Human Universals

by Donald E Brown

  Another important discussion of universals appeared in Maurice Bloch’s (1977) Malinowski lecture, which assessed the relevance of developments in ethnosemantics. In brief, Bloch argues that universals—such as the cognition of time—are produced in practical interactions with nature, while such social factors as “instituted hierarchy” are the source of the culturally peculiar. For various reasons, he adds, anthropologists have tended to emphasize the culturally relative rather than universals. Since his lecture is primarily concerned with the explanation of universals, it will be discussed at greater length in the next chapter.

  A potent factor in the currently revived interest in universals results from recent thinking in various branches of the biological sciences, notably in evolutionary theory and the study of the brain. Theoretical refinements with respect to kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and sexual selection are particularly important. These refinements stem from a small number of seminal articles, including W. D. Hamilton’s “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior” (1964), J. Maynard Smith’s “Group Selection and Kin Selection” (1964), and R. L. Trivers’s “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism” (1971) and “Parental Investment and Sexual Selection” (1972). E. O. Wilson’s Sociobiology (1975) gave these ideas a wide audience and suggested—very controversially—their relevance to understanding human affairs. Wilson followed up this suggestion himself with his book On Human Nature (1978), in which he quotes Murdock’s (1945) list of universals as part of his evidence. A related development has been the deepening conviction that the locus of evolutionary processes is not the group or species but either the individual or the gene (Williams 1966; Maynard Smith 1976).

  Kin selection refers to behaviors that are directed toward individuals bearing copies of one’s own genes by proximate common descent, behaviors that are interpersonally altruistic yet potentially result in no reduction of one’s genetic representation in the next generation. The idea that altruism makes evolutionary sense when directed toward genetic relatives (whether offspring or others), and hence is highly likely to evolve, rang bells in the minds of some anthropologists: at one stroke it offered insight into the universality of kinship and of nepotism (favoring kin over strangers, close kin over distant kin).

  By offering to explain reciprocity, an exceedingly important element in anthropological thought (Gouldner 1960), the concept of reciprocal altruism also rang bells in anthropological minds. So too did sexual selection, since it seemed to bring order to numerous uniform differences between the sexes. These refinements of evolutionary biology are primarily relevant because they offer explanations for universals and so will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.

  Very much linked to these new formulations in evolutionary biology is ethology—the field study of animal behavior. Ethology offers insights into universals, in part by making careful observations among numerous animal species of behaviors that appear to have analogues among humans, in part by developing explanations and methods that students of human behavior can put to use (e.g., Tiger and Fox 1971; Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1989). Ethology has even documented the elusive universals of content. Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1979:20) presents, for example, photos (from a film strip) of a coyness display by a Himba girl. Any anthropologist looking at this sequence of photos is forcibly struck by its identity with the same kinds of display among any people he has observed. We know that much of what we do with our faces is culturally patterned, and until recently many anthropologists would have said that we do not have any good reason to think that it isn’t all cultural (see the discussion of the facial display of emotion in chapter 1). But the coyness display is complex, fixed, and, for whatever reason, apparently innate. Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s (1979) reports of normal smiling, laughing, and crying among thalidomide children born without sight, hearing, and normal limbs with which to feel other faces, provide further evidence for universals of content.

  Another result of the influence of recent trends in biology on the social sciences has been the development of evolutionary psychology, which attempts to understand the human psyche in evolutionary terms, and which in many ways is an alternative and rival to attempts to understand human behavior in evolutionary terms (Barkow 1973; Cosmides and Tooby 1987; Daly and Wilson 1988; Ghiselin 1973; Symons 1987a, 1989, 1990; Tooby 1985; Tooby and Cosmides 1989c and 1989d).16 A strongly relativistic anthropology, underpinned by behavioristic psychology, assumed that the human mind was virtually a tabula rasa: it had little wiring, and that of a very general sort. But behaviorism, or extreme versions of it, has been shown to have severe limitations. Particularly telling were the experimental findings of John Garcia and others (see especially Garcia and Koelling 1966; see also Breland and Breland 1961; and, for an anthropological perspective and summary, Konner 1982a:25–28). Garcia and Koelling (1966) found that it was easy to get rats to associate tastes with (x–ray induced) nausea and to associate lights or sound with shocks, but it was difficult to get them to associate tastes with shocks or lights and sounds with nausea. Some things were easier to “learn” than others, and this could only reflect a structuring of the brain that existed before conditioning. The brain, therefore, was not so blank as behaviorism assumed.

