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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.'"
Humans have a built in mechanism that focuses more of their attention towards bad things, "not nice" people, etc. Because it's the not nice things / people that have a higher probability of killing you and thus deserve more of your attention.
When I was young I was the nicest guy I knew
I thought I was the chosen one
But time went by and I found out a thing or two
My shine wore off as time wore on
I thought that I was living out the perfect life
But in the lonely hours when the truth begins to bite
I thought about the times when I turned my back & stalled
I ain't no nice guy after all --Lemmy Kilminster
Lemmy said it better than I could.
Time and survival have turned me from a nice kid to a cynical punk to a vicious hoodlum to a cracked middle aged guy trying to find that nice kid again.
I think whoever did this research didn't go to the wrong side of town or find subjects outside their safe comfort zone. Like the dick that I am, I'm gonna have'ta call bad science on this one.
Like they say, "you can't go home again".... I ain't no nice guy after all.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I made an "artificial life" simulator - at one point in the simulation I gave the creatures the ability to kill one another (by attempting to occupy the same space at the same time, the bigger (and so, fitter and more able to reproduce) creature would win, and get a food boost as a bonus, too.) Population plummeted for many generations while the creatures slaughtered each other, but then a few generations later, population suddenly increased again - a mutation had learned how to avoid collisions and thus was able to more densely populate the available space. Within a short time, non-violent creatures became dominant over intentionally or accidentally violent ones by a ratio of more than 100:1.