There is not one specific condition that makes us behave a certain way, instead it is a combination of several elements. Robert Sapolsky explores in depth what the causes and effects of the variables that make up who we are. Most of our mannerisms are rooted in our ethnicity, the culture we grew up in, society, where we spent most of our lives, and our susceptibility and exposure to certain behaviors. Though these are all important, they do not solely determine our predispositions to certain attributes, instead it is a combination of genes and the environment. Dr. Sapolsky justifies his research by telling how we are affected by things that happened millions of years ago in our history, which in turn directly affects our amygdala, that is the part of the cerebral hemisphere involved with emotions. Even though some consider our behaviors to be made up of a series of life altering situations, it is actually genes, the…show more content… Sapolsky begins his talk with describing a fantasy he has dreamt of since he was a child. It is a scene where he breaks into Adolf Hitler's bunker, cuffs him, and then proceeds to do gruesome things to him. If this was actually done, it would be considered heroic. However, in another situation, he told everyone to imagine they were walking down the street, and a person was running towards them with what appeared to be a gun, so you shoot, and upon closer inspection, the "gun" was a cell phone. He goes on to state that if the person running towards you was a man, and perhaps a different race, our biological predispositions would make us more likely to shoot. Sapolsky goes on to say how when it is the right kind of violence, it is completely fine, in fact, we praise it, but when the same kind of violence is performed in another situation, it is punishable. So, this brings him to the question of what goes on in our brain when we are in these situations? He begins in the first second before a behavior is provoked, leading us to the
