When We Are in Love, We Have Irrational Thinking

Posted on May 15, 2022 by Victor Karandashev

For many people, romantic love appears to be an enchanting and mysterious emotional experience. It seems to be something irrational and inexplicable. People are curious about the secrets of love, yet not many scholars dare to rationally explain or scientifically understand why we fall in love. Do we follow our irrational thinking when we are in love?

Our Irrational Human Nature

Through centuries and across cultures, people have been inclined to think irrationally and intuitively about many things. Little knowledge and a lack of rational thinking were the main reasons why they thought this way.

Even though science has helped us understand the world and life more rationally, people still tend to think irrationally and rely on their gut feelings.

The Power of Irrational Thinking

This is why many people believe in some secret supernatural powers, in “conspiracy theories”, astrology, horoscopes, amulets, talismans, charms, interpretations of dreams, and many other mystical and magical things. No rational explanation can change their beliefs. These beliefs are persistent, despite anything.

Concerning this point, Howard Rankin asserts,

“Human beings are not logical; we are storytellers most interested in emotional comfort and safety. We can convince ourselves and justify anything. “
(Rankin, 2019).

As he claims,

“We are basically still Neanderthal, focused on survival and safety, and living in the present. Our brains haven’t adapted to a much more complex world.”
(Rankin, 2019).

Why Does Love Have Irrational Thinking?

In the same way, people believe in the irrational nature of romantic love and love attraction. They tend to trust their intuition rather than rational arguments. Many believe in fate and destiny in love, in the mythic “chemistry of love,” and in love at first sight. They believe that relationships work or do not work for them because they do not have the right “chemistry”. They tend to be intuitive and irrational in their relationships.

Many people believe that the mysteries of romantic love are beyond our rational knowledge, reason, and logic. Their ideas of love relationships concede some irrationality. People in traditional cultures who were not as well educated called this “the magic of love.” People who are better educated today call it “love’s chemistry.” Yet, love chemistry is still hard for us to understand from a scientific point of view. The term seems scholarly and respectable at first, although it is still irrational in its subject.

In their scholarly approach to love, modern educated and scientific conceptions of love strive to be rational, reasonable, and scientifically based. Nowadays, references to the stars aligning for a couple or fate sound pseudoscientific. The Amour’s, or Cupid’s, arrow in a heart is a beautiful symbol, but the myth seems too naïve to believe for modern people.

Nevertheless, many of them continue to believe in love irrationally. Why is that?

The Pitfalls of Irrational Thinking

First, people’s minds have a dichotomy of rational and irrational thinking. Many can think rationally about science and business but prefer to think irrationally about their internal experiences and relationships. They can be objective about some things but tend to be subjective about others. They can be objective researchers in science, though they can be subjective devotees in religion. For them, these different perspectives appear compatible.

The Pitfalls of Intuitive Thinking

Second, people have two modes of thinking: analytical and intuitive. People can be rational and analytical thinkers in their cognition of objective external objects in the world. However, it is difficult for them to be objective toward people—others and themselves. They tend to think irrationally and intuitively about people and relationships.

The Pitfalls of Exhaustive Thinking

Third, critical thinking can be exhausting. Hard and extensive thinking is tiresome. As some people know, too much thinking can cause a headache. Therefore, some people prefer to rely on simplistic shortcuts, such as intuitive, irrational thinking. It is easier and simpler, yet frequently biased. People are especially biased in their perception of others, themselves, and relationships.

The Pitfalls of Thrilling Emotions

Fourth, people tend to like everything that is mysterious, surprising, wonderful, beautiful, and fascinating. Love is such a “thing” that excites men and women, young and old. They like the thrill of such knowledge. It is natural that they like things, experiences, and events that are intriguing, captivating, and charming.

Idealistic Thinking Makes Men and Women Happy

Across various cultures, romantic tales of folklore, art, novels, poetry, and movies have described romantic love and romantic relationships in fascinating, exciting, wonderful, and intriguing ways. Often, their plots and depictions are beautiful and unbelievably idealistic. They are like fairy tales or scary stories, which are thrilling and inspiring for children. In the same way, adults love romantic stories just as kids love fairy tales. Sometimes, they believe their dreams will come true.

Irrational, idealistic thinking is fascinating and exciting. Why then succumb to rational, realistic thinking? It seems more interesting to think irrationally, especially about love and relationships.

