快猫短视频

These are interesting times for those who are curious about evolutionary processes and their role in human characteristics, especially differences between the sexes.

So far, there has been a firmly established 鈥渂iology is destiny鈥� mantra ringing down through the centuries. It has been a central tenet of traditional evolutionary explanations that differences in behavioural traits between men and women have fixed biological foundations (hence their inter-generational stability).

Allegedly, these traits 鈥渉old fast鈥� in the face of external pressures, only shifting eventually after very long periods of consistent environmental influence. This biological stability was supposedly reflected in the consistency of male/female differences down the ages.

This notion of biology as holding fast against prolonged environmental pressure is crumbling; this year there were reports of on artificial islands in Brazil adapting to the change in their environment within 15 years. The relevance of social and cultural context was demonstrated by a showing that the differences in cognitive abilities between men and women in 26 countries varied as a function of the country鈥檚 attitude to gender roles.

And now we have a discussing how the respective roles of biology and environment as sources of stability and variability might be reversed when it comes to the evolutionary processes that determine sex/gender differences.

The context of this latest work, by researchers in Australia, 聽Israel and the UK, is an extension of classical Darwinian theory that acknowledges the role of non-genetic inheritance modes, including ecological and cultural inheritance.

They focus on developmental trajectories, and how these can be diverted or manipulated by environmental factors. This suggests that social and cultural constructions can have a core role in determining neural and behavioural outcomes, including those of those of sex and gender.

Variety suppressed

In a closely argued paper, the authors propose a model that emphasises biology as a source of variability and the environment as a source of stability. They suggest that biological variability is in fact being 鈥渟uppressed鈥� or masked by highly stable cultural forces and socio-environmental conditions.

This more radical description of the interplay between biology and the environment is demonstrated by a wide range of examples, from mallards to moose, as well as humans.

A good example was the finding in 2015 of the 鈥渕osaic鈥� character of human brains, which dismantled the notion that, biologically speaking, male and female brains are fundamentally different.

Why might this matter? The authors are admirably cautious in their discussions of the balance between biology and the environment, quite rightly wishing to 鈥渢ranscend oppositional conceptualisations鈥�. But they note that the long, intensive socialisation human infants experience is full of emphasis on differences between the sexes, via stereotypical toys, clothing, names, expectations and role models.

They talk of this influence as creating stability, of holding the phenotype steady. But it could equally be described as repressing the benefits of variability.

This is a thought-provoking and timely piece. It draws attention to the powerful role that sociocultural imperatives can play in the development and maintenance of sex/gender differences. Limits imposed by biology becomes limits imposed by cultural intransigence.

A biological deterministic perspective would hold that cultural influences (such as diversity programmes) would have little or no discernible effect on an individual. What if, in fact, giving that individual鈥檚 biology a chance to express its variability could bring about just the change that is needed, and possibly much quicker than has ever been envisaged.

It is a shame that the author of the now notorious Google memo hadn鈥檛 read this exciting new paper before he released his comments on the futility of diversity training.