of human nature, including emotional sensitivity, warmth, and flexibility. When we transform others into animals, we have stripped them of uniquely human qualities such as rationality, self-control, moral sensibility, and civility. Of those who are like animals, some will seem like kin to the domesticated form and thus controllable as property; others will seem like wild animals and thus dangerous, dirty and deserving of elimination. However we engage this process, we have bleached individuals of their humanity. This process, one that occurs in both everyday life and in cases of conflict, has allowed us to treat the mentally and physically disabled like animals, to consider women as sexual property, justify slavery and slave wages, deny certain races the opportunity to vote and receive education, and mandate ethnic cleansing. Before I describe a shocking set of experimental findings on dehumanization, consider first a snapshot into some of our historical attitudes, shared across many countries and cultures. Before we knew much about human evolution and the causes of variation, scientists made sweeping statements about the relationship between brain structure and differences in intelligence and behavior among men, women and the variety of races. It was commonly believed that, compared with white men, women and all other races had smaller brains, approximating our cousins the apes. Listen to Gustave LeBon, a distinguished social psychologist, writing in 1879: In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason. Without doubt there exist some distinguished women, very superior to the average man, but they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as, for example, of a gorilla with two heads; consequently, we may neglect them entirely. By elevating white men to the gold standard of perfection, it was easy to see everyone else as a degenerate form of God’s creation or, in biological terms, of arrested evolution, with non-Caucasian races showing greater affinity to our furry cousins the apes. Looked at today, backed by our understanding of genetics and the evolutionary process, these accounts are absurd and offensive. Sadly, despite efforts to clean up our explicit racist and sexist attitudes, overwhelming evidence reveals that the brain holds dear a suite of unconscious prejudices that serve to dehumanize those unlike us. Now the shocking experiments. The American social psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt dared to ask whether US citizens unconsciously associate Black people with imagery ofd apes, using the disturbing history of this association as her jumping off point. In parallel with the studies of race Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 101 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012847

presented in the last section, Eberhardt was also interested in the possibility that if people carry this association around in their head, they do so unconsciously, despite explicit avowals that they are not at all racist. And if they carry this association around unconsciously, how does it impact upon their judgments and actions? In one experiment with both Caucasian and non-Caucasian subjects, Eberhardt used a technique called subliminal priming. Subliminal priming involves rapidly presenting pictures, sounds or other experiences under the radar of awareness and then presenting material that falls within our radar. If the two experiences are similar, the unconscious version affects subjects’ perception of the conscious one. For example, if you first prime people by flashing the picture of a woman’s face, subjects then respond faster to faces of women than to faces of men. In other words, despite the fact that subjects are unaware of the prime, it affects their judgments. Eberhardt first primed subjects with photographed faces of Caucasian or Black people or an unrecognizable non-face. They then watched a short movie that started off with an unrecognizable object that looked like it was covered by dense snow. As the movie progressed, the snow lifted, making it easier to recognize the object as a line drawing of either a duck, dolphin, alligator, squirrel or ape. Subjects stopped the movie as soon as they recognized the animal. Compared with Caucasian faces and non-faces, priming with Black faces caused subjects to stop the movie much sooner for apes, but not for any other animal. Compared with non-faces, priming with Caucasian faces caused subjects to stop the movie much /ater for apes, but not for any other animal. This suggests that Black faces made it easier to identify apes, whereas Caucasian faces made it harder to identify apes, with no comparable effects for any other animals. Caucasian and non-Caucasian subjects showed the same pattern of response, and so too did individuals with and without strong, explicit racial attitudes. Although the similarity among Caucasian and non-Caucasian subjects is of interest, and suggests that the association is held even among those who were perhaps less strongly associated with this form of dehumanization, there were relatively few Black subjects in this non-Caucasian group. This first set of experiments suggests, therefore, that among a racially heterogeneous group of educated Stanford undergraduates, individuals carry an unconscious association between Black people and apes, and thus, an unconsciously dehumanized representation of another human being. Given the animal form of this dehumanization, the implication from Haslam’s work is that Caucasians associate Blacks with less rationality, civility, and self-control, in essence, less uniquely human qualities. These are remarkable and disturbing findings. They can’t be explained by some superficial similarity between human faces and animals because Eberhardt found the same results when she presented either line drawings or words of animals. Had Eberhardt used actual photographs of animals, subjects could have used similarity in skin color or nose shape — for example, seeing a black human face would prime seeing a black ape face because both have the color black in common. Line drawings and Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 102 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012848

written words cut the legs out of this account. Eberhardt’s results suggest that apes are associated with the socio-cultural, racial category “Black.” These findings reveal a deep seated, dehumanized representation that is readily triggered even in highly educated people. But perhaps they are less disturbing then we might imagine. not so bad if the take home message is that we are closet racists with antiquated theories of evolution or God’s design. Outside of these artificial studies, we are well educated citizens who keep our isms tucked away, locked up in our unconscious. Unfortunately, the unsettling feelings that many will have to these studies are exacerbated by an additional set of results collected by Eberhardt, linking unconscious impressions to harmful actions. Caucasian male subjects watched a video of a policeman using force to subdue a suspect who was either Black or Caucasian. When primed with an ape drawing, but not that of a tiger, subjects were more likely to say that the policeman was justified in subduing the Black suspect than the Caucasian suspect. We are more than closet racists. We are out of the closet, armed for prejudice and dehumanization. To unconsciously think that Blacks are more like apes than other racial groups is to strip them of characteristics that are uniquely human. As Haslam notes, when we dehumanize others in this particular way, we no longer see them as human, but as incompetent wild animals or immature children lacking in intelligence, etiquette, rationality, and moral wherewithal. This mode of dehumanization is ancient, reflected in the writings and paintings of European explorers who encountered indigenous cultures in Asia, Australia, and Africa. Dehumanizing others into objects is equally ancient, unflattering and dangerous. In one study, American adults were told to focus on either the physical appearance or personality of the actress Angelina Jolie and the ex-governor of Alaska and presidential hopeful Sarah Palin — both famous personalities within the United States. When subjects focused on appearance as opposed to personality, they judged both Jolie and Palin as relatively lacking in traits of experience or human nature. Jolie and Palin were seen as objects. In other studies, carried out by Haslam, subjects judged objectified men and women as less capable of suffering and less deserving of moral compassion and protection, reinforcing the age old attitude we once held toward slaves, and that many hold today toward prostitutes. When people become property, they fall outside of the circle of moral patients. Studies of the brain provide further support for these dehumanizing transformations, and highlight, once again, both the beneficial and malignant consequences of our mind’s promiscuity. Brains without borders Dehumanization enables doctors to treat their patients — human or nonhuman animal — as mechanical Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 103 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012849

devices that require repair. This allows for cool-headed, rational, and skillful surgeries, while fending off the humanizing emotions of compassion and empathy. This is adaptive. This is a transformation that enables doctors working in war-torn areas or regions afflicted with a disease outbreak, to treat hundreds of suffering patients as if they were treating inert cars on an assembly line. Good doctors allow their compassion and empathy to return as their patients regain awareness. Bad doctors maintain their cool, detached manner, insensitive to the physical and psychological pain of their waking patients. Bad doctors continue to perceive their patients like cars on the assembly line. Really bad doctors see their patients like cars that were created for personal R&D. Recall from earlier sections that when we see someone else in pain, particular areas of the brain activate as we imagine their suffering. Many of the same areas of the brain also activate when we personally experience pain. This is the circuitry for pain empathy. The French cognitive neuroscientist Jean Decety showed that when physicians look at video clips of people experiencing pain from a needle prick, this circuit is suppressed relative to non-physicians. For physicians, it’s as if they were watching a needle prick a pillow. Though we don’t know how much experience was necessary or sufficient to cause the physician’s lack of pain empathy, or the extent to which physicians are physicians because they were born with less empathy, Decety’s findings point to individual differences in our capacity to feel what others feel and the potential modulating role of experience. Several studies now show that based on individual experience, the human brain readily flip-flops between empathy and callousness. In two similarly designed experiments, one recording from pain related areas in the brain, and the other from a motor area associated with the hand, Caucasian and Black subjects watched a video of a needle penetrating a human hand. Consistently, subjects showed weaker activation in the pain and motor areas when watching the needle penetrate the hand from another race. This lowering of pain empathy and motor response for the out-group was greatest for subjects with the highest implicit or unconscious racial biases, as measured with the IAT tool noted earlier. These studies of the brain, like the behavioral studies I discussed earlier, add to the idea that we have a racial bias for pain empathy. We feel others’ pain, but only for those who share the same race. But since, by definition, we look more like those from within our racial group than those outside it, perhaps the bias is less about race and more about those that don’t look like us. To explore this possibility, Black and Caucasian subjects saw a needle penetrate a violet-colored hand. Violet hands are not only different, but far more different than either black or white hands in terms of our experience of skin coloration. Nonetheless, the activation pattern in the brain matched the subject’s own race. When we feel less compassion for someone of another race, it is because of racial biases, not because of superficial differences in appearance. Color is simply a cue that reminds us of our prejudice. Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 104 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012850

The fact that we feel less empathy for people in pain if they fall outside our inner sanctum suggests that we have dehumanized them, stripping away dimensions of experience that humanize those within the sanctum. These are the dimensions associated with emotion, and when taken away, cause us to perceive the other as an object. Since objects can’t feel pain or joy, we can’t share in their experience because they lack experience altogether. If that is the case, then when we perceive any human group that has been dehumanized in this particular way, there should be little to no activity in those areas of the brain associated with thinking, feeling, wanting, and believing. To explore this possibility, the social psychologist Susan Fiske placed subjects in a brain scanner and presented photographs of either extreme out-group members, such as the homeless and drug addicts, or photographs of other groups such as the elderly, middle-class Americans, and the rich. When viewing the extreme out-group, not only did Fiske see little activity in an area critically related to self-awareness and the process of thinking about others thoughts and emotions — the medial prefrontal cortex — but she also observed an intense increase of activity in the insula, a brain area that is recruited when we experience disgust. Fiske’s results highlight the dangers of dehumanization. Once we turn off areas of the brain that are involved in thinking about others’ thoughts and emotions, and turn on areas involved in disgust, we have set ourselves up for moral disengagement. As the distinguished American psychologist Albert Bandura has documented through decades of research, moral disengagement allows people to justify harm by transforming lethal motives into morally justified and even benevolent ones. Moral disengagement allows us to excuse ourselves from moral responsibility, either disregarding the harm imposed or convincing ourselves that it was justified, even obligatory. In several international studies of school-aged children, results consistently show that those who are most morally disengaged are most likely to engage in various forms of aggression, including bullying and repeated criminal offenses. These same children are also least likely to engage in helpful behavior, revealing that moral disengagement dispenses with the typical process of self-censure and sanctioning that we carry around when we are morally engaged. Ina study of American prison personnel involved in death penalty sentences, executioners were more morally disengaged than support staff or prison guards. Executioners were more likely to dehumanize the convicted prisoner and provide moral and economic justifications. Executioners also felt less guilt because they had developed a narrative to justify their actions, one that ascribed complete fault and responsibility to the victim. Support staff flipped in the opposite direction, fully involved with the weighty moral issues associated with ending someone’s life. In a study of people’s political attitudes, those with strong right wing authoritarian views, commonly associated with fascism and submission to authority, were more likely to support war by means of morally disengaging. In particular, they were most likely to support war by justifying its necessity and trivializing the harm that will necessarily arise — for Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 105 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012851

example, invading another country is not aggressive, but designed as a pre-emptive strike to protect group interests. Moral disengagement enables behaviors that are either immoral, illegal, or counter to deeply rooted intuitive prohibitions against harming others. It is a process that has the beneficial consequence of empowering soldiers to go to war under just causes, as well as the toxic consequence of empowering rogue leaders to carry out genocide under unjust causes. It is a process that allows us to hibernate from our moral responsibilities. It is a form of self-deception, a partner to dehumanization in the denial of reality. But self-deception, like deception of others, is not always harmful. In fact, it is often highly adaptive. Angelic denial In a nationally televised address in 2005, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pronounced that the Jews had "created a myth in the name of the Holocaust and consider it above God, religion and the prophets." Judge Daniel Schreber believed that his brain was softening and that he was turning into a woman in order to form a sexual union with God. During a doctor’s visit, a man reported that his pet poodle had been replaced by an impostor, masquerading as if he was the real deal. Judge Patrick Couwenberg stated under oath that he received the Purple Heart for military operations in Vietnam, and soon thereafter carried out covert missions in Southeast Asia and Africa as a CIA agent. The pilots of Air Florida flight 90 ignored signs from their dashboard indicating engine trouble and then proceeded to crash into a bridge, killing 74 of the 79 people on board. In 2008, while Hilary Clinton was running for President of the United States, she regaled admiring supporters with stories of her international experience, including her visit to Bosnia in 1996 where her plane was forced to land “under sniper fire”, followed by a rapid evacuation for cover. When I was a teenager, I often walked onto the tennis court thinking that I was John McEnroe, serving and volleying like the world’s number one player. Each case above tells the story of a person who acted as if the world was one way even though it wasn’t. The Holocaust and its trail of atrocities were real, confirmed by thousands of scarred survivors and the relatives who have heard their accounts. Judge Couwenberg was never in Vietnam, never earned a Purple Heart, and never had a connection with the CIA. There are no pet poodle impostors. Our brains don’t soften, though they do deteriorate with age. When dashboard indicators suggest engine trouble, better to be safe than sorry when you are responsible for the lives of many people. Hilary Clinton landed in the exceptionally safe airport of Tuzla where she was warmly greeted by US and Bosnian officials. I am no McEnroe. Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 106 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012852

In each of these cases, there was a mismatch with reality. The person harbored a false belief, but believed it was true. In some cases, the mismatch was due to psychosis, some kind of delusion or malfunctioning of the brain. These people didn’t know that their beliefs were false. In other cases, the mismatch resulted from an intentional lie or distortion, a process that is adaptive, designed to promote self-confidence and manipulate others. When I conjured up images of McEnroe, I momentarily deceived myself. I believed it helped my game. I never thought I was McEnroe. I carried my self-deception honestly. When Hilary Clinton misreported her trip to Bosnia, perhaps she misremembered or perhaps she distorted her memory to convince voters that she had what was necessary to run the country — toughness and international experience. Unfortunately for Clinton, her comment about Bosnia was accompanied by other distortions, which led the American essayist William Safire to write “Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady... is a congenital liar.” Some cases of self-deception are harmless and even beneficial, as in my illusion of tennis grandeur. Others are only mildly harmful, as in Clinton’s distortion of her political experiences. And yet others are deeply harmful, as when leaders such as Ahmadinejad deny the suffering of millions. The problem is that anyone can harness the power of self-deception for ill gotten gains. Why does our mind play tricks on us, allowing us to believe things that are false? Why didn’t evolution endow us with a reality checking device that 1s vigilant 24/7? The answer here parallels the refrain carried throughout this book: like its evil sister dehumanization, self-deception is Janus-faced, showing both an adaptive and maladaptive side. Self-deception allows us to protect ourselves from the reality of a current predicament or loss. Self-deception allows us to provide a better personal marketing brand to defeat our competitors in attracting mates and garnering other resources. Self-deception may even be critical to the functioning of a healthy and safe society: in a study of male criminal offenders, those with the lowest levels of self-deception with respect to their own self-worth showed the highest levels of recidivism. There is, however, a fine balancing act, revealing the slippery slope from adaptive to maladaptive: as studies by Roy Baumeister reveal, individuals with the highest self-esteem and the most overblown sense of themselves are also the ones most likely to lash out with extreme violence when someone threatens the reality of their stature. The evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers was the first to identify the adaptive significance of self-deception and its connection to deception. As he insightfully notes in his book The Folly of Fools, what appears completely irrational about self-deception evolved as a consequence of selection to deceive competitors: “To fool others we might be tempted to reorganize information internally in all sorts of improbable ways and to do so largely unconsciously.” The most effective self-deceiver acts without any sense of his true motives. He is on autopilot, driven by a purely self-interested mind. No checks and balances. Here, I build on this idea. I will show you how studies of pathology and healthy brain function Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 107 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012853

illuminate the mental chicaneries that lead us down the road to self-deception. As with the dangers of dehumanization and its role in denying reality, so too is self-deception a dangerous state of mind, allowing individuals to inflict great harm while feeling aligned with the angels. What did William Safire have in mind when he called Hilary Clinton a congenital liar? Congenital refers to a trait that is present in utero, at birth or soon thereafter. Congenital disorders, diseases, or anomalies typically refer to defects caused by a combination of genetic and environmental problems. A cleft lip is an example of a congenital anomaly, one that appears at birth as a gap in the upper lip. Because we don’t have detailed records of Hilary Clinton’s life as a child, it is hard to say whether her lying was congenital in the same way that a hair lip is congenital. We can rule out the in utero and at birth periods because Hilary, like all other children, was not born speaking or lying. These capacities mature. That she developed a tendency to exaggerate and distort is consistent with other reports. She falsely claimed that she was centrally involved in the creation of a Children’s Health Insurance Program, an initiative that was actually created by Senators Ted Kennedy and Orin Hatch. She also claimed that she played a significant role in the Good Friday Agreement for Northern Ireland, a comment that Nobel laureate Lord William David Trimble described as “a wee bit silly.” When Safire described Clinton as a congenital liar, what he was referring to was the habitual pattern of fabrication. When patterns of the mind become habits, they are hard to break. Each distortion, rehearsed over and over, becomes part of the fabric of truth. It is a life story that starts as fiction and ends up as non-fiction in the mind of the story-teller. We can begin to understand this transformation by looking at the clinician’s notebook. For more than 100 years, psychiatrists have described a syndrome known as pathological lying. If lying is pathological, it must deviate from some norm. The psychiatrist Charles Dike sums up the essence of this disorder: Pathological liars can believe their lies to the extent that, at least to others, the belief may appear to be delusional; they generally have sound judgment in other matters; it is questionable whether pathological lying is always a conscious act and whether pathological lars always have control over their lies; an external reason for lying (such as financial gain) often appears absent and the internal or psychological purpose for lying is often unclear; the lies in pathological lying are often unplanned and rather impulsive; the pathological liar may become a prisoner of his or her lies; the desired personality of the pathological liar may overwhelm the actual one; pathological lying may sometimes be associated with criminal behavior; the pathological lar may acknowledge, at least in part, the falseness of the tales when energetically challenged; and, in pathological lying, telling lies may often seem to be an end in itself. Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 108 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012854

