October 1, 2002 - Human Nature I: Nature v. Nurture Revisited Welcome to another semester of fun, excitement and unparalleled interesting and reasonably useful knowledge about International Organizational Behavior!
I bet that you thought the controversy over whether human beings are shaped by nature or nurture was either decided long ago or no longer of interest in 2002.
It turns out that the debate still rages. It is a timeless controversy.
A new book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, (Viking 2002), by Steven Pinker, presents the fundamental issues in the debate that have been rekindled in recent years by arguments among biologists, evolutionary psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and philosophers.
Shortly before his untimely death Stephen J. Gould published The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Belknap/Harvard 2002), a monumental account of the revision of Darwinian theory into the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution. Whether and from what mankind evolved is one of the central issues in the controversy.
Demonstrating the depth and complexity of the situation, in the recent debates over the roles of biology and culture, biologists have argued that the concept of race is no longer valid because evidence from the Human Genome Project suggests that all human beings share the same genetic structure. Many biologists also believe that the idea of race has the effect of promoting social division and conflict.
But the American Sociological Association has argued that the concept of race remains relevant because, even if not biologically based, race is an important social construct. On August 9, 2002 the American Sociological Association endorsed the statement "Importance of Collecting Data and Doing Social Scientific Research on Race" that reads in part,
Sociological scholarship on "race" provides scientific evidence in the current scientific and civic debate over the social consequences of the existing categorizations and perceptions of race; allows scholars to document how race shapes social ranking, access to resources, and life experiences; and advances understanding of this important dimension of social life, which in turn advances social justice. Refusing to acknowledge the fact of racial classification, feelings, and actions, and refusing to measure their consequences will not eliminate racial inequalities. At best, it will preserve the status quo.Some basic issues concerning nature v. nurture/biology v. culture are:
- Are human beings a product of their environments and therefore determined by their social and cultural contexts?
- Is there a genetic structure that contributes to human development independent of environment?
- Is it possible that both environment and genetics contribute or interact to make us what we are or become? If so, what is the contribution of each?
While these questions are interesting for understanding human development they become even more interesting--and complex--when thinking about the differences in behavior across cultures.
Web Exercise
The World Wide Web is useful to begin an exploration of the basic issues in the long-running debate over whether nature or nurture exerts more influence on human behavior. An interesting web site is Social and Cultural Anthropology. Another web site, referred to above is the American Sociological Association statement on race.
Using a search engine such as Google.com or Altavista.com look for web sites on:
- Evolutionary Biology
- Cultural Anthropology
- Cognitive Science
- Cross-cultural Psychology
- According to these web sites what are the major issues today for explaining human nature and behavior from the perspectives of biology and culture?
- How do these perspectives explain behavior across cultures?
- What are the implications of this debate for understanding international organizational behavior?
- What are the implications of this debate for managing behavior in organizations across cultures?
[ I N T E R N E T E X E R C I S E S | U P D A T E S | F E E D B A C K | S A L E S C A T A L O G ]