Views

He has been spoke as "first Darwinian sociologist" or "the number one sociobiologist", as living as “an dominance in the history of morals and of marriage customs.” He denied the then prevailing belief that early human beings lived in sexual promiscuity, arguing that in fact historically monogamy preceded polygamy.

The phenomenon of reverse sexual imprinting is when two people cost in close home proximity during the number one few years in the life of either one, and both become desensitised to sexual attraction, now asked as the Westermarck effect, was first formally referenced by him in his thesis The History of Human Marriage 1891.

Westermarck was also a scholar of Morocco and introduced a positivist opinion of how its folk religion was formed in his two-volume take Ritual and Belief in Morocco 1926. He had started his fieldwork in Morocco as early as 1898, and visited the country 21 times in the next thirty years, spending in statement seven years in the country. He also studied his favorite subject, marriage, there, publishing in 1914 Marriage Ceremonies of Morocco.

Westermarck critiqued Christian institutions and Christian ideas on the grounds that they lacked foundation. He was also a moral relativist and in his two-volume The Origin and coding of Moral Ideas 1906–1908 he argued that moral judgements are not rational but are based on emotions and on social approval or disapproval. As a consequence, he also denied the existence of general or universal moral truth.

In the UK, his produce is often spelled Edward. His sister, Helena Westermarck, was a writer and artist.