The Choice Is Ours Page #2

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to spy on your neighbors?

There's one technology that we don't have,

that we sorely need

if we're going to really change,

and that's the technology of behavior.

The science of behavior needs to be

applied like the sciences of physics,

chemistry, and biology have been.

That's that one missing ingredient in our culture.

And that's the toughest one because

it opposes the way that

most people think about themselves.

(Narrator) Examining human behavior

in the same manner

as any other physical phenomenon

will enable us to understand

the factors responsible for shaping

our attitudes and our conduct.

(Henry) All natural scientists

assume that their subject matters

are lawful and orderly.

If they're not, then you can't do science.

Behavioral scientists assume

that human behavior and

the behavior of other organisms

is also lawful and orderly.

To not assume that means that you accept that

human behavior is somehow separate

from the rest of nature.

We don't make that assumption.

We make the assumption

that human behavior is part of nature.

(Narrator) Human behavior

is just as lawful as everything else.

(Jacque) The sunflower

does not turn to the sun.

The sun makes it turn

by pulling in membranes.

A sailboat cannot sail.

The wind moves it.

Plants can't grow.

They are shoved

by sunshine, soil, temperature,

all kinds of things.

All things are shoved by something else.

All people are acted upon by other things.

Remember, your mother said "cup, table, light

papa, mama" over and over again

until you did the same thing.

Even race hatred is learned.

(Announcer) ... as the ideals

of intolerance and racial superiority

are taught to succeeding generations.

You could be brought up to hate Afro-Americans.

You could be brought up to hate

Jews, Swedes, all kinds of people.

- I hate Philippinos,

I hate Mexicans,

I hate them all!

We could raise a Jewish boy

in a Nazi culture.

He becomes a good Nazi.

A PRIME EFFECTOR ?

(Narrator) Mechanical processes are

based upon many interacting systems.

- What you got there, son?

- A plane.

What makes it fly? Is it the propeller?

- The propeller is not going to turn

unless you have the motor, right?

- So, it's the motor?

- But the motor needs fuel.

- So I'm guessing it's the fuel that makes it fly.

- Almost, but if you don't have the spark plugs,

and the oxygen, the fuel's not going to burn.

- So it's spark plugs and oxygen?

- You would think so,

but actually, even with all that working,

if you don't have the wings

and control surfaces to give it lift

it will never get off the ground.

- So it's the wings

and control surfaces that make it fly?

- Actually, it's all the above, son.

It's a complicated machine.

It needs all these things working together

to make the plane fly.

That's a lot like other technologies

and even human behavior.

- So it's all those things that make it fly.

- Exactly, kiddo!

(Narrator) Just like mechanical systems,

our behavior

has no single cause.

- God gives people good blood and bad blood,

and there's an end to it.

(Narrator) Our behavior is generated

by the many interacting variables

that we encounter.

(Henry) The environment can

never be the same for any two individuals.

That really counters claims

that people make when they say

"I have three children. They were all raised

in the same environment, but they all turned out so different."

Well, by that definition, the same environment

refers to the house they lived in

or the parents they had.

(Jacque) There's no such thing as

'the same environment'.

If you have two kids, one is 4 years old

and you play with him,

and the 7 year old is standing there

with that lower lip sticking out.

You say "What's the matter?"

and the kid goes like that.

You're making jealousy and envy.

That's where it comes from.

(Henry) But from a scientific perspective,

the environment really consists

of the moment to moment interactions

between your behavior

and those events both inside and outside you.

So, the environment is in constant flux.

(Jacque) You put the young kid

on your lap and the older kid.

You say "I love you both."

You never play with any one kid

or have a favorite.

If you say "You can go to the movie

but you can't because

you didn't do your homework",

when she falls down the stairs,

you have a grin on your face.

It's not that you're bad,

but you feel you've been mistreated.

(Narrator) Even our concepts of

aesthetics and beauty

are often attributed to an intrinsic quality,

but closer investigation

reveals that these perceptions

vary greatly from place to place

and throughout history.

(Henry) I think notions of aesthetics

and beauty are for the most part learned.

All you have to do are cross-cultural examinations

of what people consider

to be attractive and beautiful.

You'll find that they differ widely

from culture to culture.

Sometimes they differ widely

within the same culture.

(Jacque) There are people who wear

brass rings around their neck.

They stretch their neck.

If you take those rings away,

the head would fall over

and they call that beauty.

On some of the islands I went to visit,

if the girl had a buttocks

that stuck way out, that was beautiful.

The other girls were nothing.

(Announcer) Even a girl

might find herself shut up in a cage

until she's put on almost 265 pounds

that make her almost,

but not quite eligible for marriage in her country.

(Henry) I know there are suggestions

that there are genetic contributions

to what we think is beautiful,

but I think the most parsimonious

explanation we can have for

what constitutes beauty

to a given individual has to come

from that individual's environment;

the culture they're raised in.

(Jacque) If everybody had a nose a foot long,

you'd have surgery done.

There is no such thing as beauty.

It's all projection.

If you marry the most beautiful girl in the world

and she turns out to be a pain in the butt,

that face becomes ugly to you.

(Narrator) Some researchers are posing that genes

rather than upbringing,

determine if someone might become a criminal

and even a murderer.

(Henry) If you ask people to tell you

what determines whether they become

a doctor, or a lawyer, or whatever profession,

most people will agree that

it has to do with your upbringing:

the influences from your parents,

from teachers, from others.

Not genes. Genes don't determine

that you become a lawyer or a doctor.

(Narrator) Genes don't give us a value system

or a process level by which we operate.

(Henry) Genes don't shape

our behavior. The genes themselves

were shaped by our evolutionary history.

But our behavior alone is squarely shaped

by the environment that we're exposed to.

(Narrator) Behavior does not occur in a vacuum.

It is always dependent on

considerable environmental input.

(Jacque) I wanted to know whether men have

a natural attitude toward women,

or do they learn it?

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