Archer J
Lancashire Polytechnic, Preston, United Kingdom.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 1988 Aug;55(2):272-8. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.55.2.272.
This article offers a critique of Littlefield and Rushton's (1986) application of sociobiological principles to bereavement following the death of a child. The following general issues are considered: (a) whether behavior is always adaptive and (b) the distinction between proximate and ultimate explanations. It is argued that grief is a maladaptive by-product of another, adaptive feature and that hypotheses about the severity of grief are best derived from proximate considerations rather than genetic relatedness. The use of a single-item rating scale to measure grief is questioned, and it is noted that interspouse reliabilities reported in the article were low, a problem not solved (as claimed) by aggregation. Criticisms are made of the specific hypotheses, notably in terms of their origins in sociobiological theory. It is argued that functional hypotheses are not alternatives to proximate mechanisms, but enable some proximate mechanisms to be viewed from the perspective of evolutionary biology.
本文对利特菲尔德和拉什顿（1986年）将社会生物学原理应用于儿童死亡后的丧亲之痛进行了批判。文中考虑了以下几个一般性问题：（a）行为是否总是具有适应性；（b）直接解释与终极解释之间的区别。本文认为，悲伤是另一种适应性特征的非适应性副产品，关于悲伤严重程度的假设最好从直接因素而非基因关联性推导得出。文中对使用单一项目评分量表来衡量悲伤提出了质疑，并指出文章中报告的配偶间信度较低，且这一问题并未（如所声称的那样）通过汇总得到解决。本文对具体假设提出了批评，尤其是就其源于社会生物学理论的方面。本文认为，功能性假设并非直接机制的替代方案，而是能使一些直接机制从进化生物学的角度得以审视。
