What a week, huh friends? I know a lot of us are feeling… feelings about the US election. I did what has now become tradition on sad election nights - got a bottle of wine and some friends and listened to music and laughed to remind myself that this actually still is a really beautiful world with a lot of wonderful people and things in it.
In preparing for the election, I have also been thinking a lot about what leads people to behave the way they do. My favourite book about this, and one I credit with making me a lot more empathetic to people with views wildly differing from mine has been social psychologist and Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU Jonathan Haidt’s incredible work The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. Check out (one of) his amazing Ted talks below.
Through his work, I found neuroscientist and Stanford professor of biology, neurology and neurosurgery, Robert Sapolsky who has written another incredible book called Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.
This book was WILD. Sapolsky is a primatologist, first and foremost, and has had a career studying ape societies and how humans are different - and the same. Reading this book and really thinking about it has also made me more pragmatic about how and why the election turned out the way it did. Here are five things I learned from this book that may just make you more understanding - and hopeful - too.
1. Context is everything
As Sapolsky explains when we think about how humans behave, we tend to silo motives - is it because of a physical response? Is it hormonal? Is it purely cognitive?
No. It’s interdisciplinary, meaning it’s an amalgamation of environment, biology and learned behaviour that produces instances of our best and worst actions - which you can boil down to acts of overt altruism or aggression.
There is no such thing as a pure morally right or morally wrong behaviour in a vacuum. Rather, the moral correctness of an act emerges based on our reasons for doing that particular thing.
As an example - political violence is mostly characterised as wrong. But most people would also agree that if someone were given the miraculous ability to time travel and kill Hitler on the toilet, that would probably be okay with them, given the context.
And thus moral utilitarianism is born.
Lesson: Everyone’s morality is context dependent. Remember that when judging how and why people who may have voted for the “other side” does what they do.
“In the West we nearly all have strong moral intuitions about the wrongness of slavery, child labor, or animal cruelty. But that sure didn’t used to be the case. Their wrongness has become an implicit moral intuition, a gut instinct concerning moral truth, only because of the fierce moral reasoning (and activism) of those who came before us, when the average person’s moral intuitions were unrecognizably different. Our guts learn their intuitions.”
Robert Sapolsky
2. … And the society we grow up in heavily influences our decision-making and moral reasoning
“Your life will be unrecognizably different, depending on which culture the stork deposited you into.”
Robert Sapolsky
Human society structures can be split into two broad groups - collectivist and individualist cultures. Collectivist cultures are more prominent in the global East and prioritise group interest above self-interest, focusing on unity, altruism and selflessness. Individualist cultures, on the other hand, tend to focus more on individual rights and freedoms, independence, and personal identity.
Whether or not you grow up in a collectivist or an individualist culture will have a huge impact on your moral reasoning. People in collectivist cultures are scientifically proven to use the word “I” less often, to have higher rates of introversion, to obtain information primarily through one’s social network, to view education as a means to an end in terms of learning to “how to do” rather than “how to think” and to view one’s occupation as members of an in-group supporting group interest.
Meanwhile, members of individualist societies use the word “I” more often, talk more often in educational settings, have higher rates of extroversion, obtain most of their information through the media, and view education as a way of learning to think, rather than do. They tend to view their occupation’s goals as separate from their own - an employer’s interest is valid only if it aligns with theirs.
And HOW these cultures form is fascinating. Take the US. It’s a culture of immigrants, who due to the very nature of immigration, likely already possessed strong individualist and non-conformist traits. This, in combination with a frontier economy, produced the hyper-individualist country we see today.
Meanwhile, in East Asia, terraforming and resource allocation necessitated generation after generation of communal labourers and produced collectivist sentiment. And here’s the crazy thing - we can actually tell how intertwined ecology and environment are to East Asian Cultures because in places where the rice harvest is not as integral to their economy, they become individualists instead of collectivists - with all their associated cognitive baggage.
That… is insane. Just considering how much that factor alone impacts your entire view of the world and mode of interacting with it should give you pause when considering how other people behave.
Lesson: Where you grow up determines how you see, understand and interact with the world. Remember that when trying to understand how people can reach vastly different conclusions about the same event.
3. But some of it is innate, including (largely) how you are likely to vote
A combination of these factors, in conjunction with some pretty strong neurological evidence, can predict how individuals will vote.
