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What is the Standard Social Science Model of Human Nature?

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Final answer:

The Standard Social Science Model emphasizes environmental influences on human behavior, while sociobiology credits genetics and natural selection, contributing to the nature versus nurture debate within the social sciences.

Step-by-step explanation:

The Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) of Human Nature suggests that human behavior is primarily learned through interaction with the environment. This view posits that society and culture shape our behaviors, beliefs, and personalities rather than biological determinants. In contrast, sociobiology argues that human behavior can be explained mostly through genetics and natural selection, framing the 'nature versus nurture' debate. Critics of sociobiology, like Stephen Jay Gould, argue that this perspective underestimates environmental influences. Understanding human nature is essential to social sciences, which aim to find rules of human behavior as certain as those in natural sciences.

Works such as Maryanski and Turner's The Social Cage and the approaches of evolutionary biology and sociobiology provide insights into human behavior through the lenses of genetics and evolution, recognizing that humans are subject to natural laws and that cooperation with nature may affect how societies evolve and individuals behave.

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