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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.'"
I would guess this journal doesn't have many subscriptions on the planet Vulcan.
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.
to publish the study freely :-))
Is that his stage name? What a badass name though, seriously.
Perhaps its because when you punch that dude you risk being expelled from the gene pool due to death or damage to reproductive organs. Nature (and thus humans) are usually only violent when violence increases their chance to reproduce it has nothing to do with morality.
Because I'm a huge asshole.
They can rip each other to shreds if the mood takes them.
On the highway? no, when anonymous? no.
And when in puberty? not a chance. The human child is a outright evil thing. Ever deal with a pack of teenage girls in a middle school? Satan is nice compared to those evil things.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is outrageous. Who do these scientists think they are?
New Yorkers are humans, too!
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
That's actually a good point. What does being anonymous do to the results of this study?
But back to your point, in the long run it might be the opposite, that people tend to remember more good things while mind works to forget the crappy stuff
I am very sorry, but I need to point out one very important thing ---
Contrary to your assertion, the human mind remembers bad events that create bad vibes much more than good feeling events
Here's one experiment that you can carry out yourself ---
Go do 100 good things to one person --- open door for the person, pour drink for the person, say "Hello", sweep the yard, clean the car ... and so on
After you do all that, do one bad thing to that same person --- just one will do
You can slap that person, or punch him/her, or kick the cat or whatever
See how that person will react
Will that person forgive your one bad act because you have done 100 good things for him/her?
Or will that person remember you forever for that one bad thing that you did to him/her --- and forgot all about the other 100 good things that you have done?
Go try that out yourself, and see the result
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Wait a minute. Does this mean that all those times I've thought people were being nasty they were either being ignorant or incompetent? That would mean everyone is dumber than I thought. In some ways that's easier to believe.
A large part of our being nice relies on laws.
But look what happens to people "above the law". Copyright Legislators? Not Nice.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
People are indeed nice, because they have learned via evolution (social or biological) that cooperation is more productive overall than fighting (just ask military people what is the reason for professional armies and how many soldiers shoot in the air during battles). However, the civilization system that we build promotes and rewards above else cheaters and sociopaths. And thus, the level of psychopathy is proportional to the wealth/power. Being anti-human is a requirement to become very powerful in our paradigm.
Just make a search on "iterative prisoner's dilemma" and you will see that as long as defection is not rewarded WAY higher than cooperation (it should be higher though - one time cheating is usually profitable) people tend to cooperate. Make the reward for defection really big and well....people will cheat.
After all wealth is tight with survival chances and longevity so there is a very good biological incentive to seek wealth. The system rewards bastards, so we tend to become bastards.
I hope I am clear enough.
Do we count honesty as nice? A little experiment (in the form of an ad for a bank that I do not use, am not employed by or own shares of).
Would you give back the $5 to this asshole?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgiWkVZGN7g
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
You are plenty clear enough for me, so I don't need to mirror your fine point.
System rewarding bastards applies to many levels of politics. I'll also add the economy of synergy effects - all the bastards are within 100 miles of each other, controlling 150+ million of us across the country. It's absolutely the Prisoner's Dilemma because we can't coordinate enough to vote a third party in.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
For instance, it is known that bees have an unusual form of heredity which means that sisters are more closely related than they are to the next generation. Did the bee colony co-evolve cooperation and this hereditary mechanism? Why are bonobos socially cooperative and other chimpanzee races much less so?
Another example: wrens. In the breeding season these birds are strongly territorial. In winter they will find suitable hiding places and cluster in groups to keep warm.
Once again, correlation doesn't imply causation, and this subject is well worth investigating because of its potential importance to survival as population increases.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
If we have a fundamental aversion to violence, then why are we entertained by it?
Personally I think it's the lack of consequences that entertainment-based violence offers. That our built-in aversion to violence is a more wide-ranging built-in aversion to getting into situations that would end badly for us. A Risk/Reward system built in to our biology.
Also, *Doffs hat* Have a nice day.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Humans are nice, yes; kin selection has made us opt for things clearly disavantageous as individuals (like honesty and non-violence to the weaker) but advantageous to our groups - being the group whatever you feel like (co-citizens, brothers of faith, nation, teenagers, team supporters, vegans/vegetarians/omnivorous...).