What seems most critical to the pathology is the lack of control which leads to repetitive lying over a long period of time. Compared with run of the mill liars, pathological liars often seem unaware that they are lying and do so many times a day as part of their daily habit. In the same way that birds have to fly and fish have to swim, pathological liars have to lie. If pathological liars are unaware of their lies and incapable of controlling themselves, then they are not responsible for the harm they impose. They have no choice. Unbeknownst to them, their brain has been hijacked by a creative fiction writer. They are following a script, but have no sense of its author. Dike’s summary is based on a loose and eclectic set of clinical observations. Several clinicians thus debate whether habitual lying counts as pathology and thus, whether it is worthy of an entry into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. For example, how can the clinician establish pathology given the evidence that healthy people lie about twice a day, physicians lie about 40-80% of the time to help their patients gain better health care, and lying within an experimental context increases as subjects generate more lies? My own sense is that despite the difficulty of defining the pathology with precision, clinicians have identified individuals that lie with every breath and often identify psychopaths by their calculated conning. These observations sharpen our approach to understanding the seeds of deceit and self-deception in the non-pathological condition. For example, does excessive and sustained lying stem from a specific problem associated with recognizing the truth or does it grow from a more general problem with self-control? Or, does the habitual liar suffer from an emotional deficit such that when he or she lies, there are no feelings of guilt and shame? Without these emotional regulators, it is impossible to learn from the harm caused. When healthy people distort the truth, they often feel bad. When healthy people think about distorting the truth, they often think about the potential harm and then silence the option to lie in favor of the truth. Perhaps unhealthy people never hear these emotional alarms. The mind sciences have begun addressing these issues. The American neuroscientist Adrian Raine reported that individuals with a history of repeated lying and con-artistry have structurally different brains from non-liars, including individuals with a history of anti-social problems. Habitual liars have more white matter in the frontal lobes, but less grey matter. White matter consists of axons and myelin. The axon 1s the part of a nerve cell that carries information. It is like the electric cable that runs from the power station. Myelin covers the axon, at least in healthy individuals. It is like the fat around your bones, protecting and insulating neurons. Fat helps keep us warm. Myelin helps neurons transmit information. The grey matter consists of nerve cell bodies, which lack myelin. The function of grey matter is to connect up the neurons to transmit information between areas of the brain. Raine suggests that the increase in white matter gives habitual liars the upper hand when it comes to lying, helping them suppress the truth, control their emotions, and mind read what others believe and Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 109 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012855

desire. The decrease in gray matter allows habitual liars to lie without feeling guilty. The messaging center that sends healthy subjects moral reminders about the virtues of truth, is shut down or barely audible within the mind of a pathological liar. The brain of a pathological liar allows for the ultimate poker face. The brain of a healthy individual allows us to perfect the poker face by repeating a distorted narrative, converting a lie into a self-justified truth. This is dangerous denial. When we lie, either to manipulate someone else or ourselves, we distort the truth. We can either do this on the fly or use a narrative held in long-term memory. When Hilary Clinton told her supporters that she had to dodge bullets in Bosnia, she either lied in the moment to convey a stronger image or she developed this distortion over a long period of time. In the first instance, she knew that her comment about Bosnia was false. She was deceptive, but not self-deceived. In the second case, she was self- deceived and most likely unaware. Her narrative was so clear that she could picture running for cover without the usual welcoming party. Several studies now reveal that both forms of lying engage brain areas associated with self-control and conflict— the right backside of the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate. This makes sense. To tell a lie, either to oneself or another, requires controlling what we know about reality to convey an alternative reality. When we hold both versions of this narrative in mind, there is conflict. As we rehearse one version more than the other, the conflict dissipates. The more we rehearse, the more we push this narrative into long term memory. The more we push this narrative into long term memory, the more it becomes part of what we believe is true. The more we believe it is true, the more we hold onto a narrative that can be used to justify our actions. The imaging results fit well with our understanding of which brain regions are involved in self- control, conflict, memory, and social knowledge. To understand which regions are either necessary or sufficient for representing truths and lies, we turn to a technique called ‘ranscranial direct current stimulation. This method allows researchers to safely increase or decrease activity in a brain area through electrical stimulation. Think of this technique as a volume knob on an old fashioned radio. Turn it clockwise and you amplify the signal. Turn it counter-clockwise and you quiet the signal. When the German neuroscientist Ahmed Karim and his colleagues applied this technique to the right backside of the prefrontal cortex, and decreased activity, healthy subjects were better at telling lies, lied without guilt, and were less stressed out as measured by the sweatiness of their skin. This pattern mirrors the natural state of pathological liars. Absent the circuitry in the brain that exerts self-control over our distortions, Karim turned healthy subjects into conscience-free, poker-faced, liars. If self-deception and deception are not only part of normal brain function, but adaptive processes, then what makes this system turn toxic? What tips the brain over to the dark side, allowing self-deceptive illusions to empower the individuals and groups to cause great harm? Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 110 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012856

lam God! Across the globe, in Eastern and Western cultures, clinicians have reported a consistent pattern of psychotic delusion, typically associated with schizophrenia: many believe that they are God, God’s messenger, or the Devil, equipped with extraordinary, invincible powers. This is the same disorder that led the Australian gentleman we encountered at the start of this chapter to believe that he had two heads and heard the voices of Jesus and Abraham. Estimates reveal a greater number of cases among Catholic than Islamic or Protestant societies, and the fewest among Hindu societies, although experts are uncertain as to why such particular biases exist. The interesting point 1s that there are individual differences in the expression of religious delusions that are at least partially mediated by the particular beliefs and customs of the religion. Religious delusions are also held with greater conviction than other delusions, more resistant to change, and often result in self-mutilation or harming others; when harm occurs, it follows the narrative from a religious text, plucking out eyes or cutting off genitals as the means to cleansing sins. What makes religious delusions like these, in which the individual has created a narrative of supreme confidence and power, different from non-delusional, non-psychotic forms of distortion? In a Gallup poll, 10% of the Americans surveyed claimed they had spoken with the devil. In several psychological experiments, healthy non-psychotic subjects consistently report that they are smarter than most, more attractive, and more likely to win than lose an athletic competition. Though some of these people are correct — they are in fact smarter, more attractive, and better competitors — most are wrong and yet believe they are right. What this research reveals is that we all suffer, some more than others, from positive illusions — biases that distort our sense of confidence, control, and invincibility These illusions differ from delusions in that they are less fixed, more flexible, and more amenable to change. Delusions are highly maladaptive, a signature of brain dysfunction, and the source of great suffering. Positive illusions, in contrast, are often highly adaptive, generating the confidence necessary to take on great challenges and challengers, convincing an audience or a group of opponents that we are stronger, smarter, and sexier. Positive illusions have been linked to direct mental and physical health benefits, including evidence that distorted optimism can slow disease progression. Positive illusions are, as noted by the biologists Richard Wrangham, Robert Trivers, and Dominic Johnson, a form of self-deception with considerable evolutionary benefits. But like the runaway capacity of desire, so too can our illusions of grandeur runaway. When this occurs, illusion and delusion are virtually indistinguishable. What was once a narrative centered on the grandiose belief of being god-like has been transformed into the belief of being God, leading individuals and groups to engage in extreme extortion or violence, not only blind to Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial iil HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012857

obvious risks but incredulous that there would be any risks. This is denial. This is another way in which we close off our senses to reality in order to create our own imagined reality. How does this process get started? It is not until the age of about 18-24 months that we acquire the ability to recognize ourselves in a mirror. It is not until a couple of years later that we have a sense that our own beliefs can sometimes differ from others that we interact with. It is not until this time that we develop the capacity to deceive, along with a powerful suite of social emotions that enable us to feel embarrassed, envious, and elated. These feelings link up our sense of self with our sense of others. These are comparative feelings and beliefs, and they feed back to who we are, either building up our self-confidence or crushing it. When my daughter Sofia was ten years old, she announced that she will one day go to Brown University — attracted by their course offerings and the fact that Emma Watson, aka Hermione Granger of Harry Potter fame, was a student — be rich and have five children — she wanted more siblings and has always had a taste for the luxurious — obtain a veterinarian degree — my wife is a veterinarian and we have five pets — open a restaurant — I love to cook— and be an Olympian in gymnastics — sports run in our family. Sofia was not delusional, but brimming with uncalibrated confidence. Her confidence was uncalibrated because she had no sense of what it takes to get into Brown, become rich, take care of five kids, obtain a vet degree, open a restaurant, and win gold. My wife and I would be horrid parents if we burst her bubble. We would be irresponsible parents if we didn’t, over time, describe the exciting challenges associated with each of these desirable goals. Developing a sense of self depends on at least two capacities: looking inwards at what we know and are capable of doing, and looking outwards at what others know and are capable of doing. When we look inwards, if we honestly open our eyes to the richness of our autobiography, we will recognize cases where we have succeeded and those in which we have failed. This history reveals our knowledge and ignorance, our strengths and weaknesses, and our capacity to exert control or meld to external forces. When we look outwards, again with an honest, panoramic perspective, we learn about those who know more or less than we do, about those we can outcompete and those we lose to in defeat, and about situations that undermine our capacity for self-control. Distortion enters these personal narratives when we either lack information or filter it in some way, consciously or unconsciously. The British criminology scholar Mandeep Dhami examined positive illusions in criminals incarcerated in prisons within the United States and the United Kingdom. Because recidivism levels are high among convicted criminals, with 40-60% of offenders re-convicted after 1-3 years from release, it is important to understand risk factors. One possibility is that criminals believe that their prior offense was just a one-off event or bad luck, and that, of course, they will never engage in crime again, having learned their lesson and feeling fully confident in their capacity to lead a crime-free life. Based on a sample of Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 112 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012858

over 500 prisoners from medium security prisons, 60-80% believed that they would find a place to live as well as employment once released, whereas less than 30% felt that they would commit another crime. Prisoners also felt that they were much less likely to commit another crime than other prisoners. Thus, whether prisoners were evaluating their own chances of success or their success relative to others, they were living with a distorted narrative. The shorter the criminal record, the more distorted the narrative. Repeated experience with crime appears to anchor the narrative in a more realistic assessment of the future. Certain experiences can also enhance positive illusions by giving individuals an unrealistic sense of self-control, along with a distorted expectation that future outcomes are highly deterministic. For example, people who are wealthy, highly educated, part of a dominant group, or citizens within a society that values independence, are more likely to believe that they have control over the future and are more likely to express optimism and high self-esteem. These attitudes often lead to a boosted sense of control and an illusory sense of control over future outcomes. The American psychologist Nathanael Fast ran a series of experiments to further explore the relationship between power and illusory control, specifically asking whether subjects endowed with power expect control over outcomes that are strictly due to chance or that are unrelated to the domain of power. Across each study, whether subjects recalled a personal situation where they were in power or had to imagine being in power, they were more likely than those in a subordinate position to express confidence about the outcome of rolling a six-sided die, predicting the future of a company, and influencing the results of a national election. Power and winning distort, a tale that has been told and retold countless times in the annals of industry and warfare. As the American business administration scholars Francesca Gino and Gary Pisano note, the business world is full of cases where leaders and leading companies crash because they fail to examine the causes of success. They assume, for example, that their success is entirely due to their brilliance, control over the market, and the weakness of the competition, as opposed to a shot of good luck. So too goes the story of unexamined war victories, as supremely confident generals discount relevant information about their opponents, leading battalions on a death march. Our willingness to accept victories without question stands in direct contrast with our motivation to scrutinize failures, drilling down for explanations or causes. When we lose or fail in some way, the negative emotions accompanying this experience focus our attention on working out an explanation. When we win, we bask in the glory, fueled by the brain’s chemicals and the body’s hormones. This physiological orchestration sets up the positive illusion of overconfidence, a winning card in many competitive arenas, and a disaster in others. Recall from chapter 1 that our brains, and the brains of other animals, are configured to reward victory with a cascade of hormonal and neurobiological changes. Winning delivers a shot of testosterone, and so too does observing others win. Winning also delivers a shot of dopamine, further generating a Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 113 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012859

honey hit to the brain when we shine. There is evidence that schizophrenia is associated with a dysfunctional dopamine system, which might help explain the overconfidence in their beliefs, especially beliefs in powerful religious icons. Winning boosts confidence, which increases the chances of winning again. This is a highly adaptive cycle that can lead to overconfidence. Dominic Johnson took advantage of the research on human and animal competition to explore the link between overconfidence, testosterone, and war within the context of a simulated game. Each subject played the role of a leader in a country at war with another over diamond resources. The goal of the game was to accrue the highest level of resources or defeat the neighboring country. Though war games ona computer can not capture the full reality of war, the fact is that military specialists throughout the world use simulations to prepare combatants for some of the strategic and emotional problems they will confront. Most subjects judged that they would outcompete their opponents, and this was exacerbated in males relative to females. Those who believed that they would whip their opponents actually had the worst records, suggesting that they were not only uncalibrated but that their distortion of reality led to costly outcomes. Those with the highest expectation of victory had the highest testosterone levels and were most likely to launch unprovoked attacks on their opponents. Whether in real life or in the simulated world of computer games, brimming overconfidence can lead to a distorted sense of risk and the odds of victory in war — or any competitive arena. Though this is a costly strategy, there are clear evolutionary benefits under conditions explained by Trivers and Johnson. Self-deception is favored when opponents have imperfect information about their strengths and weaknesses, and where the payoffs are high relative to the costs. Self-deception leads individuals to go for it, convincing themselves and others that the risks are low, the gains are great, and the standard social norms are no longer applicable. This is a dangerous form of denial, recruiting moral disengagement to justify horrific means and ends. This is a piece of the psychology that can facilitate the process of runaway desire. This is a piece of the psychology that enables individuals to cause great harms. My goal in this book has been to find the universal core of evil, the elements or ingredients that are shared across all cases of evil. My suggestion is that the mixture of desire and denial are both necessary and sufficient ingredients in the recipe for evil. All other ingredients are flourishes, creative additions that do not take away from the universal core. Within each of us is a recipe for causing excessive harm and for expressing exceptional compassion. We have choices. But as evidence accumulates from the sciences, it has become increasingly clear that some of us have fewer choices than others. Some of us are equipped to resist the temptations of a culture of evil, while others fall prey. This is the story of our species. This is our story. Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial i14 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012860

