Thorstein Veblen
PSY 101 Section E
CID #1: Initial Position:
Are Humans Naturally Violent?
The question of whether humans are naturally violent relates to the prominent psychological
question of whether human thought, feeling, and behavior is a product of our innate nature or our
experiential nurture. As discussed in class, almost all of our psychology actually derives from some
combination of both nature and nurture. As such, my initial position is that humans are not naturally
violent: violent behavior may derive from some distant innate tendency, but that tendency is only actuated
by the environment.
Based on the argument presented by Wilson and Wrangham, it seems that the argument for
humans being naturally violent is based largely on primate research. The logic is that primates tend to
have violent group relations, humans share much genetic material with primates, and thus humans must
naturally be violent. Yet, humans are distinct from primates: we have complex language, complex
culture, and sophisticated self-awareness. I thus agree with the third criticism Wilson and Wrangham
present of their own position: “we already know that humans can be violent and that humans can be
peaceful as well; what matters for humans are environmental factors such as culture rather than biology”
(p. 59).
Building on this criticism, Sussman notes that even chimpanzee violence is rare and may be
propagated by environmental interference. Further “there are variations in the amounts of violence in
different human cultures and individuals. If we have the capacity and plasticity to change by learning
from example, then our behavior is determined by socialization practices and by our cultural histories and
not by our nature!” (p. 72). Although some primates may be violent, that is a long way from saying that
humans are naturally violent.
Two questions related to this issue that would be interesting to discuss:
1) If you argue that humans are naturally violent, how do you explain all the individual people who
rarely or never engage in violent acts?
2)
Isn’t it dangerous to human society to assume that our psychology is determined by an
evolutionary past that we can only speculate about without actually observing?