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Guest post: A human instinct to bargain

Originally a comment by Alan Peakall on Vice n virtue.

Certainty of paternity may be the ultimate material basis of the imperative for sexual control, but it does not account for religious taboos on non-procreative sexual acts. Possibly they are Gouldian spandrels emerging from cross firing of the supposed exchange instinct asserted to be disclosed by evolutionary psychologists’ study of Wason test experiments. Once humans have acquired the intellectual sophistication to recognise sexual pleasure as an inducement to reproduction, non-reproductive sex becomes a potential trgger for guilt/shame at cheating nature or Nature personified as a god. Religion as an institution then seizes on that guilt as a means of social control and incorporates it into a meme matrix. This appears still more plausible if you recall the prevalence of the cliched campaign trail barb “If he cheats on his wife, he’ll cheat on the country”.

IIRC it was Stephen Budiansky who attributed many religious impulses to a human instinct to bargain even if there is no counterparty with whom to strike a deal (fasting, human sacrifice, …) just as a beaver will attempt to build a dam in response to the mere sound of running water.

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