May 23, 2014

On human nurture

From the University of Chicago Magazine, an article on philosophy professor Jesse Prinz:
On human nurture
By Michael Washburn 
Prinz never suggests that genetic and biological considerations should be absent, but cautions against overreliance on such explanations. Near the end of his least technical book, Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind (W. W. Norton, 2012), he writes, “Every cultural trait is really a biocultural trait—every trait that we acquire through learning involves an interaction between biology and the environment.” But in chapters on human intelligence, language, gender, and more, Prinz makes the case that culture’s influence dwarfs that of biology. 
Culture, history, and experience form the environment that, for Prinz, shapes what we become. He contends that those external factors determine everything about us—everything, down to such biological fundamentals as fear. “I think everything I do is an entry into the nature-nurture debate,” he says. “More specifically, I’m interested in nurture. I think human behavior is interesting precisely because it’s so plastic.” 
He conceived Beyond Human Nature, in part, as a response to Stephen Pinker’s How the Mind Works (W. W. Norton, 1999), one of the more influential examples of what Prinz terms a “cultural syndrome which might be called biocentrism.” The biocentric view, he says, “is to say when we encounter human behavior our first line of explanation should be ‘it’s in the genes, it’s in our evolutionary history, it’s fixed in us,’ as opposed to a more culturally oriented view.” 
The notion Prinz opposes has a lot of intellectual traction in the popular imagination. Books like Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (Harper Collins, 1992) sell in the millions. Genetic explanations are applied to more and newer aspects of human behavior. In a New York Times column last year, “Are Our Political Beliefs Coded in Our DNA?,” Thomas Edsall explored genopolitics, an ascendant area of study trying to tease out biological underpinnings of our political beliefs, and the Atlantic published an online adaptation from Avi Tuschman’s touted book on similar questions, Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us (Prometheus Books, 2013). Prinz’s contrary position can provoke controversy. 
“Jesse’s a smart guy,” Pinker wrote in an e-mail, “and his arguments for influences of culture are intelligent and have to be taken seriously, but I think his view of the ‘broader cultural syndrome’ is exactly backwards.” 
Pinker, the Johnstone Family professor in Harvard’s psychology department, continued, “By far the dominant cultural syndrome is that children are blank slates and that culture and parenting inscribe it,” and he noted that concept’s own acceptance in the cultural mainstream. “You’ll read hundreds of articles on economic inequality in the Times, the New Yorker, and so on, and never will there be even a mention of the possibility that smarter, more ambitious, or more disciplined people might be more successful.” Contra Prinz, Pinker concluded, “I think it’s Jesse who’s defending the broad cultural syndrome.” 
In response Prinz hits a more moderated note, saying, “I think the truth is there are two broad syndromes, and that is partially why we have a nature-nurture debate.”

More fundamentally, we have a nature-nurture debate because the influence of nature v. nurture on various phenomenon is a highly worthy subject for us to debate. Both nature and nurture are important and disentangling their effects is challenging.
But genetic, biological, and evolutionary explanations of behavior attract enormous interest, and “many more books have been published by popular presses defending evolutionary psychology than defending cross-cultural psychology.” 

A franker response would be that Prinz is gunning for Pinker not because Pinker represents the conventional wisdom (he doesn't) but because Pinker is the top gun at present, so he's a worthy challenge to try to take down. If you can out-argue Pinker, you've really done something.

Similarly, I'd rather out-argue Jared Diamond than T-N Coates or Michael Lewis than Malcolm Gladwell.

