Animal and human behavior is highly contingent on circumstance

Evidence

While the use of such explanatory devices had been commonplace in both biology and psychology, Lumsden and Wilson differed from other theorists of development in proposing that such rules are genetically determined, in the sense that the characteristics of the rules themselves develop independently of the state of external conditions. Such a position does not seem plausible @ priori and the empirical grounds for doubting it are also substantial (see Bateson 1976; 1983). What an individual does is highly dependent on circumstances, in terms of both the short-term control of behaviour and the development of an individual’s particular style (Hinde 1982; Huntingford 1984). No animal behaves in the same way irrespective of conditions. Nor, of course, do humans. Departures from the norm are not necessarily pathologies generated by abnormal conditions. They may well be highly adaptive responses to particular ecological conditions. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 439

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that departures from norms can be adaptive responses rather than pathologies resonates directly with the reader’s task — in Blindness, ‘abnormal’ social behavior is a rational response to collapsed observability, not mere pathology. — connects to: Maternal behavior stems from situation and attitude, not instinct — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1503; Human habit conceals its own habitual character, whereas animal habit does not — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 551; Success in hunting depends on matching the animal’s timing judgment — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 206 (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The idea that deviance is adaptive contingency rather than dysfunction presses hard against both biological determinism and theories that treat norm-transgression as breakdown — a genuinely re-orienting lens.