What drives human behavior? Why do we do what we do? Is free will an illusion? Has civilization made us better? Can we escape our tribal past?
These questions (and many, many others) are the subject of a new book called Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. The author is Robert Sapolsky, a biology professor at Stanford and a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research at the National Museums of Kenya.
In a brisk 800 pages, Sapolsky covers nearly every facet of the human condition, engaging moral philosophy, evolutionary biology, social science, and genetics along the way.
The key question of the book why are we the way we are? is explored from a multitude of angles, and the narrative structure helps guide the reader. For instance, Sapolsky begins by examining a persons behavior in the moment (why we recoil or rejoice or respond aggressively to immediate stimuli) and then zooms backward in time, following the chain of antecedent causes back to our evolutionary roots.
For every action, Sapolsky shows, there are several layers of causal significance: Theres a neurobiological cause and a hormonal cause and a chemical cause and a genetic cause, and, of course, there are always environmental and historical factors. He synthesizes the research across these disciplines into a coherent, readable whole.
In this interview, I talk with Sapolsky about the paradoxes of human nature, why were capable of both good and evil, whether free will exists, and why symbols have become so central to human life.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
You start the book with a paradox of sorts: Humans are both exceptionally violent and exceptionally kind. Were capable on the one hand of mass genocide, and on the other hand of heroic self-sacrifice. How do we make sense of this dichotomy?
In an evolutionary sense, we're this incredibly confused species, in between all sorts of extremes of behavior and patterns of selection compared to other primates who are far more consistently X or Y, and we're so often floating in between. In a more proximal sense, I think what that tells you over and over again is just how important context is.
Can you clarify what you mean by context here?
Sure. What counts as our worst and best behaviors are so much in the eye of the beholder. So often it really is the one man's freedom fighter versus the other's terrorist. But even separate of that, just the fact that in some settings our biology is such that we are extraordinarily prosocial creatures, and in other settings extraordinarily antisocial creatures, shows how important it is to really understand the biology of our response to context and environment.
You argue that biological factors don't so much cause behavior as modulate it can you explain what you mean?
Ultimately, there is no debate. Insofar as using "genes" as a surrogate for "nature," it only makes sense to ask what a gene does in a particular environment, and to ask what the behavioral effects of an environment are given someone's genetic makeup. They're inseparable in a way that is most meaningful when it comes to humans.
Given how variable human behavior is, do you believe in a fixed human nature? There is a lot of debate about this in the world of philosophy. I wonder how you think about it as a scientist.
Human nature is extraordinarily malleable, and I think that's the most defining thing about our nature.
Okay, but in the book you come awfully close to concluding something very different. Specifically, in your discussion of free will, you reluctantly embrace a deterministic account of human behavior. You argue that free will is, in fact, an illusion, and if thats true, Im not sure how malleable we can be.
If it seemed tentative, it was just because I was trying to be polite to the reader or to a certain subset of readers. If there is free will, its free will about all sorts of uninteresting stuff, and it's getting cramped into tighter and increasingly boring places. It seems impossible to view the full range of influences on our behavior and conclude that there is anything like free will.
Thats a bold claim...
Youre right. On the one hand, it seems obvious to me and to most scientists thinking about behavior that there is no free will. And yet its staggeringly difficult to try to begin to even imagine what a world is supposed to look like in which everybody recognizes this and accepts this.
The most obvious place to start is to approach this differently in terms of how we judge behavior. Even an extremely trivial decision like the shirt you choose to wear today, if dissected close enough, doesnt really involve agency in the way we assume. There are millions of antecedent causes that led you to choose that shirt, and you had no control over them. So if I was to compliment you and say, Hey, nice shirt, that doesnt really make any sense in that you arent really responsible for wearing it, at least not in the way that question implies.
Now, this is a very trivial thing and doesnt appear to matter much, but this logic is also true for serious and consequential behaviors, and thats where things get complicated.
If we're just marionettes on a string and we don't have the kind of agency that we think we have, then what sense does it make to reward or punish behavior? Doesnt that imply some degree of freedom of action?
Organisms on the average tend to increase the frequency of behaviors for which theyve been rewarded and to do the opposite for punishment or absence of reward. That's fine and instrumentally is going to be helpful in all sorts of circumstances. The notion of there being something virtuous about punishing a bad behavior, that's the idea thats got to go out the window.
I always come back to the example of epilepsy. Five hundred years ago, an epileptic seizure was a sign that you were hanging out with Satan, and the appropriate treatment for that was obvious: burning someone at the stake. This went on for hundreds of years. Now, of course, we know that such a person has got screwy potassium channels in their neurons. It's not them; it's a disease. It's not a moral failing; it's a biological phenomenon.