Endnotes: Chapter 3 Recommended books: Baron-Cohen, S. (2011). The Science of Evil. New York: Basic Books. Hamburg, D. (2008). Preventing Genocide. Denver: Paradigm Publishers. Johnson, D. P. (2004). Overconfidence and war. Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Kelman, H.C., & Hamilton, V.L. (1989). Crimes of Obedience: toward a social psychology of authority and responsibility. New Haven: Yale University Press. Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P.R. (Eds.). (2011). The Social Psychology of Morality. Washington: American Psychological Association. Staub, E. (2010). Overcoming Evil. New York: Oxford University Press. Trivers, R. (2011). The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life. New York: Viking Press. Notes: * Delusions, confabulations and the fabric of belief: Ames, D. (1984). Self shooting of a phantom head. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 145(2), 193; McKay, R. & Dennett, D. (2009) The evolution of misbelief. Behavioral and Brain Sciences vol. 32 pp. 493-561; Hirstein, W. (2005) Brain Fiction, Cambridge, MIT Press. * iHuman: Bastian, B., Laham, $.M, Wilson, S., Haslam, N., & Koval, P. (2011). Blaming, praising, and protecting our humanity: The implications of everyday dehumanization for judgments of moral status. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50(3), 469-483; Graham, J., & Haidt, J. (2011). Sacred values and evil adversaries: a moral foundations approach. In M. Mikulincer & P.R. Shaver (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Morality; pp. 11-32, Washington ,American Psychological Association; Gray, H M, Gray, K, & Wegner, D M. (2007). Dimensions of Mind Perception. Science, 315(5812), 619-619; Gray, K, & Wegner, D M. (2011). Morality takes two: dyadic morality and mind perception. In M. Mikulincer & P.R. Shaver (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Morality, pp. 109-128, Washington ,American Psychological Association; Gray, K., Jenkins, A., Heberlein, A. S., & Wegener, D. M. (2011). Distortions of mind perception in psychopathology. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108: 477-479; Haslam, N., Bastian, B., Laham, S., & Loiugham, S. (2011). Humanness, dehumanization, and moral psychology. In M. Mikulincer & P.R. Shaver (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Morality, pp. 203-218, Washington, American Psychological Association; Loughnan, Steve, Leidner, Bernhard, Doron, Guy, Haslam, Nick, Kashima, Yoshihisa, Tong, Jennifer, & Yeung, Victoria. (2010). Universal biases in self-perception: Better and more human than average. British Journal of Social Psychology, 49(3), 627-636; Martinez, A., Piff, P., Mendoza- Denton, R., & Hinshaw, S. P. (2011). The power ofa label: Mental illness diagnoses, ascribed humanity, and social Rejection. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 30(.): 1-23. * Populating the inner sanctum: Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., & Kurzban, R. (2003). Perceptions of race. Trends in Cognitive Science, 7(4), 173-179; Kinzler, K.D, Corriveau, K.H, & Harris, P.L. (2011). Children's selective trust in native-accented speakers. Developmental Science, 14(1), 106-111; Kinzler, K.D, & Spelke, E.S. (2011). Do infants show social preferences for people differing in race? Cognition, 119(.), 1-9; Kinzler, K.D., Dupoux, E., & Spelke, E.S. (2007). The native language of social cognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(30), 12577-12580; Kinzler, K.D, Shutts, K., Dejesus, J., & Spelke, E.S. (2009). Accent trumps race in guiding children's social preferences. Social Cognition, Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 115 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012861

27(4), 623-634; Kurzban, R, Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(26), 15387-15392; Markus, H.R. (2008) Pride, prejudice, and ambivalence: toward a unified theory of race and ethnicity. American Psychologist, 63 (8), 651-70. * Prejudiced language: Dixon, J, Mahoney, B, & Cocks, R. (2002). Effects of regional accent, race, and crime type on attributions of guilt. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 21(2), 162-168. Lev-Ari, Shin, & Keysar, Boaz. (2010). Why don't we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(6), 1093-1096. * Unconscious attitudes and prejudice: Avenanti, A, Sirigu, A, & Aglioti, S.M. (2010). Racial Bias Reduces Empathic Sensorimotor Resonance with Other-Race Pain. Current Biology, 20, 1018- 1022; Balas, B., Westerlund, A., Hung, K., & Nelson, C.A. (2011). Shape, color and the other- race effect in the infant brain. Developmental Science, 14(4), 892-900; Banaji, M.R. (2001). Implicit attitudes can be measured. In H.L. Roediger, J.S. Nairne, I. Neath & A. Surprenant (Eds.), The Nature of Remembering: Essays in Honor of Robert G. Crowder. Washington: American Psychological Association; Correll, J, Wittenbrink, B, Park, B, Judd, C.M, & Goyle, A. (2010). Dangerous enough: Moderating racial bias with contextual threat cues. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 184-189; Chiao, JY, & Mathur, V.A. (2010). Intergroup Empathy: How Does Race Affect Empathic Neural Responses? Current Biology, 20(11), R478- R480; Dunham, Y, Baron, A, & Banaji, M. (2008). The development of implicit intergroup cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(7), 248-253; Gutsell, JN, & Inzlicht, M. (2010). Empathy constrained: Prejudice predicts reduced mental simulation of actions during observation of outgroups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 841-845; Hein, G, Silani, G, Preuschoff, K, & Batson, CD. (2010). Neural responses to ingroup and outgroup members’ suffering predict individual differences in Costly Helping. Neuron, 68, 149-160; Ito, T.A, & Bartholow, B.D. (2009). The neural correlates of race. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(12), 524- 531. Masten, C.L, Telzer, E.H, & Eisenberger, N.I. (2011). An FMRI investigation of attributing negative social treatment to racial discrimination. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(5), 1042-1051; Xu, X., Zuo, X., Wang, X., & Han, S.. (2009). Do you feel my pain? Racial group membership modulates empathic neural responses. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(26), 8525-8529. * Dehumanization: Baron-Cohen, S. (2011). The Science of Evil. New York: Basic Books; Cheng, Y, Lin, CP, Liu, HL, Hsu, YY, Lim, KE, Hung, D, & Decety, J. (2007). Expertise modulates the perception of pain in others. Current Biology, 17(19), 1708-1713; Decety, J. (2009). Empathy, sympathy and the perception of pain. Pain, 145(3), 365-366; Decety, J, Michalska, KJ, Akitsuka, Y, & Lahey, BB. (2009). Atypical empathic responses in adolescents with aggressive conduct disorder: a functional MRI investigation. Biological Psychology, 80(2), 203-211; Decety, J, Yang, C, & Cheng, Y. (2010). Physicians down-regulate their pain empathy response: An event- related brain potential study. Neuroimage, 50(4), 1676-1682; Jackson, P., Meltzoff, A., & Decety, J. (2005). How do we perceive the pain of others? A window into the neural processes involved in empathy. Newroimage, 24(3), 771-779; Fiske, S. (2009). From dehumanization and objectification to rehumanization. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1167, 31-34; Goff, P, Eberhardt, J, Williams, M.J, & Jackson, M.C. (2008). Not yet human: Implicit knowledge, historical dehumanization, and contemporary consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(2), 292-306; Haslam, N. (2006). Dehumanization: An integrative review. Personality and Social Psychology Review 10(3), 252-264; Haslam, N, Kashima, Y, Loughnan, 8, Shi, J, & Suitner, C. (2008). Subhuman, inhuman, and superhuman: contrasting humans with nohumans in three cultures. Secial Cognition, 26(2), 248-258; Lammers, J, & Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 116 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012862

Stapel, D. (2010). Power increases dehumanization. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 14(1), 113-126; Moller, A.C, & Deci, E.L. (2009). Interpersonal control, dehumanization, and violence: A self-determination theory perspective. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 13(1), 41-53; Viki, G T, Zimmerman, A, & Ballantyne, N. (2010). Dehumanization and attitudes towards the ill-treatment and social exclusion of Muslims: The mediating role of perceived symbolic threat. Manuscript, 1-14. * Moral disengagement: Bandura, A., Barbaranelli, C., Caprara, G., & Pastorelli, C. (1996). Mechanisms of moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 364-374; Bandura, A. (2002). Selective moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Journal of Moral Education, 31(2), 101-119; Bandura, A. (2004). The role of selective moral disengagement in terrorism and counterterrorism. Jn: Understanding terrorism: Psychosocial roots, causes, and consequences, Eds, F.M. Mogahaddam, A.J. Marsella, Washington, APA Press, 121-150; Jackson, L. E., & Gaertner, L. (2010). Mechanisms of moral disengagement and their differential use by right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation in support of war. Aggressive Behavior, n/a—n/a. doi:10.1002/ab.20344; Kelman, H.C. (1973). Violence without moral restraint: reflections on the dehumanization of victims and victimizers. Journal of Social Issues, 29, 25-61; Kelman, H.C., & Hamilton, V.L. (1989). Crimes of Obedience: toward a social psychology of authority and responsibility. New Haven: Yale University Press; McAlister, AL, Bandura, A, & Owen, SV. (2006). Mechanisms of moral disengagement in support of military force: The impact of Sept. 11. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 25(2), 141-165; Obermann, M.-L. (2011). Moral disengagement in self- reported and peer-nominated school bullying. Aggressive Behavior, 37, 133-144; Osofsky, MJ, Bandura, A, & Zimbardo, PG. (2005). The role of moral disengagement in the execution process. Law and Human Behavior, 2A), 371-393; Shulman, E. P., Cauffman, E., Piquero, A. R., & Fagan, J. (2011). Moral disengagement among serious juvenile offenders: A longitudinal study of the relations between morally disengaged attitudes and offending Developmental Psychology. do1:10.1037/a0025404 * Lies and self-deception: Carrion, R.E., Keenan, J.P., & Sebanz, N. (2010). A truth that's told with bad intent: an ERP study of deception. Cognition, 114(1), 105-110; Dike, C., Baranoski, M, & Gniffith, E.E.H. (2005). Pathological lying revisited. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law, 33, 342-349; Ekman, P., Friesen, W.V., & O'Sullivan, M. (1988). Smiles while lying. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 414-420; Greene, J. D, & Paxton, J. M. (2009). Patterns of neural activity associated with honest and dishonest moral decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 10630), 12506-12511; Grubin, D. (2005). Commentary: getting at the truth about pathological lying. J Am Acad Psychiatry Law, 33(3), 350-353; Hayashi, A., Abe, N., Ueno, A., Shigemune, Y., Mori, E., Tashiro, M., & Fujii, T. (2010). Neural correlates of forgiveness for moral transgressions involving deception. Brain Res, 1332, 90-99; Karim, A. A., Schneider, M., Lotze, M., Veit, R., Sauseng, P., Braun, C., & Birbaumer, N. (2010). The truth about lying: inhibition of the anterior prefrontal cortex improves deceptive behavior. Cerebral Cortex, 20(1), 205-213; Mameli, F., Mrakic-Sposta, S., Vergari, M., Fumagalli, M., Macis, M., Ferrucci, R., Priori, A.. (2010). Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex specifically processes general - but not personal - knowledge deception: Multiple brain networks for lying. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 211(2), 164-168; McKay, R.T, & Dennett, D.C. (2009). The evolution of misbelief. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32, 493-561; Mele, Alfred. (2010). Approaching self-deception: How Robert Audi and I part company. Consciousness and Cognition, 19(3), 745-750; Otter, Z., & Egan, V. (2007). The evolutionary role of self-deceptive enhancement as a protective factor against antisocial cognitions. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 2258-2269; Sweetser, E. (1987). The Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 117 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012863

definition of "lie": an examination of the folk models underlying a semantic prototype. In D. Hollard & N. Quinn (Eds.), Cultural Models in Language and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press; Talwar, V., & Lee, K. (2002). Development of lying to conceal a transgression: children's control of expressive behaviour during verbal deception. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 26, 436-444; Verschuere, B, Spruyt, A, Meijer, E.H., & Otgaar, H. (2011). The ease of lying. Consciousness and Cognition, xxx, yyy-zzz. dol: doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.10.023; * I’m God!: Bhavsar, V., & Bhugra, D. (2008). Religious delusions: finding meanings in psychosis Psychopathology, 41(3), 165-172; Fast, N. J., Gruenfeld, D. H., Sivanathan, N., & Galinsky, A. D. (2009). Illusory control: a generative force behind power's far-reaching effects. Psychological Science, 20(4), 502-508; Dhami, M. K., Mandel, D. R., Loewenstein, G., & Ayton, P. (2006). Prisoners’ positive illusions of their post-release success. Law and Human Behavior, 30(6), 631-647; Fast, N. J., Gruenfeld, D. H., Sivanathan, N., & Galinsky, A. D. (2009). Illusory control: a generative force behind power's far-reaching effects Psychological Science, 20(4), 502-508; Johnson, D. D. P., & Fowler, J. H. (2011). The evolution of overconfidence. Nature, 477(7364), 317-320; Johnson, D. D. P., Weidmann, N. B., & Cederman, L.-E. (2011). Fortune favours the bold: An agent-based model reveals adaptive advantages of overconfidence in war. PLoS ONE, 6(6), e20851, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020851.¢004; Lou, H. C., Skewes, J. C., Thomsen, K. R., Overgaard, M., Lau, H. C., Mouridsen, K., & Roepstorff, A. (2011). Dopaminergic stimulation enhances confidence and accuracy in seeing rapidly presented words Journal of Vision, 11(2), 1-6. doi:10.1167/11.2.15; McDermott, R., Tingley, D., Cowden, J., Frazzetto, G., & Johnson, D. D. P. (2009). Monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA) predicts behavioral aggression following provocation Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(7), 2118-2123; Moore, D. A., & Healy, P. J. (2008). The trouble with overconfidence Psychological Review, 115(2), 502-517; Robbins, R. W., & Beer, J. S. (2004). Positive illusions about the self: short-term benefits and long-term costs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(2), 340-352; Seeman, P. (2007). Dopamine and schizophrenia. Scholarpedia, 2(10), 3634. doi:10.4249/scholarpedia.3634; Siddle, R., Haddock, G., Tarrier, N., & Faragher, E. B. (2002). Religious delusions in patients admitted to hospital with schizophrenia. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 37(3), 130-138; Wrangham, R.W. (1999). Is military incompetence adaptive? Evolution and Human Behavior, 20, 3-17; Zhu, F., Yan, C.-X., Wang, Q., Zhu, Y.-S., Zhao, Y., Huang, J., Zhang, H.-B., Gao, C.-G., & Li, S.-B. (2011). An association study between dopamine D1 receptor gene polymorphisms and the risk of schizophrenia. Brain research, doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2011.08.069 Quotes * Racist, white male superiority: published in Gould, S.J. (1980). "Women's Brains" in The Panda's Thumb, New York, W.W. Norton. Pages 152-159. * Holocaust denier, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2005/12/14/AR2005 121402403 html * Hilary Clinton as congenital liar: W. Saffire, 1996, Blizzard of lies, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/08/opinion/essay-blizzard-of-lies.html * The adaptive logic of self-deception: Trivers, R. The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self- Deception in Human Life, New York, Viking/Penguin Press. * Clinical liars: Dike et al. (2005). Pathological lying revisited. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law, 33 pp. 342-349; quote on p. 342 Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 118 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012864

Chapter 4: Wicked in waiting The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. — Bible, Psalm 53:8 Growing up is a lottery. No one has a say over their genes or their parents, including the environment that is created on their behalf. For individuals raised in poverty, abused by parents or abandoned by them, there may come a time when it is possible to purge the past, rise above it, and lay down new tracks. Success in this endeavor depends upon biological potential and the environment’s toxicity. Though every healthy human being acquires the same basic biological ingredients, individual differences in how our biology expresses itself can either provide immunity against toxic environments or deep vulnerabilities. The unlucky ones inherit genes that predispose to sensation-seeking and risk-taking, callous and unemotional attitudes toward others, weak self-control, and narcissistic leanings. With this lottery ticket, it takes little to trigger the mindset of an evildoer. And yet some resist. An impressive accumulation of scientific evidence helps explain the source of these individual differences, including its role in sculpting different personality profiles that either deviate greatly from societal norms or follow them to perfection. What’s normal? Much of our fascination with evil stems from the distinct impression that evildoers are anomalies. Their actions are inhuman, unimaginable, rarely witnessed, and detrimental to our species’ survival. This impression carries with it an assumption about what is expected or typical of our species, as well as what is possible. It assumes that evildoers have thoughts, feelings, and desires that fall outside of the repertoire of an average human being. Their actions are unimaginable because most human minds lack the capacity Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 119 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012865

to imagine butchering human bodies. Like so many simple claims that go unchallenged, we should be puzzled by this one. We should ask: what’s normal? The evolutionary history of each species’ brain does not provide a complete account of what the brain can do. Consider again a topic from chapter 1: domesticated dogs and their ancestors, the wolves. Though dogs live with humans, and are often raised by them, they never acquire a human language. In this sense, the domesticated dog is just like the wolf. But what dogs can do, with greater facility than any wild wolf, is understand a variety of human gestures such as pointing and the movement of our eyes. This capacity emerged following a period of human domestication. Wolves were not part of this selective regime. But, and this is the most interesting twist in the story, wolf puppies raised by human caretakers develop into adults that can read pointing and looking extremely well. This tells us that even wolves evolved the potential to read human gestures, but only human environments favor this skill. This tells us that what animals express is not necessarily indicative of their potential. To uncover their potential, we must alter the environment or wait for such changes to happen naturally. When we ask What's normal), we are asking two questions: what is the evolved repertoire and what is the evolved capacity? The evolved repertoire tells us something about the relationship between a species’ biology and the environments that have shaped their behavior. The evolved capacity tells us about a reservoir of behaviors that may only emerge in novel environments. What’s normal human behavior? The same distinctions apply to us as to dogs and wolves, with the extra complication that our species adds because of historical twists and turns orchestrated by legal, political, ethical, religious, and medical points of view. History presents us with hundreds of cases where an accepted normal mutated into abnormal, or where abnormal transformed into normal. During the Italian Baroque —a period of decadence that started in the late 16th century and ended in the early 18th century — some 500,000 boys were castrated in order to freeze their youthful voices for the enjoyment of others. These castrati formed an essential part of music culture, of what people expected and wanted. For many of these young boys, not only did castration end their reproductive careers, but often, their lives. As the 18th century drew to a close, so too did castration in the name of art. What was normal then is perceived as abnormal and heinous today. The same story can be told for other sexual practices, including female genital mutilation, circumcision, and homosexuality. In the United States, homosexuality was considered a disease before the 1970s, with its own entry in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Thanks to an underground movement of gay psychiatrists and the work of Evelyn Hooker who discovered that the manual’s classification entry was based entirely on clinical interviews of gay prisoners, homosexuality has been freed from its jail sentence as a mental disease — as abnormal. Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 120 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012866

