Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

by Robert M. Sapolsky

  47.C. Lamm et al., “The Neural Substrate of Human Empathy: Effects of Perspective-Taking and Cognitive Appraisal,” J Cog Nsci 19 (2007): 42.

  48.N. Eisenberg et al., “The Relations of Emotionality and Regulation to Dispositional and Situational Empathy-Related Responding,” JPSP 66 (1994): 776; G. Carlo et al., “The Altruistic Personality: In What Contexts Is It Apparent?” JPSP 61 (1991): 450.

  49.B. Briers et al., “Hungry for Money: The Desire for Caloric Resources Increases the Desire for Financial Resources and Vice Versa?” Psych Sci 17 (2006): 939; J. Twenge et al., “Social Exclusion Decreases Prosocial Behavior,” JPSP 92 (2007): 56; L. Martin et al., “Reducing Social Stress Elicits Emotional Contagion of Pain in Mouse and Human Strangers,” Curr Biol 25 (2015): 326.

  50.R. Davidson and S. Begley, The Emotional Life of Your Brain (NY: Avery, 2012); M. Ricard et al., “Mind of the Meditator,” Sci Am 311 (2014): 39.

  51.A. Lutz et al., “Long-Term Meditators Self-Induce High-Amplitude Gamma Synchrony During Mental Practice,” PNAS 101 (2004): 16369; T. Singer and M. Ricard, eds., Caring Economics: Conversations on Altruism and Compassion, Between Scientists, Economists, and the Dalai Lama (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2015); O. Klimecki et al., “Functional Neural Plasticity and Associated Changes in Positive Affect After Compassion Training,” Cerebral Cortex 23 (2013): 1552.

  52.P. Bloom, “Against Empathy,” Boston Review, September 10, 2014; B. Oakley, Cold-Blooded Kindness (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2011); Y. Cheng et al., “Expertise Modulates the Perception of Pain in Others,” Curr Biol 17 (2007): 1708; Davidson and Begley, op cit.; this is the source of the quote.

  53.K. Izuma et al., “Processing of the Incentive for Social Approval in the Ventral Striatum During Charitable Donation,” J Cog Nsci 22 (2010): 621; K. Izuma et al., “Processing of Social and Monetary Rewards in the Human Striatum,” Neuron 58 (2008): 284; E. Dunn et al., “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness,” Sci 319 (2008): 1687.

  54.B. Purzycki et al., “Moralistic Gods, Supernatural Punishment and the Expansion of Human Sociality,” Nat 530 (2016): 327.

  55.L. Penner et al., “Prosocial Behavior: Multilevel Perspectives,” Ann Rev Psych 56 (2005): 365.

  56.W. Harbaugh et al., “Neural Responses to Taxation and Voluntary Giving Reveal Motives for Charitable Donations,” Sci 316 (2007): 1622.

  57.E. Tricomi et al., “Neural Evidence for Inequality-Averse Social Preferences,” Nat 463 (2010): 1089.

  Chapter 15: Metaphors We Kill By

  1.“Fighting and Dying for the Colors at Gettysburg,” HistoryNet.com, June 7, 2007, www.historynet.com/fighting-and-dying-for-the-colors-at-gettysburg.htm.

  2.The killing of Tavin Price: Brainuser1, “Mentally Challenged Teen Shot Dead for Wearing Wrong Color Shoes,” EurThisNThat.com, September 22, 2016, www.eurthisnthat.com/2015/06/03/mentally-challenged-teen-shot-dead-for-wearing-wrong-color-shoes/comment-page-1/. Irish hunger strikers: “1981 Irish Hunger Strike,” Wikipedia.com, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Irish_hunger_strike#First_hunger_strike. “My Way” killings: N. Onishi, “Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord,” New York Times, February 7, 2010.

  3.Footnote: T. Appenzeller, “Old Masters,” Nat 497 (2013): 302.

  4.R. Hughes, The Shock of the New (New York: Knopf, 1991). The following reference is included in the hopes that it will make it seem like I actually read this book: M. Foucault, This Is Not a Pipe (Oakland: University of California Press, 1983).