Now we dont punish epileptics for their epilepsy, but if they suffer bouts frequently, we might not let them drive a car because its not safe. Its not that they dont deserve to drive a car; its that its not safe. Its a biological thing that has to be constrained because it represents a danger.
Its taken us 500 years or so to get to this revelation, so I dont know how long it will take us to reach this mindset for all other sorts of behaviors, but we absolutely must get there.
So what is true for the epileptic is true for all of us all of the time? We are our brains and we had no role in the shaping of our biology or our neurology or our chemistry, and yet these are the forces that determine our behavior.
Thats true, but its still difficult to fully grasp this. Look, I believe there is no free will whatsoever, but I can't function that way. I get pissed off at our dog if he pees on the floor in the kitchen, even though I can easily come up with a mechanistic explanation for that.
Our entire notion of moral and legal responsibility is thrown into doubt the minute we fully embrace this truth, so Im not sure we can really afford to own up to the implications of free will being an illusion.
I think thats mostly right. As individuals and a society, Im not sure were ready to face this fact. But we could perhaps do it bits and pieces at a time.
You write that our species has problems with violence. Can you explain this complicated relationship?
The easiest answer is that we're really violent. The much more important one, the much more challenging one, is that we don't hate violence as such we hate the wrong kind of violence, and when it's the right kind of violence, we absolutely do cartwheels to reinforce it and reward it and hand out medals and mate with such people because of it. And thats part of the reason why the worst kinds of violence are so viscerally awful to experience, to bear witness to. But the right kinds of violence are just as visceral, only in the opposite direction.
The truth is that this is the hardest realm of human behavior to understand, but its also the most important one to try to.
What is the wrong kind of violence? What is the right kind of violence?
Of course that tends to be in the eye of the beholder. Far too often, the right kind is one that fosters the fortunes of people just like us in group favoritism, and the worst kinds are the ones that do the opposite.
Violence is a fact of nature all species engage in it one way or other. Are humans the only species that ritualizes it, that makes a sport of it?
That does seem pretty much the case. Certainly you see the hints of it in chimps, for example, where you see order patrols by male chimps in one group, where if they encounter a male from another group, they will kill him. They have now been shown in a number of circumstances to have systematically killed all the males in the neighboring group, which certainly fits a rough definition of genocide, which is to say killing an individual not because of what they did but simply because of what group they belong to.
What's striking with the chimps is that you can tell beforehand that this is where they are heading. They do something vaguely ritualistic, which is they do a whole bunch of emotional contagion stuff. One male gets very agitated, very aroused, manages to get others like that, and then off they go to look for somebody to attack. So in that regard, there is a ritualistic feel to it, but that's easily framed along the conventional lines of nonhuman animal violence. By that, I mean when male chimps do this, when they eradicate all of the other males in a neighboring territory, they expand their own; it increases their reproductive success.
I believe it is really only humans that do violence for purely ritualistic purposes.
Is our tribal past the most important thing to understand about human behavior?
I think it's an incredibly important one, and what's most important about it is to understand the implications of the fact that all of us have multiple tribal affiliations that we carry in our heads and to understand the circumstances that bring one of those affiliations to the forefront over another. The mere fact that you can switch people's categorization of others from race to religion to what sports team they follow speaks to how incredibly complicated and central tribal affiliation is to humans and to human life.
You spend a lot of time talking about the role of symbols and ideas in human life. We kill and we die for our symbols, and we often confuse the symbols themselves for the things they symbolize. Do you think symbols and ideas amplify our tribal nature, or do they help us transcend it?
Well, its important to understand that not only are we willing to kill people because they look, dress, eat things, smell, speak, sing, pray differently from us, but also because they have incredibly different ideas as to very abstract notions. I think the thing that fuels that capacity is how primitively our brains do symbolism.
I think the fact that our brains so readily intermix the abstractions and symbols with their visceral, metaphorical analogues gives those abstractions and symbols enormous power. That fact that were willing to kill and die for abstract symbols is itself crazy, but nonetheless true.
Has civilization made us better?
Absolutely. The big question is which of the following two scenarios are more correct: a) Civilization has made us the most peaceful, cooperative, emphatic we've ever been as a species, versus b) civilization is finally inching us back to the level of all those good things that characterized most of hominin hunter-gatherer history, preceding the invention of agriculture. Amid mostly being an academic outsider to the huge debates over this one, I find the latter view much more convincing.
You say you incline to pessimism but that this book gave you reasons to be optimistic. Why?
Because there's very little about our behaviors that are inevitable, including our worst behaviors. And were learning more and more about the biological underpinnings of our behavior, and that can help us produce better outcomes. As long as you have a ridiculously long view of things, things are getting better.
Its much nicer to be alive today than it was 100 or 200 years ago, and thats because weve progressed. But nothing is certain, and we have to continue moving forward if we want to preserve what progress weve made.