  It seems entirely reasonable to assume that the specific structuring of the rat’s brain that these experiments uncovered is a product of evolution: mechanisms that associate things eaten with nausea, for example, would have great survival value, would be strongly selected, and would result in organisms that make that association quickly. Reasonable as this seems, the difficulties Garcia and his colleagues faced in publishing and winning acceptance of their research findings are now legendary. The seminal paper described above (Garcia and Koelling 1966) was turned down by the “blue ribbon” journals of experimental psychology (Seligman and Hager 1972:8), and the findings of a later paper were dismissed as “no more likely than birdshit in a cuckoo clock” (quoted in Seligman and Hager 1972:15). These reactions are understandable: the experiments of Garcia and his collaborators undermined the whole notion that associational learning, a generalized learning process, provides a satisfactory explanation for how behavior is acquired. That notion was firmly entrenched in psychology—and elsewhere in the social sciences.

  One of the key shifts in thought that has been stimulated both by ethology and by studies such as Garcia’s is summarized in the distinction between “learning” and “acquisition.” Because “learning” often connotes “learning theory,” behavioristic associationism, and social or cultural conditioning—all of which presume only very general mental mechanisms—the more neutral term, “acquisition,” has come into use to refer to actions or behaviors that develop in a manner suggesting some sort of specific genetic programming for them. Thus Chomsky says we “acquire” language, and he is critical of the notion that it is, in the frequently employed senses of the term, learned (see, e.g., 1959:57).

  But learning is a word that cannot easily be discarded. Thus Gould and Marler (1987) coin the phrase “learning by instinct” to describe behaviors that are phylogenetic adaptations and yet require some practice or imprinting experience in order to develop normally. They give bird songs in certain species, and human speech, as examples. Developed more within the tradition of learning theory is the idea of “preparedness” (Seligman 1971; Seligman and Hager 1972; see also Lenneberg’s [1967:373, 375] “readiness” and “resonance” in reference to age-delimited preparedness). Preparedness refers to the extent to which an organism or species is genetically prepared to learn something. If highly prepared, “one-trial” learning may suffice: humans sometimes learn to detest a food from a single experience in which it induced, or seemed to induce, illness (Seligman and Hager 1972:8). Some human phobias may result from prepared learning. All these ideas represent a substantial departure from the tabula rasa view of the mind, which holds that there is only general wiring in the brain.

  Current thought—forcefully supported by data on the highly specific cognitive, emotional, or behavioral def
icits that result from brain lesions in specific locations (Gardner 1974; Sacks 1985)—thus has it that the mind is wired in great detail. With respect to vision, consider the following (from Sekular and Blake 1990): At the level of brain cells, those in the visual cortex specialize in the angle of edges, the speed of motion, and the direction of motion registered in their field of vision. Others specialize in the color they detect or in the degree to which they are ocular dominant or binocular. At a higher level of organization, brain regions may be so specialized that their neurons respond, for example, only to the human face when viewed from a particular angle.

  This restoration of the localizing or faculty theory of the brain, which had been swept aside by behaviorism, is further buttressed by lessons from the attempts to develop artificial intelligence and by evolutionary theory. Creating artificial intelligence has been much more complicated than was first thought, and constructing systems that duplicate the performance of even relatively simple mental tasks requires considerable preprogramming that is specific to the task and that is analogous to “innate knowledge” (Tooby 1985). In other words, the model of the human mind as comprising general-purpose “intelligence” finds no support in artificial intelligence.

