Can evolutionary theory help us to understand human behaviour and society? Many evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, and psychologists are optimistic that evolutionary principles can be applied to human behaviour, and have offered evolutionary explanations for a wide range of human characteristics, such as homicide, religion, and sex differences in behaviour. Others are sceptical of these interpretations, and stress the effects of learning and culture. They maintain that human beings are too special to study as if they were just another animal—after all, we have complex culture, language, and writing, and we build houses and programme computers.