A general problem for the smarter defenders of the academic conventional wisdom like Prinz is that his allies don't want to give up their assumption that their Nurture side has a higher average IQ than the Nature side. So, Prinz has a hard time coming out and say, "Look, most of the brainpower and good ideas lately have been on the Nature side, so I'm trying to up the game of the Nurture side."
The influence of “nurture” on a wide range of human behavior and pathology, Prinz believes, awaits empirical proof. “My bet is that, when it comes to violence, addiction, IQ, many psychiatric disorders, and values, we will find that culture has a significantly bigger impact,” he says. “But there are traits for which the relative contributions of nature and nurture are less well understood (such as personality), and much science is still needed to establish exactly how culture impacts behavior when it does.” 
A survival emotion like fear, for example, has deep biological roots long proven to prompt the fight, flight, or freeze responses in humans and animals alike. But, Prinz points out, the cultural context influences how humans express it. In ancient Rome, where one of the cardinal virtues was heroism in the face of mortal danger, the embodiment of fear was quite different. For a Roman citizen the idea that you would flee or freeze, he says, is ludicrous. “We can see how an emotion that’s really deeply rooted in our biology could immediately give rise to a very different action.”

But of course the Romans remain famous for how unusual they were at overcoming their fears to allow them to be successful at organized violence. To win as many battles as the Romans did, they invested enormously in training to overcome natural flee or freeze responses to danger, as well as the opposite responses such as out-of-control rage that made tactical control difficult. (The Spartans were a similar and even more extreme famous example of nurture in action.)

This hardly means that Nurture was unimportant. After all, the Romans conquered much of the world. It just means that the discussion will go on. Occasionally, we might even move from thesis and antithesis to synthesis in some areas.

45 comments:

FredR said...

"For a Roman citizen the idea that you would flee or freeze, he says, is ludicrous. "

Lol. As if Cato the Younger was the typical Roman citizen. Obviously your average Roman dude knew plenty about cowardice.

Anonymous said...

By far the dominant cultural syndrome is that children are blank slates and that culture and parenting inscribe it”


I don't think that's the "dominant cultural syndrome". It's true that parents, at least in the middle and upper classes, put a great deal of effort into trying to give their children an edge over other children. But that's because it's a variable they can control, while their genes are fixed.

This may superficially look like a "dominant cultural syndrome" positing that "children are blank slates" but that's not what is actually going through any parents mind. They're just thinking "The neighbors are sending their kid to music school - maybe I should be doing something similar for my little Timmy".

Great Caesar's Ghost said...

That citation about Rome is pretty lame. Who says there weren't scared Romans? Just take a look at Caesar, Gallic War, Book One Chapter 39!

Anonymous said...

It's well established that even within families, parents do not treat their children equally. Firstborns are treated better, given more attention and more encouragement. The same is true, in Western cultures at least, for girl children. Firstborns who are female do exceptionally well in life compared to other children.

Things like ambition, discipline, and self-confidence are all qualities which can be heavily influenced by "environment", meanings parents and schools.

Professor of Mystery said...

School is a personality test.

The school finds out what if anything a student is passionate about.

That's about it.

Professor of Mystery said...

Here's why a Roman soldier didn't tend to Run:

He was told he'd be chased down and killed if he did. Either by Centurion if by the Barbarian.

Thursday said...

Steve:

Cordelia Fine is yet another person worth arguing with. I was totally unconvinced by the central thesis of her book, but it was a bracingly critical look at some of the studies of sex differences.

Of course, she relies way too much on priming studies to boost the nurture side of things. And, while she is very good at criticizing speculation about the exact mechanisms of sex differences, there is still quite a bit of stuff that is really hard to explain using mostly nurture.

I would strongly recommend her book.

Anonymous said...

That citation about Rome is pretty lame. Who says there weren't scared Romans?


That's a lame argument. The point is not that there were no scare Romans. or scared Germans, French, and British in the WWI trenches. The point is that man is a social animal and it was possible to create a social construct which they cared about even more than their own physical safety. To be seen as a coward by your fellows was a fate worse than death. Literally.

Professor of Mystery said...

The Army tries to ensure that the crowd instinct doesn't emerge.

Unknown said...

Obviously your average Roman dude knew plenty about cowardice.

Your average hoplite sure did:

"Some lucky Thracian has my noble shield;
I had to run; I dropped it in a wood.
But I got clear away, thank God! So hang
The shield! I'll get another, just as good."
--Archilochus

Anonymous said...

FWIW, the Romans fought in infantry squares. So the first row of Roman infantry had more to worry about from the second row of Roman infantry than the enemy they were facing.

