Book Review: Behave

Robert Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst: “. . . . when the frontal cortex [conscious reason] labors hard on some cognitive task, immediately afterward individuals are more aggressive, less empathic, charitable and honest. Metaphorically, the frontal cortex says, ‘Screw it. I’m tired and don’t feel like thinking about my fellow human.’”

“We implicitly divide the world into Us and Them, and prefer the former. We are easily manipulated, even subliminally and within seconds, as to who counts as each. . . . . ‘Me’ versus ‘us’ (being prosocial within your group) is easier than ‘us’ versus ‘them’ (prosociality between groups).”

SUMMARY: In Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (Penguin Press, 2017), author Robert Sapolsky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky) looks broadly at the collective impacts of what is known about genetics, endocrinology, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, culture, society, history, evolution and laws of nature on the biology of human behavior. He asks an interesting question: Is enough known to reasonably support an evidence-based belief that humans can progress in terms of more peace, freedom and prosperity, with less war, oppression and poverty? In essence, can the human species learn enough to help survive its self-destructive tendencies? Because of complication and uncertainty, Sapolsky’s answer is an unsettling maybe.

REVIEW: Sapolsky is a neuroendocrinologist and a professor of biology, neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford University. Behave is written for a lay audience and easy to read. It is a long book (675 pages plus 38 pages of appendices on neuroscience, endocrinology and proteins) that covers a large amount of relevant information from many species. Complicated concepts are explained clearly with modest use of carefully explained technical jargon. Sapolsky’s mindset is holistic. He integrates the various influences on human behavior, e.g., culture, age, and hormone status, more than other authors have done to date. In considering sources of human behavior he rejects categorical simple-cause thinking, e.g., gene X caused this behavior, but hormone Y caused that behavior, while religion Z caused yet another behavior, and by golly, that war 1300 years ago caused yesterday’s bloody mess. The evidence says that all influences are relevant, including what happened in the second, minutes, hours, days and centuries before someone does something. Sapolsky describes behavior and the science by referring to those various time frames and their relevance.

Nature vs. nurture: A repeated theme is interplay between nature and nurture. Evolution provides a mechanism to insure that the influence of genes is lessened by allowing time for a key part of the brain to experience life before maturing. The human frontal cortex, significantly responsible for moral thinking and decisions, is the last part of the brain to mature. That part of the brain is done growing up by the mid-twenties. Existing evidence suggests that this long maturation time limits the impact of genes on adult thinking and behavior.

Once mature, frontal cortex functioning appears to be more influenced by experience, culture and family. The frontal cortex significantly shapes, among other things, adult decision making, risk-taking, morals and identity. The absence of activity by the adolescent frontal cortex underpins many teenage behaviors, frustrating, good, bad, dumb, weird, brilliant and bizarre. Other brain regions that affect behavior are mature in adolescents, but their impact isn’t modulated like it is in adults with a mature frontal cortex.

Another repeated theme is rapid, unconscious characterization of people into US and Them. Humans and many animals share this trait in some form or another. The trait exists in human infants. Mental discrimination of people into groups is based on everything from race, gender and kinship to meaningless traits. This trait has been exploited for millennia by politicians and warlords to create divisions among groups of people, even when the actual differences are insignificant. This is happening in spades in American politics today. It is a source of bad behavior.

Despite his obvious command of science in various fields, Sapolsky does not articulate a clear path to peace and better behavior. His admonition is for forgiveness and tolerance. The most hopeful lesson comes from human history, which generally reflects a capacity of cultures to improve over time. It is not yet known if knowledge of human cognitive and social biology can make a meaningful difference in fostering progress. That’s disappointing.

Despite Sapolsky’s obvious optimism for a better world through science, he leaves a clear impression that it is still too early to know how to extrapolate from science to culture and society:

“It’s complicated. Nothing seems to cause anything; instead everything just modulates something else. . . . . Eventually it can seem hopeless that you can actually fix something, can make things better. But we have no choice but to try.”

At least there is a reason for hope in the uncertainty. Maybe someday knowledge of human behavioral biology can be translated into social good.

B&B orig: 9/16/17