Posted: Dec 28, 2010 11:43 pm
virphen wrote:Isn't that just covering homicide though? (just playing devil's advocate)
That wouldn't address whether or not there is such an effect in regard, say, to sexual abuse.
Indeed, this research was only looking at homicide so it's possible that there would be still be significant differences in other areas like sexual abuse, neglect, etc, but (assuming that the findings in that article are valid) the Cinderella effect would still struggle to explain these findings. It requires us to accept that there is an evolutionary adaptation that causes us to treat our biological children differently from non-biological children, and then it would have to account for the fact that this adaptation does not apply to homicide. It's not impossible for it to be able to adapt to these findings, but it would make it less parsimonious and it's predictive power would suffer a fair bit, I'd imagine.
virphen wrote:(and might there not be the absence of the incest taboo to potentially explain it?)
Indeed, that would be the other issue - if we eliminate homicide from the Cinderella effect, then what we're left with could potentially be explained in better ways. Instead of appealing to a nebulous desire to pass on one's genes, it would clearly be easier to explain any differences in rates of sexual abuse by an incest taboo. Or if we still wanted an evolutionary explanation, we could invoke the Westermarck effect as an explanation for why the parents are less likely to sexually abuse their own children.