Reluctance to Serve in the late Roman Army

http://www.romanarmytalk.com/17-roman-military-history-a-archaeology/316469-reluctance-to-serve-in-the-late-roman-army.html

The Spartans had their moment but flamed out pretty fast. They're ruling elite also surrendered to Athens when their kids were surrounded at the battle of Pylos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pylos

And remember all those Spartan kids could say they served and collect Spartan VA benefits and run for President of Sparta as a veteran, just like that President ...

That movie The 300 was a tad bit of an exaggeration. The Spartan infantry knew that if they held together Persians would not be able to charge through the narrow mountain pass. And they knew that avoiding the pass and attacking from the rear would be very difficult for the Persians. They also knew that if they retreated they would be easily surrounded and destroyed. So they had the wisdom to stick it out in the pass and hope the Persians would do the smart thing and retreat and attack by sea. The Persians did not do the smart thing, which resulted in what might be considered a Pyrrhic victory for the Spartans.

Another bit of Greek military history, Pyrrhic victory .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory

Luke Lea said...

"My bet is that, when it comes to violence, addiction, IQ, many psychiatric disorders, and values, we will find that culture has a significantly bigger impact. . ."

I just happened to be listening to this ten year old interview with Robert Plomin. I wonder how big of bet he would be willing to make?

Anonymous said...

He has a point in that genes aren't everything - see peaceful Swedes vs Vikings or, more recently, starving Chinese in 1957 vs relatively wealthy Chinese in 2007.

And extremes of nurture (e.g. the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire) can have extreme effects.

But Pinker and Prinz may both be right about broad cultural syndromes. Among the elite the blank slate is pretty much an article of religious faith, and heretics can be severely punished - while in less rarefied circles people are more likely to believe the evidence presented by their lying eyes. Pinker sees an overarching elite consensus, Prinz sees proletarian heresies everywhere.

Professor of Mystery said...

Chicken and egg!

Are the parents better genetic material?

Anonymous said...

Some thoughts from Martin Van Creveld:

https://www.traditionalright.com/pussycats/
(...)
American troops returning from a tour undergo obligatory testing for post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. PTSD, of course, is a real problem for some. However, as all history shows, it is simply not true that fighting, killing, and watching others being killed is necessarily traumatic. Suppose the Roman Army had dealt with PTSD as we do now; would it have conquered the world? Nor, contrary to what one often hears, is it true that historical combat was less terrible than its modern equivalents. Perhaps to the contrary, given that the combatants could literally look into each other’s eyes, hear the screams, see the spurting blood, and touch the scattering brains.

As I wrote decades ago in Fighting Power, the real origin of PTSD is found in a personnel system which, for reasons of administrative efficiency, treats the troops like interchangeable cogs, isolates them, and prevents them from bonding. Adding offense to injury, the abovementioned tests, introduced with the possibility of liability in mind, are humiliating. Wasn’t it Frederick the Great who said that the one thing that can drive men into the muzzles of the cannon trained on them is pride? Nor do things end at this point. Far from celebrating the troops’ courage and sacrifice, society very often treats them as damaged goods. Indeed things have come to the point where it expects them to be damaged.

(...)

Anonymous said...

I'm under the impression that Cordelia Fine's book is very good, but one thing that annoys me about it is that it is regularly trotted out as definitively settling the male/female sex differences debate. Philosophers use it a lot like academics use _The Mismeasure of Man_ (though it's better than Gould's book).

--SoCal Philosopher

Pat Boyle said...

culture’s influence dwarfs that of biology.

What a silly thing to say.

Measurements of the influence of heredity versus that of environment only make sense when the comparisons are very tightly confined. And of course there are also always interaction effects.

In the early fourteenth century the peasants weren't eating too well. They were shorter, sicker and less intelligent than the aristocracy. The nobles thought of the peasants as stupid and they would have been right largely for environmental reasons. Their brains and bodies were stunted.

But eliminate the nutrition difference in the twenty first century and there still are IQ differences but not because of gross nutritional differences. The genetic component has risen in importance. And it will continue to rise as we gradually eliminate all inequality in the environment.