When clinicians diagnose individuals with a mental disorder, they are making a statement about deviance, about what falls within and outside the range of normal mental states. Unfortunately, there are no clear categories, no bright lines separating normal from abnormal or uncommon. As the distinguished American psychologist William James noted, however, studying “the abnormal is the best way to understand the normal.” Let’s follow this logic. Consider the developmental disorder of autism. This disorder, typified by difficulties understanding what others believe and feel, ranges from individuals who appear locked out of the world, rocking back and forth to their own internal rhythm, to high functioning individuals such as Professor Temple Grandin, who not only teaches college-level courses, but has done wonders as a spokesperson for autism and for the animal welfare movement. This range already tells us that autism is represented by a spectrum, once identified by purely behavioral measures, but joined today by genetic and neurobiological markers. The genetic evidence is particularly helpful for explaining the observed variation. For example, the MAOA gene, located on the X chromosome, is involved in the regulation of social behavior and has different forms that map to differences in brain activity and stress physiology. The different forms correspond to the number of copies of the genetic material. This copy number is, in turn, partially responsible for the spectrum of autism observed, especially the degree of social dysfunction, including stress and aggression. Once we admit to a spectrum, and begin to pinpoint the factors that push individuals to stand on one end or the other, we must admit to admitting virtually everyone onto this spectrum. All of us, at some point in our life, have lacked sensitivity to the feelings and beliefs of others. All of us have been self-absorbed and locked out from the rest of the world. All of us have failed to express empathy and compassion to others. All of us have been a bit abnormal in this sense. All of us fall, on occasion, within the spectrum of autism as well as other disorders of the mind such as psychopathy. Like autism, psychopathy is not one neat and tidy disorder, but a spectrum. Diagnostically, psychopaths are impulsive, narcissistic, and lacking in social emotions such as empathy, remorse, and guilt. These behaviorally defined characteristics are complimented by genetic and neurobiological markers, some pointing to risks in the pre-school years, and linked to the same MAOA gene noted above. The spectrum that defines psychopaths ranges from hyper-smart, calculating, and powerful politicians to low IQ, downtrodden, serial murderers. Everyone of us occasionally shows our psychopathic face: self- absorbed, impatient, manipulative, and uncaring. What is abnormal, then, is living with these characteristics, all the time. Clinically diagnosed psychopaths, like clinically diagnosed individuals with autism, have the characteristic traits as stable components of their personality. An honest clinician will tell you, however, that stability is difficult to define, and so too are the essential traits. An honest brain scientist will also tell you that, despite the observation that psychopaths have hyperactive dopamine brain Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 12] HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012867

circuits that may drive sensation seeking, along with smaller frontal lobe circuits that may minimize their sensitivity to punishment and the capacity for self-control, these differences are statistical. What “statistical” means is that if you were to stack up all of the brains with hyperactive dopamine circuits and smaller frontal lobes into one pile, most, but not all would be from psychopaths. You would also find psychopaths in the pile of brains showing normal dopamine activity and average-sized frontal lobes. These brain differences are interesting, but they are not yet like fingerprints, absolutely and uniquely distinctive and diagnostic of a disorder. Such honesty reveals the challenges we face in answering the simple question What’s normal? Lawyers, judges and juries face the same problem as clinicians, often relying upon documents such as the DSM to determine when someone has acted outside the range of normal behavior. But for legal cases, there are two relevant layers of the normalcy problem. The first concerns whether the supposed criminal was sane or insane. An insanity defense requires evidence of a disease or defect of the mind. It requires evidence that the individual lacked the capacity to appreciate the criminal nature of the act as well as the capacity to conform. This is the part that relies on the DSM, as well as clinicians who can testify based on their expertise. The second concerns a more general understanding of what a prototypical or normal human would or could do in a given situation. The idea seems straightforward enough, but as I mentioned above, is only deceptively straightforward. Crimes of passion provide a useful illustration of the challenges we face, especially with respect to understanding how harm is ignited in the face of moral norms against it. Highlighting the truism that love makes you crazy, the crime of passion defense is invoked for cases where, in the heat of the moment, an individual finds and kills his or her spouse in bed with a lover. The defining feature of a crime of passion is that it was not planned and most people faced with the same situation would act similarly, unable to control their emotions. The crime of passion defense seems straightforward. Like autism and psychopathy, however, it too relies upon a diagnosis of what a prototypical or average person would do in the same situation. This diagnosis requires an understanding of two difficult mental states: planning and self-control. Planning involves imagining the future, time traveling to a new world, dreaming up what we might do and how we might feel. We plan in the short and long term, filling up our mental sticky notes with to-do lists. Self- control enters into planning because what we imagine for ourselves — what we desire — 1s often inappropriate or unethical because it harms others or ourselves. As noted in chapters 2 and 3, the capacity to keep desire in check relies on moral engagement. Moral engagement requires self-control. Moral disengagement requires denial in order to loosen the grip of self-control and enable desire to have its way. Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 122 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012868

When Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husband John Bobbitt’s penis, she fulfilled her desire to harm another. She carried out this gruesome act despite the moral and legal sanctions against it. But she did not plan this act in advance, and nor did it occur in the heat of the moment, triggered by finding her husband in bed with a lover. It followed in the wake of his repeated philandering, attempted rape and psychological abuse. As an act, it fell between the cracks of a long-term plan and a reflexive response — it was hatched on the night of the fatal attack, triggered by seeing a carving knife in the kitchen. Lorena either lost self-control for that fatal moment or she was in complete control, aware of what she was about to do and justified by her own moral convictions, believing that harming John was just deserts. John was most definitely not innocent. The jury delivered a “not guilty” decision, appealing to a crime of passion defense. This decision effectively excused Lorena’s harmful act as normal and justified given the mitigating circumstances. When we consider the nature of evil, we must pause to consider our own biases and prejudices about what’s normal. We must ask about the human potential, about our evolved capacities and our ability to behave in novel ways in novel environments. When we say that a person, group or nation is evil, we are saying something important about human nature, about our capability as a species. We are saying something important about the relationship between nature and nurture. Evil eggs and corrosive coops How much do career criminals cost? Estimates from the United States suggest that if you can prevent a high risk child from entering this career, you save $1.5-2 million in costs of education, mental health, and criminal fees. Educational facilities such as the Penikese Island School in Massachusetts, where I have had the privilege of working, spend about $100,000 per student per year to keep high-risk teens off the streets and out of jail. Based on statistics collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, approximately 100,000 individuals under the age of 18 years were arrested in 2007 for violent crimes — murder, forcible rape, and aggravated assault. If we had nurtured and educated these teenagers before they committed such crimes, we would have saved close to $100,000,000,000. Violent crime prevention pays. How does a career of violent crime start? Are there early warning signs? How early? How much starts with the egg and how much with the coop in which it was raised? Early scientific interests in this chicken and egg problem can be traced to the efforts of the Italian physician and psychologist Cesare Lombroso. In 1876, he published his magnum opus 7he Criminal Man. This was a serious, scholarly book aimed at understanding “whether there is a force in nature that causes crime.” Based on measurements of both anatomical and psychological characteristics, Lombroso Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 123 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012869

concluded that criminals were born not made. Their defining features were throwbacks to our evolutionary ancestors, dehumanized by biological defects. Modern man was civilized and elegant. Criminal man was barbaric, a savage with slanted forehead, jutting jaw, and excessively long arms. Criminal man was more ape-like than human-like. Because the cause of these differences was biological, Lombroso argued that a life of crime was inevitable. Change through rehabilitation was hopeless. To protect society, these natural born criminals had to be taken out of society, either locked up or executed. These ideas formed the basis of several eugenics’ movements, with the aim of weeding out the undesirable, less than human elements of society, be they less intelligent, from a non-Caucasian racial group, or from a culture with different religious beliefs. Lombroso’s theory of criminality was soon rejected as scholars from a variety of different disciplines unearthed its racial stereotypes and shoddy methods, including a failure to include the many people with slanted foreheads, jutting jaws, and long arms who never committed crimes, and those with statuesque anatomy who did. This initiated a general skepticism and even fear of biological explanations, causing a swing in the opposite direction. Criminals were not born but made by corrupt societies. Humans are not born with biologically encoded scripts for behaving with malice or virtue. Rather, we are born with blank slates, waiting for society to inscribe its distinctive signature. So began a pendulous swing from nature to nurture. Though the oscillation continues to this day, there is increasing appreciation, perhaps especially in the arena of criminology, that both nature and nurture make important contributions. This change comes, in part, from a far greater understanding of genetics, combined with long term studies of how humans and other animals develop within environments that are either nurturing or damaging. Consider the MAOA gene that I mentioned in the last section. This gene produces an enzyme that goes by the same shorthand of MAOA, or MonoAmine Oxidase A. MAOA is evolutionarily ancient, shared with other animals, and has two different forms — /ow and high — that influence the level of serotonin as well as the brain areas involved in social evaluation and emotional regulation. Early evidence for the critical role of this gene in social behavior emerged from a study that knocked it out of operation. Ifyou knock out the MAOA gene in mice, they quickly become hyper-hyper-aggressive. These genetically transformed mice have no capacity to regulate their social behavior. Consequently, all interactions are treated as confrontational and handled by aggressive attacks. These results are consistent with a large body of work in animals showing that heightened aggression and low levels of serotonin go hand in hand. These results are also consistent with work on humans. In, 1993, the Dutch biologist Hans Brunner analyzed the genetics of a large, extended family. Some individuals within this family were born with a defect that silenced the operation of the MAOA gene; they were like the mice who had this gene silenced. Relative to others in the family, these individuals had a pronounced history of violence, Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 124 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012870

including murder, rape, and arson. Oddly, although this work provided one of the cleanest links between genes and violence in humans, it slid under the radar of scientific attention, only to be resuscitated and enriched about ten years later. The behavioral geneticists Avshalom Caspi and Terry Moffitt studied a large population of young boys over several years. Though boys and girls have the MAOA gene, its effect on behavior is easier to study in boys because they have only one copy whereas girls have two, one for each of their two X chromosomes. For each boy, Caspi and Moffitt collected information on the presence and frequency of their antisocial behavior and whether they were raised by parents who were caring, mildly abusive, or severely abusive. For each boy, they also noted whether they had the low or high expressing form of MAOA. Caspi and Moffitt’s results provided a textbook example of nature’s interaction with nurture. If the parents were caring, the genes made no difference in their child’s personality or behavior. If the parents were mildly abusive, the boys with the low activity form were nine times more likely to fight, steal, bully, and defiantly break rules. For those boys with severely abusive parents and the low activity form of MAOA, 85% developed into violent, delinquent criminals. What these findings tell us is that in humans, it makes little difference which form of MAOA you have if you grow up with nurturing parents. But if you grow up with abusive parents, your genes make all the difference in the world. Those with the low expressing form are more likely than not to develop into delinquents, whereas those with the high expressing form are more likely than not to develop immunity. By a double dose of bad luck, one shot from the genes and one from the environment, some have a high probability of entering into the pool of potential evildoers. The German neuroscientist Andreas Meyer-Lindenburg took the genetic work one step further, linking the particular form of MAOA up to differences in the brain. Those with relatively poor social regulation and the low expressing form of MAOA had significantly smaller brains, specifically in regions associated with the control of emotion and social behavior — the amygdala, anterior cingulate, and prefrontal cortex. These individuals also had less connectivity between these regions, harking back to the importance of promiscuity both between humans and other animals, but also within our own species. Less connectivity translates to less control by the frontal areas of the brain over emotion-relevant areas such as the amygdala. When individuals with the low expressing form viewed angry or fearful facial expressions, the emotionally-relevant brain areas went into hyper-drive, whereas those areas involved in regulating emotions hibernated. Thus, in contrast with individuals who have the high expressing form of MAOA, those with the low expressing form are overwhelmed by emotionally charged experiences, lacking the mental brakes to stay cool. By luck of the draw, the low expressing form of MAOA builds a child that is Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 125 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012871

more likely to get angry and violent in the face of frustration and other emotional challenges, whereas the high expressing form builds a child that is walled off, immune to the same challenges. MAOA is crucial not only in long term human development, but also in everyday, ephemeral social interactions. In a laboratory study, an experimenter offered subjects the opportunity to earn up to $10 on a vocabulary quiz. Once they finished the quiz, they learned that an anonymous person in another room either took some of their earnings or left it alone. With this information in hand, the quiz-taker could either vindictively punish the person by giving them some hot sauce or they could cash out of the game and recover the money lost. In other words, they could either vindictively burn their opponent or recover their losses at no cost. In reality, there was no partner in the other room. When subjects with the low expressing form of MAOA lost most of their earnings, they were far more likely to deliver the hot sauce than those with the high expressing form; they were also most likely to deliver the highest amount of the sauce. Like long-term parental abuse, even short-term provocation invoked in a laboratory environment can cause those with the low expressing form of MAOA to act out and attack. As with all genes that have different forms, the number of individuals with the low expressing form of MAOA varies by population, including different ethnic and culturally identified groups. Caucasian and Hispanic males show some of the lowest frequencies at 34 and 29 % respectively, whereas Maori, Pacific Islander, and Chinese males show the highest at 56, 61, and 77% respectively. In a study of over 1000 men, individuals with the low expressing form of MAOA were more likely to be in violent gangs, and once in gangs, were more likely to use guns and knives than individuals with the high expressing form. Variation in the frequency of these two forms is interesting as it provides the signature handiwork of natural selection. When the frequency of one form goes up, the most likely explanation is that this form benefits the individual carriers. When the frequency goes down, there is a hidden cost. In light of this teeter-tottering of frequencies, the Maori are of interest. As celebrated by many New Zealanders today, the Maori were a highly adventurous and warring people. Individuals who took risks and fiercely defended their resources were heroes. Heroes may have been carriers of the low expressing form of MAOA. Heroes often leave more offspring, who were also carriers of the low expressing form. In the Maori environment, selection may well have favored this form of the gene. The important point is that different environments will favor different frequencies of the two forms of MAOA. This helps explain both the cause of individual differences and the challenges we face in confronting cultures of violence that are fueled by nature and nurture. Many other labs have followed up on Caspi and Moffitt’s long term, developmental study. Most find the same relationship between the MAOA gene and antisocial behavior. Others add to this account by showing how different genes and early appearing physiological differences contribute to a highly aggressive and antisocial starting state. In one study, the German psychologist Alexander Strobel put Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 126 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012872

