GRE Reading Comprehension

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Source: NO6

Some modern anthropologists hold that biological evolution has shaped not only human morphology but also human behavior. The role those anthropologists ascribe to evolution is not of dictating the details of human behavior but one of imposing constraints—ways of feeling, thinking, and acting that "come naturally" in archetypal situations in any culture. Our "frailties" –emotions and motives such as rage, fear, greed,gluttony, joy, lust, love—may be a very mixed assortment, but they share at least one immediate quality: we are, as we say, "in the grip" of them. And thus they give us our sense of constraints. Unhappily, some of those frailties—our need for ever-increasing security among them—are presently maladaptive. Yet beneath the overlay of cultural detail, they, too, are said to be biological in direction, and therefore as natural to us as are our appendixes. We would need to comprehend thoroughly their adaptive origins in order to understand how badly they guide us now. And we might then begin to resist their pressure.

Question List: 1 2 3 4

The primary purpose of the passage is to present

  • A a position on the foundations of human behavior and on what those foundations imply
  • B a theory outlining the parallel development of human morphology and of human behavior
  • C a diagnostic test for separating biologically determined behavior patterns from culture-specific detail
  • D a practical method for resisting the pressures of biologically determined drives
  • E an overview of those human emotions and motives that impose constraints on human behavior

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