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Human Universals, Human Nature & Human culture
Author(s): Donald E. Brown

Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of
Arts & Sciences Stable
URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027944
JLluman universals - of which hun dreds have been identified - consist of those
features of culture, society, language, behavior, and mind that, so far as the record
has been examined, are found among all peoples known to ethnogra phy and history.
After presenting some of the basic conceptions and problems concerning such
universals per se - their kinds and causes and the methodologi cal and disciplinary
considerations that have shaped their study -1 will explore some of the issues in
how human univer sals relate to human nature and human culture. I will begin with
some examples. In the cultural realm, human universals include myths, legends,
daily routines, rules, concepts of luck and precedent, body adornment, and the use
and pro duction of tools ; in the realm of lan guage, universals include grammar,
phonemes, polysemy, metonymy, antonyms,nd an inverse ratio between the fre
quency of use and the length of words ; in the social realm, universals include a
division of labor, social groups, age grad ing, the family, kinship systems, ethno
centrism, play, exchange, cooperation, and reciprocity; in the behavioral realm,
universals include aggression, gestures, gossip, and facial expressions; in the realm
of the mind, universals include emotions, dichotomous thinking, wari ness around or
fear of snakes, empathy, and psychological defense mechanisms. Many universals
do not fall neatly in to one or another of these conventional realms, but cut across
them. Kinship ter minologies (in English, the set of terms that includes 'father,'
'mother,' 'brother,' 'sister,' 'cousin,' etc.) are simultaneously social, cultural, and
linguistic. The con cept of property is social and cultural. Revenge is both behavioral
and social. Lying and conversational turn-taking are simultaneously behavioral,
social, and linguistic. Many behavioral univer sals almost certainly have distinctive,
even dedicated, neural underpinnings, and thus are universals of mind too. A
distinction among universals that figures large in anthropological thought is that
between 'emic' and 'etic' These words (derived from the linguistic terms 'phonemic'
and 'phonetic') distinguish
features that are overtly or consciously represented in a people's own
cultural conceptions from features that are pres ent but not a part of the overt
or con scious local cultural conceptions. Thus every people has a language with
gram mar, but not all peoples have an overt cultural representation of the idea of
grammar. Merely having grammar is an etic fact. If it is culturally represented as
well, then it is an emic fact too. Etically, everyone has a blood type, but the cul tural
practice of distinguishing between blood types (as in the case of those Jap anese
beliefs that link blood type with marital compatibility) is far from uni versal. Emic
universals are probably much rarer than etic universals. Many universals subdivide
into yet others. Thus tools are a universal, and so too are some general kinds of
tools (pounders, cutters, containers, etc.). The facial expression of emotion is a
univer sal, and so too are smiles, frowns, and other particular expressions. While
some universals are or seem to be relatively simple, others are complex.
Ethnocentrism and romantic love are examples : both are best understood as
complexes or syndromes rather than simple traits or behaviors. Many universals
have a collective rath er than individual referent. Thus music and dance are found in
all societies, but not all individuals dance or make music. Yet other universals are
found in all (normal) individuals, although some times only in one sex or the other or
in particular age ranges. Thus women ev erywhere predominate in child-care and on
average are younger than their mates. Children everywhere acquire language with
prodigious skill, but adults do not. On the other hand, above the age of in fancy
everyone employs gestures and such elementary logical concepts as 'not,' 'and,' 'or,'
'kind of,' 'greater/lesser,' 'part/whole,' etc. ; everyone classi fies ; everyone has likes
and dislikes. It is important to distinguish between kinds of universals. The formally

dis tinct kinds include absolute universals, near universals, conditional universals,
statistical universals, and universal pools. The universals I listed at the start of this
essay are absolute universals - they are found among all peoples known to
ethnography and history. A near univer sal, by contrast, is one for which there are
some few known exceptions or for which there is reason to think there might be
some exceptions. Fire making and keeping domestic dogs are near uni versals, as
there are good reports of a very few peoples who used fire but did not know how to
make it, or who did not possess dogs. Many traits are described as 'universal or
nearly universal' to ex press a note of caution (given the sam pling problems
to be described below). Thus the emphasis of percussion or deep-noted
instruments and of the colors red, white, and black in rituals around the
world should probably be described as 'universal or nearly univer sal.' A
conditional universal (also called an implicational universal) is an if-then
universal : if a particular condition is met, then the trait in question always ac
companies it. Such universals are analo gous to the facultative adaptations of
evolutionary biology, of which callusing is an example : not all individuals
have calluses, but if there is sustained friction on particular locations of the
hand, say, then calluses develop. An example from culture of a conditional
universal is that if there is a cultural preference for one hand over the other,
then it will be the right hand that is preferred (as in West ern culture, where
the right hand is used in greetings and taking oaths). It is the rule or underlying
causal mechanism that is the real universal in such cases. A statistical universal is
one that may be far from absolutely universal but that occurs in unrelated societies
at a rate that seems well above chance. An exam ple is the name different peoples
give to the pupil of the eye. In a surprisingly large number of unrelated languages, it
is a term that refers to a little person ; the apparent explanation for this is the com
mon experience of seeing a small reflec tion of oneself in other people's eyes.
Although it is something of a stretch to think of such phenomena as universals, the
explanation for them is drawn not from cultural particularities but from universal
experience. A universal pool refers to those situa tions in which a limited set of
options exhausts the possible variations from one society to another. The
international phonetic alphabet, which does not really cover all the possibilities,
nonetheless serves to express the idea : it consists of a finite possible set of speech
sounds or sound contrasts, from which a selection is found in each distinct language.
An early-twentieth-century analysis of kin ship terminologies showed that a quite
small set of semantic contrasts accounts for the differences in kin terms in all or
nearly all societies (a few further con trasts have been added since).1 Examples of
the semantic contrasts are sex, which distinguishes 'brother' from 'sister,' 'father'
from 'mother,' etc. ; and generation, which distinguishes 'son' from 'father,' 'father'
from 'grandfather,' etc.

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Human Universals, Human Nature & Human culture

Author(s): Donald E. Brown

and dislikes. It is important to distinguish between kinds of universals. The formally

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