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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   4327 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 23, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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What is the most gene determinant that evolutionary psychologists have went with human behavior?

When thinking about my dog and dogs before her, I’m just struck by how affixed their behaviors are by genes. Not just aggression and desire to socialize, but their needs for physical activity, the particular ways they like to exercise, what they like to do outside.

Then I think about myself. Could human genes be so determinant? Do humans have an essentially fixed type or category of activity that they must do to be happy, which is informed by their ancestral background? And I just wonder how specific these could be. Should farmer ancestors spend more time around dirt and animals? Do those who have musical genes need to be musical to be fully happy? Etc. How specific are these gene-determined affinities?

Do those who have musical genes need to be musical to be fully happy?

IME yes.

I dimly recall that people do better eating ancestral diets, i.e. Asians are healthier eating rice and Europeans on wheat.

Other than that, I can't think of anything that doesn't generalize to * all* humans, such as a need for socialization.

For a trivial example, human infant behavior in the first hour after birth seems pretty strongly genetically determined. Pretty much all healthy infants do the same things in the same order (see table 1 here).

See also the field of evolutionary aesthetics:

When young human children from different nations are asked to select which landscape they prefer, from a selection of standardized landscape photographs, there is a strong preference for savannas with trees [...] There is also a preference for landscapes with water, with both open and wooded areas, with trees with branches at a suitable height for climbing and taking foods, with features encouraging exploration such as a path or river curving out of view, with seen or implied game animals, and with some clouds.

That's a very specific type of landscape, and it does in fact seem to be pretty tied to our genetics.

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