It’s always a treat to find a good candidate for our series on babies-who-totally-learn-how-to-do-things. In previous editions, we’ve featured a baby rapper, baby preacher, baby worshipper, and two babies mimicking a conversation.
These videos are entertaining because they’re babies, but the message their actions send is more than just adorable. They remind us of how deeply cultural we are as human beings.
In this edition, baby gives CPR:
There’s nothing natural about giving CPR. There’s no gene, no evolutionary push for that behavior, no particular brain organization, and no special mix or hormones that can explain why that baby can mimic the steps of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Instead, that baby is learning.
Learning is coded in our genes. We’re deeply and naturally flexible that way, able to learn whatever our particular culture needs and values. Many people make biologically deterministic arguments — ones that draw a causal arrow from our biology to our behavior — but that’s usually wrong. More often, we are biologically designed to be contingent, our behavior is naturally dependent on whatever it is in the world that we encounter.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 5
Racial Bias and Media Coverage of Violent Crime » Antropologia Masterra — April 11, 2015
[…] Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages) […]
Gimli — April 12, 2015
"Many people make biologically deterministic arguments — ones
that draw a causal arrow from our biology to our behavior — but that’s
usually wrong. More often, we are biologically designed to be contingent, our behavior is naturally dependent on whatever it is in the world that we encounter"
That's a perfect description of an evolutionary approach to understanding behavior. Across evolutionary history, our ancestors faced different sets of challenges, which led to different evolved traits (both mental and physical). Some of these traits are environment contingent - they are more likely to develop in response to specific environmental stimuli. In evolutionary biology, these are called "conditional strategies", and the study of how different environments evolved different evolved predispositions and behaviors is called "behavioral ecology".
In other words, no one (in science at least) thinks of biological determinism in the way this post describes (simple causal arrow from biology to behavior). Biological determinism is a real thing, but that's not an accurate representation of it.
Learning is a particularly important evolved trait that is sensitive to environmental input. But for century+, we know that learning is not equipotential. For example, monkeys can more rapidly learn fears of snakes by observing other monkeys (one trial) than fears of bunnies (many trials) because evolutionary history of dealing with dangerous snakes has predisposed them to more rapidly acquire fears of these predators through social learning.
lisa — May 19, 2020
Oh my gosh!!! Thank you so much for this post. I’m 10 weeks now and struggling with not feeling completely bonded yet. I just got to hear baby’s heartbeat and see baby wiggle in my belly and that was amazing. Made it seem more real. Still learning to be ok with my feelings.baby gate reviews
lisa — July 28, 2020
This was a fantastic read! My mother was 18 when she had my sister and 21 with me- not super young per se, but still young. It makes her a much younger grandparent than either of the other grandparents (she's 10 years younger than my sister's in-law and about 12 years younger than mine). Sometimes we lament the fact that my mother still has to work, that she's not able to spend as much time with her grandchildren, that she's still interested in going out, having her own time, and maybe not as interested in showering her grandchildren in her dotage- because she really isn't there yet in her life. But then we realize how great it is to have two sets of grandparents and influences- one that may seem more normal to other children, but one that has always been normal for us- our mother has always been young and awesome and we've always cranked the stereo on the way to school and watched crazy movies on the weekends. She's a cool lady and I'm glad she gets to be a cool grandmother- even if it means that my kids will have to realize that she's not just grandma, but Grandma T- an individual with a life and a job and friends that don't play cards but still go to concerts and bars. Stay cool! For more viist vakn.com
lisa — December 7, 2020
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