  5.T. Deacon, The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain (New York: Norton, 1997).

  6.Footnote: L. Boroditsky, “How Language Shapes Thought,” Sci Am, February, 2011.

  7.G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); G. Lakoff, Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don’t (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

  8.T. Singer and C. Frith, “The Painful Side of Empathy,” Nat Nsci 8 (2005): 845.

  9.M. Kramer et al., “Distinct Mechanism for Antidepressant Activity by Blockade of Central Substance P Receptors,” Sci 281 (1998): 1640; B. Bondy et al., “Substance P Serum Levels are Increased in Major Depression: Preliminary Results,” BP 53 (2003): 538; G. S. Berns et al., “Neurobiological Substrates of Dread,” Sci 312 (2006): 754.

  10.H. Takahasi et al., “When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude,” Sci 323 (2009): 890.

  11.P. Ekman and W. Friesen, Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Cues (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1975).

  12.M. Hsu et al., “The Right and the Good: Distributive Justice and Neural Encoding of Equity and Efficiency,” Sci 320 (2008): 1092; F. Sambataro et al., “Preferential Responses in Amygdala and Insula During Presentation of Facial Contempt and Disgust,” Eur J Nsci 24 (2006): 2355; P. S. Russell and R. Giner-Sorolla, “Bodily Moral Disgust: What It Is, How It Is Different from Anger, and Why It Is an Unreasoned Emotion,” Psych Bull 139 (2013): 328; H. A. Chapman and A. K. Anderson, “Things Rank and Gross in Nature: A Review and Synthesis of Moral Disgust,” Psych Bull 139 (2013): 300; H. Chapman et al., “In Bad Taste: Evidence for the Oral Origins of Moral Disgust,” Sci 323 (2009): 1222; P. Rozin et al., “From Oral to Moral,” Sci 323 (2009): 1179.

  13.C. Chan et al., “Moral Violations Reduce Oral Consumption,” J Consumer Psych 24 (2014): 381; K. J. Eskine et al., “The Bitter Truth About Morality: Virtue, Not Vice, Makes a Bland Beverage Taste Nice,” PLoS ONE 7 (2012): e41159.

  14.E. J. Horberg et al., “Disgust and the Moralization of Purity,” JPSP 97 (2009): 963.

  15.K. Smith et al., “Disgust Sensitivity and the Neurophysiology of Left-Right Political Orientations,” PLoS ONE 6 (2011): e2552; G. Hodson and K. Costello, “Interpersonal Disgust, Ideological Orientations, and Dehumanization as Predictors of Intergroup Attitudes,” Psych Sci 18 (2007): 691; M. Landau et al., “Evidence That Self-Relevant Motives and Metaphoric Framing Interact to Influence Political and Social Attitudes,” Psych Sci 20 (2009): 1421.

  16.A. Sanfey et al., “The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game,” Sci 300 (2003): 1755.

  17.T. Wang et al., “Is Moral Beauty Different from Facial Beauty? Evidence from an fMRI Study,” SCAN 10 (2015): 814.

  18.S. Lee and N. Schwarz, “Washing Away Postdecisional Dissonance,” Sci 328 (2010): 709.

  19.S. Schnall et al., “With a Clean Conscience: Cleanliness Reduces the Severity of Moral Judgments,” Psych Sci 19 (2008): 1219; K. Kaspar et al., “Hand Washing Induces a Clean Slate Effect in Moral Judgments: A Pupillometry and Eye-Tracking Study,” Sci Rep 5 (2015): 10471.

  20.C. B. Zhong and K. Liljenquist, “Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing,” Sci 313 (2006): 1451; L. N. Harkrider et al., “Threats to Moral Identity: Testing the Effects of Incentives and Consequences of One’s Actions on Moral Cleansing,” Ethics & Behav 23 (2013): 133.

