Sociobiology

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 unable to be evidentially supported.

First, the immense amount of combinations of pairs of genes make "predictability and reproducibility virtually impossible." (Bleier) Between just one male and one female there are over eight million possible genetic pair combinations. A person can't definitively say that a behavioral trait involving more than one gene could be passed on to the offspring of a male and a female. So even if there were a combination of genes that could predict a certain disposition towards a specific behavior there would be no way to know whether that behavior could be passed on to the offspring.

Second, there is no evidence to supports the claim that behaviors are attached to genetic combination patterns. In order for the genetic patterns to in control of behaviors, genes would have to specifically form the human and there could be no other variables that interacted in the process. If there were other interactions, then the genes would not be the sole sculptors of the human. In fact, there are many other molecules and processes that occur within the body to form a human. RNA, proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids also have a say in how a human turns out. Not only that but a gene's unpredictable interactions with other genes and other intercellular interactions affect how the gene makes its effect. "There is not even any simple cause and effect relationship between a particular gene and a particular anatomical feature," (Bleier) let alone a behavior.

Another problem of the biological explanation lies in Sociobiologists' ethnocentric descriptions. Many of their descriptions of universal human behaviors are found only in Western civilizations. They find everything about their culture the norm and then go around judging others in light of their own cultural views and beliefs. So they make generalizations that make the world that they are used to the normal and natural world, therefore everything else is abnormal in some degree. In other words, Sociobiologists simply construct their world and then express any inconsistencies with their theories as variances based on the degree of the application in the particular instance. So often their supposed predispositions don't occur in a majority of human beings. This leads into the next problem, which is that Sociobiological arguments are often circular.

The average Sociobiologist states a premise about how behaviors are based on genetics. Next it states a behavior that the researcher says is genetically based and devises a theory that explains exactly why the behavior would be beneficial for a person to have in given circumstances. Then the researcher says that their conjecture supports the validity of his initial premise. In this way, he can support anything that he wants to as long as he picks the right example and gives a reasonable explanation. The problem with circular arguments is that they don't prove the causality of anything. "Sociobiologists constantly 'prove' the validity and predictive values of their theories by 'predicting' what they and everyone else already know to be demonstrated fact." (Bleier) Plus they simply don't know what the precise conditions were at the time that they are hypothesizing about. They usually support their theories by saying that in certain conditions this trait would have been adaptive, but without having proof that the conditions were precisely as they assume, they are merely playing a historical guessing game about how we turned out the way we are.

The last thing that impedes the biological explanation's persuasiveness is that they do not adequately define what the behaviors they claim to be represented by genes. Most of the terms that they use such as aggression, coyness, dependence, altruism, loyalty, and promiscuity. These are very abstract and are open to many different interpretations. Coyness could be demonstrated in numerous ways as could aggression. So which one of those ways are Sociobiologists talking about when they say that a man is aggressive and a woman is coy? There must be some exact definition given to each one of the behavioral terms used by Sociobiologists if they are to use them, otherwise they could use one definition of the word in one instance and a different definition in another to prove what is convenient. Also, the problem arises of how abstract behaviors can be linked to specific gene patterns. Sociobiologists' methods as they currently exist are messy and inconclusive.

Support for Biological Gender Roles

Most of the criticisms above dispute the Sociobiological standpoint on the biology of psycho-sexual gender differences. They