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

We're only nice in person

[wcrowe]

We may be less likely to do violence as individuals, but we're more than happy to embrace violence if someone else is doing the torture and killing. Lots of people are completely at ease with the fact that a million babies are killed in abortions every year, while many others believe that waterboarding prisoners is perfectly acceptable.