  21.M. Schaefer et al., “Dirty Deeds and Dirty Bodies: Embodiment of the Macbeth Effect Is Mapped Topographically onto the Somatosensory Cortex,” Sci Rep 5 (2015): 18051. See also C. Denke et al., “Lying and the Subsequent Desire for Toothpaste: Activity in the Somatosensory Cortex Predicts Embodiment of the Moral-Purity Metaphor,” Cerebral Cortex 26 (2016): 477. A debate about these findings: D. Johnson et al., “Does Cleanliness Influence Moral Judgments? A Direct Replication of Schnall, Benton, and Harvey (2008),” Soc Psych 45 (2014): 209; J. L. Huang, “Does Cleanliness Influence Moral Judgments? Response Effort Moderates the Effect of Cleanliness Priming on Moral Judgments,” Front Psych 5 (2014): 1276.

  22.S. W. Lee et al., “A Cultural Look at Moral Purity: Wiping the Face Clean,” Front Psych 6 (2015): 577.

  23.H. Xu et al., “Washing the Guilt Away: Effects of Personal Versus Vicarious Cleansin
g on Guilty Feelings and Prosocial Behavior,” Front Hum Nsci 8 (2014): 97.

  24.J. Ackerman et al., “Incidental Haptic Sensations Influence Social Judgments and Decisions,” Sci 328 (2010): 1712; also see: M. V. Day and D. R. Bobocel, “The Weight of a Guilty Conscience: Subjective Body Weight as an Embodiment of Guilt,” PLoS ONE 8 (2013): e69546.

  25.L. Williams and J. Bargh, “Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth,” Sci 322 (2008): 606; Y. Kang et al., “Physical Temperature Effects on Trust Behavior: The Role of Insula,” SCAN 6 (2010): 507.

  26.B. Briers et al., “Hungry for Money: The Desire for Caloric Resources Increases the Desire for Financial Resources and Vice Versa,” Psych Sci 17 (2006): 939; X. Wang and R. Dvorak, “Sweet Future: Fluctuating Blood Glucose Levels Affect Future Discounting,” Psych Sci 21 (2010): 183.

  27.M. Anderson, “Neural Reuse: A Fundamental Organizational Principle of the Brain,” BBS 245 (2014); 245; G. Lakoff, “Mapping the Brain’s Metaphor Circuitry: Metaphorical Thought in Everyday Reason,” Front Hum Nsci (2014), doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00958.

  28.P. Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2000); R. Guest, The Shackled Continent (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2004); G. Stanton, “The Rwandan Genocide: Why Early Warning Failed,” J African Conflicts and Peace Studies 1 (2009) 6; R. Lemarchand, “The 1994 Rwandan Genocide,” in Century of Genocide, ed. S. Totten and W. Parsons, 3rd ed. (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2009), p. 407.

  29.S. Atran et al., “Sacred Barriers to Conflict Resolution,” Sci 317 (2007): 1039.

  30.Hussein quote from CNN, Nov 6, 1995.

  31.D. Thornton, “Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness Shake Hands for the First Time,” Irish Central, January 18, 2010, www.irishcentral.com/news/peter-robinson-and-martin-mcguinness-shake-hands-for-the-first-time-81957747-237681071.html.

  32.J. Carlin, Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation (New York: Penguin Press, 2008); D. Cruywagen, Brothers in War and Peace: Constand and Abraham Viljoen and the Birth of the New South Africa (Cape Town, South Africa: Zebra Press, 2014).

  Chapter 16: Biology, the Criminal Justice System, and (Oh, Why Not?) Free Will

  1.Innocence Project, “DNA Exonerations in the United States,” www.innocenceproject.org/dna-exonerations-in-the-united-states/.

  2.N. Schweitzer and M. Saks, “Neuroimage Evidence and the Insanity Defense,” Behav Sci & the Law 29 (2011): 4; A. Roskies et al., “Neuroimages in Court: Less Biasing Than Feared,” TICS 17 (2013): 99.

  3.J. Marks, “A Neuroskeptic’s Guide to Neuroethics and National Security,” Am J Bioethics: Nsci 1 (2010): 4; A. Giridharadas, “India’s Use of Brain Scans in Courts Dismays Critics,” New York Times, September 15, 2008; A. Madrigal, “MRI Lie Detection to Get First Day in Court,” Wired, March 16, 2009.