The thing that blew my mind when I first read Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind, and which Robert Sapolsky goes on about in great length here (referencing Haidt’s work quite a bit) was that there are neurologically measurable differences in the brains of conservatives and liberals. These findings have been reproduced in study after study, decade after decade, to the extent that we can now fairly reliably predict how people will vote from infancy.
Studies suggest that support for right-wing authoritarianism is linked to lower IQ - mostly because they provide simple answers for those who experience difficulty with abstract reasoning.
However, those who merely vote conservative tend to be more uncomfortable with ambiguity. They report higher levels of anxiety, experience a lower threshold for disgust, have more nightmares and often have larger amygdalas. Interestingly, they also report higher levels of overall happiness than those on the left do. They tend to place value on the safety and wellness of those directly in their tribe than those who are far away.
Meanwhile, those on the left are more comfortable with ambiguity, have a higher disgust threshold and report less anxiety but more unhappiness. They tend to be more open to experience, which is something that seems to be innate, measurable from childhood. From a brain structure standpoint, they have more grey matter in the cingulate cortex.
Their moral cognition is also different. Those on the right tend to value loyalty, authority and sanctity, while those on the left care more about fairness and liberty - and tend to value it for everyone, not just members of their own group.
What’s interesting is that while much of this seems to be innate, SOME of it is also situational - one study suggests that the longer someone is in a room with smelly garbage, the more conservative their views on social issues become. Meanwhile, as leftists tend to use reappraisal strategies when presented with aversive stimuli, conservatives, when taught to do the same express fewer conservative responses.
Understanding that someone’s differing viewpoint could be because their brain’s structure is literally different than my own or that there is something innate in them that has created a very different value or moral reasoning system to my own, literally changed the way I look at opposition politics.
“The issue isn’t how a few bad apples can ruin the whole barrel, it’s how a bad barrel can turn any apple bad. […] Rather than concentrating on one evil person at a time, what Zimbardo calls a ‘medical’ approach, one must understand how some environments cause epidemics of evil, a ‘public health’ approach. As he states: ‘any deed, for good or evil, that any human being has ever done, you and I could also do—given the same situational forces.’”
Lesson: How you vote is determined by everything from biology, to early childhood experiences, to the particular society you are surrounded by. A person’s material reality and predispositions determines their interior reality.
4. Our brain’s evolution helps us do the right thing - even when it’s the hard thing…
Broadly speaking, we’ve got different levels of things happening in our brain when we “decide” how to behave.
The limbic system governs our emotional response to sensory stimulus and communicates those findings to the autonomic nervous system - mostly through the hypothalamus. Ever get the nervous wees before a presentation? That’s your emotions guiding your body’s actions (“We’re in a dangerous situation - pee now so we can focus on running away faster!”)
The limbic system also contains the amygdala which mediates aggression and related emotions of anxiety, disgust and fear. This is what causes those instantaneous reactions that “clock” faces of races different than our own measurably in countless studies. This can lead to snap fear judgments (think of the cases of police shooting first and clearing up the details second).
“No brain operates in a vacuum, and over the course of seconds to minutes, the wealth of information streaming into the brain influences the likelihood of pro- or antisocial acts. As we’ve seen […] much of these varied types of information is subliminal. Ultimately […] in the moments just before we decide upon some of our most consequential acts, we are less rational and autonomous decision makers than we like to think.”
Robert Sapolsky
These are measurable, automatic reactions BUT they can be mediated through societal conditioning - and some help from our frontal cortex.
Our frontal cortex is what helps us mediate those impulsive reactions by facilitating our working memory, planning, strategy, decision-making and delayed gratification abilities. Ours (humans) in particular have a special type of neuron called von Economo neurons that are only found in complex social species - because controlling initial impulses in a society is crucial to social success. In short, our frontal cortex helps us the do the right thing EVEN when it’s the hard thing.
The newest (from an evolutionary standpoint), shiniest part of the frontal cortex is the pre-frontal cortex, which helps us decide what to actually DO with all the messages we’re receiving. This is bolstered by the dopaminergic system, which gives us motivation and helps us anticipate a reward FOR that motivation.
Essentially, evolution of a developed pre-frontal cortex, bolstered by von Economo neurons and a strong dopaminergic rewards system helps us do the right thing, even when it’s the hard thing.
