Why we do what we do? — 10 Theories that explain human behavior
By: Rajat Dangi
Tags: Evolution, Human Behavior, Capitalism, Psychology, Theory

A 2010 study surveyed all the papers published between 2003 and 2007 in top scientific journals from six sub-fields of psychology. They discovered that the papers often made broad claims about the human mind. However, the majority of test participants belonged to two categories: WEIRD and mentally-ill. WEIRD stands for western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic as described in Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Which means, the psychological studies are in fact not based on Homo Sapiens but on Homer Simpson.

Scientists have a detailed map of mental states for the mentally ill and WIERD people. But they lack serious information on the mental states of normal human beings. When the researchers fail to decipher our own behavior, we resort to the theories given by the observers of our society. Many philosophers and academicians who were the subject expert took layers off the human behavior.

These theories help us understand our civilization, language, consciousness better.

1. The Immortality Project

Winner of Pulitzer prize in 1974 — ‘The Denial of Death’ is life’s work of Ernest Becker. This book is a work of psychology and philosophy. It explains why humans want to be remembered after death. The author coined the concept of ‘Immortality Project’ to explain this irrational human behavior.

Humans are the only animals conscious of their death. Becker bases this theory on the basic duality in human life. Humans live dual life between the real world of objects and an imagined world of meaning. We have two self, one who eats, sleep, and talk and the other who refuses to acknowledge death. We realize that death is a threat to all the meaningful work we do in our life. That’s why we are so scared of it that we want to be remembered forever. This idea gives birth to ‘The Immortality Project’.

Becker says that our civilization is a symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of its own mortality. As our defense against our own mortality, humans have built entire civilizations. This explains the reason behind the purpose, meaning and our craving to do something big. Which means, we go through all the hardship so that another mortal being remember us, weird!

2. Theory of Mimetic Desire

“This is the most influential book in my life,” said Peter Thiel for the ‘Things Hidden Science the Foundation of Life’. It is written by Rene Girard, a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science, who gave the theory of ‘Mimetic Desire’.

According to the theory, all our desires are mimetic. In other words, all human desires are nothing but an imitation of others desires. The theory explains the rise in appreciation for travel, luxury, and social validation. That’s what makes Instagram such an addictive platform. Our desires are not internal except for our physical needs. It gives a clear differentiation between need and want.

This is how desire functions in our everyday life, someone signals a particular desire and then we also desire the same. No wonder what is keeping our shopping malls full and bank accounts running. After all, all of us can’t become monks. But now that we know the reason behind our desires, we can keep them in check.

3. Universal Grammar Theory

Ever wondered how sophisticated languages developed in the different parts of the world? The interesting fact is that most of the languages developed in the same time duration. If you think of it, you’d realize that it’s not a coincidence. How did all our civilizations invent language and similar concepts of grammar? It is interesting to see that grammar of all the languages has common elements such as noun, verb, words, sentences etc.

The Universal Grammar Theory given by Noam Chomsky explains what lead us to these sophisticated languages. The basic assumption in the theory is that a certain set of structural rules are inherent to humans. Chomsky says that our brain contains a set of constraints for organizing language. The common elements which are part of every language can be thought of as the ‘set-of-structural-rules’.

It would have been impossible for humans to develop such complex language systems on their own. The theory suggests that noun, verb, tense etc. are an inherent part of our DNA. Which means, if we simulate the entire evolution again, humans will come up with languages with similar structural elements in it.

4. Everything eats everything else

No matter how much we talk about veganism, animals rights, humanism, and equality. Humans are cruel and second to none on that list. The plants are the only living beings who can use the sunlight, water, and soil nutrients to produce food. Others get their food from the plants, some animals eat the plant eaters, and remaining feed on both.

This has been the course of evolution. The powerful species will eat the submissive ones and this cycle goes on. The dominant animals are thus favored by nature. They live long enough to reproduce and protect their offspring. This ‘survival-of-the-fittest’ gives rise to a philosophical question “Is nature cruel?”. Why animal life on earth evolved in such a way that the survival depends on killing and consuming other animals? The partial answer is, cruelty is the driving force behind evolution.

5. Viruses and Civilization

Human civilization is like a virus. We live and depend on the earth (host) for our survival. In the process, humans cause damage to the host, like viruses damage the body of their host. It is evident from the route that homo-sapiens took to spread on the earth. First, we appeared on the African continent. Then homo-sapiens moved to the present day Europe. Destroying the great flora and fauna on both the continents. And later they became the cause of extinction of homo-neanderthals.

The large predators existing on those continents were not prepared to deal with the Homo-sapiens. They were unaware of this new species (humans) and didn’t know whether to run or attack these two-legged apes. The homo-sapiens also became the cause of extinction of Tasmanian Aborigines, an ethnic group living on Tasmania island. All these traits show that our civilization is equal to a virus.