subjects in a brain scanner and invited them to play a bargaining game where they could punish someone who acted unfairly to them — personal revenge — or punish someone who acted unfairly to someone else — impersonal punishment. For each subject, Strobel also collected information on a gene called COMT Met. This gene has three different forms, linked to differences in activity level in the frontal lobe of the brain, which are linked to differences in the levels of dopamine, which are linked to differences in the experience of reward. Given the different forms of COMT Met, at least part of what we experience as the feeling of reward or gratification was determined by our parents, and our parent’s parents, and their parent’s parents, all the way back to our ape-like cousins who evolved this gene. When Strobel looked at the brain scans of his subjects, he found that the same circuitry was engaged for personal revenge and impersonal punishment, with significant activity in the striatum — a reward area — as well as in the insula — an area involved in the feeling of disgust. When we detect an injustice, we feel disgusted, a feeling that may motivate our desire for retribution. The striatum finishes off the process, rewarding us for our punitive response, and wiping out the negative feeling of disgust. Importantly, individuals with the high expressing form of COMT Met, and thus, higher levels of dopamine, showed stronger activation in the striatum, and were more likely to punish those who act unfairly. Strobel suggests that those with the high expressing form punished more because they anticipated a higher level of reward. If this explanation is right, it has profound consequences for how we think about individual participation in the policing of norms and the honey hits associated with aggression. Some people will have a natural bias to shy away from punishment, not because they fail to see the importance of ratting out cheaters, but because they don’t anticipate feeling good about it. Others will be prone to punish even the most minor infractions because they feel empowered and good about it. Those who are empowered to punish because it feels good have forged a stronger association between aggression and reward. Unbeknownst to these individuals, they started life with a bias, one that colored their willingness to harm others. This bias is joined by many others that I discuss in the next few sections. The take home message is that if you are born male, endowed with certain genetic variants such as the low activity form of MAOA, and experience physical and psychological abuse by your parents, the odds of delinquency are frighteningly high. That’s the bad news. The good news is that if you are born male, have the high activity variant of the MAOA gene, and experience physical and psychological abuse by your parents, you are vaccinated by nature against the harms of your unfortunate nurture. The problem, of course, is that you have no say over which endowment you get, nor over the kinds of parents you receive. One of the reasons I have worked through this case study of genetic constraints and environmental sculpting is to provide an antidote to the often polarized views that have dominated much of the historical and psychological literature on evil. Many of the earliest, and most famous psychological Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 127 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012873

experiments were related in one way or another to Hannah Arendt’s thoughts about Adolf Eichmann and the fact that good people are capable of horrific things: the banality of evil. Hiding behind every average Joe is a person equipped with an engine of malice. Banality is the veil of evil. Thus, the American psychologist Stanley Milgram showed that normal people were capable of shocking innocent others when an authority figure told them to do so; of course, there were no shocks, but the subjects believed they were real. Similarly, the American psychologists Solomon Asch and Philip Zimbardo showed that normal people followed group attitudes and instructions, bleating like mindless sheep, no reflection, no critical thinking, no concern about the consequences of their actions. In Zimbardo’s study — the famous Stanford prison experiments — run of the mill undergraduates playing the role of prison guards turned into little dictators, mentally and physically abusing their run of the mill undergraduates playing the role of prisoners. Together, these studies seemed to support a blank slate view of the mind, a tablet waiting for inscription by the local culture, with no constraints on the written matter. A closer look at many of these studies reveals far more variation in how individuals responded, suggesting that differences in their genetic make-up and personal experience either facilitated their willingness to follow authority and ideology or prevented it. Many subjects in both the Milgram and Zimbardo studies refused to follow the orders or rules of the game. Those who refused tended to identify more with the victim and less with the authority figure or ideology. This suggests important differences in the capacity to experience empathy and compassion for another. Studies by the cognitive neuroscientist Esse Viding show that by the pre-school years, some children have a diminished capacity for empathy, expressing a deeply callous and unemotional character. These children exhibit severe conduct problems, especially violence. These children lack remorse and an awareness of others’ distress. They are cold, heartless kids. If they have a twin, they are more likely to share this callous-unemotional personality than two unrelated children, revealing the trademark of a powerful genetic engine. More boys than girls fall on the high end of this callous-unemotional scale — where high translates to colder and more callous. Those who score highest on the scale engage in more direct physical bullying than those who score lower. High scorers lack the skills to modulate their behavior following direct or anticipated punishment. These individuals also show reduced activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that is critically involved in regulating emotion, especially the assignment of a positive or negative value on our actions and experiences. These individual differences persist into adulthood. These are the kind of individual differences that can explain why some followed Milgram and Zimbardo’s instructions to perfection, while others resisted, exerting self-control. Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 128 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012874

The sweetness of control When humans and other animals travel the road to excess, whether for food consumption, violence, power, or sex, it is either because they gave in to an in-the-moment impulsive itch or because a history of losing self-control turned into an addictive habit. What causes us to lose our sense of moderation, allow our mental brakes to slip, and give in to temptation? What causes our preferences to inconsistently and irrationally shift over time, allowing seductive offerings to win? If you are the eminent social psychologist Roy Baumeister who has contributed fundamental insights into the nature of evil, the answer is simple: sugar. Love it. Want it. Need it. When we work hard, focusing on a difficult problem or trying to figure out the best decision, exhaustion strikes. Part of our exhaustion comes from the fact that we have depleted a critical resource: sugar, or more precisely, glucose. When the availability of this resource diminishes, we also lose self- control. This is why the loss of self-control has a cycle that follows the time of day, with the greatest losses occurring late rather than early: diet breakers are more likely to pig out in the evening than early in the morning; shoppers are more likely to buy impulsively as the day moves on; impulsive crimes and relapses of addiction are evening affairs; judges are more likely to dole out punishment at the end of a day in court than when they start a new day. Dozens of experiments show that if you have to exert self- control in one context it taxes your capacity to exert self-control in another. For example, if you ask subjects to avoid laughing while watching a comedy routine, avoid thinking about a white bear, or avoid eating chocolates now to have radishes later, these same subjects will squeeze a hand grip for a shorter period of time than subjects who never contended with the various self-control tasks. When you deplete your personal resources, you lose your grip, opening yourself up to binge eating, unnecessary violence, sexual promiscuity, and drug relapses. How do we know that glucose is responsible? If you give people a milkshake with real sugar before they have to take a hard test involving self-control, they do better than if you give them a milkshake with an artificial sweetener. If you first make people take a test that taxes their attention, and causes their glucose to drop, they do worse on a subsequent test, including the hand grip squeezing test. In an extraordinary series of experiments and observations, the American psychologist Nathan DeWall found that subjects who drank lemonade with glucose were less likely to respond aggressively to an insult than subjects who drank lemonade with artificial sweetener; individuals with diabetes — who have difficulty regulating blood glucose, and thus have less of it— reported higher levels of aggression on a questionnaire than non-diabetics; within the United States, those states with higher numbers of diabetics showed higher crime rates; and countries with a higher frequency of a genetic disorder that lowers glucose levels showed higher killing rates both in and out of war. Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 129 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012875

To accept DeWall's striking results, it is necessary to accept one connection between self-control and aggression and a second between glucose and self-control: SELF-CONTROL DOWN ~ AGGRESSION UP GLUCOSE DOWN ~ SELF-CONTROL DOWN That aggression often follows from a loss of control is backed up by considerable evidence, including clinical studies that link lack of inhibition in psychopaths to extreme violence. Also of interest is the fact that impulsive aggression is more likely to arise when individuals are drunk than sober. Alcohol, as we all know, lowers our inhibitions, but also lowers glucose in both the brain and body. Though scientists such as Baumeister and DeWall have not yet worked out in detail how glucose is used or replenished in the context of self-control, there are far too many studies using different methods and subjects to ignore this relationship. Minimally, these studies indicate that we should think about self-control like a resource, something that can be used up and replenished, something that can be depleted, tipping the scale toward violence. One of the interesting implications of DeWall’s work is that individual differences in glucose availability are coupled with individual differences in self-control. Diabetes shows a high level of heritability, meaning that some individuals are more likely to develop this problem than others simply based on what genes they receive from their parents. The prevalence of diabetes is on the rise in many countries, with some estimates suggesting that by 2025, there will be 325,000,000 diabetics world wide, more than double current estimates. The genetic disorder that lowers glucose levels arises because of a deficiency in a key enzyme, glucose-6-phosphate-dehydrogenase. This is one of the most common enzyme deficiencies in the world, affecting over 400,000,000 people, and in many cases, triggered by the consumption of fava beans. As with variation in the frequency of MAOA, so too can variation in this glucose-related gene be subject to selection pressures, especially given its link to violence. Once again, we see nature and nurture contributing to individual variation and cultural differences in our capacity to harm others. Together, these observations of glucose-related disorders speak to a disconcerting reality: we are born with inherent differences in the availability of key resources guiding self-restraint. Some of us start off life better equipped to control our frustrations, wait for future gains, and moderate our temper. These early differences can have long lasting and disastrous effects later in life, a point supported by a study that began forty years ago with four year-old children presented with a marshmallow. The American social psychologist Walter Mischel recruited four year old children to his laboratory and sat them down at a table with two objects: a marshmallow and a bell. He then told each Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 130 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012876

child that he was going to leave the room. If they wanted to eat the marshmallow, they only had to ring the bell. But, as Mischel informed them, if they waited for his return, he would bring them more marshmallows. Mischel took out his stopwatch and recorded how long each child waited before ringing the bell. Some children rang the bell almost immediately, leaving Mischel no time to leave the room. Others waited. This isn’t surprising. Some children are impulsive, others are impatient, and this shows up early in life. What is surprising is that these early appearing personality types held steadfast, impacting later life decisions and actions. The more impatient types were more likely to be involved in juvenile delinquency, have poor grades, abuse drugs, get divorced, and lose their jobs. For women who developed eating disorders, those who were more patient were more likely to be anorexic, whereas those who were more impulsive were more likely to be bulimic. When the American developmental psychologist B.J. Casey put these now 40-somethings inside a brain scanner, the patient ones showed stronger activation in the prefrontal areas of the brain when viewing happy and fearful faces, revealing stronger self-control over their feelings. In contrast, when the impatient ones viewed the same stimuli, not only was there a weaker response in the prefrontal region but a stronger response in the ventral striatum when viewing happy faces. The striatum, as noted earlier, is involved in the experience of reward. For the impatient types, seeing something positive is like eating candy, something that is hard to ignore. The patient types regulate this feeling, transforming the heat of the moment into a cool experience. The impatient types are overwhelmed by this feeling, giving into temptation. This work adds to the genetic evidence reviewed earlier, showcasing both the importance of individual differences in self-control, and the stability of these differences as distinctive personality types. Individual differences in self-control are also relevant to levels of recidivism in youths who have committed a crime, and thus tie us back to the beginning of this chapter and the costs of a career criminal. Career criminals are individuals who repeatedly commit crimes. They lack self-control. This is important for judges, juries and society as we want to know in advance who is most likely to commit another crime if we release them back out onto the streets. The American sociologist Matt DeLisi presented a self- control survey to approximately 800 juvenile youths, ages 12-17 years, each with a criminal record. Those who scored one standard deviation from the mean on this survey, and thus were more impulsive than most, were five times more likely to become career criminals. Five times. Self-control on its own accounted for about 80% of the variation in recidivism among these delinquents; the remaining 20% was accounted for by factors that one might think would be much more important, including mental health, education, gender, and socioeconomic background. As DeLisi concludes, these results suggest that measures of self-control provide a reliable predictor of the likelihood of repeating a crime. They provide a Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 131 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012877

measure of risk, a factor that both juvenile and adult courts should be using to determine their sentencing, especially the individual’s future dangerousness. Individual differences in glucose metabolism, together with relative differences in brain activity, lead to stable differences in self-control. But there’s more, both luck of the draw genetic effects and clinical distortions. Recall that the low expressing form of the MAOA gene results in lower levels of serotonin which, in turn, leverages less control over aggressive impulses. There is another gene — SLC6A4 — that also comes in two forms and regulates the level of serotonin. The short form of this gene gives you less serotonin, is commonly found in pathological gamblers and psychopaths — two heavily male-biased disorders that are associated with impoverished impulse control. Psychopaths also have relatively smaller frontal lobes , especially within a region that has a high density of serotonin neurons. Psychopathy is joined by a family of impulse control disorders that also implicate dysfunction of the serotonin system, including kleptomania (stealing), pyromania (burning), trichotillomania (hair pulling), and oniomania (shopping). Like glucose, serotonin plays a lead role in our capacity for self-control. When serotonin is sidelined from the performance, any number of impulsivity problems may emerge. What I have said thus far is only a partial accounting of the biological ingredients that figure into our capacity for self-control. What this partial recipe tell us is that regardless of the situation, some individuals are inoculated against the pull of authority and group ideology and others are susceptible. If you missed the inoculation clinic in utero, you are more susceptible to temptations and excesses, including excessive violence. This is important for our interpretation of the real world and of the famous psychological experiments by Milgram, Zimbardo, and others in which seemingly good people carried out unambiguously horrid things. Some individuals carry a genetic skeleton that resists the push and pull of charismatic leaders and powerful isms. These people will not be pushed into doing bad things. Others, faced with the exact same situation, will find their skeleton buckling, tempted to take risks and lash out when the going gets tough. Invisible risks Several years ago, Ira Glass, the brilliant radio show host of This American Life, delved into the topic of superheroes. One episode focused on a question that has become part of my repertoire for dinner parties, especially those in need of a conversational catalyst: if you could become a superhero with one power, which would you take — the ability to fly or to be invisible? Most people have a rapid-fire, confident response to this question, while others reflect a bit, often engaging themselves in a public debate over their conflicted views. What is interesting about people’s answer to this question, independently of whether they pick flying or invisibility, is that they rarely talk about using their power to do good in the Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 132 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012878

world! The flyers talk about how cool it would be to vacation anywhere in the world, zip to work or school, or have fun soaring like an eagle. The invisibility types talk about sneaking into stores and taking clothes or music they like, eavesdropping on conversations, and playing tricks on family members and friends. What is even more interesting about these particular answers is how they divide into pure hedonism — flying — and pure vice — invisibility. With invisibility you can take risks at no cost, except for the cost that soon becomes apparent to many of these newly donned superheroes: even if they don’t get caught, they still did something bad, morally bad. This ratchets up their guilt. With this realization, and a dip into the dark side, comes an about face, with some picking flying instead of invisibility. Rarely do people stick with invisibility, but see how they might deploy their power for virtuous purposes. Rarely do these superheroes realize that they can be real heroes, using their invisibility to gain covert information about terrorist organizations, elicit drug traders, pedophilic priests, or abusive parents — minus the risks. In real life, there are risks associated with every decision, some clear from the start and others only clear in hindsight. As with self-control, a growing body of evidence shows that there are individual differences in risk-taking: some are risk-averse, some risk-prone, and some seemingly risk-blind, unaware that they are taking risks at all. Some of these differences are evident early in life. Some of these differences are strongly associated with crime later in life. Some of these differences provide insights into the invisible risks that individuals and societies confront, risks that can cause great harms. Research on clinical populations with antisocial disorders, most notably those with a clinical diagnosis of psychopathy, reveals a major cause of their high risk, costly, and violent behavior: a failure to experience fear, anxiety, or stress in response to highly evocative images and sounds. In contrast with healthy populations, psychopaths are emotionally blasé about the things in the world that can cause harm or result in punishment. The problem lies in the fact that psychopaths, both adults and those identified as candidates early in childhood, fail to learn about the dangers in life. Their failure to learn is caused by a reduction in size and activity of two critical and connected brain areas: a region of the frontal cortex and the amygdala. When this system works efficiently, it allows individuals to learn about the sounds, smells, and sights that are associated with bad things in the world. When this system works well, individuals learn to avoid antisocial, immoral, and illegal acts by developing anxiety and fear over the possibility of punishment and personal injury. When this system works poorly, as is the case in psychopaths, individuals act as if there are no dangers or risks of punishment — a disposition that enables inappropriate actions. But psychopathy covers a broad spectrum, with problems that all of us confront at some point in our lives, some of us even repeatedly. This is important as it forces us to look at non-clinical populations for the causes of individual differences in risk-taking, especially our reactivity to dangerous events. Studies carried out over several decades, in a wide variety of cultures, reveal that children begin life with distinctive temperaments. Some are mellow, blasé about events that are startling to many. Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 133 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012879

