Humans Are Nicer Than We Think

derekmead writes "While everyone's always waxing like Lord Tennyson about nature being 'red in tooth and claw,' neuroscience and psychology are quietly telling us that we may be innately nicer than we think. Sure, we're not cuddly little bunny rabbits, but many lines of evidence over the past few decades have pointed toward some distinctly physical underpinning of basic morality and aversion to violence, implying that humans (and probably many other animals to) have a strong built-in 'try-not-to-punch-that-dude' mechanism. A recent study published in the journal Emotion, by psychologists Fiery Cushman, Allison Gaffey, Kurt Gray, and Wendy Mendes, provides some further evidence for the link, as the authors put it, 'between the body and moral decision-making processes.'"

Comments

I'm an exception to the rule

[ProgrammerJulia]

Because I'm a huge asshole.

Re:First post

[doti]

I'll just leave this here..

http://chzgifs.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/funny-gifs-sorry-spiderman.gif

Pinker's book

[sbjornda]

People interested in this topic may wish to read Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. In my opinion Pinker does a more convincing job of documenting that violence has declined rather than why, but it's a fun read.

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.nosig