Modern human beings (Homo sapiens) evolved in Africa between 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. The evolution of human is considered to be a significant evolutionary process. Our cranial capacity increased, posture improved, fur decreased and we went from a Chimpanzee to human. Since the dawn of the human beings, the world, that is a common habitat to all species, has changed a lot. Humans are considered to be more intelligent species than the others mainly because of their cognitive abilities. Also, humans are superior to other species because of the behavior they exhibit. Human behavior is one of the main entity that make humans, human. Humans behave in ways that differ according to age, gender, time, place, experience and many more. In this blog, we will try to understand why we behave the way we behave, but from a more biological point of view. And we'll try to correlate it to the idea of free will.
Before We Behave
Before diving into the topic of human behavior and free will, let's take a step back and understand what happens before we exhibit any action or behavior. Seconds before we display a behavior or make any decisions, neurotransmitters in our body flow through neurons and neuronal junctions. The combination of the neurotransmitters and flow of ions in and out of the cell creates what we call an 'Action Potential'. It creates neural firing and any action or decision is made by us or our body. There are neurotransmitters in our body like Dopamine, Serotonin, Ach and many more. The 'Action Potential' is a result of in and out flow of ions like Na, K which causes de/repolarization of the neurons that conduct the electrical signals through neuronal synapses. Our brain has billions of synapses between neurons and it works like a chain for the flow of signals. So, if there is Dopamine spike, we are likely to feel relaxed, if Endorphins spike, it creates analgesia and if Adrenaline spikes, it increases heart rate, blood flow. But what causes this? What happens before the neural firing and mobilization of neurotransmitters? What happens is that the hormonal level in our body fluctuates. Hormones like Insulin, Thyroxin, Estrogen, Progesterone's level change depending upon circumstances. Like in time of ovulation Estrogen level increases which triggers the action of let's say 'x' neurotransmitter. The hormones are important regulators of the behavior we display. But again the same question arises. What causes the levels of hormone to increase or decrease? Age, life stages, nutrition, disease condition etc. make sure that the hormonal level in your body fluctuates. For example the levels of LH and FSH (both are hormones) is low before puberty. After puberty the Estrogen level reaches its threshold and cause the release of the two hormones FSH and LH which are the responsible for ovulation and mensural cycle in women. Life stages like in pregnancy, the level of Progesterone increases and remains at a level to sustain the pregnancy and similar for other hormones too. But what before that? Before puberty, a person lives his/her childhood or toddler age. The teachings, learnings, experiences that a child has in his early life is one of the most important determining factor of how he will be as a person as he grows. This age is so vulnerable. The behavior of a person now has almost always has a correlation as to how he was as a child and what were his experiences in that age. A child growing up in a abusive family has a strong affinity for aggressiveness and violence. Also before the birth of a person, s/he has to spend nine months in his/her mother's womb. So the environment inside a mother's womb also affects the neo and post natal life of a person. So, for example the amount testosterone the baby gets exposes to in mother's womb may help to predict what type of behavior s/he will display once s/he grows from a baby to an adult.
And even before a fetus is developed, it's the genes. The genes of our parents are combined during the fertilization of male and female gametes. The 23 pairs of chromosomes hold all the genetic and phenotypic characters and information of a human. The genes of parents are inherited to their offspring. As we know many diseases are genetic like cancer. Human behavior is also genetically influenced. Before these genes, it's about our ancestors. How did our ancestor lived? What were their culture? These things heavily influence the coming generations. The study human society comes under Anthropology. For me personally, Anthropology is a important branch of biology. Human societies have really shapes our culture, thinking and behavior. There is something even before our ancestors and that is evolution. Evolution is an underrate topic in my opinion because everything is shaped and constructed by evolutionary process and yet we pay so less attention to it. we were not always modern humans, we evolves from Chimpanzees to Homo Sapiens. So when discussing about human behavior, evolution just cannot be left out.
How our behavior is influenced ?
The behavior we exhibit are shapes by many things. Our actions are influenced by what happened in our body seconds before to how our ancestors lived thousands of years ago. If we retrospectively extrapolate any of our behavior, we get a long chain of elements that shaped our actions and behavior. For example, we know that crime rates in south America is higher than in the North. This has to do with their ancestors. The south Americans are descendent of people who practiced so called 'Culture of Honor'. People practicing this culture value prestige, power and honor above everything. So if someone threatens them, it is considered noble if they immediately retaliate that with force. Tolerating pain or suffering from others is a sign of disgrace. Killing, injuring others for their honor is considered noble. So, South Americans still follow this culture that has increased violence, crime rate in that part of the world as compared to the North.