Love Destiny Across Cultures

Posted on May 14, 2022 by Victor Karandashev

Is love really our destiny in life? What do different cultural beliefs tell us about love destiny? Our love destiny is likely to be our fate for life.

Love is a mysterious and unknown force that many cultural traditions consider fate and destiny. The English term “destiny” has Latin origins, denoting the meaning “determined.” It stands for a strong supernatural power that is embodied and personified as a cosmic or God’s superpower. It determines what happens in people’s lives and relationships.

The belief in fate and destined love suggests that there is only one true love and one predetermined marriage for life. Prospective partners are either meant for each other or not.

The Cross-Cultural Universality of Fate and Love Destiny

In many cultures and periods of history, people have held the view that love and a long-term relationship are their fate and destiny. These are the traditional European romantic love ideals found in literature and scholarship. Anthropological studies have shown that these cultural beliefs exist in many African and Asian societies (see for review, Karandashev, 2017, 2019).

These folk and literary perceptions are mirrored in words such as destiny and fate, which assume the existence of an ultimate agent that guides a person to perfect love and predetermined marital partnerships. True love is an unavoidable fate. It is beyond a person’s control. He or she just ought to succumb and accept it as destined love, with all that happens.

The Lexicon of Love Destiny Across Cultures

In many cultures and languages, there are words that express the meanings of fate, love destiny, or something similar. For example, the classical Greek word for an unshakable and binding destiny is “anánk” (starcrossed love). The Japanese word for the feeling that love with this person is inevitable is “koi no yokan.” The Chinese word for a force impelling a relationship’s destiny is “yuán fèn.” The Korean word for lifelong, unshakable love is “sarang” (Lomas, 2018).

We can see that the notion of predetermined love has appeared in a variety of cultures and languages. Here are just a couple of examples of the cultural beliefs in fate and destiny in love and marriage.

The Burmese Cultural Idea of Love Destiny

In a Burmese cultural context, here is the concept of love as fate. Previously known as Burma, Myanmar is a Southeast Asian country heavily influenced by Buddhist culture. Burmese folklore tradition teaches men and women that love is their fate.

The cultural myth tells people that shortly after one’s birth, the Hindu god Brahma writes one’s love destiny on the forehead. So, the destiny of love is what guides men and women in love and in their marital future, one for life. In Burmese society, there is no custom of arranged marriages. People follow their destiny.

Love is mostly involved in the marital relationship, along with sentimental affection, sexual attraction, sympathy, and attachment. However, despite its importance in men’s and women’s marital lives, love is exhibited in moderation (Victor de Munck, 2019; Spiro 1977).

Like in other East Asian societies, Burmese spouses are reserved in their emotional expressions.

The Chinese Cultural Idea of Love Destiny

These are the cultural beliefs about destined love in Chinese society. People have traditionally followed their faith through relational fatalism. Predestined relational affinity is embodied in the Chinese concept of “yuan” (Goodwin & Findlay, 1997; Yang, 2006).

Because they believe in a predetermined relationship affinity, people think that the type of relationship, how long it will last, and how well it will work are all determined by affinity.

The different types of yuan are the external and stable causal factors determining different types of relationships. This external attribution of the relationship to “yuan” plays its vital social-defensive and ego-defensive roles in the relationship.

In establishing a relationship, Chinese men and women particularly appreciate relational harmony. They have a fear of disharmony in the relationship and strive for harmony for the sake of harmony itself. Due to the attribution of yuan, family relationships are supposed to be kept harmonious and stable (Yang, 2006).

Our Love Destiny in Life

Posted on May 13, 2022 by Victor Karandashev

Do we have a choice in love? Or is love really our destiny that we need to realize and follow?

Throughout history, folklore, literature, and art have portrayed romantic love as a mysterious connection between two people. People could not explain this feeling through rational thinking, logic, or reason. It seems there is some kind of “magic of love.” Such a mysterious force of love is love destiny or fate.

What Is Destiny?

Beliefs in destiny have been part of the cultures of many societies for hundreds of years. The term came from the Latin verb “dēstināre” which means “to determine.” The word refers to a powerful supernatural force that determines what happens in people’s lives. It is an unknown cosmic or divine superpower.