After Common Core is in place IQ differences from heredity may very well larger then they are today. A uniform environment has to boost the hereditary component.

There is strong interaction effect in IQ and breastfeeding. Some breastfed babies with the right alleles at two particular SNPs have IQs at least six points higher than non-breastfed babies. This seems to be settled science.

But if you have a different set of alleles in your genome at those two spots it makes no difference if you were breastfed or not.

So is this a genetic or an environmental effect?

Pat Boyle

Cail Corishev said...

The school finds out what if anything a student is passionate about.

Huh? If I'd ever let my teachers know what I was passionate about, they would have kept a much closer eye on me than they did.

Anonymous said...

Among the elite the blank slate is pretty much an article of religious faith


As shown by what? My (admittedly small) sample of "elite" acquaintances certainly don't believe in any blank slate. In America the term "elite" is almost a synonym for "Jews", and they are as genetically obsessed a group of people as you'll find anywhere in the world.

The "elite" may not want public discussion of genetic differences, but that's a very different thing from their believing that such differences do not exist.

Anonymous said...

OT: Antony Ressler, described as Sterling's longtime friend, is supposedly interested in purchasing the Clippers. Ressler started his career at Drexel Burnham Lambert--Milken's trading house. Milken is now a client, and possibly a secret adviser, to Guggenheim, which is likely to propose a competing, and NBA favored, bid.

Zonk said...

Nature becomes more important each year because human culture and environment becomes more standardized each year due to the constant march of globalization. Every non western country has been heavily westernized the past two decades, excepting only a handful of failed states losing the remnants of civilization imposed during the colonial era and regressing toward sharia and tribal barbarism.

Or the shorter version, less diversity of environment means diversity of genes is more important.

Anonymous said...

OK, perhaps "Among the elite, public profession of belief in the blank slate is pretty much a condition of membership"

candid_observer said...

"I'm under the impression that Cordelia Fine's book is very good,"

I don't know what would give you that impression, except for the unsurprising assertion of many ideologues that it's very good.

In fact, it is very weak indeed in its attempt to deal with evidence of sex differences. For example, it pretends to undermine the argument that men dominate the extreme right tail of mathematics ability based in large part on studies by the rather notorious feminist "scientist" Janet Hyde.

Those studies are absurd for their cherry picking of evidence. In a large multitude of countries taking the PISA, boys dominate girls at the upper end on math just as expected. But in a given year, it happened that 2 or 3 of those countries showed girls nearly as well as boys (in Iceland, just a shade better). Problem is, in a later year, those countries essentially all moved back to follow the general pattern -- except Iceland, which seemed for inexplicable reasons to have girls in the country who did much better than boys, even though boys and girls in the cities followed the usual pattern.

Obviously, it's just statistical noise. But the fact that in any country it might be possible for the girls to do as well as the boys was reported as compelling proof that it couldn't be a genetic difference lying behind the different levels of achievement.

See
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm
for a criticism of the Hyde papers.

And Fine also gives short shrift to Simon Baron-Cohen's work. She raises the typical quasi-creationist argument focusing on "gaps" in inference. So Simon-Baron's result might show certain differences between the genders based on, say, prenatal testosterone, but how do we really, really know that that effect is related to important differences between the genders in how they think?

Really, it's just all the usual bag of tricks. Combined of course with snark, snark, snark.

A response by Baron-Cohen:
http://issuu.com/thepsychologist/docs/psy1110/15
A review of Fine's book by some other practicing scientists in the area of gender differences:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108906/

AMac said...

> A franker response would be that Prinz is gunning for Pinker not because Pinker represents the conventional wisdom (he doesn't) but because Pinker is the top gun at present, so he's a worthy challenge to try to take down.

This.

- - - -

Washburn paraphrases Prinz: "Culture, history, and experience form the environment that.. shapes what we become. [Prinz] contends that those external factors determine everything about us..."

Nurture all the way!, in other words.

