be more willing to support you based on your reproductive fitness? As for relatives of additional potential spouses, the considerations of I discussed above still apply.
Well, the more kids are in a family, the less resources can be allocated to each child, all other things being equal. That said, it isn’t obvious to me that your premise is true. I have found that my esteem for somebody grows for some reason when I learn they have siblings.
Naive evo-psych seems to imply that having a big family should make me more attractive, for two reasons: 1) it’s evidence that my genes cause many surviving kids, 2) more people will share resources to help my kids survive. But that doesn’t seem to work in real life. Why?
“Real life” doesn’t even remotely resemble the ancestral environment. In the modern world, a big family is evidence about your cultural background, especially the relationship between your cultural background and contraception, and that might be a turn-off for some. This is the same kind of phenomenon that makes having extra fat evidence, in the ancestral environment, that you were good at acquiring food and other resources, but in the modern world it’s evidence that you’re poor or lack access to good food or lack self-control or whatever.
Yeah, saying “evo-psych doesn’t work” is one way to answer my question :-)
I mean, I’d rather say “evo-psych has a certain domain of applicability, and also it’s not the only force that shapes human behavior, and also most people who try to apply evo-psych don’t understand the evolutionary-cognitive boundary, and...”
It seems a little presumptuous to say “if I naively apply this idea, I get something that looks wrong, therefore this is a dumb idea” instead of saying “if I naively apply this idea, I get something that looks wrong, therefore I may have applied it in a dumb way.” Have you read an actual textbook on evolutionary psychology?
Nope. I was kind of hoping some expert would answer.
To reformulate the question, is there some easy way to see that my prediction is wrong without going out and checking? The arguments in your first comment apply to all of evo-psych equally. Your second comment mentioned the “evolutionary-cognitive boundary” which doesn’t seem to be what I want, unless I’m missing something...
It was an example of how people can incorrectly apply evolutionary psychology. Anyway, despite my previous comment, it’s not clear to me that your prediction is in fact wrong.
Do you (not) observe this both with males and females?
Baboons are supposed to be a good model for human social structure, though not as smart as apes. They are matrilocal, so they don’t know how big the male’s family was. The female’s status is largely determined by alliances, which are made of family blocks. They do get some grooming work out of allies. They might be able to get work out of low status females, who love to hold high status babies, but the mothers don’t trust them, perhaps out of fear for the baby, perhaps out of fear of status contagion. Anyhow, since (2) is true, it’s hard to measure (1). But it is probably better to look at anthropological evidence than baboons.
Large families mean low infant mortality and low maternal mortality. Low infant mortality might be due to good genes, or good provisioning. A woman from a large family might provide genetic protection against maternal mortality, but not a man from a large family. If infant mortality is due to bad infant genes, siblings testify to this kind of gene, but it might not be different from other kinds of robustness that can be measured in adulthood. If it’s paternal provisioning, then maybe it’s evidence that the man inherited dad strategy genes (vs cad strategy), but hunter-gatherer couplings probably were not long term so the large family is not highly informative. The farming environment seems like it should select for the behavior you suggest, but people usually assume it didn’t last very long so didn’t shape much.
Why does evo. psych imply this result? The fact that you can spawn healthy children may make you more attractive to an additional potential mate, but the potential mate must also consider whether you can provide resources to support additional children.
This seems like the opposite of what evo. psych would predict. Your relatives might be willing to provide you more support if you have more kids, but why would strangers be more willing to support you based on your reproductive fitness? As for relatives of additional potential spouses, the considerations of I discussed above still apply.
Well, the more kids are in a family, the less resources can be allocated to each child, all other things being equal. That said, it isn’t obvious to me that your premise is true. I have found that my esteem for somebody grows for some reason when I learn they have siblings.