Our colleagues at Xataka Science have explained that there is something called the Westermarck effect, which determines human beings we are not sexually attracted to the people with whom we grow in our childhood, especially if it is parents or siblings.
This is possibly at the base of one of the most widespread taboos in all societies: incest.
Name "Westermarck effect"It is due to a Finnish anthropologist who defined it at the end of the 19th century and then it has been confirmed by a multitude of anthropological and also ethological works in primates: shared parenting annuls sexual attraction.
The study of this phenomenon also includes children raised as siblings from the earliest childhood and that, in line with known marriage customs in Taiwan in which the girl is adopted into the family of the future husband from an early age to secure a partner to him without dowry costs
AdvertisingThese marriages had a high divorce rate and, in many cases, the girl had been married as she was not attracted to the young man she had spent her childhood with.
In a small number of cultures this taboo has not existed, as among the ruling classes of Ancient Egypt, but, in general, they can be found in all current and historical cultures and societies, being also legally punished and absolutely abhorred by the rest of the people of each of the cultures studied.
On the contrary, if there are some cases of siblings who, having not grown together and without knowing each other, get to relate sexually and even get married, due, perhaps, to that alarm that prevents us from being attracted to very direct brothers or relatives, in their Case does not work by not having shared childhood.
The conclusion is that there is a mechanism in our psyche that makes us have no sexual interest towards the individuals with whom we grew up in close relationship in early childhood.
Incest, therefore, is more than cultural taboo, it is nourished by instinctive impulses that seem to favor exogamy, that is, that human beings seek their partner outside their genetically closest group and thus favor the survival of the species through the diversification of hereditary features.
It is unknown that it produces the Westermarck effect, but it seems to have a natural origin, rather than a cultural one, and it could be that it is produced by smell, sibling competitiveness or other biological reasons that form in our minds the idea that some people are not available as sexual partners.
