kin selection

(noun)

an evolutionary mechanism by which an organism's behavior benefits the reproductive success of its relatives, including at the expense of its own survival or reproduction

Related Terms

  • game theory
  • altruism

Examples of kin selection in the following topics:

  • Altruism and Populations

    • One explanation for altruistic-type behaviors is found in the genetics of natural selection.
    • The lowering of individual fitness to enhance the reproductive fitness of a relative and, thus, one's inclusive fitness evolves through kin selection.
    • What is clear, though, is that heritable behaviors that improve the chances of passing on one's genes or a portion of one's genes are favored by natural selection and will be retained in future generations as long as those behaviors convey a fitness advantage.
  • Evolutionary Psychology

    • Evolutionary psychology seeks to understand human behavior as the result of psychological adaptation and natural selection.
    • Evolutionary psychology stems from Charles Darwin's theories of evolution, adaptation, and natural selection.
    • The brain's adaptive mechanisms have been shaped over time by natural and sexual selection.
    • Other adaptations might include the abilities to infer others' emotions, to discern kin from non-kin, to identify and prefer healthier mates, to cooperate with others, and so on.
    • Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection has been highly influential in the field of evolutionary psychology.
  • Mate Selection

    • There is wide cross-cultural variation in the social rules governing the selection of a partner for marriage.
    • There is wide cross-cultural variation in the social rules that govern the selection of marriage partners.
    • In some communities, partner selection is an individual decision, while in others, it is a collective decision made by the partners' kin groups.
    • In some of these societies, individuals are only allowed to select partners from the individual's social group.
    • In other societies, on the other hand, partners can be selected from a different social group than one's own.
  • Visualizing multiplex relations

    • Alternatively, one can "bundle" the relations into qualitative types and represent them with a single graph using line of different colors or styles (e.g. kin tie = red; work tie = blue; kin and work tie = green).
    • If the data have been stored as multiple matrices within the same file, when that file is opened (Netdraw>File>Open>UCINET dataset>Network) a Ties dialog box will allow you to select which matrix to view (as well as to set cut-off values for visualizing valued data).
    • An even more useful tool is found in Netdraw>Properties>Lines>Multi-relation selection.
    • The Relations dialog box allows you to select which relations you would like to view, and whether to view the union ("or") or intersection ("and") of the ties.
  • Scales of measurement

    • Each person from the list that is selected is coded one.
    • Those who are not selected are coded zero.
    • To do this, one simply selects some "cut point" and re-scores cases as below the cut-point (zero) or above it (one).
    • Multiple-category nominal measures of relations: In collecting data we might ask our respondents to look at a list of other people and tell us: "for each person on this list, select the category that describes your relationship with them the best: friend, lover, business relationship, kin, or no relationship. " We might score each person on the list as having a relationship of type "1" type "2" etc.
    • That is, we might take the data arising from the question described above and create separate sets of scores for friendship ties, for lover ties, for kin ties, etc.
  • Sampling ties

    • Snowball approaches can be strengthened by giving some thought to how to select the initial nodes.
    • An alternative approach is to begin with a selection of focal nodes (egos), and identify the nodes to which they are connected.
    • We can know, for example, that some actors have many close friends and kin, and others have few.
    • For example, if we identify each of the alters connected to an ego by a friendship relation as "kin," "co-worker," "member of the same church," etc., we can build up a picture of the networks of social positions (rather than the networks of individuals) in which egos are embedded.
    • Such an approach, of course, assumes that such categories as "kin" are real and meaningful determinants of patterns of interaction.
  • Energy Conservation

  • Multiplex data basics

    • For another example, we could combine multiple relations to create qualitative types: 1 = kin only, 2 = co-worker only, 3 = both kin and co-worker, and 4 = neither kin nor co-worker.
  • Categorical REGE for directed binary data (Wasserman-Faust directed data)

    • Our example will be of a binary graph; the algorithm, however, can also deal with multi-valued nominal data (e.g. "1" = friend, "2" = kin, "3" = co-worker, etc.).
  • Interest Groups

    • Foreign policy interest groups often overlap with so-called "ethnic" interest groups, as they try to influence the foreign policy and, to a lesser extent, the domestic policy of the United States for the benefit of the foreign "ethnic kin" or homeland with whom respective ethnic groups identify.
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