  4.S. Reardon, “Smart Enough to Die?” Nat 506 (2014): 284.

  5.J. Monterosso et al., “Explaining Away Responsibility: Effects of Scientific Explanation on Perceived Culpability,” Ethics & Behav 15 (2005): 139; S. Aamodt, “Rise of the Neurocrats,” Nat 498 (2013): 298.

  6.J. Rosen, “The Brain on the Stand,” New York Times Magazine, March 11, 2007.

  7.Footnote: S. Lucas, “Free Will and the Anders Breivik Trial,” Humanist, Sept/Oct 2012, p. 36;

  J. Greene and J. Cohen, “For the Law, Neuroscience Changes Nothing and Everything,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Soc B, Biol Sci 359 (2004): 1775.

  8.D. Robinson, Wild Beasts and Idle Humours: The Insanity Defense from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

  9.S. Kadri, The Trial: Four Thousand Years of Courtroom Drama (New York: Random House, 2006).

  10.J. Quen, “An Historical View of the M’Naghten Trial,” Bull of the History of Med 42 (1968): 43.

  11.Both O’Connor and Scalia are quoted from their dissenting opinions in Roper v. Simmons, 545 U.S. 551 (2005).

  12.L. Buchen, “Arrested Development,” Nat 484 (2012): 304.

  13.Rosen, “Brain on the Stand.”

  14.L. Mansnerus, “Damaged Brains and the Death Penalty,” New York Times, July 21, 2001, p. B9; M. Brower and B. Price, “Neuropsychiatry of Frontal Lobe Dysfunction in Violent and Criminal Behaviour: A Critical Review,” J Neurol, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 71 (2001): 720.

  15.M. Gazzaniga, “Free Will Is an Illusion, but You’re Still Responsible for Your Actions,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 18, 2012; M. Gazzaniga, Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain (New York: Ecco, 2012).

  16.L. Steinberg et al., “Are Adolescents Less Mature Than Adults? Minors’ Access to Abortion, the Juvenile Death Penalty, and the Alleged APA ‘Flip-flop,’” Am Psychologist 64 (2009): 583.

  17.S. Morse, “Brain and Blame,” Georgetown Law J 84 (1996): 527.

  18.B. Libet, “Can Conscious Experience Affect Brain Activity?” J Consciousness Studies 10 (2003): 24; B. Libet et al., “Time of Conscious Intention to Act in Relation to Onset of Cerebral Activity (Readiness-Potential),” Brain 106 (1983): 623.

  19.V. Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human (NY: Norton, 2012).

  20.C. Dweck, Mindset: How You Can Fulfill Your Potential (London, UK: Constable & Robinson, 2012); C. Dweck, “Motivational Processes Affecting Learning,” Am Psychologist 41 (1986): 1040; S. Levy and C. Dweck, “Trait-Focused and Process-Focused Social Judgment,” Soc Cog (1998); 151; C. Mueller and C. Dweck, “Intelligence Praise Can Undermine Motivation and Performance,” JPSP 75 (1998): 33–52.

  21.J. Cantor, “Do Pedophiles Deserve Sympathy?” CNN.com, June 21, 2012.

  22.S. Morse, “Neuroscience and the Future of Personhood and Responsibility,” in Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, ed. J. Rosen and B. Wittes (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2011); J. Rosen, “Brain on the Stand” New York Times, March 11, 2007; S. Morse, “Brain Overclaim Syndrome and Criminal Responsibility: A Diagnostic Note,” Ohio State J Criminal Law 397 (2006): 397; this is the source of the Morse quotes in the subsequent paragraphs.

  23.H. Bok, “Want to Understand Free Will? Don’t Look to Neuroscience,” Chronicle Review, March 23, 2012.

  24.Morse, “Neuroscience and the Future of Personhood”; S. Nichols, “Experimental Philosophy and the Problem of Free Will,” Sci 331 (2011): 1401.

