reverse sexual imprinting

Westermarck effect. Was doing a bit of thinking about who we find attractive.

Then something more disturbing : GSA also makes an interesting read. Especially the irrelevant, but amusing Star Wars and Koi Kaze references.

Makes you wonder though. Everyone in the world is distantly related, somehow. People are fond of saying opposites attract. But more often than not it's people of the same feather who get together...

-~-

Followed up some links from Wiki, found some studies.

Study on children raised in Kirya Yedidim, an Isreal kibbutz - children from different families raised together at this facility from a young age : in the hope that they would grow up to marry each other.

Quote: Not only did they shower, sleep and run around naked together and explore each other's bodies, as they approached puberty they began openly to play sex games, including intimate kissing, fondling.

Quote: In a second phase of the study, when these children had grown up, it emerged that not only had no marriages taken place between any of the sabras from Kiryat Yedidim, and three other kibbutzim, but neither was there a single reported incident of sexual intercourse.

Sorry but I laughed at the, uhm failure =p

Another study, done on practices in China - a certain type of arranged marriage where the bride was sent away as a child to be raised alongside her future husband - was also a failure much in the same way that the Isreal kibbutz attempts were.

Quote: "If she came at three or younger, the sexual aversion and rate of marriage breakdown was very high. After five or six, there wasn't much difference between married couples who met at 16. There is some factor in developmental psychology during the first three years of life that seems critical in determining sexual attraction, but we don't know yet what this factor is."

Such a young age obviously hints towards physiological / psyschological effects rather than a social stigma : it's unconscious, and something you can't control anyway. It also seems targeted solely at a particular person : not a set of personality traits. IE you are turned off by the idea of getting together with a sibling, but if you met someone who fits enough criteria (remember GSA) it would be ok.

This effect being targeted solely at a particular person might hint at pheromone imprinting?

*gosh it's late, i should sleep*