The modern term “destiny” commonly describes a preset and unavoidable future occurrence, experience, or outcome. The word also refers to the powerful force that determines them. Instead of natural causation, people believe in supernatural causation, which is responsible for the events. People can understand natural causes and generally control them. However, people cannot comprehend supernatural causes, and they are beyond their control.

“Fate” is just another word that people use to describe the meaning of the word “destiny.”

The belief in destiny has endured throughout time and cultures. Destiny has often been personified and represented as a person, idol, or other natural thing with supernatural power. It was often a goddess who possessed the power to determine the course of events in life.

The psychological phenomenon of “hindsight bias” easily explains the belief in love’s destiny. In other words, this is the “knew-it-all-along” phenomenon when people overestimate how predictable past events were. This is a psychological illusion of predictability. Hindsight bias misrepresents memories of what has occurred.

What Is Love Destiny

A belief in fate and destined love implies that we have just one predestined real love with a single person for life. According to this belief, we have a prospective partner who is destined for us.

The men and women who are waiting for the strike of true love are faithfully waiting for such a “magical” moment. Romantic novels and movies beautifully depict this “special” moment when a mysterious spark strikes the heart.

When a man or a woman is already in the state of being in romantic love, they have a magical experience that they have waited for and loved this person their whole life.

They feel a tacit sense of love destiny.
They realize they haven’t chosen their beloved.
They believe that unknown fortune, like fate, brought them this blessing of love.
They suddenly experience this impulse of natural attraction that comes from some supernatural force.
They call it “love destiny.”

“He believes it was his destiny to be there that day so that he could meet her—it was meant to be.”

According to the “love destiny” myth, men and women are predestined (or not predestined) to fall in love with someone. They do not choose to love someone; love destiny predetermines whom they fall in love with—once and for the rest of their lives. Romantic love ideals suggest that love is an unpredictable force and an unknown reality.

Romantic lovers deem that they have only one person in the world who is truly predestined for them. That person is their soul mate for life, with all their strengths and weaknesses. They believe it is better to “follow your heart than your head.” All these things are possible for true love, and it will find its way and endure forever.

Do You Believe or Not in Love Destiny?

Romantic ideals of predestined love have endured throughout the centuries. They were the sources of ultimate happiness, drama, and tragedy. Belief in destiny is a kind of “superstition.” Science often teaches us to abandon superstitions as scientifically invalid. Shall we do this in love?

However, such idealistic beliefs can be useful in life. Studies have found that romantic partners who believe in romantic destiny experience higher relationship satisfaction and have more stable relationships. Researchers found that it is true, at least for many Americans (e.g., Knee, 1998).

Yet “love destiny” can be a phenomenon that people believe in across cultures.

The Mystery of Love at First Sight

Posted on May 11, 2022 by Victor Karandashev

Through the centuries, love has been depicted as a mysterious, incomprehensible connection between two people. It is a sense that defies logic, reason, or reasonable thought. The mysterious feeling of “love at first sight” is a wonderful example of such a happy and mysterious experience.

What Is Love at First Sight?

One of the major tenets of the classical romantic love model is love at first sight. The modern symbols of Cupid’s “love arrows”—the images of a winged infant carrying a bow and a heart pierced by an arrow—came from ancient Roman mythology. Nowadays, they signify love at first sight. Over history, love at first sight has been popularized in Western cultures through art, romantic novels, plays, shows, and movies.

What Does Love at First Sight Look Like?

These days, “falling in love,” likely at first sight, is typical in romantic love plots and the narrative of many romantic novels and films (Hefner & Wilson, 2000).

The dilated eyes look at an attractive stranger passing by or standing by in the hallway. And the character feels insight—actually, testosterone, estrogen, and oxytocin—hinting that this is true love. For many young people, personal models of love entertain the dreams of falling in love on a single happy occasion and with a delightful glance.

Physical attraction is evident in some expressions of the eyes, such as the copulatory gaze and the longing gaze into the eyes of an attractive person. If a person continues to gaze for many seconds, the loved one may notice this and be attracted back to that person. Therefore, the loved one may gaze back at the person. Consequently, the gaze back may reinforce the person’s belief that the loved one is interested in him or her. Then, both are silently gazing into each other’s eyes, feeling an immediate, unspoken emotional attraction. Thus, love at first sight can occur between them at the same time (Grant-Jacob, 2016).

