Sociobiology: Human and Behaviors
Introduction
Sociobiologists believe human behavior has developed through evolution in the same manner that physical characteristics have. They describes how psycho-sexual gender differences have evolved by using a Sociobiological method of explanation. They say that these gender differences are based on two indisputable biological facts. First, humans as biological beings have a propensity for maximizing their reproductive success in order to ensure that their genes will be passed on and they will "survive" through their offspring. Second, men have a much greater potential capacity for reproducing than women because of women's long gestation and lactation periods. They argue that because of these two facts, men are predisposed towards polygyny and multiple mates and women naturally hunt for the best possible mate. They extrapolate from this to say that men are naturally: more promiscuous than women, more aroused by the sex organs of the opposite sex than women, more sexually driven than women. And finally they argue from the Sociobiological perspective that the most successful behaviors "become based in our genes, and that certain genetic configurations become selected because they result in behaviors that are adaptive for survival." (Bleier) I do not believe that psycho-sexual gender differences are merely determined by biology, and I intend to provide evidence supporting my thesis in this first section of my paper.
Problems with the Sociobiological Perspective
The first reason I have to doubt that these differences are determined by biology has to do with Sociobiologists' explanation that behaviors are able to be encoded into or represented by any concrete genetic combinations. If it were easy enough to find a gene that caused a tendency towards a specific behavior and then show that all or even most of humans had this gene then this theory may be plausible; but there are two major reasons why this is highly improbable, if not impossible, and virtually
Sociobiologists believe human behavior has developed through evolution in the same manner that physical characteristics have. They describes how psycho-sexual gender differences have evolved by using a Sociobiological method of explanation. They say that these gender differences are based on two indisputable biological facts. First, humans as biological beings have a propensity for maximizing their reproductive success in order to ensure that their genes will be passed on and they will "survive" through their offspring. Second, men have a much greater potential capacity for reproducing than women because of women's long gestation and lactation periods. They argue that because of these two facts, men are predisposed towards polygyny and multiple mates and women naturally hunt for the best possible mate. They extrapolate from this to say that men are naturally: more promiscuous than women, more aroused by the sex organs of the opposite sex than women, more sexually driven than women. And finally they argue from the Sociobiological perspective that the most successful behaviors "become based in our genes, and that certain genetic configurations become selected because they result in behaviors that are adaptive for survival." (Bleier) I do not believe that psycho-sexual gender differences are merely determined by biology, and I intend to provide evidence supporting my thesis in this first section of my paper.
Problems with the Sociobiological Perspective
The first reason I have to doubt that these differences are determined by biology has to do with Sociobiologists' explanation that behaviors are able to be encoded into or represented by any concrete genetic combinations. If it were easy enough to find a gene that caused a tendency towards a specific behavior and then show that all or even most of humans had this gene then this theory may be plausible; but there are two major reasons why this is highly improbable, if not impossible, and virtually