Traits Of Human Nature Research Articles

Animals and Androids

People commonly ascribe lesser humanness to others than to themselves. Two senses of humanness appear to be involved: attributes that are unique to humans and those that constitute essential "human nature." Denying uniquely human and human-nature attributes to other people may implicitly liken them to animals and automata, respectively. In the present study, the go/no-go association task was used to assess implicit associations among social categories exemplifying the two senses of humanness, traits representing these senses, and the two types of nonhumans. Congruent associations (among artists, human-nature traits, and animals; among businesspeople, uniquely human traits, and automata) were consistently stronger than incongruent associations. Explicit ratings supported these differential associations. Social perception may involve two subtle ways of dehumanizing others.

More human than you: Attributing humanness to self and others.

People typically evaluate their in-groups more favorably than out-groups and themselves more favorably than others. Research on infrahumanization also suggests a preferential attribution of the "human essence" to in-groups, independent of in-group favoritism. The authors propose a corresponding phenomenon in interpersonal comparisons: People attribute greater humanness to themselves than to others, independent of self-enhancement. Study 1 and a pilot study demonstrated 2 distinct understandings of humanness--traits representing human nature and those that are uniquely human--and showed that only the former traits are understood as inhering essences. In Study 2, participants rated themselves higher than their peers on human nature traits but not on uniquely human traits, independent of self-enhancement. Study 3 replicated this "self-humanization" effect and indicated that it is partially mediated by attribution of greater depth to self versus others. Study 4 replicated the effect experimentally. Thus, people perceive themselves to be more essentially human than others.

The Paradoxes of Utopia A Study in Utopian Rationalism

Utopian rationalism names the belief that science has made utopia a practical possibility. Its characteristics include determinism, collectivism, distrust of individual initiative and belief in the superiority of collective planning in securing human happiness. The first section traces the utopian and dystopian tradition into modern science fiction. The ideas collected here are systematized in the next section, which on all points dismisses the tenets and claims of utopian rationalism as false, and in a final section, which discusses utopian thinking and its dangers in general. Utopian thinking is traced to three traits of human nature, namely, the quests for happiness, perfection, and submergence.

Marx as a Social Economist: The Labor Theory of Value∗

In an essay in the December 1978 issue of the Review of Social Economy [Hunt, 1978, pp. 285-309], I suggested that the criteria for defining social economics should focus on whether the economic theor? ist gives importance to the fact that in any actual, concrete, empirical situation, economic behavior is an intersection of the innate traits of human nature ? universal human needs, potential for development, and degree of malleability ? and the peculiar or particular social institutions, social relationships and social processes characteristic of the socioeconomic system under consideration. In that essay I asserted that Veblen and Marx were two of the clearest examples of social economists. In the present essay, I shall elaborate on this view of Marx. For reasons that I have elsewhere discussed extensively, I con? sider a theory of value to be the very heart of a general economic theory. [Hunt, 1977, pp. 11-26; and Hunt, 1979, clips. 3-12] There? fore, I shall discuss Marx's labor theory of value in the belief that it is the most essential core of his social economics.

Religion and the Mores

Mohammedanism, Romanism, and Protestantism contain Systems of world-philosophy which have been deduced from religious dogmas. The world-philosophy is in each case removed by several steps of deduction from the religious postulates. In each case Customs have grown up from the unavoidable compromise between metaphysical dogmas and interests, and these customs, so far as they inhere in essential traits of human nature, or in fundamental conditions of human life, or as far as they have taken on the sanctity of wide and ancient authority so that they seem to be above discussion, are the mores. Does a Roman Catholic, or a Mohammedan, or a Protestant child begin by learning the dogmas of his religion and then build a life-code on them? Not at all. He begins by living in, and according to, the mores of his family and societal environment. The vast mass of men in each case never do anything else but thus imbibe a character from the environment. If they learn the religious dogmas at all, it is superficially, negligently, erroneously. They are trained in the ritual, habituated to the usages, imbued with the notions, of the societal environment. They hear and repeat the proverbs, sayings, and maxims which are current in it. They perceive what is admired, ridiculed, abominated, desired by the people about them. They learn the code of conduct—what is considered stupid, smart, stylish, clever, or foolish, and they form themselves on these ideas. They get their standards from the standards of their environment. Behind this, but far behind it for all but the scholars, are the history and logic by which the mores are connected with the religious facts or dogmas, and when the scholars investigate the history and logic they find that the supposed history is a tissue of myths and legends and that the logic is like a thread broken at a hundred points, twisted into innumerable windings, and snarled into innumerable knots.