Will this behavior of human civilization become the cause of our own extinction? The answer lies in the complex characteristics of the virus. It is not in the interest of a virus to kill its hosts. In rare exceptions, the host dies as part of a complex parasite cycle. Generally, the healthier the host, the longer the virus survive. In the process, the weaker hosts dies and the one who adapts to the virus will later form a symbiotic relationship with it. In a way, viruses have been a major driver of human evolution.

6. Ownership and Monogamy

Ownership of property and livestock was not so common in the prehistoric era like it is today. With the concept of ownership, came the challenge of passing ownership on death. The easiest way to do it was passing it on to the next generations. But, like other animals, humans were not monogamous (committed to one sexual partner) in nature.

Homo-sapiens used to practice polygamy and the group/tribe together raised the infants. With that system in place, it was impossible to divide the individually owned property. The easiest solution was monogamy. That idea later gave birth to the nuclear families in our culture.

Eventually, all the tribes and entire civilizations adopted monogamy. This explains why the majority is always short of providing for their family. The evolution never prepared us to live in nuclear families but our need to own property and transfer it to our heir forced us to do so. It is also a prime example of how alien concepts can overpower our evolutionary needs in this new world.

7. Wishful Thinking

An average human being will always go for the lowest hanging fruit. We are always looking for the easier alternatives, even if it requires us to constantly lie to ourselves. This partially explains the belief systems and religion. But what is replacing religion in this world of increasing atheists is the concept of ‘Wishful Thinking’.

Many writers, philosophers, and motivational speaker popularized ‘Positive Thinking’. The popular work in this field is ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne and ‘The Power of Your Subconscious Mind’ by Joseph Murphy and Ian MacMahan. There are many self-help books on the lines of visualization, positive thinking, and optimism. This idea spread into society like a plague because it is a low hanging fruit on the path of materialistic desires.

These evangelists and writers realized that in the postmodern world people believe in themselves. They created a new god for the atheists. In capitalism, an inability of the majority to meet their new desire lead them to search an easier route. Their obsession gave rise to this pseudo-scientific notion of positive thinking. This explains the rise in self-help books, blogs, and motivational speakers in the world, who speak of the ‘wishful thinking’.

8. Happiness Synthesis

Happiness has become a cultural obsession in present times. Earlier there were only a few philosophers like Epicurus who wrote about happiness at length. Today, every second blog on the internet is helping us on ‘how to be happy’. As if someone is selling happiness in the stores.

Dan Gilbert the Author of ‘Stumbling on Happiness’, challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. According to his theory of ‘Happiness Synthesis’ — human beings can create happiness in every situation. What makes us unhappy? A part of our brain called pre-frontal cortex has the capability to simulate experiences in our head. We can simulate the events in our head, way before they occur. And our simulator signals that this will be good and that will be bad. But even the worst experiences make no impact on our happiness in the long run.

In his TED talk, he projected two pictures on the screen. In one picture a guy won a $314M lottery and in another, a paraplegic patient was sitting in an ambulance. He asked the audience ‘which one would they choose as their future?’ No doubt everyone will want to win the lottery. But a few years after the incidents (lottery and paraplegia) both the guys were equally happy. This explains that the cultural obsession with happiness is fairy dust. It is propagated so that people stay motivated for more money, more productivity and that keeps the economic engines churning.

9. Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality Development

Popularly known as the Freudian theory developed by Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. This theory states that personality is formed through conflicts among three fundamental structures of the human mind: the id, ego, and superego. It deals with the internal stages that humans go through in the process of personality development.

In simple terms, ‘id’ is the biological drive, for example ‘I want to do that now!’. But ‘superego’ (social expectations) will restrict that desire with ‘It’s not right to do that.’ And the stage completes with ‘Ego’ when the persona comes up with a middle way ‘Maybe we can compromise’.

According to Freud, a child goes through five stages which critically shapes and develops the personality. At each stage, there is a conflict between a child’s biological drives and social expectations; successful navigation of these internal conflicts will result in the completion of each stage and will result into a fully mature personality. Freud theory suggests that sexuality is the single driving force in the human personality development, which attracted fair criticism.

10. Escapism

Why do humans want to become inter-planetary species? Why we’ve always dreamed of leaving this planet, off into the dark sky, on another planet. Panspermia hypotheses propose that microscopic life-forms developed elsewhere. Maybe in the celestial bodies (space rocks) ejected into space as a result of a collision between planets and small solar system bodies. Later these celestial rocks collided into the earth and thus sowed the seeds of life on earth.

In an episode of ‘Ancient Aliens’ on History TV18, they entertained this thought that humans collectively have about the space. The episode argued that it is in our DNA to hustle and ultimately find a way out of this planet. Sigmund Freud considers escapist fantasy a necessary element in the life of humans.

Maybe that’s the internal driving force behind our space exploration programs and SpaceX.