The Cross-Cultural Nature of Love at First Sight

“Love at first sight” seems to be a common metaphor in both literary and colloquial English. The phenomenon of love at first sight is also known across cultures, despite different cultural attitudes toward free choice in love.

There are direct equivalents in other European languages, such as the German expression “Liebe auf den ersten Blick“, the Italian “amore a prima vista”, the Spanish “amor a primera vista”, and the French expression “coup de foudre“. The Italians and Spanish also frequently use the colloquial “colpo di fulmine” (Italian) and “oon fleh-chah-zoh” (Spanish).

The French idiomatic expression “le coup de foudre,” besides its literal meaning, also conveys a figurative meaning of “love at first sight.” It is well known to French-speakers and is different from “tomber amoureux (de)“—gradual falling in love with.

The Chinese word “chengyu” (yí jiàn zhōng qíng) stands for love at first sight. Since ancient times, Chinese literature has had many tales of love at first sight and the flash of erotic bliss.

The Japanese Hitomebore also means the same basic emotional insight, while Koi No Yokan is an untranslatable Japanese phrase referring to “the premonition of love” – a sense that a person feels upon encountering someone with whom they inevitably fall in love.

How to explain love at first sight

Thus, we can see that love at first sight is a universal, cross-cultural experience. Does this support the supernatural power of love? Or can science explain the “love-at-first-sight” phenomenon in another way?

Over recent years, researchers have been able to delve into psychological explanations of this experience when we fall in love with someone we see for the first time. We instantly feel it’s he or it’s her—one and forever.

Love at first sight is only one of many phenomena illustrating the mystery of love.

And researchers are looking for a scientific explanation of love at first sight.

The Mystery of Love

Posted on May 10, 2022 by Victor Karandashev

Romantic love has been widely depicted across centuries as mystery, magic, and the mysterious chemistry between individuals. Many people believe that the secrets of romantic love are beyond our comprehension, rationality, and reasoning. Their beliefs in love admit irrationality of some sort. While the less educated people of the traditional cultures referred to the “magic of love”, the modern educated people call this “love’s chemistry.” The latter undoubtedly sounds more scientific yet still admits to love’s magic. Anyway, both “concepts” accept romantic love’s inexplicable irrationality. The scientific nature of love chemistry continues to elude our intellectual comprehension (Karandashev, 2017, 2019).

Unknown Causes and Nature of Love

The causes of love are unknown. Why may a man or woman not love someone who is good and nice in many respects? Why does a person sometimes fall in love with bad boys or girls?

Love can strike at any moment and in any place, rendering a lover a powerless victim who acts irrationally and loses control over his or her actions and motives. Men and women do not intentionally choose with whom they fall in love. It is assumed that it is impossible to purposefully fall in love with someone.

A person “falls in love not by design and conscious choice but according to some accident of fate over which the victim has no control”
(Greenfield, 1965, p. 363).

Romantic love is felt as an uncontrollable emotion, as an experience driven by an external power that overwhelms one’s life.

The Irrationality and Mystery of Love

As in any other mystical experience, romantic love appears as an insight that is incomprehensible and unreachable for the rational mind. To some people, the mystery of romantic love is comparable to the magic of religious experience. In both cases, rationality is not suitable to grasp them. In both cases, the rationale is not applicable to their comprehension. Lovers, like the denoted believers, are free from “the cold skeleton hands of rational orders, just as completely as from the banality of everyday routine” (Weber, 1958, p. 347).

The emotional experience of love for them resembles magical transcendence. Romantic love is felt as an “aching of the heart” and an “infection of the brain” (Tennov 1979).

According to anecdotal love stories and myths, people don’t truly understand why they love one person but not another. They rarely choose a partner and rarely fall in love for rational reasons.

The idea of an intentional fall in love by choice sounds unlikely. Most people do not believe that they can fall in love with someone when they wish.

Mystical Experience of Love

Across time, the mysterious, wonderful, and magical feelings associated with love have fascinated people. These long-held beliefs in the mystery of love were due to people’s inability to rationally explain why people suddenly fall in love. Cupid’s arrows fired from his bow caused the person struck to fall in love.

Love magic and love spells have been practiced for hundreds of years. The stories of success have been mostly anecdotal.

Love magic presumably attracts the love of the beloved. It’s frequently used by a woman to induce a certain man to love her or by a man to induce a specific woman to love him. It was a promising cure in the case of unrequited love. Magical love spells are supposed to be helpful in such cases.