But the flaw in this cage-match is that nobody -- nobody smart, that is -- is riposting with "Nature only!" That's a Weak Man if not a Straw Man.

Frame the argument as "Nurture not nature" (Prinz, Marx) versus "Nurture and nature" (Pinker, Wade). Then it's clearer which position is aligned with evolutionary theory as well as with our lyin' eyes.

JayMan is about as Nature-ist as a smart person comes. Even he isn't claiming that the specific forms of culture are pre-determined by genetics, a la termite and ant colonies. Korean orphans raised from birth by Lutheran Minnesotans speak... English! Fancy that.

reiner Tor said...

The point is that man is a social animal

Which is determined genetically. With unusual effort you might make a proud coward brave, but what can you do with an anti-social or sociopathic coward, who has no shame?

Thursday said...

Did you miss the part where I said that Fine's overall thesis was unconvincing? There's still a lot of stuff she can't really explain.

But there are real problems with some of the studies by Simon Baron Cohen and other sex difference researchers.

Some of the speculations about exactly how sex differences come about are pretty dodgy too.

And, yes, she is uncritical of studies, including the priming studies, that support her side.

AMac said...

True story. My neighbor got a Laborador Retriever last year, much to my misgiving. A few days ago, with no warning, it bit his wife, then turned on him, chomping each of his arms, in turn. A lot of damage.

Oh, my mistake -- the late pet's breed was Pit Bull. However, per Jesse Prinz, the account is entirely unaffected by that minor detail.

Thursday said...

From the link candid observer gave:

"Both books [one of them Fine's] contain much of merit that we think readers of the Biology of Sex Differences will agree with, but both books can be vexing in the ways the scientific study of sex differences in brain and behavior is portrayed and the current state-of-the-art is presented."

I agree. Much worth in Fine's book, but ultimately unconvincing.

dearieme said...

"we have a nature-nurture debate because" until recently most people were brought up by their parents, so that the difficulty of separating nature and nurture effects was real. Nowadays when so many people are brought up by step-parents, live-in boyfriends, and whatnot, the debate is easily settled. Nature wins.

jack strocchi said...

steve sailer said:

This hardly means that Nurture was unimportant. After all, the Romans conquered much of the world. It just means that the discussion will go on. Occasionally, we might even move from thesis and antithesis to synthesis in some areas.

My own take on the Darwinian dialectic as applied to humans:

Nurture: phenotypic embodiment is a synthetic function of:

Culture: ecotypic environment
Nature: genotypic endowment

Obviously in humans the nurtured phenotype can feed back and change both the cultural eoctype (ideological revolution) and natural genotype (genetic engineering).

Anonymous said...

In contrast to say, Jayman's blog, among others, Sailer is always very reasonable about the importance of both nature and environment depending on what type of trait you're interested in.

Comments on this blog often focus on how PC media outlets have made discussion of genetics taboo when discussing race and intelligence, among other topics.

But no matter what you're talking about, environment still matters a lot.

Case in point: this story about the German twins Otto and Ewald on a number of fitness blogs:

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/control-gene-expression/#axzz32aFjZdI2

Anonymous said...

To win as many battles as the Romans did, they invested enormously in training to overcome natural flee or freeze responses to danger, as well as the opposite responses such as out-of-control rage that made tactical control difficult. (The Spartans were a similar and even more extreme famous example of nurture in action.)

It is amusing that all the training (of soldiers and children) is counted as nurture.

The fact that an individual can lean (and thus is trainable) and the extent to which they can, is determined by genes, and thus is simply nature.

Thursday said...

Jayman may go overboard sometimes, but he's right that there is a heritable component to every single behavioural trait in humans.

Professor of Mystery said...

Good point.

But what subject or vocation did you take a liking to?

MQ said...

The fact that an individual can lean (and thus is trainable) and the extent to which they can, is determined by genes, and thus is simply nature

This is a somewhat bizarre argument. Human beings are naturally flexible to their environmental influences and therefore all environmental/nurture based flexibility counts as genetic determinism? The entire discussion is, or should be, about the level of environmental plasticity that we naturally have, and this argument just denies the issue. If we were genetically designed to be blank slates, we would still be blank slates.

