Talk:Tend and befriend

Social affiliation
I suggest that the term Social affiliation would be a more general and encyclopedic term. In the meantime, I have created a redirect page, and linked to it from the Affiliation disambig page. RichardVeryard (talk) 14:29, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Adding controversial tag and controversy section due to this theory's basis in evolutionary psychology. This theory exhibits some of the worse tendencies towards gender determinism displayed by that field.

Badly sourced
The article contains few sources. Many assertions are unsourced, and references to pseudoscience (Polyvagal theory) used as evidence. 178.3.49.25 (talk) 20:49, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

This is baloney
"Tend and befriend" is one of many evo-psych claims that runs completely counter to how male and female behaviors actually operate in non-western societies. There is no evidence that the supposed greater female tendency towards coalition building or friendship seen in western culture is universal, and in fact serious anthropological research tends to point in the other direction: in most non-western and especially tribal cultures, men are more gregarious, form larger coalitions and maintain denser within-gender solidarity networks than women. This is a pure example of how sloppy and poorly-produced research based on a priori assumptions (and sometimes flat out lies) is rewarded by the low standards of the evo-psych snake oil pseudoscience fraud. I don't even think this article deserves to exist, period. Traditional Culture Preservation Society (talk) 00:13, 25 January 2024 (UTC)


 * "and in fact serious anthropological research tends to point in the other direction: in most non-western and especially tribal cultures, men are more gregarious, form larger coalitions and maintain denser within-gender solidarity networks than women"
 * Care to present this research? 102.42.224.65 (talk) 18:01, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The work of Joyce Benenson comes to mind. It's honestly embarrassing that we are still having these conversations about "male responses" and "female responses" in the post-Cordelia Fine world, anyway. 76.38.21.67 (talk) 02:23, 5 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I am the same person as the account above ("Traditional Culture Preservation Society"). I took the liberty of rewriting much of this article to reflect the actual cross-cultural data. Hope this sparks some useful conversations from the "nature side" of the debate.JRBusk (talk) 15:34, 24 June 2024 (UTC)