The Parasite-Stress Theory of Values and Sociality, Infectious Disease, History and Human Values Worldwide
By F. Pazhoohi. 2016
97 citations recorded by the source corpus.
In their book The Parasite-Stress Theory of Values and Sociality , Randy Thornhill, Distinguished Professor at The University of New Mexico, and Corey L. Fincher, Assistant Professor at University of Warwick, present a new interpretation of human values and cultural behaviors, on the basis of ecological variations in parasite-stress prevalence across and within nations. The first chapter of the volume is a detailed introduction outlining the contents. Before delineat ing their theory in upcoming chapters, in the second chapter Thornhill and Fincher discuss their philosophical viewpoints on scientific investigation in general, and evolutionary science in particular. First, the chapter compares philosophical and scientific methods of knowing, concerning explora tion of the universe and its function. In particular, in this chapter the authors challenge philosophical aesthetics and argue that pure philosophical reasoning cannot discover causes of nature without scientific testing. The authors further argue that due to personal differences in values (biased common sense, intuition, and emotional validation of ideas), human pure reasoning, thinking, and deduction are biased, and that aesthetic philosophy cannot empirically falsify or verify hypotheses. They also argue that all areas of science that deal with life and living beings are evolutionary in essence, and that humans are evolved animals and living beings—hence, that all studies of humans are evolutionary and biological studies. Next, the authors explain the enculturation process and review different theories on cultural learning. They assert that “enculturation of the individual is an active ontogenetic process of choice of information from the environment that yields reproductive competence in the local (p. other they the ontogeny of people is designed to choose ways of thinking, and attitudes and values that are ancestrally adaptive social navigations the local culture. They that cultural acquisitions are local psychological adaptations that are caused by infectious disease–related ecological adversities that design people
Subfields: Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/96a4395a721f76b83d610abee4f2a4d60a4206b7
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Citations in the corpus
- Changes in Personal Values in Pandemic Times (2021, background): “Evolutionary theory suggests infectious disease may have an especially high likelihood to induce behavioral, and thus value, adaptation (Thornhill & Fincher, 2014).”
- Cross‐Country Determinants of Early‐Stage Necessity and Opportunity‐Motivated Entrepreneurship: Accounting for Model Uncertainty (2018, unknown): “…Boudreaux, and Salahodjaev 2017), and can explain a significant share of current variations around the world related to economic development, human capital, and the JOURNAL OF SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT260 propensity of societies to welcome and adopt new ideas (Thornhill and Fincher 2014).”
- Is the Relationship Between Pathogen Avoidance and Ideological Conservatism Explained by Sexual Strategies (2015, background): “One account suggests that interactionswith outgroupmembersmight pose a greater pathogen threat than interactions with ingroup members if outgroups carry – and are adapted to – pathogens from different ecologies (see Thornhill & Fincher, 2014, for an overview).”