But ironically, when groups collide, the same kin selection with the same "group over individual" genetically embued mentality make us insane, violent and savage - war, team supporters fights, raids...
It's almost like genetics proving Anonymous is right - none of us are as cruel as all of us .
Nerdy news for your nerdy needs? http://www.soylentnews.org Soylent News is people!
>If we have a fundamental aversion to violence, then why are we entertained by it?
So it never occurred to you that humans have the capacity to tell fantasy and reality appart and can in fantasy enjoy the very things that we are averse to in reality without any particular causal link or need for the one to bleed into the other ?
Not to do deny that such bleeding over never happens, only that there is no proof nor even any GOOD reasons to believe it's inevitable or that the process is not entirely within the conscious control of the person involved.
We're entertained by fictional violence because they appeal to our flght-or-flight adrenal gland responses without triggering any of the emotions that real violence links to - disgust, fear etc.
This kind of study is actually quite in line with what we can observe all the time - people who are under the influence of drugs like alcohol are far more likely to act violently. That makes sense as natural aversions are reduced by such drugs (the same reason they have a notable reductive effect on sexual inhibitions)
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
It's smarter to be nice thats why.
If you ever were a kid and you went and punched another kid that kid is probably going to punch you back and harder than you punched them. If you pull a cats tail it's probably going to scratch or bite you. People learn to be nice because usually that is the only way to live a long life. Mean people don't get as much sympathy when something bad happens to them, and people who like violence often don't live very long unless they become professionals.
Are people nice? Yes but people are nice because they learn to be. In many cases people are nice because they have to be. Experiments have shown the exact opposite of this result. The Milgram experiment proves that deep down people aren't nice when no one is looking or when some authority tells them to be mean. The Stanford prison torture experiment proves the exact opposite as well in that people actually enjoy hurting others when they know they can get away with it.
The article is disinformation. It's looking at neuroscience (what people think and feel) vs what they actually do. People tend to do whatever is easiest, then they do what is smarter, and if being mean is easier and smarter than being nice then people can be mean.
People are indeed nice, because they have learned via evolution (social or biological) that cooperation is more productive overall than fighting (just ask military people what is the reason for professional armies and how many soldiers shoot in the air during battles). However, the civilization system that we build promotes and rewards above else cheaters and sociopaths. And thus, the level of psychopathy is proportional to the wealth/power. Being anti-human is a requirement to become very powerful in our paradigm.
Just make a search on "iterative prisoner's dilemma" and you will see that as long as defection is not rewarded WAY higher than cooperation (it should be higher though - one time cheating is usually profitable) people tend to cooperate. Make the reward for defection really big and well....people will cheat.
After all wealth is tight with survival chances and longevity so there is a very good biological incentive to seek wealth. The system rewards bastards, so we tend to become bastards.
I hope I am clear enough.
Only people aren't nice when they are prison guards. Suddenly they become mean torturers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
http://www.prisonexp.org/
There's probably a near infinite number of basic differences between accurately depicting violence and showing it the way most entertainment does. For just a few examples, take films such as Con Air or the Die Hard series. Are people really attracted to the message of violence itself, or do they like it that the violence seems to fall hardest on the worst villians, as though the violence became proof that there was some sort of God, if only a God of Wrath that would steer a falling villiain into landing in an improvised electric chair? Most people are not attracted to entertainment where violence is shown as part of the random seeming outcomes of the real world. Showing that the Uber-Eeeevil guy still has people who miss him once he's gone - that what one person considers a terrorist, another considers a freedom fighter - that bullets don't always stop in the primary target - these things tend to hurt entertainment sales.
In a way, you could argue that the (fictive, entertainment depiction of) violence is itself never the real problem, and worrying about the effect of it on even children is worrying about the wrong aspect of the TV shows and films in question. Even if we grant the premise that entertainment violence does have bad effects on some people, maybe it's the terrible inaccuracy of films that show people shooting guns out of "perp's" hands with high powered sniper rifles that would take said perp's whole arm off at the shoulder that cause the psychological damage. Maybe showing the randomness of a realistic firefight, showing the consequences with some respect for realism, is what's needed to keep from glamorizing the violence itself. Maybe it's showing guns as surgically precise tools and bullets as steered by the god of the tribe of good guys to achieve instant karma. Maybe it's showing people falling down, but not showing funerals full of grieving families, or people spending the rest of their lives in wheelchairs, or even some poor janitor having to mop up the mess. Maybe it's the claim that the strong and decent are quick to resort to violence rather than reluctant at best.
