James S Boster
Biographic Data
| ID | 82749 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James S Boster |
| GIVEN NAMES | James S |
| FAMILY NAME | Boster |
| SIGNATURE | BOSTER J S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pittsburgh |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 434 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 32 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Human Cognition as a Product and Agent of Evolution
This paper explores two complementary ways of examining the relationship between evolution and cognition: the first arguing that human cognition has evolved to make sense of other evolutionary products, the second describing the impact of human cognition on the selection of domesticated plants. The first section of the paper reviews research that delineates the correspondences among different biological classification systems. The second section …
Functional Variation in Sensitivity to Cues that a Partner is Cheating with a Rival
Mapping the Conceptual Space of Jealousy
Evolutionary approaches to the study of romantic jealousy have principally been guided by the idea that there are two types of threats to romantic relationships-sexual and emotional-and that these two affect men and women's fitness differently. While this approach has garnered considerable empirical support, it has not investigated the full conceptual domain of jealousy. To do so, we employ techniques developed by cognitive anthropologists and ps…
Scars for war
The semantic categories of cutting and breaking events
This special issue of Cognitive Linguistics explores the linguistic encoding of events of cutting and breaking. In this article we first introduce the project on which it is based by motivating the selection of this conceptual domain, presenting the methods of data collection used by all the investigators, and characterizing the language sample. We then present a new approach to examining crosslinguistic similarities and differences in semantic c…
Evolutionary Anthropology Society
Towards IRB Reform
Social roles and the evolution of networks in extreme and isolated environments
This article reports on the evolution of network structure as it relates to formal and informal social roles in well-bounded, isolated groups. Research was conducted at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Data were collected on crewmembers' networks of social interaction over each of three winter-over periods, when the station is completely isolated. In addition, data were collected on the informal roles played by crewmembers (e.g., instrument…
Rage, Revenge, and Religion
Until recently, the Waorani of eastern Ecuador engaged in a vicious cycle of revenge killing in which men responded to the death of kin by attacking their enemies. Yet their language, Wao tededo, lacks a label for the concept of "revenge killing."Apparently, a social pattern of revenge killing is not dependent on the recognition of "revenge" as an abstract category- revenge need not be an overt cultural construction to be acted upon. This article…
High Paternity Certainties of Jewish Priests
Recent evidence (Skorecki et al. 1997) of significant differences between the Y chromosomes of Jewish priests (Kohanim) and laymen (Israelites) indicate very high degrees of paternity certainty (p, the probability that a man's wife's children are his own, Hartung 1985). Estimates of gene flow into the Kohanim from Israelites indicate that approximately 20% of living Ashkenazic Kohanim and 56% of living Sephardic Kohanim are descended through male…
The Successive Pile Sort
Testing Explanatory Models of Dowry
Developmental changes within the structure of the mammal domain
Development changes in the organization of information within the mammal domain were examined and considered within the context of cultural knowledge acquisition. Judgments of similarity among mammals were elicited from 7-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults by means of a triad task. Analyses addressed both quantitative and qualitative models of development consistent with Romney, Weller, and Batchelder's (1986) cultural consensus model. Results p…
Human marriage systems and sexual dimorphism in stature
Contemporary populations of Homo sapiens are sexually dimorphic on a variety of traits. In terms of stature, men are reliably between 4% and 10% taller than women in well‐sampled human populations. Are cross‐cultural differences in the magnitude of sexual dimorphism consistent with expectations from sexual selection theory? Prior studies have provided conflicting answers to this question in part because they failed to agree on how the force of se…
Dowry and Female Competition
Cognitive and Contextual Variation in Hot‐Cold Classification
Dowry as Female Competition
