Behave.

AuthorRiggs, Mike
PositionBehave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky - Brief article - Book review

Several years ago, researchers shared pictures of past political candidates with a group of children and asked those children to pick which person from each pair they'd prefer to lead them on a hypothetical boat trip. Despite having never seen the faces before, nor knowing they ran for office, the children chose the picture of the winning candidate 71 percent of the time.

That's one of the many cases dissected by Robert Sapolsky in his new book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (Penguin). His point is not that politically chosen leaders are inherently qualified, but that humans are inherently biased, and "our conscious cognitions play catch-up to make our decision seem careful and wise."

Using an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses hormone research in East African baboons (which he's observed every summer for the past 30 years) as well as the neuroscience literature he's taught and written at Stanford, Sapolsky takes a stab at explaining the environmental, genetic, and endocrinological catalysts for human behaviors.

Why, for...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT