Review Of Douglas Kenrick's 'Sex, Murder And The Meaning Of Life'

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Kailey Bennett Dr. Brian Lynch Sociology 101 14 November 2015 Sex, Murder and the Meaning of Life The book by Douglas Kenrick concerns evolutionary psychology, which is the study of evolution-based psychological traits. If you have a religious-based antipathy towards evolution, reading this book would be a total waste. If you accept the fact that humans have evolved over millions of years, reading this book may provide you with wonderful insights into human nature. Kenrick assumes that the science of evolution is beyond dispute and scarcely mentions Charles Darwin. But he does aggressively defend evolutionary psychology – “we claim that the evolutionary perspective can integrate psychology, economics, political science, and anthropology, …show more content…

Maslow’s theory was first proposed in 1943, and based on evolutionary psychology, Kenrick thinks it needs to be reconstructed because (a) it failed to appreciate the central importance of reproduction to human life, and (b) it assumed that the top of the hierarchy was disconnected from biology. Kenrick’s revised hierarchy of human motives (starting from the bottom) – physiological needs, self-protection, affiliation, status/esteem, mate acquisition, mate retention, and parenting. Sex and religion on the subject of sex and religion, Kenrick stakes out a controversial position. He has found that the strongest predictor of religiosity relates to sexual and family values (monogamy, no pre-marital sex, anti-abortion). From this, he concludes that people participate in religion because of their conservative attitudes about sex, and attitudes about sex and family are causes of religious attendance, and not just the effects of religious training. Because religious people think premarital sex is sinful, they tend to marry younger. And because they believe abortion (and sometimes birth control are sinful), they have kids younger. This early child-bearing results in less formal education, which helps to explain why religious people are less educated than non-religious

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