Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Robert M. Sapolsky, 2017
A neuroscientist’s wife caught up with a rude driver at a red light and tossed a grape lollipop through his window. Robert Sapolsky takes any act apart step by step: what was happening in the brain a second before it, which hormones were at work that day, what childhood, genes and culture laid down. You’ll see why willpower runs out, how the brain sorts people into us and them, and what helps you refuse to go along with evil.
Who it is for
For anyone who wants to understand why people do both cruel and beautiful things, and what the brain, hormones, childhood, genes and culture have to do with it. And for anyone who notices in themselves flashes of anger, stubbornness or a fear of standing out, and wants to handle them.
We don’t hate violence. We hate and fear the wrong kind of violence, violence in the wrong context.
A grape lollipop instead of revenge
Robert Sapolsky admits that ever since childhood he has played the same scene over in his head. He bursts into the bunker, overpowers Hitler and devises a punishment for him worse than any execution. His heart pounds, he gets hot, his fists clench. And yet the same man opposes the death penalty and votes for strict gun control. Almost everyone, he says, has this jumble of thoughts about violence.
Now a scene from his family’s life. A driver deliberately cut off their car and gave them the finger. Sapolsky’s wife caught up with the driver at a red light, knocked on his window and tossed in… a grape lollipop. If he was that angry, she explained, he must have had a terrible childhood, and the candy would make up for it at least a little.
Sapolsky is a neuroscientist and primatologist: for more than thirty years he studied baboons in East Africa. His central idea: what we hate isn’t violence as such but violence in the wrong context. The same punch frightens us on the street, yet in a stadium we pay to watch it. The author suggests making sense of any act by moving back from it in time, one step at a time. What was happening in the brain a second before it? What did the person see or hear a minute before that? Which hormones were at work that day, and what changed in the brain over the past year? Then further back: childhood, genes, culture and evolution.
Ahead: why willpower runs out, what testosterone really does, how childhood and genes set tendencies but don’t pass a sentence, how the brain sorts people into us and them, and why good people obey evil orders. If you want to understand where both the worst and the best acts come from, your own included, you’re already asking a question many people never get to. Let’s begin.
An iron rod and a marshmallow: where willpower lives
In 1848, in Vermont, the railroad construction worker Phineas Gage was preparing a blast when an iron rod three centimeters thick shot through his head: it went in from below, on the left side of his face, and came out through the top of his skull. Gage miraculously survived. But this respected, even-tempered man became short-tempered, rude and impatient, making plans and dropping them at once. His friends said he was “no longer Gage.” The rod had destroyed most of his left frontal cortex.
The frontal cortex, Sapolsky explains, works like a manager. It delays gratification, makes plans, holds back impulses and dampens excess emotion. The author boils its main job down to one thing: making you do the harder thing when it’s the right thing to do. It is the last part of the brain to mature.
But its strength isn’t endless. In experiments by the psychologist Roy Baumeister, people who had just done a hard mental task became more aggressive, less empathetic and less honest. When the frontal cortex works hard, blood glucose drops, and a sugary drink restores the cortex’s strength. A hungry person picks a harsher punishment for an opponent in a game. Think of a phone battery: by the evening of a hard day there’s little charge left, and there may simply not be enough for a difficult decision.
So how do you hold on? The psychologist Walter Mischel offered a clue. He left children aged three to six alone with a marshmallow: eat it now, or wait for the adult to come back and get two. About a third held out for the full fifteen minutes. The winners weren’t the ones who gritted their teeth but the ones who distracted themselves: they closed their eyes, sang, hid the marshmallow. Older children reframed the task: “It’s not about the marshmallow, it’s about what kind of person I am.” Forty years later, those who had waited showed better frontal cortex function.
The psychologist James Gross showed people a disturbing film of an amputation. In those who tried to suppress their feelings, the amygdala, the center of fear and anxiety, only grew more aroused. Those who told themselves that none of it was real, that it was all just acting, calmed down. Hence the author’s conclusion: the easiest way to resist temptation is to reframe the situation rather than strain your will. And best of all is when the right thing becomes so habitual that it no longer takes effort.
