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This chapter examines socialization and the process by which social norms become internalized, how this capacity for internalization could have evolved, and why the norms internalized tend to be group-beneficial. It begins with a discussion of cultural transmission and how it overrides fitness by taking account of two facts. First, the phenotypic expression of an individual's genetic inheritance depends on a developmental process that is plastic and open-ended. Second, this developmental process is deliberately structured—by elders, teachers, political leaders, and religious figures—to foster certain kinds of development and to thwart others. The chapter then introduces a purely phenotypic model in which, as a result of the effectiveness of socialization, a fitness-reducing norm may be maintained in a population. It also describes the gene-culture coevolution of a fitness-reducing norm before concluding with an analysis of the link between internalization of norms and altruism.

The levels of social impairment experienced by different individuals with autism spectrum disorder strongly correlate with the degrees of dysfunction within each individual’s superior temporal sulcus (STS), a key region in social perception, in general, and in the perception of biological motion, in specific. From a developmental perspective, while STS responsiveness becomes increasingly selective for human movement in typical children, observers with autism show less selective tuning. Brain imaging research is reviewed that supports an interactive development model of the social brain and social perception.

Optimizing human performance is the expression of a desired phenotype to meet the challenges of a particular task. Desired phenotypes are expressed in response to canalizing experiences such as in acclimatization to environments. Here one’s biobehavioral system adapts to the challenges of the environment to reduce physiologic strain on the system. These adaptations are within the biobehavioral system’s repertoire of expressible phenotypes and are reversible. Desired phenotypes can be maintained, facilitated, or induced by canalizing experiences. In the desire to optimize performance, the canalizing experiences are often designed to induce or prolong phenotypic expression to meet the demands of a constructed task. In these cases, the canalizing experiences, whether pharmacological or other physiologically invasive, often lead to irreversible negative health consequences. This chapter discusses the effects of canalizing experiences in terms of the strains on the biobehavioral system. The chapter advances a concept of strong environment as a means to facilitate and maintain phenotypes, which are within the phenotypic expressible repertoire. The argument is made that leveraging the bio-behavioral system’s wild type rather than domesticating the system to express a supernormal phenotype yields greater agility and overall health in a population to overcome challenges.