Definition
The decreased sexual interest between individuals who have co-resided in childhood.
Introduction
In his seminal book, The History of Human Marriage (1891), the Finnish sociologist and philosopher Edward Alexander Westermarck provided an evolutionary explanation for the evident lack of sexual interest between close kin. Deeply inspired by both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, Westermarck, who was looking to solve the question regarding the cross-cultural incest taboo, proposed that “there is an innate aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living very closely together from early youth, and that, as such persons are in most cases related, this feeling displays itself as a horror of intercourse between near kin” (Westermarck 1891, p. 321). Westermarck further argued that during the course of evolution, innate aversion had developed through natural selection: “[T]his instinct developed...
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References
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Antfolk, J., Godenhjelm, H. (2017). Westermarck Effect. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_215-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_215-1
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