Key insights from
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Audio available
10 minute read
Published May 2, 2017
What you'll learn
In addition to dedicating years of his life to living among baboons in the African bush, Robert Sapolsky is a Stanford professor whose work sits at the nexus of primatology and neuroscience. Behave is a deep dive into the meaning behind human behavior. As his 800-page tome reveals, it’s a subject too complicated for any single field of science to explain adequately.
Key insights
- 1 It’s most helpful to understand a human behavior as emanating from a series of concentric circles that provide multiple layers of context.
- 2 The amygdala is vitally important, but it can also get us in trouble—with the law.
- 3 Oxytocin makes us feel safe, but it can also make us overly trusting.
- 4 Humans don’t hate violence—we hate violence taken out of context.
- 5 Deep change in human behavior is possible over the course of generations, days, or just a few seconds.
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