Masculinity and Evolutionary Psychology Essay -- Gender Roles

When attempting to rationalise something as intangible and complex as human behavior it is difficult to devise experiments that lead to conclusive results. Sometimes complex problems atomic number 18 easier to solve when they are broken down into smaller pieces or into simpler problems that are more approachable. Using human evolution to explain human behavior is such an example. Evolutionary psychological science reaches for the roots of human development when they were in their most basic stages to explain why people assoil the way they do. Specifically, explaining human masculinity by means of science has been a major focus of evolutionary psychology. This paper seeks to explain why masculinity cannot be explained by sociology alone and will present evidence that certain male behavior such as aggression can be explained through evolutionary psychology and sexual selection. When considering the source of human behavior people often argue about how much human behavior is encoded genetically and how much is learned through interaction with society and the environment. This nature versus nurture debate arises frequently when discussing many aspects of human behavior. In an essay entitled The Gender Blur Where Does Biology dismiss and Society Take Over, Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of journalism Deborah Blum draws the conclusion that both nature and nurture must be taken into account to explain human behavior. Her conclusions are drawn principally from childhood behavior and her discussions with noted scientists. As a parent she observed that her son loved dinosaurs from the early age of two-and-a-half years old. However, she observe that he loved dinosaurs, but only the blood-swilling carnivores. Plant-eaters were wimps and lose... ...odern male behavior.Works CitedBlum, Deborah. The Gender Blur Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over? Signs of Life In the USA Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. Ed. Sonia Maasik. Bos ton, MA Bedford/St. Martins, 2000. Crawford, Charles and Dennis L. Krebs. Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology Ideas, Issues, and Applications. Mahwah, NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998. Daly, Martin and Margo Wilson. Darwinism and the Roots of Machismo. Scientific American (2002). Kenyon, Paul. Overview of Evolutionary Psychology and wedlock Strategies. Human Behavior and Evolution Society. 2000. University of Plymouth. 4 Apr. 2000 . Peterson, Dale, and Richard Wrangham. Demonic Males Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. Mariner Books, 1997.