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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.
Because I'm a huge asshole.
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.
It has everything to do with morality, it IS morality.
The situation you describe is exactly where personal moral feeling comes from. Its nature telling you (by making you feel bad) that punching that dude is a risky strategy for yourself. The public side of morailty (what we tell others they should do) follows the same rule: My repoduction works better in a world where everybody tells everybody else not to punch each other.
Perhaps you meant "it has nothing to do with moral absolutes". Then I would agree with you.
>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 *
On the contrary, they find the subject, "fascinating". (similar to why 'average' looking women buy Glamor magazine)
Sigs are for losers
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.
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.
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.