Professor Robert Sapolsky: The goal of this course is simple:
Challenge simplistic explanations, embrace the complexity of human behavior, and rely on science—not ideology—to understand why we act the way we do.
Excerpt taken from transcript start at 38:45 minute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g26stRqDrKE&t=2113s
Scientists are usually brilliant—but even they can fall into the trap of being stuck in one narrow way of thinking. Let me give you three striking examples of highly influential scientists who were pathologically locked into a single framework for explaining human behavior.
Example 1: John Watson
John Watson, one of the founders of behaviorism, once said:
“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in, and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I choose—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar-man or thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”
This was in the early 20th century. Watson helped establish behaviorism—a school of psychology that argued behavior is shaped through reward and punishment. According to this view, you can mold anyone into anything, just by controlling their environment. But modern science has shown the limitations of this approach. Behaviorism can't fully explain human behavior. We are not infinitely malleable. Watson was stuck in a single explanatory “bucket”: behavior is shaped by reinforcement alone. And he was wrong.
Example 2: Egas Moniz
Next, a quote from Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz:
“Normal psychic life depends upon the proper functioning of brain synapses, and mental disorders arise from synaptic derangements. It is necessary to alter these synaptic adjustments and redirect impulses to modify the corresponding ideas and steer thought into different channels.”
At first glance, this seems like a statement about brain function—something we now understand deeply in neuroscience. But Moniz wasn’t talking about medication or therapy. He was advocating for—and received a Nobel Prize for—inventing the frontal lobotomy. His idea of fixing "synaptic derangements" involved taking a surgical instrument, often literally an ice pick, and destroying part of a person's frontal cortex.
This is another example of a scientist confined to a narrow model—this time, neuroanatomy. He believed behavior could be explained and fixed solely by altering brain structure. Again, the damage was immense.
Example 3: Konrad Lorenz
Now, the most disturbing example. Consider this quote:
“The immensely high reproduction rate in the moral imbecile has long been established. Socially inferior human material is enabled to penetrate and finally annihilate the healthy nation. The selection for toughness, heroism, social utility must be accomplished by human institutions if mankind is not to be ruined by domestication-induced degeneracy. The racial idea as the basis of our state has already accomplished much. We must rely on the healthy feelings of our best and charge them with exterminating elements of the population loaded with dregs.”
This wasn’t Hitler speaking, although it echoes his ideology. It was Konrad Lorenz—a Nobel Prize–winning scientist and one of the founders of ethology, the study of animal behavior. Lorenz is remembered fondly for charming nature documentaries, waddling around in shorts with ducklings following him. But he was also a Nazi propagandist. He used his scientific authority to justify racist and genocidal policies. He participated in determining the fate of prisoners based on racial "fitness"—and spent the rest of his life denying his role in it.
These were not fringe thinkers. These were leading scientists—who shaped education, mental health treatment, and public policy. They promoted systems that harmed and even killed people, all because they were fixated on a single lens through which to understand human behavior—be it conditioning, brain anatomy, or racial ideology.
The lesson here: beware of single-explanation thinking.
The Mission of This Class
This class is about avoiding those traps. We’re not going to settle for simple, seductive explanations. Instead, we’ll approach behavior from multiple scientific perspectives.
In the first half of the course, we’ll do quick overviews of:
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Evolution
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Behavior genetics
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Ethology
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Endocrinology
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Neuroscience
Then, in the second half, we’ll apply those disciplines to real behaviors: love, parenting, sexuality, aggression, cooperation, language, and various mental illnesses like schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety.
With each behavior, we’ll ask:
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What exactly is this behavior?
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What triggered it in the moment?
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What’s going on in the brain—seconds, hours, even years before it happened?
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What role do hormones, early development, childhood, genes, culture, and evolution play?
We’ll build a timeline—zooming backward from the behavior itself to all the underlying influences.
The Three Big Challenges
As we go, you’ll face three intellectual challenges:
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Recognizing when we’re just like other animals.
For example: humans prefer symmetrical faces. So do monkeys. So do fish! Symmetry signals health—it's a universal preference. -
Understanding when we use the same biological tools, but in novel ways.
We might share the same neural circuits with other species but repurpose them for uniquely human behaviors. -
Appreciating when there’s no precedent for what we do.
Some human behaviors—art, religion, language—have no real parallels in the animal kingdom.
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