About the author
Robert Sapolsky is an American neuroscientist and primatologist who teaches at Stanford University. For more than thirty years he studied baboons in East Africa.
All books by this author: Robert M. Sapolsky
Terms from the book
- amygdala
- Hitler
- Neuroscientist
- Baboons
- Baumeister
- Mischel
- Testosterone
- Ultimatum
- Oxytocin
- Nelson
- Hippocampus
- Hebb
- Heritability
- Gettysburg
- Wheeler
- Milgram
- Yale
- Thompson
- Ricard
- Tuberculosis
- Primatologist: A scientist who studies monkeys, apes and other primates.
- Gage: Phineas Gage, an American railroad construction worker. In 1848 an iron rod went through his head and his personality changed sharply; it is the first case of frontal cortex damage to be described in detail.
- Frontal cortex: The front part of the brain’s cortex. It handles planning, self-control, delaying gratification and regulating emotions.
- Glucose: A simple sugar, the main source of energy for brain cells.
- Gross: James Gross, an American psychologist at Stanford University who studies how people manage their emotions.
- Eisenegger: Christoph Eisenegger, a researcher at the University of Zurich who studies how hormones affect behavior.
- Fehr: Ernst Fehr, a Swiss economist at the University of Zurich who studies fairness and cooperation.
- Voles: Prairie voles, small North American rodents that live in lasting pairs. They were used to study the role of oxytocin in attachment.
- De Dreu: Carsten de Dreu, a Dutch psychologist who studies conflict between groups and the effects of oxytocin.
- Mogil: Jeffrey Mogil, a Canadian pain researcher at McGill University.
- Harlow: Harry Harlow, an American psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, known for his experiments with infant monkeys and artificial “mothers.”
- Ceaușescu: Nicolae Ceaușescu, the communist dictator of Romania, overthrown in 1989.
- MAOA: Monoamine oxidase A, an enzyme that breaks down serotonin and norepinephrine in the brain. The gene for this enzyme comes in several variants.
- Warrior gene: A newspaper nickname for the low-activity variant of the MAOA gene, not a scientific term.
- Caspi: Avshalom Caspi, a psychologist at Duke University who studies how genes and environment together shape behavior.
- Albany: The capital of New York State, home to a campus of the State University of New York.
- Armistead: Lewis Armistead, a Confederate general mortally wounded at Gettysburg.
- Masonic: Having to do with the Freemasons, members of a secret brotherhood bound by shared rituals and signs of recognition.
- Bingham: Henry Harrison Bingham, a Union officer who helped the wounded Armistead.
- Tajfel: Henri Tajfel, a British social psychologist at the University of Bristol, author of the “minimal group” experiments.
- Fiske: Susan Fiske, an American social psychologist at Princeton University who studies stereotypes and prejudice.
- Allport: Gordon Allport, an American psychologist who proposed the contact hypothesis in the 1950s.
- Contact hypothesis: The idea that hostility between groups weakens when their members interact under certain conditions.
- Asch: Solomon Asch, an American psychologist known for his experiments on conformity, the tendency to agree with the majority.
- My Lai: A Vietnamese village where, on March 16, 1968, American soldiers killed between 350 and 500 unarmed villagers.
- Banality of heroism: A phrase coined by the psychologist Philip Zimbardo for the idea that heroes are usually the most ordinary people.
- De Waal: Frans de Waal, a Dutch-American primatologist who studied cooperation and morality in animals.
- Brosnan: Sarah Brosnan, an American primatologist, coauthor of the experiment with capuchins and unequal pay.
- Capuchin: Capuchins, small monkeys of South and Central America.
- Greene: Joshua Greene, an American psychologist and philosopher at Harvard University who studies how the brain makes moral decisions.
- Trolley problem: A thought experiment about whether it is acceptable to sacrifice one person to save five.
- Epilepsy: A brain disorder that causes seizures.
All terms
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