Page 497 - Cultures and Organizations

462 IMPLICATIONS

selection is asymmetric. In a system with two genders of which the female
gender is limited in the number of offspring that it can produce, while the
male gender is virtually unlimited, reproduction requires fewer males than
females. Females can thus afford to be picky, and males in many species
compete for females. This situation will usually result in larger body size
for the males. Human males and females have had varying body size ratios
during deep history; currently the difference is about 10 percent. The aver-
age human group has twice as many ancestors in the female line as in the
male line. This is because whereas most women have children, many males
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do not beget any offspring, while others beget hundreds —or, in the case
of Mongol emperor Genghis Khan, thousands.
Sexual selection is a vehicle of genetic selection between individu-
als, but in humans it is strongly related to symbolic group boundaries. In
collectivist societies partner selection is a crucial event, not only for the
partners but also for both their families (Chapter 4). Marriages between
royal families have frequently been used to reconcile or to join empires.
Sexual attraction between Romeo and Juliet caused major fi ghts because
they belonged to competing families. Many religions penalize marriages
with nonadherents. People are still being killed every day because of sexual
relations with out-group members. The working of the moral circle can
be very explicit when it comes to sexual rules. Sexual selection is a special
case of behavioral selection, the next category.

Behavioral Selection
When Gert Jan was a child, almost everybody around him smoked. It was

the chic, social thing to do. Refined people had a smoke after dinner. Today

in individualistic parts of the world, smoking is confined to certain sub-
groups, and smokers are widely considered losers who endanger their own

health. For someone who is looking for a partner or a friend, or for a club to
join, smoking could be a sensitive issue. So it goes for all kinds of behaviors.
Within a group, some individuals will be more liked and more imitated
than others, with the result that their behaviors spread. Among groups,
some groups develop more viable patterns of interaction, so that they win
out against other groups. This form of selection is not directly genetic,
although of course we cannot behave beyond our biological means.
Behavioral selection can also proceed through the intermediary of the
environment. Groups may burn vegetation to create habitats for large graz-
ing animals, and these or other groups may hunt those animals. Groups
may migrate to an island and learn to fish out of necessity. They may