Behave

This is a fascinating book that gives clarity to a difficult topic: how does our brain make decisions? I taught neuroscience before I retired, and I understand that when the semester turns to the cerebrum, details fade into vague and general statements. I confess to cribbing lecture notes from Sapolsky’s popular book because he explains things much more effectively than any textbook. Of course, our behaviors are influenced by immediate circumstances and by past experiences. And, yes, ancestral genetic patterns and molecular dynamics within the neurons also play a role. But so does something as simple as fatigue–and we all… show more.

We’ve often been inspired by the insights that Sapolsky has drawn from his years of fieldwork with baboons in Africa, but this book is grander in scope than his previous work, it’s a tour de force examination of human nature and behaviour.

From one of the best natural history writers of our time, neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky draws on his deep expertise to trace the biological and evolutionary origins of our human capacity for two different kinds of behavioural strategy:  morality, reconciliation and peace versus aggression, tribalism, and war. 

This book is fun and so interesting. I get the feeling that students of the author at Stanford were saying, “professor, you should write a book about the stuff we learned in this class.” And he really pulled it off. I learned what happens in your brain just before a behavior; what happens in your endocrine system in the minutes, hours, and days; what happens in your whole body genetically and epigenetically; and what happened evolutionarily to make humans the way we are! So so so interesting! 

René Descartes must have turned over in his grave a few more times after renowned neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky added this book to the growing body of research-based scholarship exposing the falsity of the Cartesian dualism between mind and body.  What makes Behave so remarkable is Sapolsky’s chapter-by-chapter explanation of how human behavior is shaped by the “utterly intertwined” influences of neurobiology, perception, hormones, neurogenesis in the adult brain, epigenetic influences in the developing brain, genes, culture, and evolution.  Sapolsky then uses this multifactorial approach to understand key behavioral challenges: us versus them distinctions, hierarchy, morality, empathy, religion, free will, and… show more.