I think the cultural plasticity of human beings is enormous, and I further think that conservatives in particular ignore this at their peril. Many of the conservative truths about human social organization are based on the observation that social organization and culture have vast and far-reaching effects on behavior. If everything is genetic programming, you lose this wisdom entirely.

Anonymous said...

"The fact that an individual can lean (and thus is trainable) and the extent to which they can, is determined by genes, and thus is simply nature"

The comment above is a prime example of a sort of aspergerish, common sense-defying genetic determinism that I frequently see in this corner of the blogosphere. Jayman is probably the worst.

Like I commented earlier, this blog is always careful to emphasize how environmental influences are also important blogosphere.

Anonymous said...

"The point is that man is a social animal"


Which is determined genetically.


So your big point is that man is an animal genetically programmed to override his own genes?

Anonymous said...

Nature becomes more important each year because human culture and environment becomes more standardized each year due to the constant march of globalization


Nonsense. The "environment" can and does differ quite dramatically among children growing up in the same house. People don't treat other people all the same. Parents don't treat their children identically.

ben tillman said...

Steve, you've had several recent posts featuring Matt Ridley, and nature/nurture is a recurring theme of your blog.

I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Ridley's "Nature via Nurture". Eleven years old already, this book may still provide the best discussion of gene-environment interaction. If you haven't read it, you should.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nature-via-Nurture-Genes-experience/dp/1841157465

Anonymous said...

Washburn paraphrases Prinz: "Culture, history, and experience form the environment that.. shapes what we become. [Prinz] contends that those external factors determine everything about us..."


Nurture all the way!, in other words.


So you're paraphrasing Washburn, who in turn was paraphrasing Prinz, and you think you can craft a sensible response to Prinz on that twice-paraphrased basis?

Anonymous said...

It is amusing that all the training (of soldiers and children) is counted as nurture.



If what we are taught is not "nurture" then we may as well just scrap the whole concept of "nurture" is being without meaning.

There are clearly plenty of people in the "humans are genetically programmed wind-up dolls whose free will is an illusion" camp. But whenever you point that out the response is not a defense of that position but a denial that anyone thinks that way.

Anonymous said...

"It is amusing that all the training (of soldiers and children) is counted as nurture."

If what we are taught is not _nurture_ then we may as well just scrap the whole concept of _nurture_ is being without meaning.

There are clearly plenty of people in the "humans are genetically programmed wind-up dolls whose free will is an illusion" camp. But whenever you point that out the response is not a defense of that position but a denial that anyone thinks that way.


Native Americans had a great capacity to learn. After all, they learned to ride horses (after they were re-introduced because they wiped them out first time around) and they learned to shoot guns.

What prevented then from developing the technology to make guns and all that stuff was the diseases introduced by Europeans and the alcohol introduced by Europeans.

They simply did not have the genes to resist.

Anonymous said...

Nonsense. The "environment" can and does differ quite dramatically among children growing up in the same house. People don't treat other people all the same. Parents don't treat their children identically.

Nonsense. "Environment" includes everything up to being dropped onto the surface of the sun. Being treated a bit differently by mummy and daddy doesn't qualify as a "dramatic" difference on that scale. Of course, neither do many genetic differences, but it's not the HBD crowd calling a few differences in differentiable genes here or there "insignificant" while calling a bit of different treatment from mummy and daddy "dramatic," either.

Anonymous said...

There are clearly plenty of people in the "humans are genetically programmed wind-up dolls whose free will is an illusion" camp. But whenever you point that out the response is not a defense of that position but a denial that anyone thinks that way.

No, there are demands to show us the people in the camp. It isn't our job to prove Santa Claus is real.

And yes, it makes perfect sense to wonder if even a lot of what we attribute to nurture is, in fact, nature.

Anonymous said...

Steve Ballmer is rumoured to be a possible buyer for the Clippers which would be interesting as iLakers would have another unreason to dislike the Clippers. Given the NBA's great business model you can see why this move would be tempting.