Synonyms
Definition
How similar in appearance or behavior an individual is to another, often used as a proxy for genetic relatedness.
Introduction
An important evolutionary benefit which might offset the high costs of parental investment is the opportunity for parents to maximize their genetic fitness through offspring survival (Trivers 1972). However, while women can always be certain that the offspring is genetically related to them, men risk chances of being cuckolded and mistakenly investing in biologically unrelated offspring (see “Paternity Uncertainty and Investment in Sons and Daughters” chapter). In fact, the rates of paternity uncertainty are found to be approximately 1.9%. Therefore, evolutionary theories suggest that men may have adapted mechanisms to mitigate this possibility. In addition to limiting their mates’ opportunities for extra-pair copulations through mate guarding and jealousy behaviors (see “Paternity...
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References
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Franklin, P., Volk, A.A. (2016). Resemblance. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2286-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2286-1
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