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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.
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.
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 !
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.
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
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.
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Hanlon's Razor.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
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>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 *
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
However, pre Korean war only 15 to 20% of of soldiers in close qurarters fired their weapons. http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hope_on_the_battlefield/
Those who are violent enough to kill are a pretty small number, percentage wise. And nobody would blame a solder for shooting at a soldier that was firing at him.
Being able to deliberately kill a fellow human being is a somewhat rare ability.
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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.