Certain herbs, like the mandrake, were supposed to have aphrodisiac or magical properties that were particularly beneficial in cases of love. All in the name of love, amulets, charms, and talismans have been created, candles lit and ritualistically controlled, and ceremonies performed. The Gypsies use a variety of love charms and practices. They include using magic to draw in someone you want, push away someone you don’t want, and make connections stronger.

The Mystery of Love Across Cultures

The idea of the irrationality of love seems to be cross-culturally universal. The concepts of God’s blessing, miracle, destiny, fate, and love chemistry all describe that romantic love is beyond our rational understanding. Some cultures and some people believe in the irrationality of love more than others. For example, French people tend to more readily believe in the irrational nature of love than Americans (Karandashev, 2017, 2019).

Love at first sight is one of the most mysterious phenomena. People across many cultures experience it in their lives and relationships. Scientists are attempting to explain love at first sight.

Genetic Diversity and Genetic Sexual Attraction

Posted on January 26, 2022 by Victor Karandashev

Despite the importance of similarity in genetic sexual attraction, genetic diversity is equally important in love. It appears that both similarities and differences between love partners play important roles.

Evolutionary Value of Genetic Diversity

Genetic sexual attraction plays an important role in triggering love between men and women. However, sexual attraction for sexual reproduction also strives to avoid the negative effect of excessive genetic similarity between loving partners. Inbreeding has a deleterious biological effect on the offspring in terms of health quality, the likelihood of diseases, disabilities, and mortality (see for review, Ceballos et all, 2021; Hasselgren & Norén, 2019).

Therefore, human evolution and population growth throughout history have promoted people to exclude mates with extreme genetic similarity from the pool of possible mating partners. Such mating increases the likelihood of harmful recessive genes and reduces offspring fitness (Ceballos et all, 2021).

Cultural Evolution Encourages Diversity in Genetic Sexual Attraction

Even though consanguineous marriages—mating relations with blood relatives—have been widespread throughout history, cultural norms of incest taboos have evolved in many societies to safeguard against this harmful effect of inbreeding. People likely became aware of the harmful effect of sexual relations between close relatives on the quality of their offspring. Incest, or sex between family members, became a cultural taboo in many societies. Evolving social norms and psychological experiences of love began to respect the principles of biological evolution. They were adjusted accordingly, encouraging the extended reproduction of offspring.

A Controversy over Genetic Sexual Attraction among Family Members

Although people perceive potential mates who resemble their kin as more sexually appealing, incest avoidance evolves from the development of taboos. When awareness of the kin relationship between self and other is bypassed, relatives often look sexually appealing to a person. So, by only consciously acknowledging incest taboos, people suppress their sexual attraction to kin (Fraley & Marks, 2010).

The Benefits of Diversity in Genetic Sexual Attraction Encourage Cultural Taboos against Incest

The difference between partners in their genetics leads to healthier offspring. Therefore, natural selection—and cultural norms accordingly—developed protective psychological mechanisms to decrease the sexual drive for similarity and allow only a suitable measure of variance between partners in love relationships. This evolutionary mechanism might be at the origin of the strong incest taboo among many populations of species and human societies (Lampert 1997, p.14).

Societies in history and modern times have respected the incest taboo, prohibiting sexual relations between females and males who are in kinship relationships. Many human societies have cultural norms prohibiting sexual relations among kin (Lampert, 1997; Murdock, 1949; Westermarck, 1891/1921).

References

Ceballos, F. C., Gürün, K., Altınışık, N. E., Gemici, H. C., Karamurat, C., Koptekin, D., … & Somel, M. (2021). Human inbreeding has decreased in time through the Holocene. Current Biology, 31(17), 3925-3934.

Hasselgren, M., & Norén, K. (2019). Inbreeding in natural mammal populations: historical perspectives and future challenges. Mammal Review, 49(4), 369-383.

Fraley, R. C., & Marks, M. J. (2010). Westermarck, Freud, and the incest taboo: Does familial resemblance activate sexual attraction?. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(9), 1202-1212.

Lampert, A. (1997). The evolution of love. Praeger.

Murdock, G.P. (1949). Social structure. Macmillan.

Westermarck, E. (1921). The history of human marriage (5th ed.). London, UK: Allerton. (Original work published 1891).

