I have talked and written about our human tendency to form in-groups and out-groups, but an article in The New York Times brought home how little it takes to differentiate “us” from “them.” In the experiments described, all it took was wristbands of different colors for people to make evaluations biased in favor of those who were wearing the same color as themselves. Is it any wonder, then, that people are biased in favor of those in the same family, ethnic group, or country. We protect our “own,” and thus we have survived.
In related experiments, they found that people rated themselves highly for fairness, even when they made choices that were generally considered unfair: giving themselves an easy job and someone else a harder one. But then the researchers added a new wrinkle: They asked participants to memorize a set of numbers, and then keep them in mind while being asked questions about the experiment and their participation. The author of the article, John Tierney, gives this assessment of the result:
“That little bit of extra mental exertion was enough to eliminate hypocrisy. These people judged their own actions just as harshly as others did. Their brains were apparently too busy to rationalize their selfishness, so they fell back on their intuitive feelings about fairness.
“…as useful as hypocrisy can be, it’s apparently not quite as basic as the human instinct to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Your mind can justify double standards, it seems, but in your heart you know you’re wrong.”
The researchers have devised some clever experiments, and it amazes me that, in the Science section of the NYT, Tierney keeps talking about “mind” versus “heart.” It points to a basic lack of understanding of how the brain works, and Tierney seems to be following the example of the researchers: “‘The question here,’ Dr. DeSteno said, ‘is whether we’re designed at heart to be fair or selfish.’” I hope he’s not talking about “intelligent” design.
Allow me to reinterpret the results in more scientific terms:
The article points out that, “It has been demonstrated repeatedly in experiments that humans are remarkably sensitive to unfairness. We’ve survived as social animals because we are so good at spotting selfishness and punishing antisocial behavior.” I could not agree more, but where does this sensitivity to unfairness reside? Tierney and the researchers seem to think that such things reside in the “heart,” but I submit that they are just another brain function, no different than the function of justification—although these activities are probably carried out in different parts of the brain.
As Marvin Minsky might say, the parts of our brain that produce justifications constitute a “resource,” which can’t be used by two competing processes at once, any more than you can advance and retreat at the same time. When the researchers had participants do math, that activity used the same resource that otherwise might have been used to justify, and the researchers instructions tilted the competition toward math.
With the brain’s justifying resource occupied, it had to fall back on another resource to answer the researchers’ questions: the “fairness assessment” resource installed long ago by evolution.
With this explanation—aided by Minsky—we could say that in the majority of cases, human beings will choose the easy way for themselves, and will justify such a choice as fair—whether made by themselves or one of “their” group—unless their justification resources are preempted by instructions from authority figures.
Our moral sense may indeed be more “basic,” in the sense that we share it with some of our inarticulate primate cousins. Justification requires language, a more recent acquisition, and will trump our moral sense when our own or our group’s behavior is concerned, unless it is otherwise occupied.
If our concern is to make our own behavior more moral, we must learn to identify less with ourselves and our group and more with “the right thing.” In a word, we must become “egoless,” a difficult undertaking, but one recommended by saintly folk for millennia.
The Heart of the Matter
Thanks for that discussion. I had not heard about those interesting Northeastern experiments, and I think that lab is only a 10-minute walk from my home—so I’ll go and talk to them. Anyway, I like your explanations. This reminds me of another example:
My daughter was doing her high school algebra homework. Some pop music was blasting away in her room along. I asked, “How can you think with all that noise?” and she replied “Actually, I can’t think about math without it.” I asked what she meant, and her answer was, “It must be because I’m an adolescent. You see, we adolescents are bothered by all sorts of irrational phobias and sexual thoughts and social concerns—and I’m the one who my friends are always asking for help. So I find that my mind keeps getting occupied with thinking about their problems. But when I turn on this loud music stuff, all of social concerns go away — and then I’m free to think about the binomial theorem and stuff like that.”
This looks as though the pop-music somehow saturates (or anesthetizes) her “social thinking” resources, and they can’t interfere or compete with her math-related processes.
I’m thrilled that you approve, and that you added the example of your daughter. I have found the ideas you present in “The Emotion Machine,” to be wonderful enhancements to my thinking about how the brain works, and have referred to the book several times in this blog. I keep thinking that at some point I’ll do a comprehensive discussion of it on my web site, but time being what it is, so far I’ve only succeeded in referring to a few choice concepts as they appear useful to my current hot button issues; which is often. It’s a truly seminal work that, once again, puts you in the forefront of creative thinking about how this machine works, and I thank you for it.