Robert Sapolsky’s Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst was published by Penguin Books in 2018. Sapolsky was a passionate amateur soccer player and used to play thrice a week, but stopped due to back problems. And then there is the dizzyingly common male violence against females for coercive sex or as a response to rejection. Empathy – feeling someone’s pain – is not as likely to lead to useful action as dispassionate sympathy, or “cold-blooded kindness”. Either they will or they won’t, but on this magisterial account it seems that we can’t really choose to do anything about it.

In doing this, Sapolsky creates a more accurate picture of why we do what we do, without getting stuck in the “tunnel vision” of one particular academic discipline. i134740257 |b3325302064140 |ddcanf |g- |m |h8 |x1 |t0 |i0 |j300 |k201210 |n08-16-2022 21:09 |o- |a612.Human Behavioral Biology, 25 lectures (Last 2 lectures were not taped / included in the official Stanford playlist but older versions/tapings of those lectures are available here). Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person’s adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup?

The knowledge regarding the biological basis of human behavior has grown explosively in recent years. This is a welcome counterbalance to the recent misanthropic strain of psychology that seeks to downgrade rationality altogether, but it is not clear that, on Sapolsky’s own view, conscious reasoning can accomplish anything at all if decisions are inexorably determined by the laws of nature.To understand why we do what we do, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky looks at extreme context, examining actions on timescales from seconds to millions of years before they occurred.

D., founding president of Integrative Restoration Institute " Numerous writings in recent years have exacerbated the traditional rift between science and religion; however, there has been a refreshing parallel movement in the opposite direction. It remains debatable, though, whether strict determinism is compatible with Sapolsky’s final message of hope for humanity, as he tells inspiring stories about moral heroism in history – the helicopter officer who stopped the My Lai massacre, the Christmas Day football match during the first world war. Sapolsky's specialization in primatology and neuroscience has made him prominent in the public discussion of mental health—and, more broadly, human relationships—from an evolutionary perspective.The greater the activation of the circuit the greater the likelihood of changing answers to confirm. One for the single lads: Heterosexual women prefer the smell of high testosterone men (so Google “how to boost your testosterone” now. Frontal and temporal obe abnormalities are associated with violent behaviour, such that prefrontal deficits have been associated with behavioural disinhibition, increased risk taking, and impulsivity, whereas the temporal lobes, among others, are involved in affect regulation and sexual behaviour.