One approach to understanding how people think, feel, and act is to try to understand what the human psyche is designed for. (Th e psyche is a broader term for mind, encompassing emotions, desires, perceptions, and indeed all psychological processes.) To understand something, you have to know what it was designed to do.
Imagine someone who has grown up on a deserted island and has never met another human being or seen any man-made items. Th en one day a box washes ashore containing an electric can opener. How would the person figure out what the can opener does? Having grown up on a deserted island, the person knows nothing about cans or electricity. Th is hypothetical person might take it apart, analyze it, observe its parts, and see what some of their properties are, but it would be almost impossible for this person to understand it properly.
Understanding the human psyche is somewhat like that. We want to understand and explain how it works. To do that, it is useful to know what the psyche/human mind is designed for. Hence we turn to nature and culture, because those are what made the psyche the way it is. If the psyche was designed for something in particular, then nature and culture designed it for that purpose. Accordingly, if we can learn what the purpose is, then we can understand people much better.
Why are people the way they are? Why is the human mind set up as it is? Why do people think, want, feel, and act in certain ways? Most of the explanations for human behavior ultimately lead back to two basic ways of answering these fundamental questions: nature and culture. Th e nature explanations say that people are born a certain way; their genes, hormones, brain structure, and other processes dictate how they will choose and act. In contrast, the culture explanations focus on what people learn from their parents, from society, and from their own experiences.
Such debates have raged over many other forms of social interaction and behavior. Are people born with a natural tendency to be aggressive, or is aggression something they pick up from watching violent films, playing with toy guns, and copying other people’s actions? Are some people born to be homosexuals, or can people choose and change their sexual orientation? Is mental illness the result of how your parents treated you, or is it something in your genes? What about whether someone likes to drink alcohol or gamble? What about heroism, especially when people risk their own lives to protect or save others? How many of the differences between men and women reflect their innate, genetic tendencies, and how many are the product of cultural stereotypes?
Many social scientists have grown tired of nature– nurture debates and wish to put an end to them, though others continue to pursue them vigorously. Th ere has been an effort in recent years to say that both nature and culture have real influence. Th e most common resolution tends to favor nature as more important, however, because nature is indispensable. As Frans de Waal (2002) argued, nature versus culture isn’t a fair fight, because without nature you have nothing. He proposed that the argument should be waged between whether a particular behavior is the direct result of nature or stems from a combination of nature and culture. Your body has to perceive what is happening, your brain has to understand events, and your body has to carry out your decisions (and brain and body are both created by nature). Put more simply, nature comes first, and culture builds on what nature has furnished. Th at is one view.
Th is book, however, favors the view that nature and culture have shaped each other. In particular, nature has prepared human beings specifically for culture. Th at is, the characteristics that set humans apart from other animals (including language, a flexible self that can hold multiple roles, and an advanced ability to understand eachother’s mental states) are mainly there to enable people to create and sustain culture. Th is interaction between nature and culture is the key to understanding how people think, act, and feel. But let’s start by considering nature and culture separately.
Next: NATURE DEFINED