Who is John Cabal?
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!
If we have a fundamental aversion to violence, then why are we entertained by it?
I don't think it's the violence, per se. The violence in movies and video games are more wish fulfillment - getting the bad guy and giving him what he deserves.
Grand Theft Auto, OTOH, .....fantasy - a "what if I went completely ape shit sociopath" type of fantasy.
Then it gets boring.
And I find as I get older, the violence get more and more boring. I really don't like action movies. When the fight scenes come, I fidget until they're over - Jackie Chan may be the exception because he's dancing more than he's fighting. Star Wars, the third movie where Vader is created (I don't give a shit what the real title is), put me to sleep - and still does.
And with any basic knowledge of physics, action movies are incredibly annoying. My biggest pet peeve - when someone shoots someone the shooter doesn't move and the person being shot flies back several meters. I wish there was a zombie Newton that would eat all the brains in Hollywood - but the poor bastard would starve.
Recent dutch new story, some kids taped a pet mouse to a firework rocket. Why was this news? Because reporting each and every day the billions of pets NOT mistreated would make the news run a bit long.
News is something that is exceptional, not the norm. Today the sun came up, is NOT news. Today the sun didn't come up, that is news.
No need to dig deeper.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Have a nice day :)
Stop tellin' me what to do! You ain't the boss of me!
I have always found the trolley model to be absurd. If we were being realistic, then there would be other solutions. The same dilemma was re-written for river tribesmen, and I much prefer this version. As far as I can remember, it goes like this...
You fish on the great river. There are five people in your boat: four people who row, and a fat guy who sits in the back and baits the hooks. Your grandfather has stories of a great and fierce crocodile that lives in the river, and kills entire boat crews, but your generation have never seen it...
(1)
The crocodile appears and comes for the boat. He swims much faster than you can row, but you start to row anyway. The fat guy was standing up at the back, and he falls in. Suddenly the boat is going faster: you might get to shore, but then the fat guy is lost. Do you turn around and try to pick him up? Most people would keep going, but feel that they ought to turn back.
(2)
The crocodile appears and comes for the boat. He swims much faster than you can row, but you start to row anyway. The fat guy was standing up at the back, but does not fall in. You know if he falls in, the boat will go faster, and he may distract the crocodile too. Do you push him in? Most people would not push, but would think that the four for one exchange is reasonable.
(3)
You are the fat guy. The crocodile appears and comes for the boat. If you jump off the boat, the others might make it to shore. Most people would think that the four for one exchange is reasonable: they hope they would be noble enough to jump, but suspect the wouldn't actually do it.
Personally I think it's the lack of consequences that entertainment-based violence offers.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there: Historically, there were gladiator games and Mayan ball court games with very real risks to the players. Even the modern somewhat-less-violent versions (full-contact sports like football, UFC, boxing, WWE) has significant consequences to the participants in the form of concussions, broken limbs, problems related to steroid use, and shorter life spans. And then there's the people who seem to treat real warfare casually and as entertainment (who are never the people actually fighting it).
Humans do seem to accept violence that risks other people's lives as entertainment.
I am officially gone from
You seem to ignore the fact that large numbers of people enjoy actual violence, injury and death. Most notable would have been the gladiators and others that were killed off in large numbers in front of very large crowds almost every day. More recently we just love the actual crashing and hurting involved in sports (American Football, Football, Rugby, Boxing etc). Not so much to the death now-a-days, but we do love our actual violence even though it's in the organised sports realm.
That and we seem to have copious quantities of examples of warfare and the barbarism (gulags, the killing fields, ethnic cleansing, the "resource wars" in Africa, etc etc), which by all accounts all too many people enthusiastically participate in.
I guess that I'm thoroughly unconvinced by this study.
Study after study. Paper after paper. Knowledge upon knowledge. We keep learning the same things about ourselves over and over and over again. Corruption is a problem of opportunity more than of character. We observe that people who believe they are "on top" are more likely to cheat and lie. We observe that when we know who we are dealing with and they know us, we are less likely to do 'bad things.'
