Gynocentric communication among nuclear kin in the USA and Spain
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Anthropology, Evolutionary Studies, Psychiatry and Psychology
- Keywords
- communication, sex differences, social networks
- Copyright
- © 2016 Brewer
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Gynocentric communication among nuclear kin in the USA and Spain. PeerJ Preprints 4:e647v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.647v2
Abstract
Paternity uncertainty seems to have shaped humans' differential investment in kin. I examined sex differences in communication among nuclear kin to expand inquiry on this matter and address some methodological limitations in prior work. I analyzed data from national surveys in the USA and Spain and a study of mobile phone communication in the immediate aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Respondents communicated mildly to moderately more with mother than father and more with sister than brother. The differences in communication with mother and father appeared in both subjective survey data and objective mobile telephone records. Across communication modes and studies, women and men did not differ consistently in overall frequency of communication. Matricentric and sororicentric tendencies were larger for the modes likely to involve dyadic communication (such as telelphone calling and texting) than modes which often involve communication in group settings (face-to-face). The tendency to communicate more with female than male kin also appeared to be stronger in women respondents than in men. These results are consistent with paternity uncertainty as an ultimate evolutionary cause of differential investment in kin.
Author Comment
This revision includes small changes to the original. I updated references in the introduction and discussion, including some additions and some deletions. I made some general formatting changes and a few other very minor edits.
This represents the final version of this article, pending comments I receive from readers. I am not seeking to publish this article in another outlet.