ABSTRACT
In the 1920s, psychologists William McDougall and J. B. Watson were the center of a great debate. McDougall advocated that genetically influenced motivational factors should be fully acknowledged and incorporated into sociopsychological explanations of behavior. Watson’s influence diminished with the rise of European ethologists Tinbergen, Lorenz, Eibl-Ebisfeldt, Baars, and others. This chapter argues that innate biases in learning and cognition have resulted from a coevolution of genes and culture over a span of several million years prior to “civilization.”. Epigenesis embodies the now well-accepted idea that physical and mental development is the outcome of continuous interaction between a genetically encoded program and the environment of the developing organism. The epigenetic view of development has been taken an important step further by sociobiologists Lumsden and Wilson in their pioneering study Genes, Mind, and Culture. One or even several examples of directed learning cannot reductionistically account for humanity’s propensity for warfare..