Read the rest here:
A Stanford scientist on the biology of human evil - Vox
- Thinking Slowly: The Paradoxical Slowness of Human Behavior - Caltech - December 23rd, 2024 [December 23rd, 2024]
- From smog to crime: How air pollution is shaping human behavior and public safety - The Times of India - December 9th, 2024 [December 9th, 2024]
- The Smell Of Death Has A Strange Influence On Human Behavior - IFLScience - October 26th, 2024 [October 26th, 2024]
- "WEIRD" in psychology literature oversimplifies the global diversity of human behavior. - Psychology Today - October 2nd, 2024 [October 2nd, 2024]
- Scientists issue warning about increasingly alarming whale behavior due to human activity - Orcasonian - September 23rd, 2024 [September 23rd, 2024]
- Does AI adoption call for a change in human behavior? - Fast Company - July 26th, 2024 [July 26th, 2024]
- Dogs can smell human stress and it alters their own behavior, study reveals - New York Post - July 26th, 2024 [July 26th, 2024]
- Trajectories of brain and behaviour development in the womb, at birth and through infancy - Nature.com - June 18th, 2024 [June 18th, 2024]
- AI model predicts human behavior from our poor decision-making - Big Think - June 18th, 2024 [June 18th, 2024]
- ZkSync defends Sybil measures as Binance offers own ZK token airdrop - TradingView - June 18th, 2024 [June 18th, 2024]
- On TikTok, Goldendoodles Are People Trapped in Dog Bodies - The New York Times - June 18th, 2024 [June 18th, 2024]
- 10 things only introverts find irritating, according to psychology - Hack Spirit - June 18th, 2024 [June 18th, 2024]
- 32 animals that act weirdly human sometimes - Livescience.com - May 24th, 2024 [May 24th, 2024]
- NBC Is Using Animals To Push The LGBT Agenda. Here Are 5 Abhorrent Animal Behaviors Humans Shouldn't Emulate - The Daily Wire - May 24th, 2024 [May 24th, 2024]
- New study examines the dynamics of adaptive autonomy in human volition and behavior - PsyPost - May 24th, 2024 [May 24th, 2024]
- 30000 years of history reveals that hard times boost human societies' resilience - Livescience.com - May 12th, 2024 [May 12th, 2024]
- Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Actors Had Trouble Reverting Back to Human - CBR - May 12th, 2024 [May 12th, 2024]
- The need to feel safe is a core driver of human behavior. - Psychology Today - April 15th, 2024 [April 15th, 2024]
- AI learned how to sway humans by watching a cooperative cooking game - Science News Magazine - March 29th, 2024 [March 29th, 2024]
- We can't combat climate change without changing minds. This psychology class explores how. - Northeastern University - March 11th, 2024 [March 11th, 2024]
- Bees Reveal a Human-Like Collective Intelligence We Never Knew Existed - ScienceAlert - March 11th, 2024 [March 11th, 2024]
- Franciscan AI expert warns of technology becoming a 'pseudo-religion' - Detroit Catholic - March 11th, 2024 [March 11th, 2024]
- Freshwater resources at risk thanks to human behavior - messenger-inquirer - March 11th, 2024 [March 11th, 2024]
- Astrocytes Play Critical Role in Regulating Behavior - Neuroscience News - March 11th, 2024 [March 11th, 2024]
- Freshwater resources at risk thanks to human behavior - Sunnyside Sun - March 11th, 2024 [March 11th, 2024]
- Freshwater resources at risk thanks to human behavior - Blue Mountain Eagle - March 11th, 2024 [March 11th, 2024]
- 7 Books on Human Behavior - Times Now - March 11th, 2024 [March 11th, 2024]
- Euphemisms increasingly used to soften behavior that would be questionable in direct language - Norfolk Daily News - February 29th, 2024 [February 29th, 2024]
- Linking environmental influences, genetic research to address concerns of genetic determinism of human behavior - Phys.org - February 29th, 2024 [February 29th, 2024]
- Emerson's Insight: Navigating the Three Fundamental Desires of Human Nature - The Good Men Project - February 29th, 2024 [February 29th, 2024]
- Dogs can recognize a bad person and there's science to prove it. - GOOD - February 29th, 2024 [February 29th, 2024]
- What Is Organizational Behavior? Everything You Need To Know - MarketWatch - February 4th, 2024 [February 4th, 2024]
- Overcoming 'Otherness' in Scientific Research Commentary in Nature Human Behavior USA - English - USA - PR Newswire - February 4th, 2024 [February 4th, 2024]
- "Reichman University's behavioral economics program: Navigating human be - The Jerusalem Post - January 19th, 2024 [January 19th, 2024]
- Of trees, symbols of humankind, on Tu BShevat - The Jewish Star - January 19th, 2024 [January 19th, 2024]
- Tapping Into The Power Of Positive Psychology With Acclaimed Expert Niyc Pidgeon - GirlTalkHQ - January 19th, 2024 [January 19th, 2024]
- Don't just make resolutions, 'be the architect of your future self,' says Stanford-trained human behavior expert - CNBC - December 31st, 2023 [December 31st, 2023]
- Never happy? Humans tend to imagine how life could be better : Short Wave - NPR - December 31st, 2023 [December 31st, 2023]
- People who feel unhappy but hide it well usually exhibit these 9 behaviors - Hack Spirit - December 31st, 2023 [December 31st, 2023]
- If you display these 9 behaviors, you're being passive aggressive without realizing it - Hack Spirit - December 31st, 2023 [December 31st, 2023]
