Lecture 1: Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology
Humans use conceptual “buckets” in order to operate within the world. These buckets allow us to simplify and understand the world, but using this type of categorical thinking comes with some pitfalls:
- People tend to underestimate differences between two things in the same conceptual bucket (we call two shades of red “red,” but other cultures may call them something different).
- People tend to overestimate the difference between two things with a boundary between them (we call one color “red” and another “violet,” when in reality they are closer in color than two shades of “red”).
- When people focus on categorical thinking, they lose out on the bigger picture.
No single bucket provides the Ultimate Explanation: they are all necessary for a complete understanding of any system (in this case, biology and behavior). So, we should not fall for thinking that one bucket is the key to the answer.
Sapolosky offers three quotes that demonstrate the dangers of falling into a one-bucket mindset:
- John Watson, the father of behaviorism
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.
- Egas Moniz, on frontal lobotomies
Normal psychic life depends upon the good functioning of brain synapses, and mental disorders appear as a result of synaptic derangements. Synaptic adjustments will then modify the corresponding ideas and force them into different channels. Using this approach we obtain cures and improvements but no failures.
- Konrad Lorenz, a founding father of ethology and a Nazi propagandist
The selection for toughness, heroism, social utility…must be accomplished by some human institution if mankind, in default of selective factors, is not to be ruined by domestication-induced degeneracy.
In the remainder of the course, the intellectual challenge will be to not fall into categorical thinking, to continually assume and then abandon each conceptual bucket. We have to realize the following:
- There are circumstances in which we are like every other animal. One example is the McClintock effect, which is the synchronization of female menstrual cycles when in close proximity.According to Wikipedia, a 2013 review found that this effect likely does not exist. However, I will say that from anecdotal evidence, I've found it to be somewhat true.
- There are other circumstances in which we appear to be similar, but are in fact doing something very different. For instance, chess grandmasters display metabolic activity on par with that of a marathon runner. The same physiological pathways are being used in both cases, but in a completely alternate way.
- There are still other circumstances in which we are truly unique, such as our use of language.