Others are high strung and reactive, responding with heightened fear to the same startling events. Others fall somewhere in between these two poles. What is surprising is the fact those with the flattest response to evocative images and sounds are the most likely to become violent delinquents in young adulthood. In a remarkable study, Adrian Raine and his colleagues presented 1,795 three year olds with two different sounds while recording the sweatiness of their palms; the sweatier the palms, the greater the stress and fear. One sound was always associated with a second and highly aversive noise, while the second sound was always played alone. When you pair a neutral sound, such as a pure tone, with a nasty sound, simply hearing the pure tone will make your skin crawl; the pure tone predicts what is coming, and what is coming is not pleasant. When Raine revisited these same individuals twenty years later, those with serious criminal records involving drug abuse, dangerous driving violations, or violence, had the driest palms at the age of three years. In another study, focusing specifically on violence, Raine measured the sweatiness of a different group of three year olds and then looked at their aggressiveness five years later. Once again, those with the driest palms at three years were the most aggressive at eight years. In the absence of a system that enables individuals to learn about danger, the brain and body act as if they were shrouded in an invisibility cloak, blind to the risks of crossing either moral or legal lines. Raine’s findings fit well with the marshmallow study. In the same way that those who were most impatient in the pre-school years were also most likely to exhibit signs of delinquency in early adulthood, so too were those who were most blasé about fearful stimuli as children most likely to exhibit delinquency in adulthood. Both studies reveal the stability of personality traits. Both studies suggest that at the level of groups of individuals, as opposed to specific individuals, the blasé-impatient types represent a greater threat to our welfare. The point about groups is important. These studies do not allow us to look at an individual’s record and conclude that because he could only wait for 3 seconds before eating the lone marshmallow, and almost fell asleep when presented with loud banging noises, that he is without doubt headed for a life of crime. We also can’t conclude that because patience and reactivity to fearful stimuli can be measured as early as three years old, that these personality traits are entirely genetic and fixed. In fact, other studies carried out by Raine show that if you ramp up the nutrition, exercise, and mental stimulation of children between the ages of 3-5 years, you can reduce adult criminal offenses by 35%. What we can conclude from these findings is that there are significant individual differences that affect who is willing to take risks and who isn’t. We can conclude that there is a strong biological component that constrains the individual’s options. We can conclude that those who start early in life without an understanding of the dangers in the world, act as if they live in a risk-free world. Molecular biologists provide an increasingly precise understanding of how these individual differences start, pointing to genes that bias some individuals to take extreme risks, including the risk of violating social norms and laws by violently attacking another human being. Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 134 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012880

There are many situations where taking a risk pays off, whether we think of stealth military operations, chancy shots in the final seconds of a basketball game, or significant investments in an up and coming stock option. Playing it safe pays off. But those who stick their necks out and take a chance, may bring home significant gains. It is because of these competing strategies and potential payoffs that evolutionary biologists have imagined that selection could maintain both personality types within a population — a point noted earlier for the MAOA and glucose-related genes. If selection has worked in this way, then there must be genetic variation that allows for both strategies. To date, the strongest evidence comes from a family of genes associated with the regulation of dopamine, with the memorable acronyms of DAT1, DRD2 and DRD4; each of these genes is associated with different forms, each form associated with different levels of dopamine. Recall from chapter 2 that dopamine plays an essential role in our experience of reward, including how motivated we are to get it and what we anticipate based on our understanding of the situation — have we been rewarded in the past, how often, and how much? The idea here is that those who carry genes that output a higher level of dopamine may weight rewards more heavily and thus, show risk-blindness; for these individuals, the eye is on the prize, not the path or obstacles to this prize. Across a number of studies, results show that variation in the expression of these genes is associated with high-risk, low self-control behaviors, including pathological gambling, substance abuse, sensation seeking, and financial investments. For example, in two separate studies, individuals with different variants of the DRD4 gene played a financial investment game involving real money. In one, designed by Joan Chiao, subjects decided to invest in either a risky asset with variable returns or a riskless asset with consistent returns. In the second study, the Swedish economist Ana Dreber and the American anthropologist Corin Apicella allowed subjects to either walk away with an initial starting pot of money, or to invest some of it ina risky asset. Those with the DRD4 variant that expresses higher levels of dopamine were more likely to pursue the risky investment. What this work reveals is that part of the variation we observe among people who make risky investments, drink too much alcohol, and gamble with their income, is due to variation in the dopamine family of genes. These are hidden risks that come to life thanks to molecular biologist’s microscope. What also comes to life is the fact that these same genes are relevant to violence, causing some to strike out even though there are significant risks and terrible consequences. In several studies, using an American health data base of several thousand adolescents, results consistently show a relationship between particular variants of the dopamine genes and violence. For example, the sociologist Guang Guo examined the relationship between violent delinquency — involving use of guns and knives — and variation in DRD2 and DAT1 among 2,5000 individuals ages 12-23 years. DRD2 was of particular interest because medical records and clinical trials reveal that administering Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 135 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012881

haloperidol — a DRD2 dopamine antagonist — helps control aggression in psychotic patients. Guo found that levels of violence were about twice as high for one variant of the DRD2 gene than others, and about 20% higher for a particular variant of the DAT1 gene. These genetic variants cause differences in dopamine, which cause differences in expected and experienced reward, which cause differences in perceived risk, which cause differences in the odds of getting in a fight and harming others. These are not genes for aggression, violence or evil. There are no such genes. Rather, they are genes that change our perception of risk. Because risk is related to all sorts of decisions, these genes can affect the odds that we directly harm others. They are part of the story of individual differences, and part of the story of why some are more likely to engage in evildoing. Everything I have discussed thus far focuses on actions, on how the psychology of desire and denial combine to fuel behaviors that lead, directly or indirectly, to excessive harms. I have also explained how different biological ingredients predispose us toward different degrees of self-control, and thus, differences in our ability to omit particular actions. This sense of omission is a virtue, a sign of resisting temptation. But can omissions be a sign of vice, of resisting an action that is called for? Can omissions ever reach such a scale that we would consider individuals or societies as evil omitters? The sin of sloth. What’s worse: 1) giving a lethal overdose to someone suffering from an incurable disease or allowing this person to die by removing life support? 2) pushing someone in front of a runaway truck to stop the truck and save the lives of five others or allowing someone to walk in front of the truck instead of warning them? 3) pouring a toxic chemical into your competitor’s drink in order to make him sick or allowing your competitor to drink the toxic chemical that was placed on the table by someone else? Even though all of these situations seem quite bad, most people have a gut feeling that the actions are worse than the omissions. They also feel that when we omit life support, fail to warn someone of a runaway truck, or remain silent about a toxic drink, that we are less responsible for the consequences that unfold. Dozens of studies, using hundreds of different examples, and thousands of subjects, support what our gut expresses: we are captive to an omission effect. Even when we understand that the consequences are precisely the same — the suffering patient dies, the truck kills the person, the toxic chemical makes the competitor sick — and so too are the person’s goals and intentions — eliminate suffering, save five people, take out the competitor — we are seduced to believe that action is worse than omission or that doing harm to another is worse than allowing harm to occur. The omission effect lays bare a tension between unconscious, spontaneous intuition and conscious, reflective thought. On the one hand, there are potentially good reasons why we evolved this Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 136 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012882

intuition. It is a heuristic or rule of thumb that may be right much of the time. When I do something, as long as it is not by accident, my intentions and goals are more clear cut than when I fail to do something or allow it to happen. If I punch you and your arm bruises, the causality is clear: I caused your arm to bruise. Iam responsible for this harm. I should be punished. If I stand by as someone is about to punch you, but don’t deflect the punch when I easily could have, it feels odd to say that I caused your arm to bruise. It also seems strange to say that Iam responsible and should be punished. By not deflecting the punch, I allowed the harm to occur. I could have prevented it from happening, but I am not obliged to. As social creatures, we have been designed to pick up on cues that reliably classify people into friends and enemies. Friends intentionally help us while enemies intentionally harm us. Actions showcase our intentions better than omissions. The omission effect also makes sense in terms of personal responsibility. Not only do our guts tell us that actors are more responsible for outcomes than omitters, but our guts also tell us that it is hard to hold others responsible for their omissions. As I sit and write these words, I am committing heinous acts of omission: I am not currently giving money to any charities, am not scheduled to teach in the dozens of refugee camps around the world, and am not volunteering for any of the peace keeping armies sponsored by the UN. Iam also guilty of many other minor crimes of omission, including the failure to consistently give my change to homeless individuals, and the failure to spend time in homes for the elderly and mentally handicapped. As I sit, Irack up countless harms of omission. It is hopefully the absurdity of this comment that shows why there is a fracture in the arm that connects omissions to responsibility. In a large scale society, it is impossible for us to hold people responsible for their omissions. There are far too many reasons, often good ones, why people don’t act. The universe of reasons for acting is smaller. If the omission effect arises because it is virtually impossible to hold omitters responsible in a large scale society, than what about small scale societies including the hunter-gathers of our past, and the tiny hamlets and villages that dot many countries, both developed and developing? When the number of people that you know and interact with is small, does the omission effect vanish? In a fish bowl community, you should be able to hold all of the other fish responsible for their actions and omissions because you know what they are up to. To explore this idea, the psychologist Linda Abarbanell and I ran a study with a rural, small scale Mayan population, living in the Chiapas region of Mexico. Every individual listened to a reading of a moral dilemma. Each dilemma described an action or an omission that resulted in harming one person, but saving the lives of many. Subjects judged the moral permissibility of the action or omission. Unlike thousands of adults on the internet who judged similar dilemmas, as well as other Mayans living in a city, individuals in this small scale Mayan population perceived no moral difference between Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 137 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012883

actions and omissions. The omission effect evaporated, with the moral weight of an action perceived to be on a par with an omission. The Mayan study is but one example. It suggests some flexibility in our perception of actions and omissions, and shows how cultural differences can create individual differences. When our social world is relatively small and circumscribed, we can keep tabs on everyone. By keeping tabs, we can hold others responsible for their actions and their omissions. As the American psychologists Jon Haidt and Jonathan Baron have shown, this psychology can be recreated in the laboratory by creating scenarios in which the individuals are either unfamiliar or familiar. When there is a relationship between the individuals — family, friends, team members — and thus, some degree of familiarity, the omission effect weakens. The omission effect is not an obligatory state of the human mind. It is a common tendency, a way that our brains lean, especially in unfamiliar contexts. In patients with obsessive compulsive disorder, the omission effect is as strong as it is in healthy subjects, except for familiar cases of harm that are directly relevant to them, such as the excessive washing behavior that is the trademark of this clinical disorder. The fact that certain situations can cause us to lean in different directions has important policy implications: even when corporations, institutions, or other organizations grow large, we should always segregate these masses into smaller divisions, and make the issues personally relevant. Every member of one division should hold all others within its division responsible or accountable. Further, efforts should be made to foster familiarity across divisions, enabling not only a level of responsibility but of respect and trust. By recreating the psychology of small scale societies, and making potential harms relevant, we may help bypass the omission effect, allowing us to hold people responsible for their omissions. This, in turn, may reduce the number of individuals who live as passive bystanders. Familiarity and relevance may well be the necessary catalysts for converting bystanders into active whistle blowers, defenders, and rescuers. When bystanders remain passive, watching the world go by, it is often because they believe that their actions won’t make a difference or think that the costs of heroism are too high. This is, again, an issue of responsibility. It raises the question of when we ought to act. The distinguished Australian philosopher Peter Singer has spent a lifetime pushing this issue in the context of charitable donations, culminating most recently in his book The Life You Can Save. The key idea, taken from a utilitarian perspective where outcomes as opposed to rules or principles motivate our moral actions, is that we ought to give a fraction of our incomes to those lacking basic access to food, shelter and health care. Standing by as bystanders when there are 1.4 billion people in a state of abject poverty is morally wrong. The logic seems perfectly reasonable, especially given the fact that humanitarian organizations have helped reduce the number of people living in poverty by .5 billion within the last 20 years. But then we learn of another Peter Singer idea: if the three richest men alive today — Carlos Slim Helu, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 138 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012884

— worth a total of 153.5 billion dollars, were to give up one third of their net worth, they could solve world hunger. On a personal level, they would barely notice this donation. With this knowledge, why should I bother to give a penny? This is one example of apathy regarding our motivation to help others. What propels individuals to shift from passive bystanders who can allow harm to occur to active contributors? Classic studies by the American psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latane reveal the ingredients for bystander action. Whether it is helping someone having a seizure, being molested, or in danger of suffocation from smoke, we are more likely to help when alone than when in a group. We are also more likely to help when we recognize the situation as a crisis and think that there are plausible solutions. These are all characteristics of the situation. There are also characteristics of the mdividual bystander, including their level of compassion and empathy toward others, their capacity to identify with the victim, and their self-control. For example, people who intervene in cases of child abuse, as opposed to the passive bystanders, are more likely to have been abused as children, more likely to perceive a solution, more likely to feel responsibility to intervene, and more likely to experience the weight of guilt for not intervening. We are back to individuals differences. We are back to the egg and coop, and their joint contribution to helping or harming others. We are back to the established genetic differences in compassion, risk-taking, and self-control that combine with a history of experience to create some who sit and watch and others who actively participate. We are more likely to pardon bystanders because we tend to see omissions as less bad than actions, and omitters as less responsible for the consequences than actors. This is a dangerous effect. Bystanders are part of the equation of evil. As noted by the American genocide scholar and psychologist, Ervin Staub, bystanders start out as passive players on the side lines, but are rapidly transformed into perpetrators. The transformation starts with the challenge of maintaining passivity while watching other humans suffer; to maintain this observer status requires suppressing empathy for the sufferers, while recognizing that they are in the minority and you, the bystander, are with the majority. To avoid feeling guilty for not feeling empathy, bystanders distance themselves even further from the victims. Distancing 1s an adaptive response as any association with the victims could put a bystander in harm’s way. But like so many other psychological states discussed in this book, distancing leads to dehumanization. Dehumanization leads to moral disengagement and greater justification for the perpetrators. Justification lends cheering support for violence. This is the final transforming step, from passive bystander to active participant. Recall that on my account of evil, evildoers either have a desire to cause harm directly or desire something good, recognizing that it will cause harm indirectly. This is true of actions and omissions. For example, keeping a secret, even if pressured into spilling the beans, is a good thing because it upholds a Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 139 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012885

promise, and thus, the relationship. But if keeping the secret results in innocent lives lost or ruined, then this is a bad thing. Not telling — an omission — indirectly can cause harm. This is the situation that has confronted the Catholic Church over the past twenty years. During the tenures of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, some 4,000 priests sexually abused some 10,000 innocent children. This is unquestionably an underestimate. This is excessive harm. Popes John Paul Il and Benedict XVI, together with their cardinals and bishops, assumed the role of bystanders. They were aware of the rampant cases of child rape among the clergy. They could have acted. Their omissions are archetypal examples of the sin of sloth. By omission, they are responsible for excessive harm and should be held legally accountable. This process has begun as evidenced by the decision in October of 2011 to indict Bishop Robert Finn for failing to report a priest who took pornographic photographs of young girls. Though Finn was only charged with a misdemeanor, this case opens opens a legal floodgate. It is an opening that should allow prosecutors, around the globe, to indict bishops, cardinals, and the Pope for evil omissions. It should empower the parents and children who have suffered to rise up and demand justice for allowing excessive harm to occur. It should cause everyone to express outrage over the fact that allowing priests to rape innocent children perpetuates a cycle of pedophiles as those who have been abused are likely to abuse others. The leaders of the church have not only commited a crime of omission, but have helped perpetuate a culture of harm. Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 140 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012886

Endnotes: Chapter 4 Recommended Books Chagnon, N. (1996). Yanomamo. 5th Edition. Harcourt Brace. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. (2009). Worse Than War. New York: Public Affairs. Jones, A. (2010). Genocide: a comprehensive introduction. New York: Routledge. Kiernan, B. (2007). Blood and Soil: A world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur. New Haven: Yale University Press. Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to Authority: An experimental view. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. McCullough, M. (2008). Beyond Revenge: The evolution of the forgiveness instinct. Jossey-Bass, New York Singer, P. (2010). The Life You Can Save. New York: Random House. Wittenbrink, B. & Schwarz, B. (2007). Implicit Measures of Attitudes. Guilford Press. Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York: Random House. Key references * What’s normal: Cohen, I. L., Liu, X., Lewis, M. E. S., Chudley, A., Forster-Gibson, C., Gonzalez, M., Jenkins, E. C., et al. (2011). Autism severity is associated with child and maternal MAOA genotypes Clinical genetics, 79(4), 355-362. * Eggs and coops: Alia-Klein, N, Goldstein, R, Kriplani, A, & Logan, J. (2008). Brain Monoamine Oxidase A Activity Predicts Trait Aggression. Journal of Neuroscience, 28(19), 5099-5104; Baler, Ruben D., Volkow, N.D., Fowler, J.S., & Benveniste, H. (2008). Is fetal brain monoamine oxidase inhibition the missing link between maternal smoking and conduct disorders? Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience : JPN, 33(3), 187; Beaver, K.M, DeLisi, M., Vaughn, M.G., & Barnes, J. C. (2010). Monoamine oxidase A genotype is associated with gang membership and weapon use. Compr Psychiatry, 51(2), 130-134; Bukholtz, J.W, & Meyer-Lindenberg, A. (2008). MAOA and the neurogenetic architecture of human aggression. Trends in neurosciences, 31(3), 120-129; Derringer, J., Krueger, R.F., Irons, D.E., & Iacono, W.G. (2010). Harsh discipline, childhood sexual assault, and MAOA genotype: an investigation of main and interactive effects on diverse clinical externalizing outcomes. Behav Genet, 40(5), 639-648; Enoch, M-A., Steer, C.D, Newman, T.K., Gibson, N., & Goldman, D. (2010). Early life stress, MAOA, and gene- environment interactions predict behavioral disinhibition in children. Genes Brain Behav, 9(1), 65-74; Fergusson, D. M., Boden, J. M., Horwood, L. J., Miller, A. L., & Kennedy, M. A. (2011). MAOA, abuse exposure and antisocial behaviour: 30-year longitudinal study The British journal of psychiatry ; the journal of mental science, 198(6), 457-463; Gibbons A. (2004) American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting. Tracking the evolutionary history of a “warrior” gene. Science 304:818; Lea, R, & Chambers, G. (2007). Monoamine oxidase, addiction, and the “warrior” gene hypothesis. J. New Zealand Medical Association, 120(1250), 1- 5; Meyer-Lindenberg, A., Buckholtz, J.W., Kolachana, B., Hariri, A., Pezawas, L., Blasi, G., Weinberger, D.R. (2006). Neural mechanisms of genetic risk for impulsivity and violence in humans. Proc Natl Acad Sci, 103(16), 6269-6274; Sebastian, C L, Roiser, J P, Tan, GC Y, Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 14] HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012887

