Talk:Westermarck effect

Incest pornography
If this is true, why are incest fantasies so common, if online porn stories are any indication? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.113.215.216  (talk • contribs)  18:18, 7 November 2002 (UTC)


 * My understanding (as an anthropologist) is that 1) the families in the stories allow one to fantasize about naughty families not one's own; and 2) the many stories are written by a relatively small number of prolific writers.


 * Besides, no effect or taboo can be applied to all humans universally. I think this is especially true these days, when some of the old taboos are breaking down because they're no longer necessary or effective.  Just a thought. Stormwriter


 * It doesn't matter whether people with incest fantasies are fantasizing about their actual family members or ficticious characters, the fantasy of sex with family members is still there. There's also the matter of actul cases of incest to consider.


 * For that matter, if there is a built-in resistance to sexual attraction to family members, why is there an explicit taboo against incest, enforced by laws and psychiatry? The same thing goes for bestiality; if it is so unthinkable, why do we bother creating and enforcing laws against it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.113.216.77  (talk • contribs)  23:28, 7 November 2002 (UTC)


 * precisely because there are exceptions: but the majority are revolted by it so they create a moral code to govern the minority. another issue is that the attraction to incest by some of the minority (the fantasy stories online) may be caused by the fact that it feels especially naughty since it is a taboo, not that there is a natural incestuous lust (so there is a difference between fantasizing about their actual family members or ficticious characters). admittedly this is speculation. lets do a survey. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Plasticlax  (talk • contribs)  00:00, 9 January 2003 (UTC)

Kibbutzim
I read once that non-sibbling children who grew up together in kibbutzes very rarely became partners as adults. no idea about what the actual stats are. -- Tarquin 00:05 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

Twilight (2008 film)
The Westermarck Effect has lately been abused to actually try to *proove* that incest is impossible by teenagers discussing "Twilight", this article serving as part of the knowledge base. Insofar it should be tempered with the fact that there is a not insubstantial amount of incest going on in just about any culture, that Westermarck recorded quite obviously *only* marriages and not the occurrences of sexual relationships and that few to none of the questioned people would openly or even anonymously admit to incest.


 * The paradigm is at best as shady as Freud's and that ought to be said loud and clear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.40.25.131  (talk • contribs)  10:09, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The people within the kibbutz system study were not related by blood and would not have had logical reason to believe any relationships with these people would be considered incestuous; therefore they would not have a significant reason to feel it was taboo.
 * If twi-fans are trying to use this article to argue that incest is impossible they must be used to skimming through half a page when reading; it clearly states that people not in close contact during the years from age 1-6 will have no such inhibition, even among siblings (it also mentions, uncited, that siblings who come into contact at a later age may find each other more attractive than an unrelated person).
 * Please also keep in mind that incest rates would be higher than just rates on consenting sexual experiences. Child sexual abuse between family members is incest and would be factored into any statistics on the matter. 24.222.251.111 (talk) 15:42, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Anyone who doubts the Westermarck effect on the basis of the existence of incest fantasies or actual incidents of incest still has the duty to explain why incest is so uncommon universally in all societies and why it has been outlawed independently in different location in the world that were not in contact. The much more likely explanation is that human beings have evolved to have instincts that attempt to (but do not always succeed) prevent the individual from engaging in sexual relations with siblings. Because humans have had the instinct of it being perverse and bad, they have outlawed it when "designing the rules of how to be a good person" (norms).88.114.154.216 (talk) 22:04, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * They don't have the duty to explain anything the burden of proof is on the people claiming this is a real thing, if you're saying there's a predisposition of aversion to incest then it's your duty to explain it by backing up your claims with facts. No one is obligated to disprove a random term someone pulled out of their ass, if anything the fact that incest exists at all is proof that there is no "westermarck effect". Society has negative feelings about many things considered taboo that have nothing to do with humans having an inherent feeling that it was wrong even murder and rape aren't taboos that we always knew were wrong we were taught it (and both are even more widespread than incest), and incest was common in many societies at certain points in history so you're wrong in that regard as well. The reason incest became outlawed in most places was because generations of inbreeding caused disorders and deformities and since there was no form of birth control back then the only way to prevent inbreeding was to refrain from sex which is why more people are arguing in favor of consensual adult incest today because we now have birth control solving the main problem society had with the taboo, like most taboos we weren't born with them instilled in us they were learned taboos.

A midrash
A midrash about he book of Genesis has a matron questioning a rabbi about the creation of Eve.

''why in secret?’ she pursued. ‘At first He created her for him and he saw her full of discharge and blood; thereupon He removed her from him and created her a second time.’ ‘I can corroborate your words,’ she observed. ‘It had been arranged that I should be married to my mother’s brother, but because I was brought up with him in the same home I became plain in his eyes and he went and married another woman, who was not as beautiful as I.’''

Does this count as a proto-example? Omeganian (talk) 16:08, 1 January 2015 (UTC)


 * This whole ("Pre-modern") section is anecdotal, weak, and would be better removed. The fact that these stories have religious sources is not convincing to anyone but the religious, and even those, for religious not scholarly reasons. --50.68.140.60 (talk) 15:58, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Bering's work doesn't contradict the Westermarck effect
There's no contradiction between people being naturally predisposed not to marry people they grew up with as siblings and people being naturally predisposed to be attracted to people who look like their fathers. In fact, if people are naturally attracted to people who look like their parents, then the incest-avoidance findings are even more dramatic. Bering's work suggests that incest-avoidance reverse-imprints on individuals, not on the class of people who look a certain way. Jonathan Tweet (talk) 20:45, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah I agree. There seems to be an odd amount of content in this article trying to criticize a phenomenon that as far as I know is not actually particularly controversial and rather widely accepted.★Trekker (talk) 23:21, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for backing me up. Also, the link was to a blog. Jonathan Tweet (talk) 02:02, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

This strange remark about 'confirmation bias'
This line was recently added to the 'Criticism' section:

Edvard Westermarck never married, and his homosexual orientation was well known in London. In some of his works, he argued for homosexuality as a natural sexual tendency. Therefore, the Westermarck effect can be considered as confirmation bias.

Firstly, who considers it to be that, exactly? Has this objection been raised by other scholars, or is this just something a random Wikipedia editor figured? Secondly, I have to say it doesn't actually make any sense to me, what does one have to do with the other? How would that bias him towards believing in an incest aversion instinct? The only thing I can think of is that this person might have meant to say "postulating natural tendencies is his answer to everything", but given that homosexuality is a natural sexual tendency, this seems like an incredibly dated objection. Less generously, it reads like a homophobic ad hominem. I'm just going to take it out again. – Fyrius (talk) 18:28, 9 November 2022 (UTC)