Boserup (1970) views dowry as a payment made by women to guarantee future support for them and their children under circumstances where their own contributions to subsistence are relatively small. We call this the labor-value model. Here, building on the polygyny threshold theory from behavioral ecology (Orians 1969), we view dowry as a reproductive tactic used by prospective brides and their kin to attract the wealthiest bridegrooms. Our model p…
Estimating relational attributes from snowball samples through simulation
Natural and Human Sources of Cross‐Cultural Agreement in Ornithological Classification
Form or Function
Ethnobiologists debate whether folk biological classifiers are natural historians attending primarily to the morphology of organisms or are pragmatists concerned primarily with utility. We argue that this question is best understood as a problem in intracultural variation: the relative importance of form and function depends on who is asked to judge the similarity of organisms as well as how they are asked to judge it. We find that expert fisherm…
Social position and shared knowledge
Agreement Between Biological Classification Systems Is Not Dependent on Cultural Transmission
General/Theoretical Anthropology
The Correspondence of Jivaroan to Scientific Ornithology
Previous studies offolk biological classification (Diamond 1966; Bulmer 1967, 1970; Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven 1973, 1974; Hunn 1975) have documented a strong correspondence between the ways folk and scientific systems of biological classification delineate natural discontinuities: folk and scientist alike recognize substantially the same categories ofplants and animals. These studies have used methods that assume that all native informants agr…
The Growth of Ethnobiological Nomenclature [and Comments and Reply]
This paper evaluates Brent Berlin's general principles of folk biological classification and nomenclature in view of evidence from hunter-gatherer groups which has accumulated over the past decade. In particular it focuses on his proposals concerning the growth and development of ethnobiological nomenclature. One proposal is that generic/type-specific polysemy (e.g., use of a single word to denote both oak tree in general and a single species of …
Exchange of Varieties and Information Between Aguaruna Manioc Cultivators
Form or Function
Ethnobiologists debate whether folk biological classifiers are natural historians attending primarily to the morphology of organisms or are pragmatists concerned primarily with utility. We argue that this question is best understood as a problem in intracultural variation: the relative importance of form and function depends on who is asked to judge the similarity of organisms as well as how they are asked to judge it. We find that expert fisherm…
Dowry as Female Competition
Boserup (1970) views dowry as a payment made by women to guarantee future support for them and their children under circumstances where their own contributions to subsistence are relatively small. We call this the labor-value model. Here, building on the polygyny threshold theory from behavioral ecology (Orians 1969), we view dowry as a reproductive tactic used by prospective brides and their kin to attract the wealthiest bridegrooms. Our model p…
The Construction of Primary Data in Cultural Anthropology
Rage, Revenge, and Religion
Until recently, the Waorani of eastern Ecuador engaged in a vicious cycle of revenge killing in which men responded to the death of kin by attacking their enemies. Yet their language, Wao tededo, lacks a label for the concept of "revenge killing."Apparently, a social pattern of revenge killing is not dependent on the recognition of "revenge" as an abstract category- revenge need not be an overt cultural construction to be acted upon. This article…
Agreement Between Biological Classification Systems Is Not Dependent on Cultural Transmission
Social roles and the evolution of networks in extreme and isolated environments
This article reports on the evolution of network structure as it relates to formal and informal social roles in well-bounded, isolated groups. Research was conducted at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Data were collected on crewmembers' networks of social interaction over each of three winter-over periods, when the station is completely isolated. In addition, data were collected on the informal roles played by crewmembers (e.g., instrument…
The Growth of Ethnobiological Nomenclature [and Comments and Reply]
This paper evaluates Brent Berlin's general principles of folk biological classification and nomenclature in view of evidence from hunter-gatherer groups which has accumulated over the past decade. In particular it focuses on his proposals concerning the growth and development of ethnobiological nomenclature. One proposal is that generic/type-specific polysemy (e.g., use of a single word to denote both oak tree in general and a single species of …
Developmental changes within the structure of the mammal domain