  The relevant theoretical consideration is that in the course of its evolution the human species did not encounter general problems, it encountered specific problems, such as recognizing faces and detecting cheaters in social exchanges (Tooby 1985; Cosmides and Tooby 1989). We should no more expect a general-purpose mental organ to evolve than we should expect general-purpose anatomical or physiological organs (Cosmides and Tooby 1987; Symons 1990; see also Fodor 1983). Whatever the details of brain specialization may be—producing fixed responses such as the coyness display and the smile, or producing no more than aims (“look after close kin”) and inclinations (“be wary around snakes”) and hence resulting in numerous particular actions—anthropology has very special roles to play in their study.

  First, these mental mechanisms—with very few possible exceptions—must be panhuman and must have evolved in the long period in which humans were hunters and gatherers (Cosmides and Tooby 1987; Symons 1990; Tooby and DeVore 1987). Since anthropologists are specialists in the study of hunters and gatherers, past and present, and in the evolution of humans, there are no scholars better equipped to identify and understand the environmental conditions in which panhuman mental mechanisms evolved.

  Second, anthropological documentation of universality is in itself an important part of the study of the mind. Thus indirect research into the wiring of the human brain—by showing for example that taxonomy is fundamental to cognition (Frake 1963), that male and female temperaments differ in cross-culturally consistent ways (Daly and Wilson 1982 [1978]; Symons 1979), or that the sense of time is universal (Bloch 1977)—is very much a part of the current scene in anthropology. As species-typical phenomena, human universals are specially privileged considerations in developing a cross-culturally valid conception of human nature.

  If the foregoing accurately grasps the outlines of the history of the anthropological study of universals, the key elements are as follows. First, universals were long taken to be facts and were thought to rest in large measure on panhuman features of the human psyche. Accordingly, when the dichotomy of nature versus culture became entrenched, universals were largely assigned to nature. As the anthropological pendulum swung to an ever stronger emphasis on culture, universals received less attention from anthropologists. The pendulum moved away from a strong culturological position in the years adjacent to World War II and again in the last decade or so.

  What distinguishes the present move toward a more neutral position of the pendulum is at least partly a growing awareness that human affairs have to be understood as an interaction between human nature and human culture. Mere awareness cannot be the whole story, however, because prominent anthropologists from Boas and Kroeber to Mead and Geertz have repeatedly (but ineffectually) reminded themselves and their colleagues that in spite of their emphasis on culture a full understanding of human behavior will necessarily be interactionist.17 Thus what is perhaps most important at present is the stimulating climate in biology and psychology. In the years adjacent to World War II, when anthropologists sought to give some sort of theoretical explanation for why universals were significant, or even existed at all, there was little to be inspired by in those fields. But the new and rapidly progressing understanding of the human mind and its evolution now offer real insight into human nature. Since the concept of the psychic unity of humanity is pivotal in anthropological thought, a sustained effort to discover its content—Kroeber’s “X”—is long overdue and now feasible.

  In the final chapter I will look in more detail at those culturological ideas that seized the high ground in anthropology early in this century. Those ideas need considerable modification, and the existence of universals is a large part of what necessitates those modifications.

  Footnotes

  1. A concern with universals in some senses of the term is ancient in both West and East. Plato’s “forms” are the most familiar example, but for further examples see Koepping’s (1983) discussion of the Stoic conceptions that gave rise to Bastian’s “elementary ideas” (described below) or Staal’s (1988) comparison of ancient Indian with Western universals of logic.

  2. “Fundamental ideas” or “elementary ideas” is a translation of Adolph Bastian’s Elementargedanken, ideas that recur again and again from society to society.

  3. Kroeber clearly was not alone in this. For example, another of Boas’s students, Robert Lowie, said that “culture…is the sole and exclusive subject-matter of ethnology” (1966 [1917]:5, my italics). Not many modern anthropologists will say this in principle, but the practice is hardy.

