Contemporary articles citing Bowlby J (1969) Attachment Loss

evolutionary, sociological, psychology, model, developed, explain, activity, human, life, present

Hopcroft, Rosemary. 2009. "The Evolved Actor in Sociology." Sociological Theory. 27:4 390-406.
In this article, I show that principles from both evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology inform a model of the actor that is usually implicit in sociological research on the family and social stratification. Making this evolved actor model explicit can unify and explain existing empirical sociological findings in these areas, and suggest new hypotheses for future research. I suggest the same is true in many other areas of sociology as well, and that explicitly incorporating a fully developed evolved actor model into sociology can both unify the discipline and reconnect it with the other life sciences.

Horne, C. 2004. "Values and Evolutionary Psychology." Sociological Theory. 22:3 477-503. Link
Scholars suggest that evolutionary psychology may provide a foundation for assumptions regarding human values. I explore this suggestion by developing two arguments regarding the permissiveness of norms regulating male and female sexual activity. The first relies on the standard rational choice assumption that people value resources, and the second relies on an assumption suggested by evolutionary psychology that actors value seeing their children successfully reach adulthood. These two assumptions produce contrasting predictions regarding sex norms. I describe the implications of these predictions for explaining cross-cultural variation and present evidence that supports the evolutionary psychology-based predictions in this context. I also suggest implications of the two approaches for explaining norms cross-nationally and within the United States. The article provides support for the utility of evolutionary psychology in developing assumptions about values.

Marshall, DA. 2002. "Behavior, Belonging, and Belief: a Theory of Ritual Practice." Sociological Theory. 20:3 360-380. Link
A new model of ritual based on Durkheims ([1912] 1995) theory is developed. It is argued that ritual practices generate belief and belonging in participants by activating multiple social-psychological mechanisms that interactively create the characteristic outcomes of ritual. Specifically, the distinctive elements of ritual practice are shown to induce altered subjective states and effortful and/or anomalous behaviors, which are subsequently misattributed in such a way that belief and belonging are created or maintained around the focus of ritual attention. These processes are traced in detail, and the resulting model is shown to be empirically credible, comprehensive, and theoretically fertile.

Smith, TS & GT Stevens. 2002. "Hyperstructures and the Biology of Interpersonal Dependence: Rethinking Reciprocity and Altruism." Sociological Theory. 20:1 106-130. Link
Fluctuations in endogenous opioid activity in the brain, controlled under ordinary conditions by attachment, are capable of producing patterns of dependence in social behavior resembling those appearing in substance abusers. Withdrawal symptoms arising in relation to these fluctuations. Short of producing dependence, ordinarily fuel everyday social interaction. and interaction then serves to modulate opioid activity within a range associated with comfort. Comfort-constraints in this sense operate in all settings of social interaction, part of an innate caregiving mechanism conserved by evolution in human behavior. In this paper we present a formal model of the neurosociological mechanism embodying these comfort constraints. Conceptualized as a hyperstructure, the mechanism grounds thinking about social interaction in recent biological discoveries, about the brain. and enables sociologists to study how activity in core brain systems constrains deep patterns in social life, including the human tendencies to altruism and reciprocity. Using computational methods, we undertake Simulations to study the mechanism, deriving implications about moral behavior. The theory of the hyperstructure leads to new conclusions about reciprocity and altruism, and bears upon sociological understanding of related subjects such as justice and social comparison.

Kanazawa, S & MC Still. 2000. "Why Men Commit Crimes (and Why They Desist)." Sociological Theory. 18:3 434-447. Link
Hirschi and Gottfredson (1983) claim that the relationship between age and crime is similar in all social and cultural conditions and that no current sociological or criminological theory can account for this similarity. We introduce the new field of evolutionary psychology and extend Daly and Wilson's (1988) work on homicide to construct a general theory of male criminality, which explains why merl commit violent and property crimes. The theory can also explain the age-crime curve. It might also account for some empirical anomalies such as why physically smaller boys are more delinquent, and why violent criminals desist more slowly.