Genetic Secrets of Love Attraction

Posted on January 25, 2022 by Victor Karandashev

From a biological evolutionary perspective, the genetic similarity must be important for sexual attraction. Intersexual attraction helps sexually dimorphic animals, such as birds and mammals, select a proper mate because they cannot reproduce offspring with anyone. They can do this only with those with whom mating success is possible and higher than with others (Karp et al., 2017; McPherson & Chenoweth, 2012; Owens & Hartley, 1998; Rigby & Kulathinal, 2015).

Do People Fall in Love with Genetically Similar Others?

For a weird example, a human individual can be attracted by a sexual relationship with a horse, cow, goat, or gorilla. They can even be a nice couple. They may attain sexual pleasure. Nevertheless, such relationships, from an evolutionary point of view, are wasteful expenditures of energy because they are destined to be childless. They are genetically too distant to produce offspring.

However, humans and chimpanzees are more similar in this regard—they have a genetic distance of less than 2%. Therefore, reproductive success in that case could be possible (Lampert 1997).

Therefore, we can expect that genetic factors and corresponding similarities in the physical appearance and chemistry of human individuals can determine their sexual and love attraction. The chemistry of love, which makes some partners more compatible with each other than others, can be real, not metaphorical.

Do we have a genetic predisposition to fall in love with someone?

Optimal Genetic Similarity

In biology, the principle of optimal genetic similarity is important for the evolutionary selection of partners among animals (Lampert 1997). Individuals tend to be attracted to others who are genetically similar to them. However, they prefer to keep their distance from those who are genetically very dissimilar from them. Both factors play their roles in the selection of mating partners with optimal genetic similarity to them.

This principle of genetic similarity may also work among humans. An individual tends to fall in love with a person who, to some extent, is genetically and physically similar. Biological evolution has developed a psychological mechanism that unconsciously attracts individuals to mates who are similar and excludes those who are significantly different.

Why Are Genetically Similar People Sexually Attractive to Us?

Here is one piece of evidence that such an unconscious attraction is possible (Rushton, 1988). Rushton examined the thousands of court cases in which courts investigated the validity of fatherhood. Genetic testing was used to identify whether a man with whom a woman had sex was actually the father of her baby. Examining those cases, Rushton (1988) was interested in knowing how men and women, at the beginning of their sexual relationship—at the time of conceiving a baby—were genetically similar to each other. The data showed that they were genetically more similar to each other than a random couple. These results indicated that it was likely that potential mates unconsciously recognized their genetic similarity with a partner and, therefore, felt sexual attraction (Rushton, 1988).

Another study used genome-wide SNPs and also supported this genetic similarity explanation of sexual attraction. In a sample of American Whites (non-Hispanic), researchers found that married partners are genetically similar to each other—more than random pairs of individuals (Domingue, Fletcher, Conley, & Boardman, 2014).

The Words of Tentative Limitations

It shall be acknowledged, however, that these findings are descriptive and can be considered tentatively true for a causational explanation. The genetic similarity between partners can be due not only to their genetic assortative mating but also to their shared ancestry (Abdellaoui, Verweij, & Zietsch, 2014). The genetic similarities in couples can be due to genetic population stratification that evolved in a society due to geographical proximity, social homogamy, and ethnic homogamy.

Are Close Relatives More Likely to Fall in Love?

According to the findings presented above, genetically similar relatives in nuclear and extended families perceive each other as physically similar and attractive. Does the genetic similarity of close relatives make them more likely to be attractive and love each other? For example, they can perceive each other as more sexually appealing. Then, the psychoanalytic myths of a boy’s unconscious sexual attraction to his mother (the Oedipus complex) and a girl’s attraction to her father (Electra complex) can be partially true due to their genetic similarity, although the effect of imprinting can also play a role.

Many cases of consanguinity in sexual relationships and marriages have been documented throughout history. In these cases, blood relatives find each other attractive (see Karandashev, 2017, 2022 in press for a review). Consanguineous marriages are still widespread and preferred in many societies in West Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa (e.g., El-Hazmi et al., 1995; Hamamy, 2012). Surprisingly, these cultural traditions have been persistent.

However, the negative impact of incest (sexual intercourse with a child, sibling, grandchild, or parent) on offspring is well documented. Therefore, to safeguard against this harmful effect of incest, cultural norms and incest taboos have evolved in many cultures.