  4. If Gardner (1974) and others (e.g., Sacks 1985) are correct in their depictions of the human mind, the long period in which “localizers” (e.g., faculty psychologists) were discredited was scientifically and medically very costly. One can only speculate if the same Zeitgeist that brought the holists to prominence among neurologists might not have had equally costly effects in the social sciences.

  5. Lowie was aware of this, because the sentence Murdock quoted was preceded by the statement that “culture cannot construct houses contrary to the laws of gravitation” (Lowie 1966 [1917]:25). While this should have led to an interactionist formulation, and Lowie comes close to saying as much, he was uncompromising in stating the autonomy of culture. “Culture is a thing sui generis which can be explained only in terms of itself.…Omnis cultura ex cultura” (1966 [1917]:66).

  6. Years later Murdock (1972) recanted his earlier views. He rejected the autonomy or causal efficacy of either society or culture and argued that it would probably be better to start the social sciences again from scratch than to salvage these reified supraindividual entities. It may be relevant that Murdock was trained outside the Boasian school.

  7. In the opening chapters of The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Lévi-Strauss (1969 [1949]) used this line of reasoning to explain why social scientists had not been able to come to grips with the incest taboo.

  8. Suggs (1971) presents another astonishing example, and he urges anthropologists to consider carefully how such things come about (1971:185).

  9. As Goldschmidt (1960) points out, complaints were lodged very quickly about Benedict’s account of the Zuni, and somewhat later about the Kwakiutl. In each case the alternative descriptions that were presented revealed people who were much less exotic than in Benedict’s account. Goldschmidt’s interpretation is that anthropologists tend to “put literary emphasis on the unusual” (1960:100). That is, they focus on the more exotic societies and on normative rather than actual behavior. Because it is a product of a human nature that is not entirely constrained by culture, the actual behavior of humans, according to Goldschmidt, is less variable from society to society than the norms are.

  10. Note that as much as he scorned the particularism of the Boas
ian school, and its notion of the arbitrariness of culture, White maintained a consistently ultraorthodox denial of any psychobiological influences on culture.

  11. It is possible that the cultural evolutionists felt it was particularly important that they not be confused with evolutionists in general and so overstated their antireductionism. Or, as seems clear in some cases, they may have been particularly influenced by the strong environmentalist stance of orthodox Marxist thought.

  12. This arbitrariness, which is one of the hallmarks of cultural relativism (Shweder and Bourne 1984:164), is greatly exaggerated (Kluckhohn 1953:897; Friedrich 1975). See the discussion of marking below and, especially, the explanation for it in the next chapter.

  13. E.g., the initial p- of Latin words regularly shifts to f- in English, as in ped and “foot” or pisces and “fish.”

  14. Ethological studies of “instinctive” behaviors had begun well before World War II, particularly in Europe, but it was not until much later that the results of these studies could make headway against behaviorism in the United States. Ethology is discussed further below and in chapter 4.

  15. This in spite of the fact that Mead herself had withdrawn from the ranks of the arch relativists. In the 1962 introduction to her Male and Female, she states a willingness to “lay more emphasis on man’s specific biological inheritance” because recent years had seen a “vivid interaction between cultural theory and observations and experiments on other living creatures, primates, ungulates, and birds,” that yielded “new insights into biologically given behavior and possible types of more specifically instinctive behavior in man.”

  16. Many of what are called “sociobiological” studies by anthropologists involve a leap from quite general processes—such as maximizing reproductive success—to quite specific behaviors—such as female infanticide among particular peoples. However, natural selection does not select directly for behaviors; it selects for the psychological processes that (in conjunction with the environment) underlie behavior. Evolutionary psychology attempts to discover the innate psychological processes that constitute (or are key ingredients in) human nature, that were shaped by evolution, and that may—in our present environment—result in behavior that makes no sense at all in terms of maximizing reproductive success (Cosmides and Tooby 1987; Symons 1989, 1990; Tooby and Cosmides 1989c).