Development changes in the organization of information within the mammal domain were examined and considered within the context of cultural knowledge acquisition. Judgments of similarity among mammals were elicited from 7-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults by means of a triad task. Analyses addressed both quantitative and qualitative models of development consistent with Romney, Weller, and Batchelder's (1986) cultural consensus model. Results p…
The semantic categories of cutting and breaking events
This special issue of Cognitive Linguistics explores the linguistic encoding of events of cutting and breaking. In this article we first introduce the project on which it is based by motivating the selection of this conceptual domain, presenting the methods of data collection used by all the investigators, and characterizing the language sample. We then present a new approach to examining crosslinguistic similarities and differences in semantic c…
The Correspondence of Jivaroan to Scientific Ornithology
Previous studies offolk biological classification (Diamond 1966; Bulmer 1967, 1970; Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven 1973, 1974; Hunn 1975) have documented a strong correspondence between the ways folk and scientific systems of biological classification delineate natural discontinuities: folk and scientist alike recognize substantially the same categories ofplants and animals. These studies have used methods that assume that all native informants agr…
Cognitive and Contextual Variation in Hot‐Cold Classification
Can Individuals Recapitulate the Evolutionary Development of Color Lexicons
Cognitive anthropologists attempt to synthesize a psychologist's insight into individuals' cognitive processes with an anthropologist's understanding of a community's cultural knowledge. One route to such a synthesis is to explore how the purposive actions of individuals give rise to community culture. Thus, cognitive anthropologists commonly view culture as an information pool that emerges when communities of individuals attempt to make sense of…
High Paternity Certainties of Jewish Priests
Recent evidence (Skorecki et al. 1997) of significant differences between the Y chromosomes of Jewish priests (Kohanim) and laymen (Israelites) indicate very high degrees of paternity certainty (p, the probability that a man's wife's children are his own, Hartung 1985). Estimates of gene flow into the Kohanim from Israelites indicate that approximately 20% of living Ashkenazic Kohanim and 56% of living Sephardic Kohanim are descended through male…
Natural and Human Sources of Cross‐Cultural Agreement in Ornithological Classification
Human marriage systems and sexual dimorphism in stature
Contemporary populations of Homo sapiens are sexually dimorphic on a variety of traits. In terms of stature, men are reliably between 4% and 10% taller than women in well‐sampled human populations. Are cross‐cultural differences in the magnitude of sexual dimorphism consistent with expectations from sexual selection theory? Prior studies have provided conflicting answers to this question in part because they failed to agree on how the force of se…
The Successive Pile Sort
Mapping the Conceptual Space of Jealousy
Evolutionary approaches to the study of romantic jealousy have principally been guided by the idea that there are two types of threats to romantic relationships-sexual and emotional-and that these two affect men and women's fitness differently. While this approach has garnered considerable empirical support, it has not investigated the full conceptual domain of jealousy. To do so, we employ techniques developed by cognitive anthropologists and ps…
Dowry and Female Competition
Functional Variation in Sensitivity to Cues that a Partner is Cheating with a Rival
Towards IRB Reform
Testing Explanatory Models of Dowry
Time Criticized for Yanomamo Characterization
A comparison of the diversity of Jivaroan Gardens with that of the tropical forest
Inferring decision making from preferences and behavior
Measuring the relationship between dietary quality and body size in primates
General/Theoretical Anthropology
The Correspondence of Jivaroan to Scientific Ornithology
Previous studies offolk biological classification (Diamond 1966; Bulmer 1967, 1970; Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven 1973, 1974; Hunn 1975) have documented a strong correspondence between the ways folk and scientific systems of biological classification delineate natural discontinuities: folk and scientist alike recognize substantially the same categories ofplants and animals. These studies have used methods that assume that all native informants agr…
The Growth of Ethnobiological Nomenclature [and Comments and Reply]
This paper evaluates Brent Berlin's general principles of folk biological classification and nomenclature in view of evidence from hunter-gatherer groups which has accumulated over the past decade. In particular it focuses on his proposals concerning the growth and development of ethnobiological nomenclature. One proposal is that generic/type-specific polysemy (e.g., use of a single word to denote both oak tree in general and a single species of …
