Hector N. Qirko

An evolutionary perspective on maladaptive traits and cultural conformity

The problem of maladaptive cultural traits is explored through the notion of adaptive psychological mechanisms. It is suggested that the theory of a specific conformity mechanism is plausible, supported by multidisciplinary data, and helpful in explaining the proliferation and persistence of human maladaptive behavior.

Induced Altruism in Religious, Military, and Terrorist Organizations

Human altruism in non-kin, unreciprocated contexts is difficult to understand in evolutionary terms. However, neo-Darwinian theories remain a potentially useful means of illuminating this behavior. In particular, induced altruism, wherein cues of genetic relatedness are manipulated to elicit costly behaviors for the benefit of non-kin, appears highly relevant. This article reviews cross-cultural data on several examples of extremely costly altruism—vows of celibacy, suicide bombings, and combat suicide—as exhibited in organizational and institutional contexts. Two predictions are used to test the relevance of induced altruism to the reinforcement of altruistic commitment to these behaviors. First, different organizations requiring costly sacrifice by their members should employ similar practices involving patterns of association, phenotypic similarity, and kinship terminology that are associated with kin cue-manipulation. Second, these organizational practices should be adopted as a consequence of recruit pools growing increasingly larger and, thus, less genetically related. There appears to be support for both predictions, suggesting that cross-cultural analyses could provide an effective avenue through which to test this and other evolutionary theories related to human unreciprocated altruism in non-kin contexts.

Consumer Authentication of Popular Music in the Global Postmodern

Determining if music and the artists who produce it belong in a particular popular music genre is accomplished socially, not musically, and this paper explores the role that consumers play in the process. It begins by reviewing theory and research on authenticating criteria and on the relationship of authentication to identity. It then explores the effects of globalization and postmodernity on popular music authentication through analyses of print and web consumer responses to two late 1990s recordings, Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos and Buena Vista Social Club. Results suggest that, even in the “global postmodern,” popular music authentication is likely to remain important to consumers in the formation and maintenance of group identity.

An evolutionary argument for unconscious personal death unawareness

Abstract There is strong experimental evidence that reminders of personal death influence individuals’ attitudes and behaviours. However, there is less support for the typically underlying hypothesis of ‘death denial’, which holds that terror resulting from the awareness of personal mortality is addressed through a variety of psychological and cultural defences. This paper suggests it is evolutionarily more plausible that humans are unconsciously unaware of their own deaths, which would mitigate death-related anxiety without the need for costly and complex defences. While some aspects of the argument are necessarily speculative, problems with the death denial model, as well as relevant aspects of literature on consciousness and self-awareness, positive illusions and self-deception, support the possibility of unconscious death unawareness. The cognitive requirements of human calculated reciprocity also suggest a potentially adaptive function for personal death unawareness, as well as a maladaptive effect related to human tendencies to enter into reciprocal contracts involving afterlife rewards.

Organizational structures and practices are better predictors of suicide terror threats than individual psychological dispositions

Terror organizations tend to rely on a limited number of practices to reinforce commitment to suicide on the part of recruits. Therefore, given the many difficulties associated with identifying individuals willing to become suicide terrorists, understanding the organizational contexts in which most suicide terrorism takes place is likely to be more useful than psychological profiling for predicting future attacks.

“Dumb” Performance as a Marker of Authenticity

ABSTRACT Musical authenticity is impossible to demonstrate objectively but is instead agreed-upon in group contexts through markers that form the basis for defining musical genres (type authenticity) and for evaluating works and artists as expressively honest (expressive authenticity). This paper explores the concept of “dumb” performance or sound as an authenticity marker in the production of Nashville roots/Americana music. Interviews with music professionals suggest that “dumbness” is a commonly shared concept that influences many aspects of musical production. It also appears to communicate aspects of expressive authenticity that help define roots/Americana music as a distinct genre to both its makers and consumers.

Kinship appeals and conservation social marketing

Increasing environmental problems and the need to obtain public support to help address them make effective appeals in conservation fundraising campaigns indispensable. However, social marketing messages based on data, characteristics of focal species, self-interest, and moral responsibility tend to work best on targeted, and so limited, audiences. As conservation organizations reach out to broader audiences, they will require strategies that appeal to more potential donors. This paper argues that use of kinship symbolism to describe non-human species should make conservation marketing campaigns more effective. Evolutionary theories of altruism predict the power of kinship-recognition cues in encouraging and reinforcing sacrifice in non-kin, unreciprocated contexts, and these cues can be manipulated in marketing campaigns to protect threatened species and resources. People often behave altruistically toward “fictive” kin, and the labeling of non-humans as kin in many traditional, small-scale societies appears to be associated with environmental resource management. Characterizing non-human species, and even non-living resources, as kin to humans in marketing campaigns may promote a willingness to contribute to conservation-related causes.

Current Trends in Cultural Particularism: The Problem Does Seem to Lie With Anthropology

Anthropology is too broad a field for the generalizations in the Beller et al. (BBM) paper (2012) to apply across the board. Furthermore, BBM’s suggestion that “anthropologists tend to concentrate on one specific group” (p. 348) is easy to dismiss. Thus, the commentary by Barrett et al. (2012) notes both the discipline’s rich and productive history of cross-cultural comparisons and the fact that some anthropologists continue to develop and test theories about cognitive universals today. However, the research interests of individual anthropologists do not necessarily reflect disciplinary emphases, and I would argue that North American anthropology, at any rate, is indeed currently focusing on cultural particulars and minimizing, if not rejecting, its traditionally concomitant emphasis on comparative, cross-cultural research. For example, while anthropologists interested in cross-cultural work often participate in small, multidisciplinary organizations such as the Society for Cross-Cultural Research, their work appears to be dramatically underrepresented in annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the discipline’s largest and most important organization (particularly for cultural anthropology). Online programs for the 2009 and 2010 meetings list papers for over 550 and 800 multiple paper sessions, respectively. However, the term “cross-cultural” is found in titles or abstracts of only 47 papers in 2009 and 70 in 2010. More recent full programs are not yet available online, but the list of paper titles for 2011 and 2012 suggests the same pattern. Another indication of the trend toward the particular are definitions of anthropology found on the web pages of anthropology departments of the first 100 “Top North American universities 2011–2012” listed by Times Higher Education (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk). This list ranks schools on the basis of “teaching,” “international outlook,” “industry income,” “research,” and “citations,” and so presumably includes the institutions most well known to potentialcollaborators inotherdisciplines,aswellasmostof thebestanthropologydepartments.