Viding, E, Wood, N W, & Blakemore, S-J. (2010). Effects of age and MAOA genotype on the neural processing of social rejection. Genes Brain Behav, 9(6), 628-637; Tikkanen, R., Auvinen- Lintunen, L., Ducci, F., Sj6berg, R.L., Goldman, D., Tihonen, J., Virkkunen, M. (2010). Psychopathy, PCL-R, and MAOA genotype as predictors of violent reconvictions. Psychiatry research. doi: 10.1016/,.psychres.2010.08.02; Williams, L.M, Gatt, JM, Kuan, $.A., Dobson- Stone, C. Palmer, D.M., Paul, R.H., Gordon, E. (2009). A polymorphism of the MAOA gene is associated with emotional brain markers and personality traits on an antisocial index. Neuropsychopharmacology, 34(7), 1797-1809. * Banality, situationism, and authority: Zimbardo, P.G. (2004). A situationist perspective on the psychology of evil: Understanding how good people are transformed into perpetrators. In: The social psychology of good and evil, A. Miller (ed), NY, Guilford, 1-23; Haslam, S.A., & Reicher, S. (2007). Beyond the banality of evil: three dynamics of an interactionist social psychology of tyranny. Pers Soc Psychol Bull, 33(5), 615-622; Russell, N. (2010). Milgram's obedience to authority experiments: Origins and early evolution. British Journal of Social Psychology 50: 140- 162; Sabini, J, & Silver, M. (2007). Dispositional vs. Situational Interpretations of Milgram's Obedience Experiments:" The Fundamental Attributional Error”. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 13(2), 147-154. * Selling albino body parts in Africa: Dave-Odigie, C.P. (2010). Albino killings in Tanzania: Implications for security. Peace Studies Journal, 3(1), 68-75; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/tanzania/768795 1/Seven-new- albino-killings-in-Tanzania-and-Burundi.html; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa- 11001791; * On self-control, glucose, and aggression: Baumeister, R.F. (2002). Yielding to temptation: Self-control failure, impulsive purchasing, and consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Research, 28(A), 670-676; Baumeister, R.F., & Alquist, J. (2009). Is There a Downside to Good Self-control? Self & Identity, 82), 115-130. Baumeister, R.F. (2002). Yielding to temptation: self-control failure, impulsive purchasing, and consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Research, 28, 670-676; DeLisi, M., & Vaughn, M. G. (2007). The Gottfredson-Hirschi Critiques Revisited: Reconciling Self-Control Theory, Criminal Careers, and Career Criminals. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 52(5), 520-537; DeWall, C, Baumeister, R, & Stillman, T. (2007). Violence restrained: Effects of self-regulation and its depletion on aggression. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43: 62-76; Gailliot, M. T, & Baumeister, R. F. (2007). The Physiology of Willpower: Linking Blood Glucose to Self-Control. Personality and Social Psychology Review 11(4), 303-327; Muraven, M, Tice, D.M, & Baumeister, R.F. (1998). Self- control as limited resource: Regulatory depletion patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(3), 774-789; Vohs, K. D., Baumeister, R.F., Schmeichel, B.J., Twenge, J.M., Nelson, N.M., & Tice, D.M.. (2008). Making choices impairs subsequent self-control: a limited- resource account of decision making, self-regulation, and active initiative. J Pers Soc Psychol, 94(5), 883-898; Dewall, C.N., Deckman, T., Gailliot, M.T., & Bushman, B.J. (2011). Sweetened blood cools hot tempers: physiological self-control and aggression. Aggressive Behavior, 37, 73- 80; DeScioli, P., Christner, J., & Kurzban, R. (2011). The omission strategy. Psychological Science, 22(4), 442-446. * Invisible risks: Fairchild G, Passamonti L, Hurford G, Hagan CC, von dem Hagen EAH, van Goozen SHM, Goodyer IM, Calder AJ: Brain structure abnormalities in early-onset and adolescent-onset conduct disorder. Am J Psychiatry 2011; 168:624—633; Gao, Y., Baker, L. A., Raine, Adrian, Wu, H., & Bezdjian, S. (2009). Brief Report: Interaction between social class and risky decision-making Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 142 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012888

in children with psychopathic tendencies. Journal of adolescence, 32(2), 409-414; Gao, Y., Raine, Adrian, Venables, P. H., Dawson, M. E., & Mednick, S. A. (2010). Association of poor childhood fear conditioning and adult crime 7he American journal of psychiatry, 167(1), 56-60; Glenn, A. L., Raine, Adrian, Venables, P. H., & Mednick, S. A. (2007). Early temperamental and psychophysiological precursors of adult psychopathic personality. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 116(3), 508-518; Isen, J., Raine, A., Baker, L., Dawson, M., Bezdjian, S., & Lozano, D. I. (2010). Sex-specific association between psychopathic traits and electrodermal reactivity in children. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 119(1), 216-225; Raine, A, Venables, P., Dalais, C., Mellingen, K., Reynolds, C., & Mednick, S. (2001). Early educational and health enrichment at age 3-5 years is associated with increased autonomic and central nervous system arousal and orienting at age 11 years: Evidence from the Mauritius Child Health Project. Psychophysiology, 38, 254-266. * Sins, slots, and omissions: Abarbanell, L., & Hauser, M.D. (2010). Mayan morality: An exploration of permissible harms. Cognition, 115(2), 207-224; Baron, J, & Ritov, I. (2009). Protected values and omission effect as deontological judgments. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 50, 133- 167; Baron, J., & Ritov, I. (2004). Omission effect, individual differences, and normality. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 94, 74-85; Cushman, F., Knobe, J., & Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2008). Moral appraisals affect doing/allowing judgments. Cognition, 308, 281-289; Haidt, J., & Baron, J. (1996). Social roles and the moral judgment of actions and omissions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 201-218; DeScioli, P., Christner, J., & Kurzban, R. (2011). The omission strategy. Psychological Science, 22(4), 442-446. * Bystanders: Banyard, V. L. (2008). Measurement and correlates of prosocial bystander behavior: the case of interpersonal violence. Violence Vict, 23(1), 83-97; Darley, J M, & Latane, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: diffusion of responsibility. J Pers Soc Psychol, 8(4), 377- 383; Latané, B, & Darley, J M. (1968). Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies. J Pers Soc Psychol, 10(3), 215-221; Melde, C, & Rennison, C.M. (2010). Intimidation and street gangs: Understanding the response of victims and bystanders to perceived gang violence. Justice Quarterly, 27(5), 619-666; Monroe, K.R. (2008). Cracking the code of genocide: The moral psychology of rescuers, bystanders, and nazis during the Holocaust. Political Psychology, 29(5), 699-735; Staub, E. (2003). The psychology of bystanders, perpetrators, and heroic helpers. Jn: The Psychology of Good and Evil: Why Children, adults and groups help and harm others, NY, Cambridge University Press, pp. 291-324. Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 143 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012889

Epilogue: Evilightenment Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society. — Benjamin Franklin Charles Darwin observed that of all the differences between humans and other animals, one capacity reigns supreme: we alone have the ability to contemplate what others ought to do. We alone are endowed with a moral imperative to reflect, consider, and imagine alternatives. We alone are impelled to be dissatisfied with the status quo, urged to contemplate what could be and ultimately what must be. This capacity creates a fundamental principle of human existence and enlightenment: we alone invest in the survival of the /east fit. We give money to those in abject poverty, risk our lives to help others in areas of conflict, adopt abandoned children, nurture individuals with extreme disabilities, and care for the elderly. This principle fuels our humanitarian efforts. Sadly, it is a necessary response to another unique difference between humans and other animals: we alone have the ability to inflict great harms on our own species and many others. We alone are responsible for creating work for those in the humanitarian sector. We alone are evil. We also have an opportunity to begin a new volume of humane history. We have the chance to harness our understanding of the past in order to present our children with the gift of knowledge and the prospects of a healthier future. We should— no, we must — teach our children what we have learned about the causes of corporate corruption, the desire for ethnic cleansing, and the combined forces of nature and nurture to create excessive suffering and lifeless flesh. These are topics that should be presented early on in education rather than waiting for heady discussions at the university. We owe the next generation the best education from our generation. The best education will come from confronting history, exposing human nature, and supporting cultural variation while fighting to demolish totalitarian regimes that limit or eliminate basic human rights. I write this sentence following on the eve of Egypt's inspiring revolution, a revolution led by educated people who refused to allow the dictator Hosni Mubarak to ruin their country and their children's future. The people of Egypt, like the people of many countries who rallied in the Arab spring of 2011, refused to be eternal victims. This is a lesson that must spread to every corner of the globe. It is a lesson of hope. It is a lesson to all evildoers to beware. I have taken you on a journey into evil’s core, penetrating with scientific evidence and explanation. Though we have traveled to distant lands, traversed vast spans of time, and encountered wildly different cultures, the key idea is that this nchness was generated from a few essential ingredients. This is a minimalist approach to a difficult and highly variegated problem. I end our journey by taking stock of the essential ideas and reflect on some of the broader implications. Retracing our steps In the beginning, before there were bald, bipedal, big-brained, babbling humans, there were hairy, quadrupedal, bitsy-brained, barking bonobos. These animals, clearly clever, have survived for over 6-7 million years, despite attempts by our species to demolish their habitat. But — and this is a significant Hauser Epilogue. Evilightenment 144 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012890

but — in the millions of years that encompass their evolutionary history, bonobos have remained virtually unchanged. They are still hairy, quadrupedal, bitsy-brained and barking. They still live in the jungles of Africa. Not a single bonobo, or its close relative the chimpanzee, has ever taken a step out of Africa the way that members of our species did some 60-100,000 years ago. In fact, not a single bonobo or chimpanzee has ever ventured across national borders within the continent to explore new opportunities or develop new cultures. Not a single bonobo or chimpanzee has even moved out of the forests and on to the beaches or deserts or alpine environments of Africa. Not one. When we took our steps out of Africa, we did so with confidence, ready to tackle new environments, create novel tools, engage in rituals to commemorate the dead, build fires to cook food and keep warm, join hands with unrelated strangers in the service of cooperation, and create oral histories that could be passed on to generations of children. What enabled this celebratory migration was a cerebral migration. Not only did our brain get much bigger than the one housed within bonobo and chimpanzee skulls, it evolved into an engine that generates an unlimited combination of thoughts and feelings. We uniquely evolved a promiscuous brain. What does promiscuity buy? In a word: “creativity.” It enables regions of the brain that evolved for highly specialized functions to intermingle with other regions of the brain to create new ways of thinking and new ways of experiencing what we see, hear, touch, taste and feel. A promiscuous brain paved the way for awe-inspiring bursts of creativity in art, music, literature and science. A promiscuous brain enabled Bach and Bono, Picasso and Pollock, Shakespeare and Shaw, and Descartes and Darwin. A promiscuous brain enables us to imagine things we have never directly experienced, to create once unimaginable worlds, including blissful heavens and living hells. My focus in this book has been the infernos we create for other human beings, here on this earth. What I have argued is that we got here by accident. When our brains allowed us to combine familiar thoughts and feelings to create virgin ideas, it enabled us to feel good about doing bad. It enabled us to incur the costs of punishing others while reaping the rewards of marching to the moral high ground. It enabled us to solve the problem of large scale cooperation with unrelated strangers. This was a fundamental breakthrough in mental life, a spectacular benefit, and the target of strong selection. But benefits often carry hidden costs. When punishment triggered a honey hit to the brain, violence and reward formed an eternal bond. We now carry the burden of a brain that engages in denial in order to satisfy our desires. When these concepts couple, the odds of conceiving excessive harms is virtually guaranteed. Sometimes this malicious offspring is intended and at other times it is foreseen. Either way, the world has been populated with evildoers in waiting. Either way, our world hosts a species that has the creative capacity to financially ruin, mutilate, rape, burn, torture, and extinguish millions of lives. Often, this potential is realized. My aim in this book has been to explain evil to better understand its origins, not to justify or promote it. My aim has been to explain evil to clarify its root cause, to alert others to its early warning signs, and to pave the way to a more humane existence. I have suggested that evil, expressed in the form of excessive harms, is caused by two ingredients: desire and denial. These are psychological states. On their own, they are often inert. When combined, they are often explosive. Desires. We all have them, from birth till death, from a desire for perpetual maternal warmth to a desire for eternal life. Some of our desires change over the course of our lives while others stay the same. We all desire good health and happiness. We differ, however, in what counts as good health and happiness. Many of us experience, at least once in our life, the desire to harm another. Our desire to harm ranges from the mundane — uttering a sarcastic comment about someone’s looks or telling a racist joke — to the horrific — creating corrupt corporate schemes or policies of ethnic cleansing. Sometimes what we desire is rather benign, but linked to foreseeable atrocities. Sometimes our desires are toxic, as when we plot to extinguish a culturally distinctive group. On one reading, President George W. Bush may well have initiated the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as retaliatory attacks on terrorists, designed to protect American interests and well-being. But he brought much of our nation on board by weaving a web of lies and feeding a cowboy mentality of revenge rather than nurturing compassion and understanding. The consequences, clearly foreseen at the time, have been excessive. As a nation, we did not pursue an eye- for-an-eye revenge. We had a different algorithm in mind, on the order of 30,000 eyes for an eye. Hauser Epilogue. Evilightenment 145 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012891

