Sociobiology is the application of evolutionary biology to human and other animal behavior. Charles Darwin wrote of the relevance of evolution to understanding human and other animal behavior, but the formalization of sociobiology as a distinct science, and the invention of the name, date from the 1975 book by Edward O. Wilson. Wilson explained the evolutionary basis of the behavior of a wide range of different animals, then in the last chapter applied these principles to humans. He expanded human sociobiology into a best-selling 1978 book On Human Nature.

Wilson identified a number of human behaviors that appear to be universal. If these behaviors were determined entirely by the environment in which individuals developed and on their personal decisions, they would be unlikely to be universal. Wilson did not claim that environment and personal decision had no effect on human behavior, but that they did not influence them completely. Wilson then provided explanations of how each of those behaviors would have proven beneficial to the fitness of humans, and therefore would have been favored by natural selection. The environment in which these behaviors would have proven beneficial is not the modern environment but the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, during the hundred thousand years that Homo sapiens existed prior to agriculture and civilization, and quite likely the environments of earlier Homo and earlier hominin species. These behaviors include:

- Incest avoidance. Human societies differ markedly in reproductive systems, from (near) monogamy to the formation of harems to (near) promiscuity. Societies differ markedly in which behaviors they consider moral and immoral. All human societies consider close consanguineous matings (incest) to be immoral. The evolutionary benefit of the "incest taboo" is that incest produces many offspring that display detrimental genetic traits.

- Recognition of discrete colors. Colors do not really exist. Photons have a continuous range of wavelengths; wavelengths between about 0.000015 inch (400 nm) and about 0.000028 inch (700 nm) are visible to humans. The recognition of discrete colors results in part from the three kinds of cones in the human retina (responding to wavelengths humans recognize as red, green, and blue) and the interpretation of nerve impulses by the human brain. Humans of all cultures have brains that interpret very similar sets of colors. Evolutionary advantages of color recognition include the ability to recognize food sources and to use color as a medium of cultural communication.

- Face pattern recognition. Humans of all cultures have brains that recognize individual faces and do so on the basis of mostly the same characteristics. The evolutionary advantages include the ability to keep track of which individual humans are friends and which are rivals within a society.

- Facial expressions. Humans of all cultures produce and respond to the same facial expressions in the same way, including anger, terror, surprise, and happiness. Smiling is not only universal but even individuals blind from birth, and who could not possibly be imitating someone else, smile. The advantages for social communication and cohesion can hardly be overestimated. . .

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