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

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.