Approximately 3,000 innocent victims died in the 9-11 attacks. As of early 2011, some where between 900,000 to over a million soldiers and civilians have died in Afghanistan and Iraq due to the war. This is excessive. This is no longer revenge. This is senseless brutality. On one reading, Pope Benedict XVI kept his knowledge of pedophilic priests quiet and confidential in order to forgive them and protect the church. But this seemingly benign desire led to a disaster, one that was foreseeable: continued sexual assault on thousands of innocent children and for many, a loss of trust in the church and their moral and spiritual leader. Discoveries by molecular biologists, neuroscientists, and psychologists reveal important individual differences in our capacity to fuel desire, differences that constrain the paths we take from birth until our last breath. Some individuals are more risk-prone, some are impatient, and some gain a greater hit of dopamine in anticipation of reward, thereby doping themselves on the brain’s pharmaceutical offerings. Some are born with a set of genes that diminish the capacity for self-control. These individuals start with lower levels of serotonin. These individuals, if raised by abusive parents, have a higher probability of taking someone’s head off if they are challenged. Some individuals are born with low stress levels. These individuals are more likely to be sensation-seekers, voracious desirers who will stop at nothing less than the spectacular, even if this means the spectacularly violent. None of these biological catalysts operate in a vacuum. All of these biological catalysts feed off of particular environments that we create. Geological and climatic factors create savannahs, oceans, and mountains. We create slums, refugee camps, and totalitarian regimes. We are responsible for creating toxic environments and equally responsible for cleaning them up. How we think about individual responsibility in cases of brain damage, developmental disorders or innate differences in the starting state of our neurochemistry is a different problem, one that I will touch upon in the last section. Denial. We all engage in it, at least some of the time. Like the psychology of desire, our engagement with denial is sometimes benign and often beneficial as a coping mechanism. We dehumanize in order to buffer ourselves from the pain of another’s pain. We self-deceive in the service of boosting self-confidence and self-esteem. When doctors turn their patients into machines that require repair, they have deployed an adaptive mechanism that keeps empathy at bay when it is unnecessary. Good doctors, the ones that we all want, turn empathy back on when their patients awake from surgery, flesh and blood pulsating, thoughts and emotions humming. Bad doctors never turn empathy back on. Evil doctors, such as Carl Clauberg who injected liquid acid in the uterus of Jewish prisoners as part of a Nazi inspired sterilization program, not only lack empathy for their patients, but see them as vermin or parasites that require extermination in the name of science and the preservation of our species. Denial has transformed other human beings into nonhuman forms, from inert objects to wild animals and parasites. Denial has allowed military leaders and airplane pilots to ignore clear signs of trouble, marching thousands to their death. When this happens, moral responsibility checks out. Denial provides individuals and nations with a certified license to maim, rape, burn, mutilate and kill without feeling guilt, shame or remorse. As with desire, the sciences provide a rich offering of evidence to explain how and why we engage in denial, either by means of dehumanizing others or self-deceiving ourselves. Both dehumanization and self-deception have a clear evolutionary logic. Dehumanization is a mechanism that enhances an individual’s competitive edge by making hatred and killing easier. Hatred and killing are the essential and ancient ingredients for defending the in-group and effacing the out-group. Sometimes, soldiers would rather avoid killing the enemy. But when dehumanization of the enemy takes hold in the mind of a soldier or civilian, killing is not only easy, but addictive. The brain’s inhibitory mechanisms, processed by circuitry in the frontal lobes, shut down. Other brain regions involved in working out what people believe and intend, enter into hibernation. With these circuits on leave, so too is our moral conscience. When the mind runs its dehumanization software, abstinence from killing is like withdrawal from a drug. Killing is satisfying. Killing is delicious. Self-deception evolved in the service of deception. By functionally fooling ourselves into believing that we are stronger, wiser, and more competent, we can convince others to go along for the ride, to work for us or work against a fictional enemy. Like dehumanization, this has both adaptive and Hauser Epilogue. Evilightenment 146 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012892

maladaptive consequences. Brain imaging studies show that different circuits turn on when we lie about long held personal stories as opposed to lies about in-the-moment situations. When we distort reality, either omitting information or twisting it to create a false belief, we have to inhibit the way things are to create an illusion of the way we wish them to be. In each case, there is conflict between one version of reality and another. In each case, the electrical and chemical choreography of the brain recruits its braking mechanism, stifling one piece of knowledge in the service of lifting another to the surface of our lips. We perfect this capacity over the course of development. Some are born lacking this capacity. Others have a system that is out of control, unable to distinguish truths from falsehoods. Somewhere along this spectrum are healthy members of society who have the potential to justify themselves and a society of willing listeners about the importance of becoming willing executioners, a phrase coined by the historian Daniel Goldhagen to describe Germans involved in the Holocaust. Desire + Denial. We all carry out this sum easily, often automatically and unconsciously. When we are pushed by a desire to eliminate others or to achieve some other goal, we call on denial to justify both extraordinary means and exceptional ends. We convince ourselves that we are morally in the right and that extermination or manipulation are our only options. We convince ourselves that the other is an object or animal, emotionally inert or unrecognizable. We shrink our moral circle, creating a culture of indifference. We convince ourselves through self-deception that the other is a threat. When we feel threatened, we raise our hackles in self-defense. When self-defense steps forward it recruits violence, justified by the belief that fighting back is not only right, but obligatory. Once violence starts, supported by a moral imperative, uncontrollable escalation follows, leaving a trail of dead bodies, raped women, and abducted children. Desire couples with denial. Once this liaisons forms, it evolves, grows and feeds on itself. We have arrived at excessive harms. We have arrived at evil. What can we do? How can we harness our understanding of evil to predict when it might occur again? Can we reduce future danger? Future dangerousness Why do we allow 16 year olds to drive in many parts of the United States, but prevent them from drinking alcohol until 21 and from renting a car until 25? Why must the President of the United States be at least 35 years old, but members of the House of Representatives can enter at 25? If 16 is the magic number for driving, why isn't it also the magic number for drinking, voting, becoming president, marrying without parental consent, joining the military, and being executed for a felony murder? Or why not make 21 the magic age for all age-restricted behaviors and positions? This would make sense in terms of our biology: it is precisely around the age of 21 that our frontal lobes have matured more completely, thereby providing us with a more functional engine for self-control. Or, why not question why we have a legal age at all? Why not have a brain scan for frontal lobe maturation along with a test for self-control that would allow some pre-16 year olds to drive, but might prevent some post-21 year olds from drinking? And if you are in favor of the death penalty — I'm not — than why not detach it from age altogether and look at the individual's moral competence and capacity for self-control? These are hard questions. How we answer them will have resounding implications for law and society. When a legal system decides that someone can drive, drink, vote, kill, run for president, marry, and die as a penalty for crime, it has constrained human behavior based on a statistical evaluation of psychological capacity. In each case, our assignment of age-appropriateness indicates that we believe the person is responsible for his or her actions and thus, his or her future actions. It also indicates that those under age are not responsible for their actions. We grant permission to drive at 16 years of age because we believe that most 16 years olds are capable of driving responsibly, now and in the future. We believe that a person who committed a heinous crime at the age of 18 is responsible for harming others and is likely to do so in the future. He or she is thus eligible for the death penalty, at least in some states within the United States. In contrast, we believe that someone at the age of 17 is still developing and has the potential to change. In this sense, we hold them less responsible for their actions. Hauser Epilogue. Evilightenment 147 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012893

Looking out at the tapestry of age-limited situations reveals a rather eclectic pastiche. In many of these cases, the cut-off age seems both arbitrary and inappropriate given the statistics. Consider the legal driving age. Is it the case that 16 year olds are responsible drivers? 16 years olds have higher crash rates than any other age group in the United States, are more likely to die in a car crash than the average of all other age groups, and car crashes are the leading cause of death among 16 year olds. North Dakotans believe that 14 year olds can drive a car. They may have fewer drivers on the road, but that doesn’t mean that a 14 year old won’t hit them or drive off the road after irresponsibly drinking. Why not keep all youths off the road until 21 when the statistics on fatal car crashes drop? Or why not follow the lead of car rental agencies and wait for the 25" birthday? There are at least two common answers to the driving age problem, both utilitarian: in farming communities, and other environments where children work with their parents, it is essential to have children driving as soon as possible; and throughout the country, many parents look forward to the day when their children can drive, thereby alleviating the need for their private chauffeur service. There is no question that these are benefits. But if the cost is death to the child and others, the economics just don’t work out. One option would be to lower the legal driving age for those communities or situations in which parents demonstrate the significance of young children driving for their financial security and well being. Those without this justification must wait until they are 21, frontal lobes matured and the novelty of intoxication lowered. The most interesting and relevant age-related issue is when someone is treated as an adult as opposed to a juvenile criminal. Within the United States, most states set the bar at 18 years, but some as young as 16. Where a state sets its bar determines whether or not the individual is eligible for the death penalty or a life sentence, as well as a host of social services. Many states with the bar currently set below 18, including my own state of Massachusetts, are presently debating whether the age limit should be raised. For some, the issue is simply one of parity: this is not an issue where states should differ, and thus everyone should be with the majority at 18 years. Others add to this discussion by arguing that it should be 18 because of brain maturation. Although it is absolutely the case that a more mature brain brings with it better self-control and less sensation-seeking or risk-taking, there is no evidence of a reliable difference between 16, 17 and 18 year olds. Some 16 year olds are remarkably patient and risk- averse whereas some 18 years olds are remarkably impulsive and risk-prone. If this is to be a meaningful discussion about future risks, plasticity, and the opportunity for rehabilitation, it will have to grapple with the scientific evidence that is presently on offer. When we use age to distinguish between legally permissible and forbidden actions, we have acknowledged that our biology and upbringing represent mitigating factors. We believe that juvenile crimes are forgivable and their actions correctable. In fact, their crimes are forgivable because their actions are correctable. Once we admit nature and nurture into the legal calculus concerning our youths, we must also allow such factors to guide our decisions about adults with developmental disorders, brain damage, and different genetic make-up. Yet, the law seems to have a double standard: youths lack free will, whereas adults have it, even if it is somewhat diminished. But if we believe that juveniles lack a sufficiently mature capacity for self-control, planning and thinking about alternative options, then we must recognize that fully mature adults can lose these capacities as they naturally age, and can lose them at any age if they suffer from brain damage. We must also wrestle with the fact that some people are born with a genetic constitution that makes them more vulnerable to addictions, sensation-seeking, violence, and a lack of compassion. Perhaps they too should be banned from driving, voting, drinking, marrying and military combat. When do we look at the excessive harms caused by individuals or groups and hold them responsible? When do we punish them to pay for their crimes and fend off future atrocities? The law often invokes the notion of future dangerousness as a means of evaluating risk. So too does the public and media. The general presumption is that for certain kinds of offences, there is a predictably high level of recidivism, of doing the same thing over and over again. But the implication of this judgment is that those who are deemed guilty are, in some way, not responsible for their future. Their future is determined for them. In fact, it is so determined that the law is willing to make a confident wager and send these criminals to prison or to their death. On this view, someone who has already Hauser Epilogue. Evilightenment 148 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012894

repeated a crime is more likely to repeat than someone who has only committed a crime once. On this view, those who engage in certain kinds of crimes, such as child molesters and rapists, are more likely to repeat because it is “in” their system. Unfortunately, both folk perception and legal analysis of future dangerousness are based on weak evidence, unfounded assumptions, or both. Consider sexual offenders. Their crime is intentional, frequently repeated, and aimed at innocent victims. Given that many sexual offenders repeat their offenses, it has the appearance of inevitability, of a process that is highly determined. Because many sexual offenders were abused as children, some experts conclude that we should blame their parents. Other experts believe that particular situations either promote or support sexual offenders, including the church and medical exam rooms. And yet other experts, including the psychiatrist Boris Schiffer, reveal brain differences among pedophiles, including especially the areas involved in reward and self-control. Together, these observations suggest that the combination of a deviant nature and toxic nurture have led to a more deterministic universe. In this universe, sexual offenses are inevitable or so highly probable that we should lock up offenders and post their crimes in every county’s registry, and if possible, as replacements for flamingo lawn art. If this assessment of sexual offenders is right, how should we think about responsibility, blame, and punishment. If sexual offenders can’t help themselves, how should we assign blame? How should we assign an appropriate level and form of punishment, if punishment is even appropriate? Studies of recidivism among sexual offenders generate rates as low as 15% and as high as 80%. These studies also reveal that recidivism rates differ for incest perpetrators, rapists, and child molesters. These numbers tell us that even child molesters don’t always repeat their crimes. They also tell us that sexual offences should not be lumped, but split apart into their underlying causes and triggers. Like the high odds favoring a horse with a distinguished lineage and top rated jockey, there are high odds favoring repeated sexual molestation in an individual who was sexually abused as a child and enters the clergy. Does this mean that we should all bet on this one horse or forget the race altogether? Does this mean that we should lock up the priest before he has an opportunity to enter his parish? No and No. Neither horse racing nor sexual molestation are that easily determined. Future success and future dangerousness are probabilistic. They represent our best guesses. When the law determines that someone is at high risk of committing a future offense, it doesn’t really care whether the individual is perfectly healthy or brain damaged. It cares about risk. In terms of blame and punishment, however, the law cares about the perpetrator’s brain. The law cares about a person’s capacity to act rationally and independently. It is this capacity that allows us to assign responsibility. It is this capacity that drives many theories of blame and punishment, including the Australian legal scholar Michael Moore’s massive treatise Placing Blame. These are reasons why scientific understanding of future dangerousness is important for law and society. Armed with these ideas about future dangerousness, we can return to the list of potential evildoers that I mentioned in the prologue. This list included individuals who caused relatively minor harms such as Reverend Lawrence Murphy and Charles Manson, as well as those who committed much more major harms such as Idi Amin and Mao Zedong. Whether we consider these individuals and their acts as evil is orthogonal to the fact that each one posed a great risk to society. Each of these individuals would have been judged as high risk for causing future danger. Only some of these individuals should have been punished if punishment is guided by our understanding of responsibility and blame. Only those individuals who can take responsibility for their actions and change should be punished. On this view, all of the dictators were rightly blamed and punished. And so too were Jane Toppan, Bernard Madoff, and Charles Granger. In contrast, although Lawrence Murphy should have been locked up as opposed to exiled to a cottage, both Murphy and Charles Manson are more difficult to assess in terms of responsibility, and thus, the appropriateness of punishment. No one would want them walking the streets today, free to rape innocent children or create a cult of murderers. But for the law to evolve, we need better tools to evaluate the biological underpinnings of diminished capacity. These measures, still in the early stages of development, will help refine our understanding of risk, guide our clinical interventions, and contribute to the construction of a safer society. As we move forward, we must also recognize the rapidly changing landscape, and the future dangerousness of globalization, especially its capacity to breed evildoers. Like authority, conformity, Hauser Epilogue. Evilightenment 149 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012895

dehumanization, and self-deception which each have both beneficial and toxic personalities, so too does globalization. Globalization has integrated developing countries into the global economy and allowed them to profit from new resources and advances. But globalization has also fragmented these countries by giving them access to resources that corrupt, such as arms for guerrilla leaders and rogue armies. What has changed in the twenty-first century, perhaps as early as the 1990s, is a new form of war, one that is tied to the signature of evil and its expression as excessive harm. No longer are wars confined to state borders, restricted to states and their legitimized militaries, financed by governments and tax revenues, and focused on combatants. Instead, the new wars of the twenty-first century have entirely porous boundaries, are funded by private organizations, run by grass-root groups, and motivated by the use of horrific means to achieve equally horrific ends, including torture, rape, mutilation, and the use and abuse of civilians, women, children and men alike. As a result, international law is effectively, ineffective. Those running these new wars are outside of international law. The consequence of the new wars extends beyond the travesties experienced by those living in these hot spots to the humanitarian aid workers and journalists who attempt to help the victims. Humanitarian aid is often pirated by rogue militias, and journalists are frequently killed or badly injured. We must therefore face the sad reality that as we ended the twentieth-century and initiated the twenty- first, casualties to non-combatant civilians shifted from few to many. We must face the reality that combating evil will require new laws and new protections for those who risk their lives to aid victims and give voice to their often silent suffering. Evil ever after? We won't eradicate evil. Why? Because the capacity for evil is rooted in human nature, born of a promiscuous mind that enables ideas and feelings to flip between beneficial and toxic. Though we institute programs and practices that promote the beneficial, living within every human mind is a toxic neighbor, waiting to move in. Adhering to authorities is beneficial in that great leaders are energizing, empowering, creative, and a source of guidance into a brighter future. But even great leaders can turn toxic, imposing corrosive ideologies and eliminating basic human rights. Conformity is beneficial in that we want to live in a society where norms are followed, providing stability and cooperation. But conformity is toxic when it leads to blind faith and uncritical thinking. Dehumanization is beneficial in allowing us to carry out medical procedures and live with certain kinds of human suffering. But dehumanization is toxic when it facilitates ethnic cleansing by shrinking the moral circle, turning atrocities into virtuous offerings. Tolerance and pluralism are beneficial in that they lead to respect and concern for others’ attitudes and desires. But tolerance and pluralism are toxic when they breed apathy and a willingness to stand by as passive bystanders. My diagnosis of evil is not meant to be defeatist, but realist. It is only through an acknowledgment of our biology and the environments it has created — and can create — that we can look for solutions to ameliorate the human condition. We are all vulnerable to walking on the wrong side. We are fallible. We are also enormously creative, capable of great change. Like no other species, we relentlessly seek novelty. No one wants to be like his or her predecessor. Whether it is a new culinary tradition, extreme sport, technological innovation, musical genre, or weapon of destruction, our search for novelty is an indestructible component of human nature. Our journey into the nature of evil has come to an end. Bombarded by the sheer magnitude of lives lost or damaged beyond repair, it is natural to deaden our senses and choke our feelings in the hope of finding solitude and peace. As painful as a re-awakening is, we must remember the individuals that make up these massive atrocities. Reflecting upon the loss of his son who was murdered by the Lord's Resistance Army, an 80 year old Ugandan chief summed it up— "We have been forgotten. It’s as if we don’t exist." We must never forget. We must never deny our potential to cause horrific pain and suffering while finding ways to forgive and express deep compassion. We must never give up on humanity. Hauser Epilogue. Evilightenment 150 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012896

Endnotes: Epilogue Recommended Books: Glover, J. (2000). Humanity. Yale University Press. Grossman, D. (1996). On Killing. New York: Back Bay Books. Moore, M.S. (2010). Placing Blame. Oxford University Press. Quotes: * Human Rights Watch Report, 2010, “The Trail of Death” Hauser Epilogue. Evilightenment 151 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012897