Culture and Gender

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How are we influenced by human nature and cultural diversity?

Genes, Evolution, and Behavior

The univeral behaviors that define human nature arise from our biological similarity. Some 100,000 years ago, most anthropologists believe, we human were all Africans. Feeling the urge to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth," many of our ancestors moved out of Africa, displacing cousins such as Europe's Neanderthals. In adapting to their new environments, these early humans developed differences that, measured on anthropological scales, are relatively recent and superficial.

To explain the traits of our species, and all species, the British naturalist Charles Darwin (1859) proposed an evolutionary process. Genes that predisposed traits that increased the odds of leaving descendants became more abundant. In the snowy Atctic environment, for example, polar bear genes programming a thick coat of camouflaging white fur have won the genetic competiton and now predominate.

Evolutionary psychology studies how natural selection predisposes not just physical traits suited to particulart contexts-polar bear coats, bats' sonar, humans' color vision-but psychological traits and social behaviors that enhance the preservation and spread of one's genes. As mobile gene machines, we carry the legacy of our ancestors' adaptive preference. One major purpose of life is to leave grandchildren.

The evolutionary perspective highlands our universal human nature. We not only maintain certain food preferences, we also share answers to social questions. Evolutionary psychologists contend that our emotional and behavioral answers to these questions are the same answers that worked for our ancestors.

Culture and Behavior

Evolution has prepared us to live creatively in a changing world and to adapt to environments from equatorial jungles to arctic icefields. Compared with bees, birds, and billdogs, nature has us on a looser genetic leash.

Evolutionary psychology incorporates environmental influences. we humans have been selected not only for big brains and biceps but also for social competence. We come prepared to learn language and to bond and cooperate with others in securing food, caring for young, and protecting ourselves. The cultural perspective, while acknowledging that all behavior requires our evolved genes, highligts human adaptability.

Cultural diversity

The diversity of our languages, customs, and expresive behaviors suggests that much of our behavior is socially programmed, not hardwired. Genes are not fixed blueprints: their expression depends on the environment. Thus, the genetic leash is long. The United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and Australia each offer a national culture, with a prevalent language, national media, national holidays and a democratic political system.

Migration and refugee evacuation are mixing cultures more than ever. Italy is home to many Albanians, Germany to Turks, England to Pakistanis, and the result is both friendship and hate crimes. In a world divided by conflicts, genuine peace requires respect for differences and appreciation for similarities.

Norms: Expected behavior

As etiquette rules illustrate, all cultures have their accepted ideas about appropriate behavior. Norms do restrain and control us-so successfully and so subtly that we hardly sense their existence.

There is no better way to learn the norms of our culture than to visit another culture and see that its members do things that way, whereas we do them this way. Norms grease the social machinery. In unfamiliar situation, when the norms may be unclear, we monitor others' behavior and adjust our own accordingly.

Cultures also varyt in their norms of expressiveness and personal space. To someone from a relatively formal norhtern European culture, a person whose roots are in an expressive Mediterranean culture may seem "warm, charming, ineddicient, and time-wasting."

Personal space is a sort of portable bubble or buffer zone that we like to maintain between ourselves and others. As the situation changes, the bubble varies in size. For reasons unknown, cultures near the equator prefer less space and more touching and hugging.

Cultural similarity

Although norms vary by culture, humans hold some norms in common. Best knwon is the taboo against incest: Parents are not ot have sexual relations with their children, nor siblings with one another.

People everywhere also have some common norms for friendship like respect the friend's privacy; make eye contact while talking; don't divulge things said in confidence. These are among the rules of the friendship game. Around the world, people tend to describe others as more or less stable, ourgoing, open, agreeable, and conscientious.