- Men who are relationship-oriented by nature usually display these 9 behaviors - Hack Spirit - December 31st, 2023 [December 31st, 2023]
- A look at the curious 'winter break' behavior of ChatGPT-4 - ReadWrite - December 14th, 2023 [December 14th, 2023]
- Neuroscience and Behavior Major (B.S.) | College of Liberal Arts - UNH's College of Liberal Arts - December 14th, 2023 [December 14th, 2023]
- The positive health effects of prosocial behaviors | News | Harvard ... - HSPH News - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- The valuable link between succession planning and skills - Human Resource Executive - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Okinawa's ants show reduced seasonal behavior in areas with more human development - Phys.org - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- How humans use their sense of smell to find their way | Penn Today - Penn Today - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Wrestling With Evil in the World, or Is It Something Else? - Psychiatric Times - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Shimmying like electric fish is a universal movement across species - Earth.com - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Why do dogs get the zoomies? - Care.com - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- How Stuart Robinson's misconduct went overlooked for years - Washington Square News - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Whatchamacolumn: Homeless camps back in the news - News-Register - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Stunted Growth in Infants Reshapes Brain Function and Cognitive ... - Neuroscience News - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Social medias role in modeling human behavior, societies - kuwaittimes - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- The gift of reformation - Living Lutheran - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- After pandemic, birds are surprisingly becoming less fearful of humans - Study Finds - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Nick Treglia: The trouble with fairness and the search for truth - 1819 News - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Science has an answer for why people still wave on Zoom - Press Herald - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Orcas are learning terrifying new behaviors. Are they getting smarter? - Livescience.com - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Augmenting the Regulatory Worker: Are We Making Them Better or ... - BioSpace - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- What "The Creator", a film about the future, tells us about the present - InCyber - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- WashU Expert: Some parasites turn hosts into 'zombies' - The ... - Washington University in St. Louis - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Is secondhand smoke from vapes less toxic than from traditional ... - Missouri S&T News and Research - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- How apocalyptic cults use psychological tricks to brainwash their ... - Big Think - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Human action pushing the world closer to environmental tipping ... - Morung Express - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- What We Get When We Give | Harvard Medicine Magazine - Harvard University - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Psychological Anime: 12 Series You Should Watch - But Why Tho? - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- Roosters May Recognize Their Reflections in Mirrors, Study Suggests - Smithsonian Magazine - October 27th, 2023 [October 27th, 2023]
- June 30 Zodiac: Sign, Traits, Compatibility and More - AZ Animals - May 13th, 2023 [May 13th, 2023]
- Indiana's Funding Ban for Kinsey Sex-Research Institute Threatens ... - The Chronicle of Higher Education - May 13th, 2023 [May 13th, 2023]
- Have AI Chatbots Developed Theory of Mind? What We Do and Do ... - The New York Times - March 31st, 2023 [March 31st, 2023]
- Scoop: Coming Up on a New Episode of HOUSEBROKEN on FOX ... - Broadway World - March 31st, 2023 [March 31st, 2023]
- Here's five fall 2023 classes to fire up your bookbag - Duke Chronicle - March 31st, 2023 [March 31st, 2023]
- McDonald: Aspen's like living in a 'Pullman town' - The Aspen Times - March 31st, 2023 [March 31st, 2023]
- Children Who Are Exposed to Awe-Inspiring Art Are More Likely to Become Generous, Empathic Adults, a New Study Says - artnet News - March 31st, 2023 [March 31st, 2023]
- DataDome Raises Another $42M to Prevent Bot Attacks in Real ... - AlleyWatch - March 31st, 2023 [March 31st, 2023]
- Observing group-living animals with drones may help us understand ... - Innovation Origins - March 31st, 2023 [March 31st, 2023]
- Mann named director of School of Public and Population Health - Boise State University - March 31st, 2023 [March 31st, 2023]
- Irina Solomonova's bad behavior is the star of Love Is Blind - My Imperfect Life - March 31st, 2023 [March 31st, 2023]
- Health quotes Dill in article about rise of Babesiosis - UMaine News ... - University of Maine - March 31st, 2023 [March 31st, 2023]