Survival Instinct
gregladen | March 15, 2016The latest National Geographic Roundtable Question: Survivor-style television has grown increasingly popular over the years and done a great job of illustrating our brain's fascinating built-in survival instinct. What role do you think our ancestral instincts play today in helping us survive, thrive and accomplish our goals? How much of our ancestral survival instincts are innate verses learned?
First, the innate vs. learned part of the question. This is a false dichotomy. We have evolved to learn. We probably have "built in" mechanisms to learn new things. This means that when we have…