19.2: Main Research Areas of Human Behavioral Ecology

Throughout this appendix, we have been discussing one of the main research areas in Human Behavioral Ecology: cooperation and sharing. There are two other main areas of research for Human Behavioral Ecologists: production and reproduction. Production research explores how people acquire the resources that they need. Some research in this area has examined which items people choose to include in their diets and how long people spend foraging. This research has shown that people do not simply acquire any food resource in their environment; instead they make strategic decisions based on the food options available and the possible nutrients gained. Research on reproduction includes an examination of how people choose mates, make reproductive choices, invest in children, and acquire help to raise offspring. This line of research has shown that human mothers need help from others to raise offspring, and this help can come from a variety of sources, including the child’s father, grandmothers, older siblings, grandfathers, or others (Hrdy 2009; Sear and Mace 2008). This is quite different from our non-human primate relatives, for whom almost all child care is given by mothers. These research areas capture many behaviors we faced in our evolutionary history: How did we get food, how did we distribute that food once we got it, and how did we make mating and reproductive decisions? All of the topics examined in the field of human behavioral ecology are closely linked to survival and reproduction inherent to evolution by natural selection and understanding how the environment influences decision making.

What Are the Common Misunderstandings about Human Behavioral Ecology?

There are a few common misperceptions about human behavioral ecology that make some people skeptical of this type of research. Some critiques have argued that studying the evolution of human behavior is problematic because of biological determinism, the idea that all behaviors are innate, determined by our genes. If behaviors are innate, then we cannot hold people accountable for their actions. But this is a misunderstanding. As mentioned previously, both genes and the environment influence behavior. Individuals may have a tendency to behave in a particular way, but behaviors are flexible. Also, there is no guarantee that everyone behaves in perfectly optimal ways. Over evolutionary time, those who acted more optimally in the past will have more offspring than those who did not, but in each generation we have variation in genotypes, phenotypes, and behaviors upon which selection can act.

Another common misconception is that by studying human behavior, human behavioral ecologists are providing justifications for those behaviors. The naturalistic fallacy describes the incorrect belief that what occurs in nature is what ought to be. This is a fallacy because it is absolutely not the goal of researchers in this field. For instance, some researchers study human violence. It is wrong to assume that by studying violence, the researchers believe that violence is an acceptable behavior or is justifiable. It is easy to slip into this misconception. For instance, while studying mating behavior, researchers may try to understand why some people cheat on their partners. Understanding what environmental factors might increase the likelihood of cheating is not providing an excuse for the behavior.

HOW CAN HUMAN BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY HELP US UNDERSTAND THE WORLD?

While it may seem that the field of human behavioral ecology is more concerned about our evolutionary past than our present, there are many contemporary issues that human behavioral ecology can help us solve. One area that human behavioral ecologists have focused on is reproductive decisions. Around the world, people are choosing to have fewer children than in the past. Some countries are still dealing with overpopulation, but an even larger number are dealing with population aging and depopulation. Understanding how people decide how many children to have is an important area of research in today’s world (Colleran and Snopkowski 2018). Researchers have also used evolutionary theory to improve handwashing rates around the world (Curtis 2013), reduce the obesity epidemic (Pepper and Nettle 2014), reduce conflict (de Waal 2000), and improve cooperation (Boyd and Richerson 1992).