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19.3: 19.3 End of Chapter Review

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    Test Your Knowledge
    • Human behavioral ecologists focus on what two main factors as influencing behavior?
    • What are the three main explanations for why people in small-scale societies share food extensively?
    • Describe the environment that represents most of human history.
    • What are two misconceptions about human behavioral ecology?
    • What contemporary world issues can human behavioral ecology help us solve?

    Glossary

    Altruism: Providing a benefit to someone else at a cost to oneself, without expecting future reciprocation.

    Biological determinism: Behaviors are determined exclusively by genes.

    Ecology: The physical and social environment, including food resources, predators, terrain, weather, social rules, behavior of other people, and cultural rules.

    Evolutionary history: An understanding of how traits (including behaviors) may be the result of natural selection in our hominin past.

    Human Behavioral Ecology: The field of anthropology that explores how ecological factors and evolutionary history combine to influence how humans behave.

    Kin selection: A type of natural selection whereby people help relatives, which can evolve because people are helping other individuals with whom they share genes.

    Naturalistic fallacy: The incorrect belief that what occurs is what ought to be.

    Proximate explanation: The mechanism that is immediately responsible for an event.

    Reciprocal altruism: Helping behavior that occurs because individuals expect that any help they provide will be reciprocated in the future.

    Show-off hypothesis: Individuals provide benefits to others because it improves their reputation and social status.

    Ultimate explanation: An explanation for an event that is further removed than a proximate explanation but that provides a greater insight or understanding. In human behavioral ecology, ultimate explanations usually describe how a behavior is linked to reproduction and survival.

    References

    Andreoni, James, and Ragan Petrie. 2004. “Public Goods Experiments without Confidentiality: A Glimpse into Fund-Raising.” Journal of Public Economics 88 (7-8): 1605–1623. doi:10.1016/S0047-2727(03)00040-9.

    Bliege Bird, R. L., and D.W. Bird. 1997. “Delayed Reciprocity and Tolerated Theft.” Current Anthropology 38 (1): 49–78.

    Boyd, Robert, and Peter J. Richerson. 1992. “Punishment Allows the Evolution of Cooperation (or Anything Else) in Sizable Groups.” Ethology and Sociobiology 13 (3): 171–195.

    Colleran, Heidi, and Kristin Snopkowski. 2018. “Variation in Wealth and Educational Drivers of Fertility Decline across 45 Countries.” Population Ecology 60: 155–169. doi:10.1007/s10144-018-0626-5.

    Curtis, Valerie. 2013. Don’t Look, Don’t Touch, Don’t Eat. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    de Waal, Frans B. M. 2000. “Primates—A Natural Heritage of Conflict Resolution.” Science 289 (5479): 586–590. doi:10.1126/science.289.5479.586.

    Dunbar, Robin I. M. 1998. “The Social Brain Hypothesis.” Evolutionary Anthropology 6 (5): 178–190.

    Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2018. “Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Indian-Ocean-tsunami-of-2004.

    Fehr, Ernst, and Urs Fischbacher. 2003. “The Nature of Human Altruism.” Nature 425 (6960): 785–791.

    Gurven, Michael. 2004. “Reciprocal Altruism and Food-Sharing Decisions among Hiwi and Ache Hunter-Gatherers.” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 56 (4): 366–380. doi:10.1007/s00265-004-0793-6.

    Hamilton, W. D. 1964. “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour I & II.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 7 (1): 1–52.

    Hawkes, Kristen. 1991. “Showing off: Tests of an Hypothesis about Men’s Foraging Goals.” Ethology and Sociobiology 12 (1): 29–54.

    Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. 2009. Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

    Johnson, Jeffrey G., Patricia Cohen, Jocelyn Brown, Elizabeth M. Smailes, and David P. Bernstein. 1999. “Childhood Maltreatment Increases Risk for Personality Disorders During Early Adulthood.” Archives of General Psychiatry 56 (7): 600–606. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.56.7.600.

    Milinski, Manfred, Dirk Semmann, and Hans Jürgen Krambeck. 2002. “Reputation Helps Solve the ‘Tragedy of the Commons.” Nature 415 (6870): 424–426.

    National Center for Homeless Education. 2017. Federal Data Summary: School Years 2013–2014 to 2015–2016. nche.ed.gov/downloads/data-comp-1314-1516.pdf.

    Parker, Sue Taylor, and Kathleen Rita Gibson. 1979. “A Developmental Model for the Evolution of Language and Intelligence in Early Hominids.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2 (3): 367–381. doi:10.1017/S0140525X0006307X.

    Pepper, Gillian V., and Daniel Nettle. 2014. “Out-of-Control Mortality Matters: The Effect of Perceived Uncontrollable Mortality Risk on a Health-Related Decision.” PeerJ 2: e459. doi:10.7717/peerj.459.

    Sear, Rebecca, and Ruth Mace. 2008. “Who Keeps Children Alive? A Review of the Effects of Kin on Child Survival.” Evolution and Human Behavior 29 (1): 1–18. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2007.10.001.

    The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. 2008. “Key Findings about Charitable Giving.” https://philanthropy.iupui.edu/files/research/copps_2005_key_findings.pdf.

    Trivers, Robert L. 1971. “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism.” The Quarterly Review of Biology 46 (1): 35–57. doi:10.1086/406755.

    Figure Attributions

    1. Figure 19.1.1 Pictures from bus 13 by Sarvodaya Shramadana is used under a CC BY 2.0 License.

    2. Figure 19.1.2 Diwali sweets India 2009 by robertsharp is used under a CC BY 2.0 License.

    3. Figure 19.1.3 Human Behavioral Ecology by Katie Nelson original to Explorations: An Open Invitation to Biological Anthropology is under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.

    4. Figure 19.1.4 Lao Mangkong family eats together by BigBrotherMouse is used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 License.

    5. Figure 19.1.5 Jakun Hunting Party Blowpipe Malaysia Mongoloid by Walter William Skeat, Charles Otto Blagden is in the public domain.

    This page titled 19.3: 19.3 End of Chapter Review is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Beth Shook, Katie Nelson, Kelsie Aguilera, & Lara Braff, Eds. (Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.