Can Individuals Recapitulate the Evolutionary Development of Color Lexicons
Cognitive anthropologists attempt to synthesize a psychologist's insight into individuals' cognitive processes with an anthropologist's understanding of a community's cultural knowledge. One route to such a synthesis is to explore how the purposive actions of individuals give rise to community culture. Thus, cognitive anthropologists commonly view culture as an information pool that emerges when communities of individuals attempt to make sense of…
Exchange of Varieties and Information Between Aguaruna Manioc Cultivators
The Construction of Primary Data in Cultural Anthropology
Social position and shared knowledge
Agreement Between Biological Classification Systems Is Not Dependent on Cultural Transmission
Estimating relational attributes from snowball samples through simulation
Natural and Human Sources of Cross‐Cultural Agreement in Ornithological Classification
Form or Function
Ethnobiologists debate whether folk biological classifiers are natural historians attending primarily to the morphology of organisms or are pragmatists concerned primarily with utility. We argue that this question is best understood as a problem in intracultural variation: the relative importance of form and function depends on who is asked to judge the similarity of organisms as well as how they are asked to judge it. We find that expert fisherm…
Cognitive and Contextual Variation in Hot‐Cold Classification
Dowry as Female Competition
Boserup (1970) views dowry as a payment made by women to guarantee future support for them and their children under circumstances where their own contributions to subsistence are relatively small. We call this the labor-value model. Here, building on the polygyny threshold theory from behavioral ecology (Orians 1969), we view dowry as a reproductive tactic used by prospective brides and their kin to attract the wealthiest bridegrooms. Our model p…
Dowry and Female Competition
Developmental changes within the structure of the mammal domain
Development changes in the organization of information within the mammal domain were examined and considered within the context of cultural knowledge acquisition. Judgments of similarity among mammals were elicited from 7-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults by means of a triad task. Analyses addressed both quantitative and qualitative models of development consistent with Romney, Weller, and Batchelder's (1986) cultural consensus model. Results p…
Human marriage systems and sexual dimorphism in stature
Contemporary populations of Homo sapiens are sexually dimorphic on a variety of traits. In terms of stature, men are reliably between 4% and 10% taller than women in well‐sampled human populations. Are cross‐cultural differences in the magnitude of sexual dimorphism consistent with expectations from sexual selection theory? Prior studies have provided conflicting answers to this question in part because they failed to agree on how the force of se…
Testing Explanatory Models of Dowry
The Successive Pile Sort
High Paternity Certainties of Jewish Priests
Recent evidence (Skorecki et al. 1997) of significant differences between the Y chromosomes of Jewish priests (Kohanim) and laymen (Israelites) indicate very high degrees of paternity certainty (p, the probability that a man's wife's children are his own, Hartung 1985). Estimates of gene flow into the Kohanim from Israelites indicate that approximately 20% of living Ashkenazic Kohanim and 56% of living Sephardic Kohanim are descended through male…
Social roles and the evolution of networks in extreme and isolated environments
This article reports on the evolution of network structure as it relates to formal and informal social roles in well-bounded, isolated groups. Research was conducted at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Data were collected on crewmembers' networks of social interaction over each of three winter-over periods, when the station is completely isolated. In addition, data were collected on the informal roles played by crewmembers (e.g., instrument…
Rage, Revenge, and Religion
Until recently, the Waorani of eastern Ecuador engaged in a vicious cycle of revenge killing in which men responded to the death of kin by attacking their enemies. Yet their language, Wao tededo, lacks a label for the concept of "revenge killing."Apparently, a social pattern of revenge killing is not dependent on the recognition of "revenge" as an abstract category- revenge need not be an overt cultural construction to be acted upon. This article…
Computer Science (19 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Biology (12 works) · History (11 works) · Citation (9 works) · History (9 works) · Categorization, perception, and language (8 works) · Library science (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works)