  25.Morse, 2011, op cit.

  26.Marvin Minsky, quoted in J. Coyne, “You Don’t Have Free Will,” Chronicle Review, March 23, 2012.

  27.Footnote: J. Kaufman et al., “Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor–5-HTTLPR Gene Interactions and Environmental Modifiers of Depression in Children,” BP 59 (2006): 673.

  28.J. Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972).

  29.D. Dennett, Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984).

  30.Greene and Cohen, “For the Law, Neuroscience Changes Nothing.”

  31.M. Hoffman, The Punisher’s Brain: The Evolution of Judge and Jury (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2014)

  32.K. Gospic et al., “Limbic Justice: Amygdala Involvement in Immediate Rejections in the Ultimatum Game,” PLoS ONE 9 (2011): e1001054; Buckholtz, “Neural Correlates of Third-Party Punishment.”.

  33.D. de Quervain et al., “The Neural Basis of Altruistic Punishment,” Sci 305 (2004): 1254; B. Knutson, “Sweet Revenge?” Sci 305 (2004): 1246.

  34.Footnote: J. Bonnefon et al., “The Social Dilemma of Autonomous Vehicles,” Sci 352 (2016): 1573; J. Greene, “Our Driverless Dilemma,” Sci 352 (2016): 1514.

  Chapter 17: War and Peace

  1.M. Fisher, “The Country Where Slavery Is Still Normal,” Atlantic, June 28, 2011
; C. Welzel, Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

  2.S. Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Penguin, 2011).

  3.N. Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, rev. ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000); W. Yang, “Nasty, Brutish, and Long,” New York, October 16, 2011.

  4.S. Herman and D. Peterson, “Steven Pinker on the Alleged Decline of Violence,” Int Socialist Rev, November/December, 2012.

  5.R. Douthat, “Steven Pinker’s History of Violence,” New York Times, October 17, 2011; J. Gray, “Delusions of Peace,” Prospect, October 2011; E. Kolbert, “Peace in Our Time: Steven Pinker’s History of Violence,” New Yorker, October 3, 2011; T. Cowen, “Steven Pinker on Violence,” Marginal Revolution, October 7, 2011.

  6.C. Apicella et al., “Social Networks and Cooperation in Hunter-Gatherers,” Nat 481 (2012): 497.

  7.S. Huntington, “Democracy for the Long Haul,” J Democracy 7 (1996): 3; T. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Anchor Books, 1999).

  8.L. Rhue and A. Sundararajan, “Digital Access, Political Networks and the Diffusion of Democracy,” Soc Networks 36 (2014): 40.

  9.M. Inzlicht et al., “Neural Markers of Religious Conviction,” Psych Sci 20 (2009): 385; M. Anastasi and A. Newberg, “A Preliminary Study of the Acute Effects of Religious Ritual on Anxiety,” J Alternative and Complementary Med 14 (2008): 163.

  10.U. Schjoedt et al., “Reward Prayers,” Nsci Letters 433 (2008): 165; N. P. Azari et al., “Neural Correlates of Religious Experience,” Eur J Nsci 13 (2001): 1649; U. Schjoedt et al., “Highly Religious Participants Recruit Areas of Social Cognition in Personal Prayer,” SCAN 4 (2009): 199; A. Norenzayan and W. Gervais, “The Origins of Religious Disbelief,” TICS 17 (2013): 20; U. Schjoedt et al., “The Power of Charisma: Perceived Charisma Inhibits the Frontal Executive Network of Believers in Intercessory Prayer,” SCAN 6 (2011): 119.

  11.L. Galen, “Does Religious Belief Promote Prosociality? A Critical Examination,” Psych Bull 138 (2012): 876; S. Georgianna, “Is a Religious Neighbor a Good Neighbor?” Humboldt J Soc Relations 11 (1994): 1; J. Darley and C. Batson, “From Jerusalem to Jericho: A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior,” JPSP 27 (1973): 100; L. Penner et al., “Prosocial Behavior: Multilevel Perspectives,” Ann Rev Psych 56 (2005): 365.