In one well-known study on empathy, participants were required to watch a confederate ("elaine") receive electric shocks. they were told either that they had to watch her receive 10 full trials of shocks, or that they could leave after watching the first two trials only. they were also told that their values and interests were similar to elaine's (similarity group), or that their values and interests were different from elaine's (non-similarity group). after the first two trials were completed, participants were told that elaine was unusually upset by the shocks due to a negative childhood experience related to electricity. participants were asked whether they would be willing to switch places with elaine. in this study, the 10-trial versus two-trial instruction was designed as a manipulation of and the similar versus dissimilar information was designed to be a manipulation of

as university of miami psychologists debra lieberman and adam smith pointed out in a recent article in the journal current directions in psychological science, humans have social and psychological mechanisms to deter incest. with very few exceptions, marriages between brothers and sisters and between parents and their children are verboten in every human culture. the primary psychological anti-incest mechanism is the yuck response. even the idea of sex with their mom or dad, bro or sis is upsetting to most people. the psychologist jonathan haidt has found that nearly everyone is repelled by the prospect of brother-sister sex, even in hypothetical situations in which there is no chance of pregnancy).

the biological cost of incest

this raises an interesting question: just what’s so bad about incest? sure, having sex with your dad or your sister seems gross — but why? some anthropologists have argued that incest taboos are learned social conventions. this explanation, however, doesn’t make sense to me as it does not explain the widespread existence of anti-incest mechanisms in creatures ranging from cockroaches to chimpanzees. second, the incest taboo is about as close to a universal law as human moral rules get.

why should mechanisms to avoid incest be so widespread both in nature and across human societies? the answer is simple. the problem with having sex close with relatives is that there is an astonishingly high chance that your offspring will be born with a serious birth defect.

every society, in order to meet the needs of it's people, has to answer three basic questions:

- what should we produce?

- how should we produce it?

- for whom should we produce it?

this questions must be answered in order to, option b, aid in production decisions.

every country can't produce everything, no matter how rich their land is. it may be a matter of technology, resources or geographical conditions. so, these three questions must be resolved in order to get the most of the production of each land.

hope this !