1460 



HORMONAL REGULATION OF BEHAVIOR 



process of generalization, American youths 

 are able to fall in love with a whole series 

 of personally diverse but socially practica- 

 ble tentative partners before a final selec- 

 tion is made (Mead, 1949b). The Lepchas 

 of Sikkim assume that one will become 

 permanently attached to a spouse if one 

 sleeps with that spouse; young girls, mar- 

 ried without any opportunity to exercise se- 

 lection, may refuse to consununate a mar- 

 riage for several years (Gorer, 1938). 



Thus, in examining in different societies 

 either the whole set of cognitive rehearsals 

 within which individuals function and ma- 

 ture or the range of diverse behaviors 

 around some particular period or stage 

 (such as weaning or first intercourse), it is 

 necessary to keep in mind the changes in 

 cortical control and endociine functioning 

 through which each individual passes and 

 the extent to which an experience, in in- 

 fancy or childhood, at first intercourse, or 

 childbirth, is an appropriate prefiguration 

 of some later activity or a fulfillment 

 of some earlier learning or expectation. 

 Throughout, we shall be dealing with the 

 question of fit; whether the period at which 

 first sex activity is socially permitted does 

 or does not coincide with periods of endo- 

 crine reinforcement of sex drive, and what 

 supplementary cultural practices there are 

 to mediate these various degrees and types 

 of exact or contrapuntal fit. 



It is essential to bear in mind also that 

 man is a domestic animal, displaying the 

 characteristics of domestic animals. Man 

 also shows a conspicuous absence of "races" 

 with reproductive isolation and a corre- 

 sponding lack of inherent or specifically im- 

 printed species recognition patterns (Hart- 

 ley, 1950). The cultural patterning of 

 human behavior functions very much like 

 inherent species recognition patterns, in 

 that human beings learn that certain in- 

 dividuals are suitable mates and that others 

 are to be rejected in terms of incest taboos 

 or along caste, class, or other lines of social 

 categorization. Small learned details of be- 

 havior, the way a spoon is held, the posture 

 of the body, an accent, may be sufficient 

 to warn a male and a female away from 

 each other or to establish a situation in 

 which a temporary or permanent sexual 

 union is possible. Aristocracies, isolated 



peasant groups, and primitive peoples often 

 display a highly ritualized type of behavior, 

 reminiscent in precision and style of the 

 courtship and mating behavior of wild birds 

 (Lorenz, 1950; Tanner and Inhelder, 1953), 

 whereas the behavior of mixed, newly ur- 

 banized populations shows the lack of fine 

 discriminations and the tendency toward 

 promiscuous search and response which has 

 been described in folk language as "barn- 

 yard morals." 



Konrad Lorenz 's recent detailed small 

 group studies of Greylag geese have re- 

 vealed a series of anomalies not unlike what 

 is found in highly degenerate rural com- 

 munities or extreme slum conditions (Lo- 

 renz, 1959). When geese are reared in a 

 constricted territory, all treat each other 

 as nest mates, the responses which nest 

 mates give each other are perpetuated into 

 adulthood and the warning behavior which 

 a strange male gives to another male, which 

 indicates his maleness, is absent. Under 

 these conditions homosexual male pairs are 

 formed, in which the superiority of the male 

 triumph ceremony, which occurs between 

 mates and between nest mates, proves a 

 greater attraction than the weaker female 

 display. Also a male may mate with two 

 females whom he cannot tell apart unless 

 they are both together, and the females, in- 

 hibited in any display of appropriate ag- 

 gression, cannot chase each other away. 



These analogues between the malfunc- 

 tioning of highly patterned inherited behav- 

 ior, under conditions of crowding, and the 

 breakdown of highly sanctioned human 

 learned behavior are exceedingly revealing. 



VII. Range of Patterning 



We may first consider those aspects of 

 human sex behavior which may be said to 

 be based directly on the biologic nature of 

 Homo sapiens. As all living peoples belong 

 to a single species, a single recitation of the 

 biologically given framework within which 

 the most primitive and the most civilized 

 operate is sufficient. At the present stage 

 of research, there is no indication that any 

 people on the earth today have an innate 

 equipment superior or inferior to that of 

 any other people, in ways which have im- 

 plications for social learning. 



In considering the sex behavior of Homo 



