The “Human Nature” Justification Myth

This entry is more along the lines of a “pet peeve” than some great management insight. But please bear with us because it’s important to get this off our chests.

Have you ever noticed that one of the quickest ways a manager (or anyone, for that matter) can end a dialogue, particularly one concerning a point of disagreement, is to pronounce your point of view “countrary to human nature”? This assertion is presented as being definitive, unarguable, sacrosanct, and therefore, finally determinative of any point under discussion. Once this decree has been uttered, any further disagreement or challenge may simply be viewed as argumentative and insubordinate. The issue has now been decided once and for all, by fiat and undeniable truth, hasn’t it?

Resorting to this argument, in our estimation, simply avoids having to confront or deal with any criticisms of the status quo, recommendations for change, or counterpoints to prior assertions. It is all that is left to be said when the manager runs out of valid and cogent counterarguments to your proposition. But its message is clear: leave it alone.

To what extent do you view your manager or supervisor as a great student of human nature? When he or she blurts out in the context of a debate something like “human beings are by nature competitive animals, and therefore trying to put together incentives for group cooperation is a waste of time,” how often do you actually find yourself in agreement with the manager’s pronouncement? Do you sit and question the degree to which you actually believe his or her statement and the conclusions implicit in it?

How many supervisors have actually been educated to any extent on the “nature” of human beings? Are they literate in the most recent scientific findings concerning human perception, human psychological development, human motivation, or attitude and belief formation. Or has most of their learning come through the “school of hard knocks,” whereby virtually all of their conclusions about human nature have been filtered through their old work environments’ cultures. Aren’t they simply bearing witness to the way things have always been in the worlds in which they’ve survived in the past and figured out ways to succeed? How much of their experience and personal evolution has been fueled by environments that encouraged individual learning and growth, risk-taking, experimentation, and continuous formal education. Is their pronouncement simply more along the lines of “we’ve always done it that way,” or “better not challenge the status quo if you know what’s good for you”?

We would argue that it’s not far-fetched to claim that it is human nature to defecate in the woods, if history is any guide of how humans behaved for thousands years before the advent of fixed communities and plumbing. Nevertheless, humans have evolved over the millennia with the advent of ideas such as civility, cleanliness, cooperation, and social responsibility. One of the great advantages of being human is that, unlike other creatures in the animal world, we are not saddled once and for all with our instinctual behaviors. Nor do we have to be slaves to prescriptions justified by pronouncements that they correspond with “human nature.” We can actually use our cerebral cortexes to develop new ideas and ways of thinking and acting that generate more positive and effective outcomes in the world.