Evaluation of human behavior.

Abstract

ABSTRACT To the Editor.— I should like to comment on the LETTER of McCrae (216:679,1971). It is true that man has certain basic inherited patterns of behavior that have come down to him from his subhuman animal ancestry. Evolutionary theory and the common observations of behavioral science confirm this. These basic behavioral patterns include self preservation, species preservation (sexual behavior), territory formation, and group formation with status-seeking behavior. Another basic pattern, according to Lorenz, is aggressive behavior.Analysis of these behavior patterns shows that the self and species preservation are at the roots of these patterns. In short, man's behavior is aimed at preserving himself and his species; everything else hangs on this. And, indeed, these two are not unrelated, since reproduction by fission can be viewed as a means of self-preservation.Very early in evolutionary history animals began to become diversified on the basis of number of offspring produced,