But we can’t rely on our pre-frontal cortex alone. Society has to do the work too.
Lesson: A lot of prejudice is sadly innate. And our societies can exacerbate or minimise that. Not everyone is immersed in a society that fosters the “better angels of their nature.”
5. … But it does not work in a vacuum.
At its core, the human brain is all about binaries. We love to fit the world into neat, easy-to-digest categories - there’s far too much information to process without them. And while this can sometimes be a great advantage (think of our innate disgust mechanism kicking in when we smell rotten food) - it can also be extremely problematic, particularly in regards to the creation of “Us/Them” binary groups.
Our categorisation of our own group - “us” - as positive and that group over there - “them” - as negative measured in children as young as three, which suggests it is an innate evolutionary behaviour. From that age, we inflate the importance of arbitrary markers that make us “us” - our food, taboos, religious affiliation, family structure etc - and view “thems” as threatening, angry and untrustworthy. “Thems” can automatically and measurably evoke the same disgust mechanisms in our brain that rotten food can. And as we have seen, people who are pre-disposed to conservative voting patterns already tend to have a lower threshold for disgust.
This innate binary mind-mapping served a purpose from an evolutionary perspective - it may be what allowed us to survive against dominant rival groups. But as we have seen, it becomes a big problem in mixed societies. It takes place mostly in the amygdala and insult (remember? The parts of the brain that is most responsible for instinct and action.)
But here’s the good news - we can change that with some help from our trusty pre-frontal cortex. Recall that the pre-frontal cortex is there to help us do the right thing, even when it’s the harder thing. But it doesn’t happen automatically. It needs societal reinforcement.
Think about it like learning to play the piano. When we are first learning how to play, our pre-frontal cortex has to work hard. But the longer we do it, the more automatic every movement and impulse becomes until eventually we can do it without thinking about it at all.
This is the role of a healthy society - one that gives people enough education and structure to challenge their innate, antisocial assumptions until the challenging itself becomes innate. This is the society we should all strive for.
Lesson: We need to collectively work towards a society where everyone - regardless of their biological predisposition - can become better at the right thing, even when it’s the hard thing.
“On any big, important issue it seems like 51% of the scientific studies conclude one thing, and 49% conclude the opposite. And so on. Eventually it can seem hopeless that you can actually fix something, can make things better, but we have no choice but to try. And if you are reading this, you are probably ideally suited to do so. You’ve amply proven you have intellectual tenacity. You probably also have running water, a home, adequate calories, and low odds of festering with a bad parasitic disease. You probably don’t have to worry about Ebola virus, warlords, or being invisible in your world. And you’ve been educated. In other words you’re one of the lucky few humans.
So try.”
Robert Sapolsky
Bits and Bobs
I’m recently back from a big trip to Mexico and still getting caught up in life/escapism but recently I’ve been:
Reading: There There by Tommy Orange. This was nominated for the Pulitzer a few years back and his second novel has only recently come out. I really enjoyed this one, he’s a very exciting emerging voice in Native American literature and I am very keen to read more.
Watching: Slow Horses is both the best show currently on television and the best thing Gary Oldman has done, like ever. And for Gary Oldman, that’s saying a lot. This latest season was the best yet - and if you prefer a read, the book series this is based on is also excellent.
Listening to: I recently got to see Heilung live and man, what a show. A brief primer: they are an “experimental folk music band” made up of Germans, Norwegians and Danes. Their music is mostly ancient poetry from a range of cultures set to music in what they call “amplified history.”
They sing in German, English, Gothic, Old High German, Icelandic, Latin, Old English, Proto-Norse, Proto-Germanic and Viking-age Old Norse.
All of their clothes and costumes are based on “spiritual traditions of the Eurasian circumpolar peoples” or historically accurate reproductions of Nordic Bronze Age clothing.
Their instruments include (but are not limited to) - a horse-skin drum decorated with human blood, a human forearm, a clay rattle with human ashes inside.
This group must be seen to be believed. Check out their Glastonbury set to get an idea.
That’s all for now friends. Stay sane, stay well, stay hopeful. There are still wonderful people everywhere working hard to make the world a better place. They have not disappeared.
Join them. And keep your chin up.
Until next time.