One example of how hormonal level influences behavior is the action of testosterone. If you ask a female as to why mostly men make women the victim in rape cases, the answer most of the time will be 'Due to increases hormone of that guy or that guy has high testosterone levels'. This is only partly true. High testosterone leads men to rape women but only in society where rape cases already exists. Testosterone has a contingent effect meaning it does what is needed to survive or thrive in the social structure. In an absolute just society, the men with higher levels of testosterone will be the most just people. In a society where rape cases already exists, testosterone says to men 'Hey, this is what you need to do to adjust in society'. The effect of testosterone is influenced by the existing social order, values and structure. So only in non just society where social problems, conflict already exists, where law and order is compromised, only in those society testosterone is responsible for increasing rape cases.
The mood swings and pain that is experienced by women are partly biological and partly a social construct. During mensural cycle the hormonal level fluctuates which can lead to mood swings. During ovulation, the level of progesterone hormone, which has anxiolytic effect, becomes low. Also the action of serotonin and endorphins are affected and as a result women feel pain. But the way those experiences are interpreted by women is an artifact of social construct. The interpretation comes from learned beliefs, stereotypes and attitude about how people perceive menstruations. A female may not experience any mood swings but she will pretend to display it to fit in the scenario. It shows how society teaches people how to interpret their experiences so they can fit in the stereotypical paradigm.
And finally, in my opinion one of the truest human behavior that makes us, us is our tendency of stereotyping others. We perceive others as stereotypical and predictable without realizing that we are also the same. We confidently assign stereotypes to others but we feel we are the exception. If he does his usual thing, we say 'he's always been like that' but when we do the sane, we assign context to it, 'I did it because of this and that, I'm not like that actually'. Stereotyping behavior is very characteristic and fallacious human behavior.
The Genes
Genes are the encoder of our genotypic and phenotypic characters. Most of our appearances, certain behavior are the manifestation of our genetic makeup. However, to credit the genes entirely for our behavior will be inaccurate. It is always the interaction between genes and environment that is responsible for how a person will turn out to be. A person with high genetic superiority for a particular trait in an unfavorable environment shall not reach his maximum potential. A person shall flourish only in a suitable environment. Even traits like height is not 100% genetic. It is only if proper diet, nutrition, exercise, environment is provided, he shall grow tall. According to Robert Sapolsky "Genes are not autonomous agents commanding biological events". So the saying that everything is decided by genes is a misconception. Human behavior is also not the only result of the genes, it is result of the interaction interaction. Our behavior is shaped by so many biological entities and genes are one of them.
The illusion of free will
We feel that our actions are free. We are free to decide what we want and feel like. Free will is a very important for many people because they don't want to be bounded by anything. It also gives them the comfort they need in life. But what exactly is this free will thing? According to Sapolsky, "Free will is nothing but undiscovered biology". We will try to explore this concept in this section.
See, till now we have understood what happens before we make decisions or what causes us to behave in a particular way. For every behavior, there are multiple factors that shapes it. A particular behavior is a result of what happened in our body seconds before it and what happened millions of years ago. South Americans being violent is due to sudden hormonal spike to how their ancestors practiced culture of honor. An adult's behavior is a result of his childhood learning, fetal environment, parental genes, his/her ancestors etc. So, a behavior is a function of everything that has happened seconds to millions years before it is exhibited. So, if we have information about everything, each detail of a person's life, the inner bodily mechanisms to fetal experience to ancestral experiences then we can predict how will he behave. In fact, millionth of a second before the action is performed, we can predict what the action will be if we have information about everything. If we have high tech ECG, MRI to understand neural circuits and a entire history of a person, we can predict with a very good degree of accuracy his/her behavior. So what if we don't have the complete information about the person? For a behavior, what if we don't understand or know which neurotransmitter is released or how much fetal estrogen exposure he had? Even though we're in twenty first century, there are some biological actions or processes, where we still lack information or idea. And this unanswered biological questions or unknown biological processes is what people call free will. So free will is nothing but undiscovered biology. If we had access to knowing every biological process within and out of our body then free will just won't exist. Biology is the determining factor of our behavior and biology is used in a very broad sense here. It includes biomolecules to biological surrounding to biological process like evolution. So the term free will exists as a result of our biological ignorance.
This blog is heavily inspired by Robert Sapolsky's book 'Behave : The biology of humans at our best and worst.
- Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Press
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