Self-Reported Availability of Kinship Cues during Childhood is Associated with Kin-Directed Behavior to Parents in Adulthood

Abstract

Reliable recognition of kin is an important factor in modulating kin-directed behaviors. For example, in selectively directing cooperative behavior to kin and diverting sexual interest away from them, kin first need to be recognized as such. Although an increasing number of studies have examined what information is employed in recognizing siblings and children, less is known about the information children employ in identifying their parents. In a web-based survey, we asked 702 Finnish undergraduate and graduate students to report the availability of a number of possible kinship cues during their childhood and youth. After factorization of the responses, we found that the reported amount of parental support, phenotypic similarity, and behavioral similarity generally predicted subjective certainty in relatedness and kin-directed behavior (i.e., cooperative behavior and inbreeding aversion) to parents in adulthood. Although the data suffer from their retrospective nature, the present study provides potentially useful information about kin-recognition of parents.