It's all part of our human nature. We see it in everything we do. When we get into "road rage" we don't identify the people, we identify the car and call 'it' an asshole and handle it however we feel we need to. When we, people, deal with "non-people" things, we are assholes.
We have built-in empathy for others. But when we are able to see people as non-people, we can do truly terrible things to them.
With all that said, there are STILL individuals capable of overcoming this problem. These rare people can look upon the need and suffering of others and not feel a pang of guilt or a desire to help. We call them sociopaths, but we also call them leaders, bosses and idols.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2707959&cid=39248607 Since the late 1980s, the game theory, strategies to play iterated prisoner's dilemma etc have led to a fundamental understanding of how altruism and cooperation could evolve. Chapter 13, "Nice guys finish first" in The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is a good starting point. But it is slightly dated, circa 1992. There are more recent materials too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'll just leave this here..
http://chzgifs.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/funny-gifs-sorry-spiderman.gif
factor 966971: 966971
It's not unreality that makes violence attractive. If it were, a real fight wouldn't draw a crowd.
The difference is a fight between two OTHER people doesn't threaten you.
People are averse to violence that could directly involve themselves and probably only to that threat.
Time and survival have turned me from a nice kid to a cynical punk
RTF[Summary]: They're talking "nature". You're talking "nurture". Like maybe one's crappy church or crappy parents or crappy poverty makes one violent.
$10,000 behind in fact
I come here for the love
Yeah, funny how people forget that we are social animals. Being social doesn't mean we're always nice and not selfish pricks, but it does mean there is a tendency just as real as selfishness to want to strengthen social bonds, and see to the health of the group.
The enemies of Democracy are
--
.nosig
I read about this theory years ago, which I've always found to be particularly interesting.
tl;dr: Human beings are naturally nonviolent. 6-7,000 years ago, desertification in northern Africa caused the humans there to become desperate for food and resources, and thus violent in order to survive. These cultures in turn spread out over the entire world (obviously able to out-compete peaceful peoples). And now various cultural practices have continued teaching violent behavior to people generation after generation when there's no longer any such natural "need" for such violence.
Liberty in your lifetime
Which is fine and thanks for the quotation. However, the main point was that I am always being told by Christians that morality comes from God and as a horrible agnostic, I have no moral compass.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
No, many religious types believe that all people are evil types itching to go on crime sprees. You may have heard it referred to as "original sin".
The fundamental purpose of religion is to keep people nice enough that we don't exterminate ourselves. (Unfortunately, it also turns out to be a great way to manipulate large groups for selfish purposes). If you read the Old Testament laws (mostly in Leviticus, re-explained in Deuteronomy) you might notice a pattern. They're all aimed at preserving a stable society with low mortality and a high rate of reproduction. They weren't new ideas that people dreamed up and said, "Let's not do that". They were common actions that were identified as things that would keep them from growing big enough to be an independent nation.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
*I use the term "natural duel" in a technical sense that excludes the artifices we have known as "duels" in civilization: Two individuals (males) in an open natural setting -- not in an arena or ring -- using everything at their disposal to hunt down and kill their rival. In the human case this includes the use of tools/weapons of their own making as well as strategy and improvisation.
Seastead this.
Do we count honesty as nice?
Quite the contrary: telling someone a truth they don't want to hear is one of the fastest ways to be labeled an dick, in my experience.
I'll take being an honest asshole over a lying one any day of the week.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Good comment. It got me thinking; I wonder if one reason we are drawn to watching violence from relative safety is to allow us to learn more about violence (or disasters, or whatever) without risk.
I've never really thought about it this way, but it seems to make a rudimentary sense that we'd develop a desire to watch a train wreck (or fist fight, or Megatron vs Optimus) in order to see who survives, and then mimic their actions if we find ourselves in our own train wreck later on. Surely the ridiculousness of a Hollywood fight scene won't help much in this regard, but, prior to TV? Say, Roman gladiator times? Maybe.
... but when you throw in a little greed and organizational hierarchy and chase it down with some tribalism and groupthink, we're still more likely to screw each other in the name of competition than cooperate in the name of the Common Good.
Evolution is entirely random. Natural selection is not. You are using the term evolution to describe both processes.
You would be correct if there were an ideology that advocated not working and living off of welfare. The act of receiving welfare only indicates that you don't have a job for some reason.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel