this amount to each player. In this game, the best for each player in the group is to contribute to the
common pot because this maximized the returns. However, the best strategy for an individual is to defect,
holding on to the initial endowment while reaping the rewards of everyone else’s generous contributions.
Those who opt out of cooperation in a public good situation stand to benefit, especially in a world with no
punishment.
Carlsmith created an experimental world of punishment for some players, but not all, and then
explored how punishment contributed to a subject’s feelings. Some could pay to punish, some witnessed
the consequence of another’s punitive act, and some had no exposure to a game involving punishment.
When given the opportunity to punish the defector, most people punished. Everyone, both
punishers and non-punishers alike, expected punishment to feel good. They were wrong. Both punishers
and those who witnessed punishment felt worse, with the act of punishment compounding the bad
feelings. The fact that the witnesses felt worse, as opposed to better, may seem at odds with our
experience of schadenfreude, of enjoying another’s misery. Shouldn’t the witnesses have rejoiced upon
discovering that the offenders were slapped with a punitive fine? In our own personal experience with
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 68
schadenfreude, as well as in studies that I will explore in a few sections, witnesses learn of a misfortune
that happens to another but this news has no direct bearing on the witness. In Carlsmith’s experiments, the
witnesses learn of a misfortune, but the offender’s defection has a direct bearing on the witness in terms
of money lost. Thus, although punishment may feel good, the benefit may not make up for the lost
income.
Everyone in Carlsmith’s experiments also believed that punishment would cause people to think
less about the offender. They were wrong again. Punishers, but not those who simply witnessed
punishment, ruminated more about the selfish offenders. Rumination led to more bad feelings. These bad
feelings led to more rumination, giving birth to a vicious cycle of feeling bad and ruminating about those
who cheated them of some money. Rumination heightened the comparative difference in resources.
Carlsmith’s findings are paradoxical and disturbing. Paradoxically, they suggest that in some
situations, our expectations about the feeling of punishing an immoral act are inverted from the feelings
we feel following punishment: rather than feeling a happy high, we feel a depressing low, often
accompanied by increasing anger. In the context of punishing a free-rider who stiffed the group, everyone
expects to feel a tingle of delicious delight, but many end up feeling angry instead. The entire polarity of
the emotion has switched, with rumination and anger dominating our thoughts. This is a dangerous state
to enter. Faced with the strong belief and desire that revenge should feel good, but lacking any
confirmation, we are moved to find new evidence. With anger at the helm, there is only one solution:
escalate the level of punishment, and continue to do so until it feels good. This is precisely the pattern I
described above for obesity: the wanting system continues to search for liking and reward, but fails, and
thus continues. Whether it is an unsatisfied desire for food or revenge, the unfortunate consequence is an
escalation to excess. Evil isn’t far behind, fueled by a variety of situations in which we fail to obtain what
we want.
The great leveler
We are often envious of those who have what we desire, whether it is good looks, money, a warm
supportive family, or a better tennis stroke. Envy can motivate us to change our looks, find careers that
will improve our finances, seek relationships that will provide additional support, and pick up a few extra
tennis lessons to win the next match. Unfortunately, envy can quickly turn, as desire and a deep sense of
inferiority transform into insatiable cravings to acquire whatever is necessary to gain superiority. Envy
thus wears two masks, one benign and inspirational, the other malignant and destructive. As the writer
Dorothy Sayers noted, envy “is the great leveler; if it cannot level things up, it will level them down.”
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 69
Envy emerges out of our sense of fairness, fueled by competition. It is part and parcel of a
hierarchical society. When we envy someone, we have detected a difference or inequity between our own
condition and that of another. We want what someone else has, presumably because we like what they
have. Wanting and liking are in harmony. Recognition of the inequity fuels competition to redress the
imbalance. This sense of fairness appears early in child development, changing in systematic ways as a
function of a culture’s norms.
The Swiss economist Ernst Fehr, who led the brain imaging studies of punishment and reward
discussed in Chapter 1, assembled a team of developmental psychologists to test for evidence of fairness
in young children ages 3-8 years old. Fehr was especially interested in when children recognize a
disparity or inequity in the distribution of resources, and what they are willing to do, if anything, to
redress the imbalance. The experimenter paired up each child with a partner of the same age who was
either from the same school or a different school; the school distinction was set up to look at in-group
versus out-group differences which, as discussed in chapter 1, can lead parochial altruism ⎯⎯ the
paradoxical result of greater cooperation among group members and greater hatred and violence toward
those outside. Though each child knew about their partner’s age and school affiliation, they never saw
their partner. Each child therefore knew only that they were playing with someone from their school or
someone unfamiliar to them.
Each child played three different games. In each game, the experimenter told one child to decide
how to distribute a fixed amount of candy. In the prosocial game, the decider either takes one candy and
gives one to the partner or takes one candy and gives nothing to the partner. If children are sensitive to
inequities and want to share in order to make things fair, they should pick the 1-1 option; picking the 1-0
option doesn’t affect the decider, but dings the partner. In the envy game, the decider has a choice
between 1-1 and 1-2. As in the prosocial game, the decider gets the same amount of candy with both
options, but preserves equity with 1-1. Picking 1-1 also reveals that the child has an aversion to others
having more, even when there is no personal cost. In the third, sharing game, the decider has a choice
between 1-1 and 2-0. Here again, the decider gets candy in both cases, but the 2-0 option tempts the
desire for more, both personally and relatively. On the one hand, a greedy child will want more candy,
and so 2 wins over 1. But picking the 2-0 option also leads to a greater difference with the partner, while
robbing them of an opportunity for any candy. If fairness prevails, deciders should pick 1-1. If
selfishness prevails, motivated by competition, they should pick 2-0.
Across all three games, there was an increasing tendency from age 3 to 8 years old for children to
pick the fair distribution (1-1). Across all ages and games, children were most likely to pick the fair
distribution when playing against familiar than unfamiliar schoolmates. What these results reveal,
together with many other similar studies, is that children are sensitive to the distribution of goods at an
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 70
early age, but with important developmental changes in play. There is a tendency for children to both
recognize inequities early in life, but to act selfishly when possible. The envy game shows this
beautifully. When another child could receive more, children rejected this option even though it wouldn’t
cost them directly: the decider always gets just one candy. Though no one has yet worked out what
causes a developmental shift from more to less selfishness, most agree that it is driven by maturation of
brain regions guiding self-control, together with social factors that make young children increasingly
aware of and sensitive to their own and others’ reputations. Fehr’s studies also show that playing fair is
not just about the distribution of resources, but about who gets them. Early in life, children have already
carved up the world into those they know and those they don’t. This division drives their thinking and
feeling, and in cases like this, their sense of fairness. Young children are well on their way to developing
parochial altruism.
Fehr’s research, and the majority of studies on the child’s developing sense of fairness, focus on
children living in large-scale Western societies. Most of the work on fairness in adults is similarly
focused on large scale societies. The precise structure of these societies may directly impact how
individuals decide when to share, what commodities enter into the distribution, and whether sharing
depends on effort invested, needs, and power. As noted in the last section, those who support an
egalitarian society are more likely to feel empathy toward those in pain than those who support a
hierarchical society. Individuals who are more empathic are also more altruistic. Hunter-gatherer
societies tend to be more egalitarian, and highly cooperative. These differences predict further
differences in how those living in small-scale societies, including the hunter-gatherers and subsistence
farmers of Africa, Asia, and South America, should respond to unfair exchanges.
The American anthropologist Joseph Henrich and his colleagues presented a set of bargaining
games to adults living in different small-scale societies across the globe. Though the subjects in this study
played a number of different games, the basic goal was similar to those deployed by Fehr in his studies of
children and adults: under what conditions will individuals choose to share an equal as opposed to an
unequal distribution of resources?
Consider the ultimatum game. One individual decides how to distribute a fixed amount of money
to an anonymous partner; in the Henrich games, he always used the local currency and an amount that
was appropriate for the society. The partner had two options: keep what is on offer or reject it. Rejection
is costly to both players as they leave empty handed. Rejection is both an expression of sour grapes for
what could have been ⎯⎯ a fair offer ⎯⎯ and punishment for selfish behavior. In large scale societies,
offers typically range from 40-50% of the initial pot, and rejections are common for offers less than about
20%.
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 71
Across the globe, most people in these small scale societies offered some amount of the initial
pot. Across the globe, most people rejected really low offers. This shows the universal signature of
fairness: an expectation of sharing resources and a no-tolerance view of greed. Cultures differed with
respect to how much they shared and whether they rejected. Some societies offered, on average, close to
40%, while others offered as little as 15%. Some societies accepted virtually all offers, whereas others
rejected both low and even high offers. Even in more egalitarian societies, therefore, there is sensitivity to
unequal distributions. Even in egalitarian societies, there is a willingness to punish those who act
unfairly, greedily taking more than their fair share.
The work I have discussed on fairness is only a fraction of the growing body of scientific
evidence. What this research reveals is that a sense of fairness is part of human nature, appearing early in
development, but guided by experience toward a particular cultural form. When our desire for fairness or
equity combines with our competitive drive, envy often follows. Studies of the brain show how envy is
generated from this combination.
When healthy subjects sit in a brain scanner and learn about other individuals who have what they
desire, there is considerable activity in the anterior cingulate, and more activity in those who feel more
envious. This is not the envy center of the brain. There is no such area. But the recruitment of the anterior
cingulate in other social situations helps us understand what is going on more generally in the case of
envy. The anterior cingulate activates when we experience pain from social exclusion, but not when we
witness such pain in others. It is one of the areas that was activated in Chiao’s work on the differences in
pain empathy for those supporting either an egalitarian or hierarchical society. The anterior cingulate is
also involved when our minds are pulled in two different directions, a situation that arises when we are
forced to choose between two conflicting moral options ⎯⎯ for example, a duty to save the lives of many
versus the prohibition of killing one person to save the lives of many. There is a common thread here that
unites these different experiences. Like our experience of social exclusion, envy is also a form of social
pain and to some, deeply painful, as it reveals a sense of deficiency in acquiring resources. Envy also
represents a situation in which our positive sense of self conflicts with the negative sense of self
engendered by social comparison. Our brain ⎯⎯ and the anterior cingulate in particular ⎯⎯ informs us that
we are less accomplished when compared with others. Envy is socially imposed pain generated by
comparison shopping.
Envy highlights what we don’t have, which fuels the system of desire, which seeks satisfaction.
Unsatisfied, envy runs wild. Unsatisfied, wanting keeps hunting for pleasure. Schadenfreude delivers
some prey.
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 72
O Schadenfreude
On February 15, 1978, a relatively unknown boxer with few professional fights, stepped into the Las
Vegas boxing ring and snatched the world heavyweight champion title from Muhammad Ali. Ali, along
with his entourage of managers, coaches and fans were shocked, though no one denied that he lost. The
unknown boxer was Leon Spinks. His only prior claim to fame, and ticket to a shot at Ali, was an
Olympic gold medal two years earlier. With this win, not only did Spinks enjoy the heavyweight belt of
champions, but a cash prize of $350,000 and a promise of $3.8 million for the rematch with Ali. But this
meteoric rise to the top fizzled into a meteoric crash, driven by women, alcohol, sports cars, and a lack of
training. Leon Spinks, aka “Neon Leon,” was living the fast life, and rapidly losing his status as a
respected sports hero.
Moments before his rematch with Ali, he cruised the streets of New Orleans on top of a limousine
while smoking a joint. He was flaunting his nonchalance, making fun of Ali’s age, and carrying on about
his ability to take the old champ without a single work out. When he entered the ring, Ali was ready.
Though the match went the full fifteen rounds, it was no contest. Ali won.
Newspaper writers and boxing fans celebrated the return of their champion, and mocked the
downfall of an ephemeral, arrogant, and out of control hero. After losing to Ali in the rematch, Neon
Leon crashed further, losing all of his earnings, taking on odd jobs for minimum wage, losing a son in a
gang fight, and suffering defeat after defeat in the boxing arena. From envied millionaire sports star to
bankrupt fool and the laughingstock of the boxing world.
When the envied fall down, we perversely enjoy the knock out. This is schadenfreude, a German
word that describes the joy we feel in witnessing another’s misfortune. Though the emotion is universally
understood, recognized in our written records at least as far back as Aristotle, the German language is one
of the few to capture the feeling by tapping the brain’s promiscuity, combining the word for harm
(schaden) with the word for joy (freude). Like envy, schadenfreude is a social, comparative emotion. It
erupts when those we envy fall down, when someone we dislike meets his comeuppance, and when a
misfortune is deserved. But like envy, schadenfreude presents two faces, one elevating and virtuous, the
other deflating and divisive. We should feel good when a person is caught crossing a moral line,
committing an injustice. Such feelings not only reinforce our own adherence to moral norms, but
encourage us to punish those who transgress. Such feelings instill courage in the service of expressing
moral outrage. As Robert F. Kennedy stated “Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle
or intelligence.” Schadenfreude in this positive sense is the inner voice of moral courage. At the same
time, it can also be the inner voice of moral disengagement, providing justification for an observed harm.
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 73
When this happens, our promiscuous brain has worked its combinatorial magic, causing us to feel good
when we witness someone else’s misfortune.
Schadenfreude, like envy, causes us to self-evaluate, looking inside of ourselves to assess our net
worth relative to others. We know from a large body of studies, several carried out by the American
social psychologist Roy Baumeister, that when an individual’s sense of self-worth is threatened,
especially those individuals with more narcissistic and overly confident personalities, aggression often
follows. The more personally threatened we feel, the more pleasure we should feel when someone else
suffers. The Dutch psychologist Wilco van Dijk tested this idea with two simple experiments. In both
experiments, subjects filled out a questionnaire that they believed evaluated their intellectual strengths.
Upon completion and scoring of the questionnaire, some were told that they had utterly flopped, scoring
in the lowest 10% of all subjects, while others were told that they performed brilliantly, scoring in the
upper 10%. Next, all subjects read a scenario in which someone suffers a misfortune. For example, in one
scenario, a student rents an expensive car to show off at a party, but then drives the car into a river, not
only damaging the car but requiring the fire department to tow it out. Those whose sense of self-worth
was threatened by the abominable test score were more likely to say that they felt good about the
misfortune, including smirks and laughter in response to the show off who submerged his rented car.
These results powerfully show that schadenfreude serves the beneficial function of hoisting our own selfworth.
When our self-worth has been challenged, for whatever reason, we feel better knowing that
someone else is worse off, regardless of context or direct relevance.
Our desire to see others suffer so that we may feel better can escalate to absurd levels, especially
when it is fueled by ideology. Beliefs can blind us to the cost-benefit analysis, motivating us to see harm
done to those outside of our inner sanctum even if it hurts us as well. Religious and political ideologies
are two of the hotspots that can drive entirely irrational desires and absurd attributions.
The American psychologist Richard Smith explored whether an individual’s political convictions
influenced the intensity of schadenfreude when witnessing a member of another party suffer, including
cases where society at large also suffers. Smith initiated the study prior to the US Presidential elections in
2004 involving Republican George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry; during this period, the
Republicans controlled both executive branches of the government. Each subject ⎯⎯ all college
undergraduates ⎯⎯ provided information about party affiliation and strength of support for the policies
and beliefs of their party. Next, every subject read and provided reactions to short newspaper articles
describing tragicomic moments for the two candidates, one in which Bush fell off his bicycle while
riding, and the other involving Kerry wearing a bizarre space outfit during a visit to NASA. Last,
subjects read and reacted to an article describing job losses and the economic downturn facing the nation
⎯⎯ an article meant to capture an objective cost to all members of society, irrespective of party affiliation.
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 74
Unsurprisingly, Democrats expressed more pleasure from reading about Bush’s bicycle accident,
whereas Republicans were more joyful over Kerry’s bizarre space suit. Surprisingly, Democrats also
expressed pleasure from reading about the economic downturn, and more pleasure than the Republicans
who were more likely to express negative feelings about this situation. Thus, despite the fact that the
economic downturn hurt everyone, the Democrats expressed pleasure over the added damage this
inflicted on the Republicans ⎯⎯ who they held responsible ⎯⎯ and conversely, the added benefit it
brought to the Democrats who could wag their fingers.
In a second study, Smith found that Democrats experienced more schadenfreude than
Republicans over the number of casualties reported out of the Iraq war, even though Iraqis were certainly
not preferentially targeting Republicans. The pleasure they experienced was entirely driven by the fact
that this was a war sponsored by a Republican government, and thus, the fatalities could be blamed on the
Republicans. From a Democrat’s perspective, even though everyone loses when soldiers die in war, it is a
bigger loss for Republicans, and thus, a bigger gain for Democrats. With schadenfreude, it is all about
comparative shopping. It is all about satisfying our desires relative to others.
As noted above, schadenfreude appears to emerge strongly when an individual’s misfortune is
deserved. To explore what is happening in the brain when such pleasure is experienced, and the
situations that might trigger it, the German cognitive neuroscientist Tania Singer set up a study involving
healthy men and women. In the first phase, subjects played a bargaining game for money against an
unfamiliar partner; prior to the game, and unbeknownst to the subject, Singer set things up so that the
partner played either fairly or unfairly. After the game, each subject entered a scanner, and watched their
partner receive a painful shock to the hand.
Predictably, Singer discovered that both men and women liked the fair players better than the
unfair players, and showed more empathy to fair players when they were shocked. Proof of empathy was
read off the images of brain activation, especially the brain circuitry known to be involved in pain
empathy, and mentioned earlier in my discussion of Joan Chiao’s work on social hierarchies: the insula
and anterior cingulate. Unpredictably, Singer discovered that the level of activity in this pain empathy
circuitry was reduced when men ⎯⎯ but not women ⎯⎯ saw unfair players receive pain. She also observed
that in men ⎯⎯ but not women ⎯⎯ there was increased activity in the nucleus accumbens ⎯⎯ an area
mentioned earlier on that, in rats, monkeys and humans is consistently associated with the experience of
reward and liking. The more individual men desired revenge for an unfair offer, the more activity they
showed in this reward area.
Singer’s findings are joined by many others showing that the nucleus accumbens, together with
other reward areas, are activated in a wide variety of situations in which we gain from others’ pain. But
because these same areas also respond to non-social, non-comparative experiences, such as eating, we
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 75
come back to a critical point in this chapter: areas that evolved for one function are readily recruited for
others, especially in a promiscuous brain like ours. As long as something makes us feel good, whether it
is winning, eating, social comparison, or harming another, the reward areas of the brain turn on.
Schadenfreude is one of the mind’s ambassadors, enabling us to journey from a state of inferiority
to superiority. It enables “imaginary revenge” in the words of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Like envy, it is highly adaptive, focusing our attention on inequities. Like envy, it is also maladaptive,
rewarding us when the inequity is not only addressed, but results in another’s failure and misery. If failure
is associated with violence, including death, so be it. The brain is poised to inspire our desire to harm or
witness harm in order to feel good.
An appetite for violence
Billions of people, perhaps all humans, have had vivid fantasies about sex, violence, or sexual violence.
Are these fantasies like food fantasies, cravings that need to be satisfied? Or, as some theories would have
it, are sexual and violent fantasies satisfying on their own, playing a cathartic role, releasing energy and
thus, reducing the need to act out?
Seung-Hui Cho was born in South Korea and then moved to the United States with his parents.
During his first three years in college, both students and professors in his literature and theatre courses
described his writings as disturbing and disgusting, and his actions toward other students as ominous and
frightening. One professor noted that his creative pieces “seemed very angry,” while another demanded
that he be removed from the class. A classmate noted that his plays were “really morbid and grotesque…I
remember one of them very well. It was about a son who hated his stepfather. In the play, the boy threw a
chainsaw around and hammers at him. But the play ended with the boy violently suffocating the father
with a Rice Krispy treat.” Cho was advised to seek counseling. He didn’t. No one followed up. A
professor aware of his often inappropriate comments and behavior contacted members of the
administration. No response. Several women alerted the campus police after Cho stalked them. No
disciplinary action was taken despite his repeated offenses. As in the SEC’s tin ear to the alarms
surrounding Madoff’s dubious securities, so too was everyone at Cho’s university deaf to his alarming
behavior in class and out.
During his senior year, Cho wrote an essay describing his anger toward rich kids, the unfairness
of life, and his own misery. He also described a revenge fantasy, packed with images of retaliation
toward those who had what he lacked. He sent his reflections along with excessively violent photographs
and videotapes to the New York headquarters of NBC news. Under a photograph of bullets he provided
the caption “All the [shit] you've given me, right back at you with hollow points."
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 76
On April 16, 2007, Cho dressed up in army fatigues. He left his dormitory and killed 32 people
and wounded 25 others with a semi-automatic Glock 19 pistol filled with hollow-point bullets, designed
to cause more tissue damage than traditional bullets. Cho then shot himself in the temple, ending his life
and the Virginia Tech massacre.
Cho’s case provides a horrifying example of how fantasies of violence can lead to real life
enactments and a trail of blood. It also provides a counter-example of the catharsis view: Cho’s fantasies
about violent revenge did not make him feel better. It made him feel worse and more violent ⎯⎯ a pattern
supported by dozens of studies.
Normally raised children as young as seven years old are more likely to act aggressively toward
their peers if they are self-absorbed in a world of aggressive fantasy, and this is especially the case for
children who witnessed violence or were subjected to it. Adult men and women are more likely to crave
violence after reading an argument in favor of the cathartic magic of violent fantasies than after reading a
manifesto against catharsis. Men who engage in aggressive sexual fantasies are more likely to engage in
aggression, but only if they are narcissists. Men who engage in deviant sexual fantasies are more likely to
enact these fantasies, but only if they exhibit signs of psychopathy. Psychopathy and narcissism are like
Siamese twins, inseparable. What these studies show is that those who are self-absorbed and play with
violent or sexual fantasies, are most likely to take these imaginary worlds onto the real world stage.
Further evidence of the connection between violent fantasies and violent actions comes from
studies by the German psychologist Thomas Elbert who studied child soldiers brainwashed into joining
the ranks of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Northern Uganda’s rebel group. Since its inception in 1987, the
LRA has recruited 25-65,000 children, starting with boys and girls as young as 10-12 years old. In
detailed interviews and analyses of now retired child soldiers, Elbert discovered that those who had more
experience with killing developed stronger, appetite-driven fantasies of killing, a hunger that had to be
fulfilled by real killing. As one ex-child soldier noted “The more we killed, the more we acquired a taste
for it. If you are allowed to act out this lust it will never let you go again. You could see the lust in our
greed popping eyes. [...] It was an unprecedented pleasure for everyone.” Not only was fantasy converted
into killing, but the more they killed, the less they experienced any trauma in later life. Unlike the droves
of veterans who have been returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and suffer from post-traumatic stress
disorder or PTSD, these child soldiers developed an immunity. Many of the veterans from Iraq and
Afghanistan had no interest in killing, and deemed the war unnecessary. In contrast, these child soldiers
were brain washed into believing that killing was necessary, and a sign of importance. Killing that is
justified is rewarding, whether the justification is real or the product of self-deception. When selfdeception
joins the fray ⎯⎯ as I further develop in chapter 3 ⎯⎯ killing is not only rewarding but virtuous.
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 77
Cho’s case is not the exception, but the rule: persistent fantasies, whether sexual, violent, or
sexually violent, are often played out in real life. When people voice their fantasies, we should open our
ears. When therapists, especially those influenced by the catharsis view of the mind, encourage their
patients to engage in aggressive fantasies to release their pent up energy, we should bring forward
malpractice suits as they are accomplices to crime.
What kind of mind is most likely to rev up the fantasy world to supersonic levels and then
unleash it in the service of excessive harm? Lust murderers ⎯⎯ individuals with a craving for the bizarre and
degenerate ⎯⎯provide one answer to this question. Lust murderers are typically repeat offenders or serial
killers. The serial nature of their crimes comes from the fact that they are motivated by recurrent
fantasies that create recurrent cravings. They are, effectively, addicted to violence. Their fantasies often
entail some kind of paraphilia ⎯⎯ an extreme and abnormal sexual arousal to objects, people or situations
⎯⎯ played out through some form of sadism ⎯⎯ a persistent pattern of sexual or non-sexual pleasure from
humiliating, punishing and harming others. Here again we see the promiscuous human mind at work,
seamlessly blending pleasure and violence, animate and inanimate attractions, sometimes with benign
origins, but often with malignant outcomes. Thus, the pleasure derived from humiliation may develop out
of the more common, normal and less harmful pleasure we experience from mockery and humor.
Humiliation is just a small step away in a mind that derives joy from others’ demise.
The paraphilias, like many of the other disorders that appear within the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Health, fall along a continuum from rather benign forms of voyeurism to
erotophonophilia, the vicious and sadistic killing of an innocent victim in order to achieve ultimate sexual
satisfaction. Regardless of the particular object or situation driving the paraphilia, individuals become
addicted. Like other addictions, including those associated with food, drugs, and alcohol, paraphilic
addicts experience withdrawal. Dangerously for the world around them, the erotophonophilic or lust killer
harbors sadistic paraphilias, including flagellation ⎯⎯ the need to club, whip or beat someone ⎯⎯
anthropophagy ⎯⎯ the desire to eat human body parts ⎯⎯ picquerism ⎯⎯ a craving to stab someone or cut
off their flesh, focusing especially on genitals and breasts ⎯⎯ and necrosadism ⎯⎯ a yearning to have
sexual contact with the dead. Although these desires may seem unimaginable, they reveal one facet of the
human mind’s potential ⎯⎯ a potential that was fully realized in the mind of Jeffrey Dahmer who
flagellated, cannibalized, dismembered, and engaged in necrophilia with his 17 victims. Such disordered
minds are part of the human condition, one that stretches from individuals who never cache in on their
fantasies to those who not only deliver, but develop ⎯⎯ as in addictions to food and drugs ⎯⎯ deeper and
deeper desires for harming others without the rewards that come from such harm. When wanting and
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 78
liking part company, with liking falling dormant due to sensitization, wanting grows in intensity, seeking
but failing to find satisfaction. So begins an appetite for violence, one that can turn into a craving.
A craving to impress
Gazelles on the Serengeti plains of Tanzania sometimes move in an exceptionally bizarre way. With legs
rigidly extended, they bounce up and down like kangaroos. There is no obvious function associated with
this movement. If anything, it appears energetically wasteful. If these gazelles lived in tall grass, one
might think that the bouncing was designed to better see or be seen. But the Serengeti plains are flat and
the grass is short. Gazelles can see for miles in this habitat and so can everything else that shares this
gorgeous part of the planet with them. This includes the lions, leopards and cheetah that think of gazelles
as breakfast, lunch and dinner. Why would a gazelle advertise like this? Why alert predators to your
location and availability? Why not use the coloration of your fur to blend into the color scheme of the
savannah, moving swiftly but imperceptibly?
We can explain the gazelle’s bizarre movements ⎯⎯ called stotting ⎯⎯ by thinking economically,
using Zahavi’s honest signaling theory that I described in Chapter 1. Whenever evolutionary biologists
see a behavior that is costly, they immediately search for a potential benefit. The reason is simple:
behaviors that tax an individual's chances of survival and reproduction are ultimately weeded out by the
force of natural selection. There must be some benefit to the individual or to others in order to neutralize
the costs. Given the ostentatious nature of the gazelle’s stotting, who benefits and how? Since the
behavior is eye-poppingly interesting to human observers, one assumes that it is eye-popping to other
animals on the Serengeti plains as well. Gazelles typically stot when they detect danger which, in the
Serengeti, means leopards, lions and cheetah. If gazelles stot to alert other gazelles, then most gazelles
should stot, at least some of the time. This is because all gazelles are vigilant, should have multiple
opportunities to see these predatory cats, and should benefit from an alarm signal. But this is not what we
observe. Instead, stotting seems to be reserved for those in good shape. When gazelles stot, they appear to
be sending a cease and desist signal to any observant cat. If this is the gazelles’ message, then cats should
selectively chase non-stotters over stotters. And when cats turn a blind eye to stotting gazelles and chase
them, they should have less success than when they chase non-stotters. Stotters are turbo-charged.
Stotting is simply their way of showing off.
These expectations are supported by the British biologists Claire Fitzgibbon and Tim Caro who
spent hundreds of hours watching gazelles and predatory cats. What they reveal is that stotting is an
honest signal of condition or quality. Only gazelles in good condition can tolerate the costs of stotting.
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 79
Stotting handicaps the individual, imposing a significant cost on the ability to move. But the cost paid is
relative to the individual’s condition. Without the cost and the ability to manage it, everyone could stot.
And if everyone could stot, the cats would quickly figure out how meaningless it is and look for other
cues to vulnerability.
Stotting appears excessive, but in fact is an honest signal of power. It is, to borrow a phrase from
the economist Thorstein Veblen, "conspicuous consumption." By flaunting their superior condition,
throwing away resources just because they can, these stotting gazelles benefit in the long run, living
longer and leaving more offspring who will inherit their qualities. These ideas carry over into human
behavior, from big spenders to, I suggest, big harmers.
The American anthropologist James Boone has suggested that human magnanimity evolved as
did stotting, as an honest signal of wealth and power. It represents a desire to impress through wastage.
Handicap yourself in the short run to benefit your wealth and status in the long run. Big tippers don't tip
in private, but in the presence of those who can admire their lavish tips. Hunter-gatherers who bring home
large prey from a day of hunting don't make cryptic deposits for others, but make sure that their offerings
are public. The Mayan pyramids were not built for personal enjoyment behind walled enclosures, but in
the open, visible to potential enemies as displays of excessive power to create something really big and
costly. Rappers such as JayZ, Puff Daddy, and 50 cent don't have absurdly lavish cribs with a six pack of
sports cars because this is what they like, but because this is what they can show off on MTV. Flaunting,
even at a substantial cost, provides a path to power. This is a club whose motto reads “Impress with
excess.”
My suggestion is that excessive harms work as honest signals of wealth and power. Here we
combine the HOW of evil ⎯⎯ discussed in this chapter ⎯⎯ with the WHY of evil ⎯⎯ discussed in chapter 1.
When millions are raped, slashed, burned, chopped up, gored, and dropped out of planes before dying,
there are only two possible explanations: the evildoer is clinically mad with no sense of moderation or a
healthy schemer who has allowed desire to run wild. The schemers are like stotting gazelles, wanting to
impress others of their awesome powers by performing high risk displays. The schemers deploy
proactive, premeditated, and cold violence ⎯⎯ like predators. As the sociologist Wolfgang Sofsky noted in
his commentary on the Nazi concentration camps “Individuals demonstrated commitment by acting, on
their own initiative, with greater brutality than their orders called for. Thus excess did not spring from
mechanical obedience. On the contrary; its matrix was a group structure where it was expected that
members exceed the limits of normal violence.” Unfortunately for society ⎯⎯ past, present and future ⎯⎯
the Nazis are not an isolated case. When Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadic, and Ratko Mladic
launched their ethnic cleansing initiative, they didn’t just displace or kill Albanians and Croatians, they
raped their women, old and young, in front of husbands, fathers, and grandfathers ⎯⎯ and then killed man
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 80
of them. Admiral Luis Maria Mendia, one of the leaders in Argentina’s “Dirty war,” convinced victims to
board a plane under the pretext of a freedom flight, and then once in flight, were thrown out of the plane,
adding sheer terror to the brutality of their death. Accounts such as these litter the pages of history. They
reveal that the desire to impress with excess is part of human nature.
What we have learned in this chapter is that our biology hands us the tools for excess, and hands
some of us more than our fair share. This does not mean that we will or must use such tools. It also
doesn’t mean that the tools were designed for excess. Some are endowed with genes that predispose to
sensation-seeking and risk-taking, others to brain circuitry and chemistry that create an insatiable desire
for reward. Different environments either encourage this biology or discourage it, a topic that occupies
chapter 4. As the eighteenth century poet William Blake remarked “The road to excess leads to the palace
of wisdom… for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough.” To more
deeply understand how our desires runaway to excess, we need to understand how the mind facilitates this
process. We need to understand the role of denial. We need to understand how individuals and groups
dehumanize the other and self-deceive themselves into believing that those unlike them represent a threat
to their purity and power. We need to understand how desire and denial combine to pave the way to
excessive harms.
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 81
Endnotes: Chapter 2
Recommended books
Bloom, P. (2010). How Pleasure Works. New York: W.W. Norton.
E. Staub (2010). Overcoming Evil. Oxford University Press.
Notes:
• Mr. Greed, Bernie Madoff: Fishman, S. (2009). Bernie Madoff, Free at last. New York Magazine, vol.
June, pp. 1-20; Henriques, D.B. (2011). From Prison, Madoff Says Banks ‘Had to Know’ of
Fraud. New York Times, February, 1-3; J. Creswell & L. Thomas, New York Times, 1/24/2009
• Stimulating the brain: Berridge, K. C. (2009). Wanting and liking: Observations from the Neuroscience
and Psychology Laboratory. Inquiry, 52(4), 378-398; Kringelbach, M., & Berridge, K. C. (2009).
Towards a functional neuroanatomy of pleasure and happiness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13,
479-487; Kringelbach, M., & Berridge, K. C. (2010). The functional neuroanatomy of pleasure and
happiness. Discovery Medicine, 9(49), 579-587; Olds, J. (1956) Pleasure centers in the brain. Sci
Am, 195:105–16; Olds J & Milner P. (1954) Positive reinforcement produced by electrical
stimulation of the septal area and other regions of rat brain. J Comp Physiol Psychol 47:419–27.
Portenoy, R. K., Jarden, J. O., Sidtis, J. J., Lipton, R. B., Foley, K. M., & Rottenberg, D. A. (1986).
Compulsive thalamic self-stimulation: a case with metabolic, electrophysiologic and behavioral
correlates. [Case Report]. Pain, 27(3), 277-290.
• Wanting, learning and liking: Peciña S, Cagniard B, Berridge KC, Aldridge JW, Zhuang X. 2003.
Hyperdopaminergic mutant mice have higher “wanting” but not “liking” for sweet rewards. J
Neurosci 23:9395–402; Peciña, S., Smith, K. S., & Berridge, K. C. (2006). Hedonic hot spots in
the brain The Neuroscientist 12(6), 500–511.
• Dopamine in and out of control: Chen, T., Blum, K., Mathews, D., & Fisher, L. (2005). Are
dopaminergic genes involved in a predisposition to pathological aggression?:: Hypothesizing the
importance of. Medical Hypotheses, 65(703-707); Di Chiara, G., & Bassareo, V. (2007). Reward
system and addiction: what dopamine does and doesn't do. Current Opinion in Pharmacology, 7, 69–
76; Doya, K. (2008). Modulators of decision making. Nature Neuroscience, 11(4), 410–416; Dreher,
J.-C., Kohn, P., Kolachana, B., Weinberger, D. R., & Berman, K. F. (2009). Variation in dopamine
genes influences responsivity of the human reward system. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 106(2), 617–622; Everitt, B. J., Belin, D., Economidou, D., Pelloux, Y., Dalley, J. W., &
Robbins, T. W. (2008). Review. Neural mechanisms underlying the vulnerability to develop
compulsive drug-seeking habits and addiction Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences, 363(1507), 3125–3135; Everitt, B. J., & Robbins, T. W. (2005). Neural systems
of reinforcement for drug addiction: from actions to habits to compulsion Nature Neuroscience,
8(11), 1481–1489; Grigorenko, E. L., De Young, C. G., Eastman, M., Getchell, M., Haeffel, G. J.,
Klinteberg, B. A., Koposov, R. A., et al. (2010). Aggressive behavior, related conduct problems, and
variation in genes affecting dopamine turnover. Aggressive Behavior, 36(3), 158–176; Johnson, P.
M., & Kenny, P. J. (2031). Dopamine D2 receptors in addiction-like reward dysfunction and
compulsive eating in obese rats. Nature Publishing Group, 13(5), 635–641; Sabbatini da Silva Lobo,
D., Vallada, H., & Knight, J. (2007). Dopamine genes and pathological gambling in discordant sib-
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 82
pairs. Journal of Gambling Studies, 23, 421–433; Sharot, T., Shiner, T., Brown, A. C., Fan, J., &
Dolan, R. J. (2009). Dopamine Enhances Expectation of Pleasure in Humans. Current Biology,
19(24), 2077–2080; Volkow, N. D., Wang, G.-J., & Baler, R. D. (2011). Reward, dopamine and the
control of food intake: implications for obesity Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(1), 37–46; Walter,
N., Markett, S., & Montag, C. (2010). A genetic contribution to cooperation: Dopamine-relevant
genes are associated with social facilitation. Social Neuroscience 6: 289-301.
• Desire for dominance: Boksem, M. A. S., Kostermans, E., Milivojevic, B., & De Cremer, D. (2011).
Social status determines how we monitor and evaluate our performance. Social Cognitive and
Affective Neuroscience; Chiao, J. Y. (2010). Neural basis of social status hierarchy across species.
Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 20(6), 803–809. Elsevier Ltd; Chiao, J. Y., Mathur, V. A., Harada,
T., & Lipke, T. (2009). Neural Basis of Preference for Human Social Hierarchy versus
Egalitarianism. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1167(1), 174–181; Deaner, R. O.,
Khera, A. V., & Platt, Michael L. (2005). Monkeys pay per view: adaptive valuation of social images
by rhesus macaques Current Biology, 15(6), 543–548; Klein, J. T., Deaner, R. O., & Platt, Michael L.
(2008). Neural correlates of social target value in macaque parietal cortex Current Biology, 18(6),
419–424; Liew, S., Ma, Y., & Han, S. (2011). PLoS ONE: Who's afraid of the boss: Cultural
differences in social hierarchies modulate self-face recognition in Chinese and Americans. PLoS
ONE, 6(2), 1–8; PLoS ONE, 4(5), 1–8; Watson, K. K., & Platt, M L. (2008). Neuroethology of
reward and decision making. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,
363(1511), 3825–3835.
•Envy and schadenfreude: Almas, I., Cappelen, A. W., Sorensen, E. O., & Tungodden, B. (2010).
Fairness and the Development of Inequality Acceptance. Science (New York, NY), 328(5982),
1176–1178; Blake, P. R., & Mcauliffe, K. (2011). “I had so much it didn't seem fair”: Eight-yearolds
reject two forms of inequity. Cognition, 120(2), 215–224; Combs, D. J. Y., Powell, C. A. J.,
Schurtz, D. R., & Smith, R. H. (2009). Politics, schadenfreude, and ingroup identification: The
sometimes happy thing about a poor economy and death. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 45(4), 635–646; Dvash, J, Gilam, G, Ben-Ze'ev, A, Hendler, T, & Shamay-Tsoory,
S.G. (2010). The envious brain: The neural basis of social comparison. Human Brain Mapping.
31(11): 1741-1750; Fehr, E., Bernhard, H., & Rockenbach, B. (2008). Egalitarianism in young
children Nature, 454(7208), 1079–1083; Leach, C.W., & Spears, R. (2008). A vengefulness of
the impotent: the pain of in-group inferiority and schadenfreude toward successful out-groups. J
Pers Soc Psychol, 95(6), 1383-1396; Shamay-Tsoory, S.G., Fischer, M., Dvash, J., Harari, H.,
Perach-Bloom, N. & Levkovitz, Y. (2009). Intranasal administration of oxytocin increases envy
and schadenfreude (gloating). Biol Psychiatry, 66(9), 864-870; Shamay-Tsoory, S.G, Tibi-
Elhanany, Y, & Aharon-Peretz, J. (2007). The green-eyed monster and malicious joy: 
the
neuroanatomical bases of envy and 
gloating (schadenfreude) Brain, 130, 1663-1678; Takahashi,
H, Kato, M, Matsuura, M, Mobbs, D, Suhara, T, & Okubo, Y. (2009). When Your Gain Is My
Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude. Science, 323,
937-939; van de Ven, N., Zeelenberg, M., & Pieters, R. (2009). Leveling up and down: the
experiences of benign and malicious envy. Emotion, 9(3), 419-429; van de Ven, N., Zeelenberg,
M., & Pieters, R. (2010). Warding Off the Evil Eye: When the fear of being envied increases
prosocial behavior. Psychological Science, 21(11): 1671-1677; Van Dijk, W.W. Ouwerkerk,
J.W., Goslinga, S., Nieweg, M., & Gallucci, M. (2006). When people fall from grace:
reconsidering the role of envy in Schadenfreude. Emotion, 6(1), 156-160; Van Dijk, W. W.,
Ouwerkerk, J. W., Wesseling, Y. M., & van Koningsbruggen, G. M. (2011). Towards
understanding pleasure at the misfortunes of others: the impact of self-evaluation threat on
schadenfreude Cognition and Emotion, 25(2), 360–368.
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 83
• Lustful violence: Gellerman, D.M, & Suddath, R. (2005). Violent fantasy, dangerousness, and the duty
to warn and protect. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law, 33, 484-495; V.J.
Gerberth. (1998). Anatomy of a lust murder. Law and Order Magazine, 46 (5), pp. 1-6; Gray, N,
Watt, A, & Hassan, S. (2003). Behavioral indicators of sadistic sexual murder predict the
presence of sadistic sexual fantasy in a normative sample. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 18,
1018-1034; Smith, C.E, Fischer, K.W, & Watson, M.W. (2009). Toward a refined view of
aggressive fantasy as a risk factor for aggression: interaction effects involving cognitive and
situational variables. Aggr. Behav., 35(4), 313-323; Crombach, A, Weierstall, R, Schalinski, I,
Hecker, T, Ovuga, E, & Elbert, T. (2010). Social status and the desire to resort to violence -- a
study on former child soldiers of Uganda. Aggr. Behav., 1-24; Elbert, Thomas, Weierstall,
Roland, & Schauer, Maggie. (2010). Fascination violence: on mind and brain of man hunters.
European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience, 260 (Suppl 2), S100-S105; Ruf, M.,
Schauer, M., Neuner, F., Catani, C., Schauer, E., & Elbert, T. (2010). Narrative exposure therapy
for 7- to 16-year-olds: a randomized controlled trial with traumatized refugee children. J Trauma
Stress, 23(4), 437-445; Schaal, S., & Elbert, T. (2006). Ten years after the genocide: trauma
confrontation and posttraumatic stress in Rwandan adolescents. Journal of Traumatic Stress,,
19(1), 95-105; Weierstall, R, Schaal, S, Schalinski, I, Dusingizemungu, J, & Elbert, T. (2010).
The thrill of being violent as an antidote to posttraumatic stress disorder in Rwandese genocide
perpetrators. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 1-30.
Quotes:
Child soldiers: cited in A. Crombach et al. (2010) Social status and the desire to resort to violence -- a
study on former child soldiers of Uganda. Aggressive Behavior pp. 1-24
The Nazis and excess: W. Sofsky (1993). The Order of Terror. Princeton University Press, New Jersey,
p.228
Hauser Chapter 2. Runaway desire 84
Chapter 3:
Ravages of denial
Self denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.
-- George Bernard Shaw
In October of 1980, a 39 year old man walked into the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Australia, having
suffered a gun shot to the left side of his skull. Once the medical team removed the bullet fragments and
cleared the blood clot, the man was able to speak. He had shot himself, aiming at his second head. Yes,
his second head. This man believed that he had two heads, his own and the head of his dead wife’s
gynecologist. Before his wife died in a car accident, he believed that she was having an affair with her
gynecologist. At night, the second head spoke, accompanied by voices from Jesus and Abraham who
confirmed the existence of the second head. As the patient expressed to the interviewing doctor “The
other head kept trying to dominate my normal head, and I would not let it. It kept trying to say to me I
would lose, and I said bull-shit.” “I am the king pin here” it said and it kept going on like that for about
three weeks and finally I got jack of it, and I decided to shoot my other head off.” Over a two year period,
the perception of the second head disappeared. The attending neuropsychologist, David Ames, described
the case as an example of schizophrenia-induced delusional bicephaly ⎯⎯ a distortion of reality that
creates a false belief of two heads.
Cases like this are bizarre. But like many neuropsychological reports, they force us to reevaluate
our perception of reality, what’s normal and what’s distorted, what’s adaptive and what’s maladaptive.
The Australian patient who developed delusional bicephaly was suffering from the loss of his wife. Loss
and suffering motivate explanation, along with something or someone to blame: Was it really an
accident? Why her? Why not me? What if she had stayed home that morning? What if I had been driving
with her? Was she distracted by her lover? Was he in the car? These questions represent gaps in a
narrative, holes that we attempt to fill, often by distorting reality.
Distortions of reality are common. Even the healthiest among us create stories designed to
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 85
explain a puzzle in our lives or to help us through trauma. These stories are narratives that provide new
truths by denying particular elements of reality. They represent the mind’s method of filling in gaps,
providing justifications for what we can’t explain or wish to explain in a different way. This is an
adaptive feature of the human mind, one that is uniquely human. But this same feature can be used to
justify immoral and atrocious behaviors, the kind that lead to excessive harms. When we distort reality
by treating others as non-human, perceiving and judging them as animals, parasites, or machines, we have
armed ourselves with a weapon that enables great harms by removing the moral consequences of our
actions. Animals, parasites and machines are outside of our moral concerns, so we shouldn’t feel guilty,
or wrack our conscience when we end their lives or ability to move. Animals, parasites and machines
don’t have rights, and thus, we have no obligation to them. Similarly, when we distort reality by means
of deception and self-deception, we have armed ourselves with weapons that enable desire to run wild.
Self-deception generates overconfidence. Overconfidence enables us to pursue our desire for power,
freed from the reins that pull us back, away from costly interactions. Self-deception allow us to convince
ourselves and deceive others that we are under attack, threatened by those who are unlike us. Under the
circumstances, we are justified in using self-defense, even if this leads to annihilating the enemy. Often,
self-deception combines with dehumanization to maximize the effectiveness of the distortion, paving an
unobstructed path for runaway desire. Denial enables desire to achieve satisfaction, minus the moral
conscience. These are the ideas that I will explore in this chapter.
Before discussing the scientific evidence that explains how the brain distorts reality by
dehumanizing and self-deceiving ⎯⎯ two core elements of denial ⎯⎯ we must understand how the brain
creates the reality of humanization, a process that imbues some things but not others with human qualities
and moral worth. This is an important problem as it shapes our perception of evil, who can cause
excessive harm and who can suffer from it. Rocks can cause great pain ⎯⎯ as in landslides ⎯⎯ but we
don’t hold them responsible for the harm caused because they lack intentions, beliefs, goals, and desires.
Rocks can also be crushed, pulverized into sand by humans working in a quarry. But rocks are neither
innocent nor victims as they have no moral worth, no capacity to suffer, and no ability to intentionally
harm another. If not rocks, what?
iHuman
Earthquakes, viruses, chimpanzees, children, and psychopaths can all cause harm to others, including
humans and other animals. We might be tempted to think that only psychopaths are rightfully classified
as evildoers because they are the only ones that can cause excessive harm to innocent others with harm as
a goal. But this begs the question of what we mean by excessive, innocent, and goal.
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 86
Earthquakes, viruses, chimpanzees, and some children often cause excessive harm to innocent
others, at least if the focus is on numbers and the way in which death arises. The earthquake that reached
a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale and demolished the capital of Haiti in 2010 took the lives of
approximately 200,000 people, all innocent and undeserving of this natural disaster. This is excess
beyond what any psychopath has ever achieved. The Spanish Flu found its way into the bodies of
innocent people from the Arctic to the Pacific Islands from 1918 to 1920, and killed over 50 million
people — a death toll that is at least four times higher than what Hitler caused during his reign, and
comparable to that achieved by Mao Ze-Dong during his. As noted in chapter 1, chimpanzees kill at a
rate that approximates many hunter-gatherer groups. When they kill, the frenzied attacks are over the top,
involving gruesome dismemberment of their victims by biting into the face, ripping off testicles and
dislocating limbs. By the age of 15 years, Willie James Bosket Jr had committed some 200 armed
robberies, stabbed 25 innocent victims, kicked a boy off of a roof to his death, and killed two men
following a failed robbery, all “for the experience.” At the level of outcomes, these are all horrific cases
of lives lost, with some excessive in terms of numbers and others in terms of means.
We can eliminate earthquakes and other natural disasters from the list of evildoers by noting that
they don’t have, as their goal or as a foreseen consequence, the elimination of lives, innocent or not. They
don’t have goals at all. This also eliminates them from the class of victims, assuming the day comes when
scientists can kill off earthquakes, cyclones, hurricanes, blizzards and so on before they pick up enough
steam to cause great harm. One might think that viruses, and their virulent partners the parasites, lack
goals because they lack brains. This intuition is correct anatomically, but incorrect conceptually. As the
American philosopher Daniel Dennett has noted, the beauty of Darwin’s theory of natural selection is that
it provided a way of giving nature competence without comprehension. Thus, viruses and parasites have
goals without understanding at all. To survive and reproduce, they have evolved exquisite chemical and
electrical machines that harvest all of their host’s resources. And if making a living requires killing the
host, so be it. They do so without shedding a tear. No guilt, no remorse. Chimpanzees, on the other hand,
have goals and brains that represent them. When chimpanzees kill, their goal is not food. Their brutal
attacks are motivated by a desire to outcompete their rivals and absorb additional resources; no one
knows if they feel guilt or remorse. Willie Bosket’s goal was to rob two men, but when he failed, he
turned to gratuitous violence, for the experience. Bosket certainly could, as a human, feel guilt and
remorse, but all reports indicate he didn’t.
We can eliminate parasites and viruses from the list of evildoers and evilreceivers by noting that
they lack an understanding of right and wrong, and are incapable of suffering. Chimpanzees are a harder
case. They live in societies with norms and respond aggressively to norm transgressions, as occurs when a
high ranking male beats a lower ranking male for trying to steal food or a mating opportunity.
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 87
Chimpanzees also suffer, experiencing pain from both physical attacks and social loss. But getting angry
at something or someone and feeling pain from a physical or social assault are different from getting
angry because someone’s behavior was morally wrong, and suffering from a morally toxic action. I get
angry at my computer all the time, swearing when it crashes, and even smacking it on its backside. But
there is no moral harm. In this sense, there is no evidence that chimpanzees have a sense of right and
wrong, and that the pain they experience is linked to a sense of how one ought to behave. Chimpanzees
can’t be evildoers, but they certainly can, and have been evilrecipients.
There is also an important difference between violently harming another and knowing it is wrong,
and harming another because it is wrong. The latter fits at least one view of evil, a kind of radical evil in
which harm is created for harm’s sake, because it is rewarding. When Willie Bosket killed those two men,
he was certainly old enough to know the difference between right and wrong. He most likely killed
knowingly, perhaps for the generic experience of shooting someone, but perhaps not with a desire to harm
for harm’s sake. Then again, when he noted that he killed for the experience, perhaps this was the
experience of pleasure from harming another.
Was Willie Bosket responsible for his shootings? The answer to this question depends on how
we think about Bosket’s options, and the link between cause and effect. At the simplest level, Bosket
caused the death of the two men in the same way that a swinging wrecking ball can cause the death of two
men. But the wrecking ball can’t be held accountable or responsible in the same way that Bosket can.
Wrecking balls lack options and lack the capacity to predict the consequences of their actions. Bosket
had options, could foresee the consequences of his actions, and had the capacity to act upon his options.
Or did he?
We know that the frontal lobes of the brain play an important role in self-control and emotional
regulation. We also know that this area of the brain is not fully mature until people reach their midtwenties.
Bosket was, therefore, operating with an immature brain. His actions were, in some ways, like
the wrecking ball, driven by inertia. Perhaps the frustration of failing to achieve his goal — robbery —
caused a dizzying chemical reaction in his brain, causing a flood of emotions, blinding his capacity to
think rationally. Paraphrasing the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, these electrochemical storms in
Bosket’s brain caused him to deposit his conscience at the door. Like the husband who finds his wife in
bed with her lover and kills them both on the spot, Bosket committed a crime of passion. On this account,
not only is he not evil, he is pardonable.
Immaturity is a mitigating factor when we evaluate a crime. It is why, in many countries, there is
one legal system for youths and another for adults. It is why, in countries with the death penalty, such as
the United States, youths are immune. With maturity comes a heightened capacity to control ones
actions, or at least, to gain better self-control and thus, to take responsibility for what one does. This
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 88
means that maturation eventually legitimizes individuals as potential evildoers. It does not, however,
cause a shift in our sense of evilrecipients. Willie Bosket may not have been an evildoer, but he certainly
could have been an evilrecipient.
What about psychopaths, people like Charles Manson and Ted Bundy? Pop culture tells us that
they are depraved, heinous, immoral monsters, deliberately causing harm to others, and often with a
delicious twinkle in their eye. But what if I told you that several recent studies of psychopaths indicate
that they know the difference between right and wrong? When judging the moral permissibility of
different actions, such as harming one person to save the lives of many, psychopaths’ judgments are often
like yours and mine, nuanced, varying depending upon the outcomes and the means by which they are
achieved. This is a rational, albeit largely unconscious understanding of right and wrong. This makes
psychopaths nothing like earthquakes, viruses, chimpanzees, or young children. It also means that they
don’t have bad moral principles, but rather, ones that are like yours and mine. What if I further told you
that before they develop into fully licensed-to-kill or extort psychopaths, many have an early history of
torturing pets and bullying other kids. What if I further told you that when they cooked the cat in the
microwave or bloodied little Johnny’s face with their fist, that the consequences of their actions left them
cold ⎯⎯ no guilt, remorse, or shame. Nothing. And what if I told you that these people are born with a
different brain chemistry and structure than you or I, leading to poor self-control and an emotionally
callous view of the world? If this medical report is correct, and I believe the scientific evidence supports
it, then psychopaths lack the ability to see alternative options and act on them. They also lack the
resources for self-control. Given this evidence, psychopaths are not evil at all, though the consequences
of their actions are often excessively heinous. Given this evidence, not one member of our initial list
would count as evildoers, though chimpanzees, children and psychopaths would all count as potential
evilrecipients.
What this discussion highlights is that our perception of evildoers and evilrecipients is influenced
by our sense of what it means to be human. Though evildoers and evilreceivers overlap in their capacities
to think and feel, there are differences, captured by Aristotle’s distinction between moral agents ⎯⎯ those
who have responsibility for others well being ⎯⎯and moral patients ⎯⎯ those who deserve moral
consideration and care from moral agents. The distinction gains scientific credibility thanks to a set of
studies by the American psychologists Kurt Gray and Daniel Wegner. In one experiment, a large internet
population compared the qualities of different things, including humans at different stages of
development ⎯⎯ fetus, baby, child, and adult ⎯⎯ an adult human in a vegetative state, a dead human,
nonhuman animals ⎯⎯ frog, pet dog, chimpanzee ⎯⎯ God, and a socially savvy robot. Subjects judged
different pairings of these things on a wide range of dimensions, including which was more likely to
develop a unique personality, feel embarrassed, suffer pain, distinguish right from wrong, experience
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 89
conscious awareness, exert greater self-control, plan ahead, develop fears, feel pleasure, and erupt into
rage. Subjects also provided their personal opinions on which individual, within the pair, they liked most,
wanted to make happy or destroy, was most deserving of punishment, and most likely had a soul.
I assume that everyone reading about the design of this study has already formed an opinion
about some of the comparisons. Presumably everyone believes that a living adult is more consciously
aware than a dead person, fetus, dog, and robot. Presumably everyone believes that all animals feel more
pain than a dead human or a robot. And presumably everyone would rather make a dog happy than a
frog, and would be more likely to allocate souls to fetuses, babies, and adult humans than to robots and
frogs. But are we more conscious than God? Does a chimpanzee feel more embarrassed than a baby? Can
a person in a vegetative state feel more pleasure than a frog or robot? What dimensions, if any, cause us
to lasso some things together but not others? What things cluster together and why? As a reminder: this
study is about our intuitions, not about what scientists have discovered about the minds and emotions of
these different things.
Adding up the large set of responses produced a map or landscape defined by two dimensions:
experience and agency. Experience included properties such as hunger, fear, pain, pleasure, rage, desire,
consciousness, pride, embarrassment, and joy. Agency included self-control, morality, memory, emotion
recognition, planning, communication and thinking. Experience aligned with feelings, agency with
thinking. With these dimensions, we find God at one edge, high in agency and low in experience. On the
opposite side, huddled together on the landscape, defined by low agency and high experience, we find
fetuses, frogs, and people in a vegetative state. High in both agency and experience were adult men and
women. Robots and dead people were low on experience and in the middle for agency, whereas dogs,
chimpanzees, and human kids were high on experience and middling on agency. This landscape not only
helps us understand how people classify these different entities, but also plays a more active role in
guiding individuals’ judgments to punish, provide pleasure, and avoid harm. If you have to harm
something, pick an entity low in experience, such as dead people and robots who can’t suffer. If you have
to punish something, pick an entity high in agency, such as living adults who recognize the difference
between right and wrong and have the capacity for self-control.
What this work shows is that people have strong intuitions about which things are morally
responsible as agents and which are deserving of our moral concerns as patients. Moral patients are high
in experience, and can thus suffer as victims, innocent or not. This is why many countries have created
laws against harming nonhuman animals, including restrictions on which animals can serve in laboratory
experiments, what can be done to them, and how they should be housed. This is also why we don’t do
experiments on fetuses, newborns, adults in a vegetative state, or humans with neurological disorders that
knock out aspects of their experience and agency. Once something enters the arena of moral patients, we
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 90
tend to leave them within this arena even if they lose particular capacities. Conversely, if scientists
discover that an organism outside the arena of moral patient-hood has capacities of experience and agency
that are on a par with those inside the arena, this evidence often promotes their legal status and protection.
Such was the fate of the octopus, an invertebrate once classified by Aristotle as “stupid”, but now
elevated to the company of much smarter animals that solve novel problems, deploy trickery, and show
some evidence of being aware of their behavior. As such, they are one of the few invertebrates to enjoy
heightened protection and care when they are kept in captivity.
Moral agents are high in agency, meaning that they can distinguish right from wrong, exert selfcontrol
in the context of selfish temptation, can be blamed and punished, and are expected to care for
moral patients. Moral patients are high in experience, including especially the capacity to feel pain. Both
moral agents and patients have moral worth. But as in all entities that have worth or value, some are more
valuable than others. So it is with moral worth. This is where departures from humanness get interesting,
dangerously so. When we strip individuals of their moral worth, denying them qualities that define
humanness, we have entered a world of distortion and denial that facilitates and justifies excessive harms.
Across many studies, individuals consider themselves to be more human ⎯⎯ as defined by the
dimensions of experience and agency ⎯⎯ and to have greater moral worth than other individuals. When
individuals are socially ostracized and excluded from a group, they judge themselves as less human, and
so do the spectators who observe the ostracism. Individuals judge members of their own group to be more
human and morally worthy than those outside the group, no matter how small or broad the group is. What
counts is our overall sense of how we compare to others, and the dimensions used to calibrate this
similarity metric. The Australian social psychologist Nick Haslam carried out several experiments to
determine how our rating of a group’s humanness influenced how much we praise, blame and protect
them, as well as whether we believe that rehabilitation or punishment is most appropriate after they have
done something wrong. Haslam based his study on the idea, supported by the law, science, and our folk
intuitions that we blame, praise and punish only those who do bad things on purpose as opposed to by
accident. Conversely, we favor rehabilitation in those cases where we believe that the person can right a
wrong, learning a lesson from a prior transgression.
Subjects started by rating several different social groups along different dimensions of
humanness. Though Haslam’s dimensions were slightly different from those used by Gray and Wegner,
they generally corresponded to experience and agency, including compassion, warmth and a sense of
community on the one hand, and reason, self-control, civility, and refinement on the other. The target
social groups were associated with negative or positive stereotypes such as the homeless, mentally
disabled, athletes, politicians, doctors, lawyers, gays, and different religious groups. Next subjects
imagined that a member of one of these groups had acted morally or immorally, or had been mistreated in
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 91
some way. Then they decided whether the person should be praised for a particular moral act such as
returning a wallet, considered responsible for an immoral act such as breaking a promise, helped out for
mistreatment such as being pushed out of line by a person in a hurry, and punished or rehabilitated for
wrongful behavior.
Haslam’s results generated a landscape of humanness very much like Gray and Wegner’s. Those
groups rated highly in terms of agency, were more likely to be blamed and punished. Those groups rated
high in experience were more likely to be praised, protected, and placed into rehabilitation. Those groups
perceived as more emotional, compassionate and warm ⎯⎯ components of experience ⎯⎯ were praised
more, whereas those perceived as more civil and rational ⎯⎯ components of agency ⎯⎯ were praised less.
Overall, the more a group tilts toward the experience end of the spectrum, the more we see them as moral
patients, deserving of our care and compassion. The more a group tilts toward the agency end of the
spectrum, the more we see them as moral agents, having responsibilities and duties to act morally.
Haslam’s findings are not only of great conceptual interest, shaping our understanding of the
defining qualities of being human, but also figure into everyday political and legal decision making.
When do we believe a person has the right to vote, drive responsibly, drink alcohol reasonably, and serve
an adult as opposed to a youth sentence for a crime? In the United States, the age cut off for considering
the punishment of a crime under the jurisdiction of a juvenile court proceeding ranges from 16-19 years.
Juvenile sentences are lighter than adult sentences, and rarely include life in prison or the death penalty.
Though there is an arbitrariness to these age cut offs, and no good reason why states should differ, the
decision to treat youths differently not only maps on to our intuitions but to the attributes that
psychologists such as Haslam, Gray and Wegner have discovered. Treating an individual as a youth is
more likely to trigger the dimension of experience in jury members and thus, more likely to trigger a
sense that the individual should be protected and given the opportunity to change through rehabilitation.
This fits with scientific evidence that an immature brain is a more plastic brain, capable of change. It also
fits with the evidence that an immature brain is a brain with less self-control and critical reasoning ⎯⎯
both components of the agency dimension. These less than fully human qualities on the agency
dimension, balanced by more qualities on the experience dimension, provide youths with an automatic
entry ticket into the arena of moral patients.
Moving outside of the arena of moral patienthood and into that of moral agency requires a change
in perception. It requires us to see individuals as acting responsibly, controlling temptation, and
understanding the distinction between right and wrong. It is for these reasons that our legal system, and
the courts that carry out its principles, must consider psychological differences. Classifying individuals
as adults or juveniles drags with it a massive psychology that is biased toward responsibility, blame and
punishment on the one hand and protection, intervention, and rehabilitation on the other. The same biases
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 92
are also engaged when we consider adults with developmental disorders or brain injury, as these deficits
are often associated with selective loss of either components of agency or experience, and sometimes
both. As demonstrated by the work of Kurt Gray, Andres Martinez, and others, labeling someone a
psychopath, autistic, or schizophrenic effectively pigeon holes the individual into a class of individuals
with less than fully human qualities. This is a good thing when it focuses us on protection, intervention
and rehabilitation. It is a bad thing when it allows us to morally disengage because those lacking the full
compliment of qualities associated with agency and experience are less morally worthy. Humanness
drives our moral concerns and our sense of others’ moral worth. When we lower our sense of another’s
value, we are willing to violate our sense of the sacred, engaging in trade-offs that are normally taboo.
Experiments by the American psychologists Philip Tetlock and Jonathan Haidt help us see what
is sacred by asking individuals what they would pay to do something sacrilegious. If something is sacred,
of great moral worth either personally or to your group, could you be paid off by a wealthy investor to
give up the object or engage in an act against it? For each of the acts below, think about your payoff
point in dollars from $0 (for free) to $1million, including the option of saying that you would never do it
for any amount of money. Keep in mind that if you choose to carry out an act and receive payment you
will not suffer any consequences:
• Kick a dog in the head, hard.
• Sign a secret but binding pledge to hire only people of your race into your company
• Burn your country’s flag in private
• Throw a rotten tomato at a political leader that you dislike.
• Get a one pint transfusion of disease-free, compatible blood from a convicted child molester.
If you are like the subjects in these experiments, the mere process of considering a payoff, even
for a short period of time, will have turned your stomach into knots and triggered a deep sense of disgust.
This is because violating the sacred is akin to violating our sense of humanness. It is playing with the
devil, accepting a Faustian offer of money to strip something of its moral worth. As Haidt notes, even
though it is sacrilege to accept payment across different moral concerns, including avoiding harm, acting
fairly, and respecting authority, different experiences can modulate the aversion we feel when we imagine
such transgressions. Women typically demand more money for each of these acts than men, and more
often reject them as taboo. Those who lean toward the conservative end of the political spectrum either
ask for more money or consider the act taboo when compared to liberals, and this was especially the case
for questions focused on acting against an in-group (race), an authority figure (political leader), or ones
purity (blood transfusion). What this shows is that our cultural experiences can distort what we consider
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 93
morally worthy or sacred. It shows how easily we can flip our values in the face of tempting alternatives.
The scientific evidence presented in this section shows that our decisions to treat others according
to different moral principles or norms is powerfully affected by our sense of what counts as another
human being. What counts includes at least two important dimensions, one focused on agency and the
other on experience. These dimensions determine whether we blame or praise someone, punish or
rehabilitate them, and ultimately, include or exclude them from the inner circles of moral agents or moral
patients. Those who fall outside these two inner circles are morally worthless. Those who are morally
worthless can be destroyed or banished. Some things are justifiably excluded and fit with our general
sense of reality ⎯⎯ rocks, dirt, cardboard boxes, plastic balls, and pieces of glass. Other things are
excluded because they don’t fit with our values of what reality should be. This is where distortion and
denial enter the process. This is where we create walls around members of one group in order to keep
others out. This is where we express partiality instead of the impartiality that Lady Justice champions
with her two balanced scales and blind fold-covered eyes. This is where we exclude others from our inner
sanctum in order to justify great harms. How is the inner sanctum set up and put into action over a
lifetime, sometimes for legitimate causes and sometimes for illegitimate and unconscionable causes?
Populating the inner sanctum
Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Laureate and Holocaust survivor, remarked that “anti-Semitism is the most
ancient form of prejudice.” This claim may well be true of human written history, but is most definitely
false if one considers the fact that all social animals and human societies, including the hunter-gatherer
groups that are descendants of people that predated the Jews, hate some individuals and love others.
Prejudice, though often based on deep seated ideological biases and stereotypes that humans invent, is, at
root, a form of partiality. Every social animal, either extinct or alive today, expresses partiality. This is a
highly adaptive and ancient psychology, promoting the care of young, investment in mates, and escape
strategies against enemies. Humans are no different, except for the role that our promiscuous brains play
in fueling partiality with ideology and symbolism. Sometimes when we express our partiality it is for the
noble cause of caring for our children and for defending ideological beliefs surrounding humanitarian
causes, including defense of basic human rights. Sometimes when we express our partiality, it is for the
ignoble cause of destroying others. How does human partiality begin? Do babies express preferences for
certain social categories? How does their experience sculpt new categories? How is the inner sanctum
populated, enabling us to preferentially help those within and harm those outside?
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At birth, newborns preferentially listen to their native language over a non-native language. Soon
thereafter, infants prefer to listen to their native dialect over a non-native dialect, and look longer at their
own race than another race. This shows that they can discriminate between different languages, dialects,
and racial groups. But do they form social preferences based on these distinctions? Would a young baby
or child prefer to take a toy from an unfamiliar person who speaks the same or different language, from
the same or different race? To answer these questions, the American psychologist Katharine Kinzler put 5
months old babies to a test.
Babies born into mono-racial and mono-lingual families sat on their mother’s lap in front of two
monitors, each presenting short video clips of different people. After watching the videos, Kinzler
created a bit of magic. The people in the monitor appeared to emerge from the 2D image and offer the
baby a toy. The trick: a real person, hidden beneath the monitor, synchronized her reach with the reach in
the monitor. Who would the baby choose given that both people offered the same toy? Babies preferred
people speaking the native over non-native language, and native-accent over the non-native accent. At
this young age, however, they showed no preference for native over non-native race. Thus, early in life
the connection between discrimination and social preference is well established for language, but not race.
When do things change for race?
Kinzler carried out another series of experiments on race with one group of 2.5 year old children
and a second group of 5-year olds. Though the methods were somewhat different, they both focused on
the child’s preferences, including who they would share toys with and who they would prefer as friends.
The 2.5 year olds showed no preferences, whereas the 5 year olds preferred their own race. Race is
therefore a slowly developing category, at least in terms of its impact on social preferences, and especially
when contrasted with both language and accent.
Kinzler took these studies one step further to explore whether there is anything like a hierarchy
among these social categories and the features that define them. What’s more important to a young child
building an inner sanctum of trusted others ⎯⎯race, language, or dialect? Would they rather interact with
someone of the same race who speaks a foreign language or someone of a different race who speaks the
native language? Using similar procedures, Kinzler showed that by 4-5 years of age, language trumps
race. Children would rather interact with someone from a different race speaking the same language than
someone of the same race speaking a foreign language.
Why would language trump race? Kinzler's answer relies on an idea developed by the American
evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban. Imagine a hunter-gatherer in South Africa, living during the
earliest stages of our evolutionary history. As individuals searched for food to eat, areas to sleep, water to
drink, and places to avoid, they came across other individuals. These individuals were always members
of the same race. Racial differences did not emerge until relatively late in human evolution, well after our
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 95
ancestors took their first steps out of Africa. If we are thinking about an evolved psychology for bonding
with members of our own group and fighting those outside, our ancestors would have been blind to race
as it was not yet an emergent property of our species. Language was, however, a property of our species,
and one that varied across populations. A hunter-gatherer walking the plains of South Africa would
indeed have run into people speaking either a completely different language, or the same language with a
different dialect. New languages are not easily acquired, and nor are new dialects. It takes real talent to
speak a new language or dialect without a trace of ones origins. Thus, like the stotting gazelles,
magnanimous spenders, and healthy evildoers discussed in chapter 2, the native languages and dialects we
speak are honest signals of social group membership. Honesty is supported by the costs we pay to
acquire them. Cheating is hard because there is a start-up cost associated with perfecting the natural
rhythm of a second language or novel dialect.
The babies in Kinzler’s experiments tell us something important: race and language are both
important social categories and discriminable from an early age. But language trumps race as a feature
because it is a better predictor of membership within the inner sanctum, at least early in life. Ultimately,
both language and race allow us to close off some from the inner sanctum and allow others in. Ultimately,
our allegiance to our native language and race can fuel our hatred toward those who look different and
speak in different tongues.
Closed doors
As adults, we tend to rely on rules of thumb to guide our social interactions, including who we trust and
who we distrust. We tend to trust those we know more than those we don’t know. Within the circle of
those we know, we believe those who are more like us than those who are unlike us, using fixed body
features ⎯⎯ race, height, hair color ⎯⎯ flexible psychological features ⎯⎯ food preferences, sports’
interests, religious beliefs ⎯⎯ and features that are flexibly constrained ⎯⎯ language and intelligence.
Together, these different dimensions cause us to close the door on some and open it to others.
Language is particularly interesting. If you can’t understand someone because they don’t speak
your language or because their accent is too heavy, then the issue is not trust, but comprehension. But
what if you can understand the person perfectly well, but they speak with a foreign accent, either one
from a different country (e.g., a French speaker speaking English) or one from the same country but a
different region (e.g., a Southern accent in the northeast of the United States)?
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 96
Subjects in an experiment first listened to people reading trivia, such as “A giraffe can go without
water longer than a camel can,” and then judged whether the sentence was true or false. If the sentence
was read in a foreign accent, subjects were more likely to say that it was false than if it was read in the
native accent. Subjects voiced this opinion even though the experimenter told them that the reader was
not expressing an opinion, but merely reading the passage as instructed. In a second experiment, British
subjects listening to a non-guilty plea by a person on trial were more likely to judge the person as guilty if
he committed a blue collar crime and spoke with a non-standard British accent (e.g., Australian). In
contrast, they were more likely to judge a white collar criminal as guilty if he spoke with a standard
British accent. Even within the class of British accents, biases emerged: subjects from the Worcester
region were more likely to judge supposed criminals as guilty if they spoke with a Birmingham accent
than with a Worcester accent. Together, these studies paint a bleak picture: accents from an out-group are
perceived as less truthful than others, and in the context of a criminal case, more guilty as well.
Accents are learned early in life, and once in place, are both clear markers of your origins and
difficult to undue. As such, they are honest indicators of at least one dimension of group membership.
What about dimensions that can readily be acquired at any point in life, and just as easily dropped? How
do these influence not only our perception of those who share these dimensions in common, but how we
treat them? In the last chapter I discussed a study by Tania Singer in which both men and women showed
more pain empathy ⎯⎯ as revealed by activation in the insula region of the brain ⎯⎯ when they watched a
cooperator experiencing pain. Further, men showed a reduction of activity in this area when a cheater
experienced pain, and increased activity in a reward area ⎯⎯ the nucleus accumbens. This pattern fits well
with the research on human and nonhuman animals showing that winning, and watching winners win,
triggers a choreographed ballet of physiological responses associated with reward. Singer took this work
further, asking whether an individual’s support for a sport’s team might similarly modulate both the
feeling of pain empathy as well as reward. Subjects, all soccer fanatics, sat in a scanner and watched as a
player from their favorite team or a rival experienced pain. Next, Singer provided subjects with three
options for interacting with these players: help them by personally taking on some of the pain they would
receive, letting them take on all the pain but watch a video as distraction, or let them take on all the pain
and watch as it happens. Option one is costly altruism, two is blissful ignorance, and three is
schadenfreude.
In parallel with the earlier work on fairness, here too Singer observed greater pain empathy when
the favorite team player experienced pain than when the rival experienced pain. She also observed that
subjects were more likely to help favorite team players by taking on some of their pain, but more likely to
watch rivals receive pain. The higher the activation level in the insula, the more they took on their
favorite team player’s pain session ⎯⎯ the more they helped. When they watched rivals experience pain,
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 97
there was significant activation in the nucleus accumbens. They felt an immediate honey hit, joy over the
rival’s pain. The higher the activation in this reward area, the more likely they were to choose the option
of watching the rival experience pain ⎯⎯ like watching a public execution and cheering for just deserts.
These results show that individual differences in our compassion toward others in pain predicts our
willingness to help them. It reveals another dimension, like language, that biases our sense of justice, both
in our judgments and in our behavior. Conversely, individual differences in our joy over others’ misery
predicts our willingness to allow others to suffer, suppress our instincts to help and, I suggest, facilitate
our capacity to harm. Similar response patterns arise in the context of race ⎯⎯ a feature of group
membership that is fixed at birth.
As noted earlier, babies stare longer at faces of people from the same race than from people of a
different race, and by the pre-school years, are more likely to show social preferences for peers and adults
of the same race. In brain imaging studies, specific areas activate when we process faces as opposed to
other objects, and one tenth of a second later, other associated regions activate when we process race.
This rapid activation occurs whether we are consciously engaged in classifying faces by race or not; for
example, the same areas activate even when we are forced to focus on gender or familiarity. This shows
that from the brain’s perspective, we don’t have an option of processing a person’s race. The brain
automatically and unconsciously hands us this information, like it or not.
The fact that we process race automatically gains importance based on a powerful set of
behavioral studies showing that virtually every person, independently of their explicit avowals of nonracist
attitudes, holds implicit or unconscious racist biases. Using a research tool developed by the social
psychologists Tony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji called the Implicit Attitudes Test or IAT, subjects see
different faces or read different descriptions of people, and then make evaluative judgments about these
people. Often, the presentations are rapid so that there is little or no time to reflect upon the evaluation.
For example, in a study focused on race, subjects first classified photographs of people’s faces as either
Caucasian or Black. Next they classified words into those associated with good positive meaning ⎯⎯ joy
and friend ⎯⎯ and those with bad negative meaning ⎯⎯ hate and bomb. In the third and critical step,
subjects saw faces and words together and, using a rule provided by the experimenter, struck one of two
keys on a keyboard as fast as possible: for example, strike the #1 key if you see a Black face and a good
word, but the #2 key if you see a Caucasian face and a good word. The intuition here is that if certain
faces and words are more strongly associated, because this is what people have learned over time, then
they will press the relevant key faster than for weaker associations. Results from several studies confirm
this intuition. For example, Caucasian subjects who explicitly deny racist attitudes are nonetheless slower
to respond when Black, as opposed to Caucasian faces are associated with good words, and faster to
respond when Black, as opposed to Caucasian faces are associated with bad words. These patterns hold
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 98
even when subjects respond to names commonly associated with Caucasian and Black people. A quick
skim through the many blogs commenting on this work reveals a common refrain that makes the key
point: many that have taken this test, whether focusing on race, sexual orientation, or political affiliation,
opine that the test must be invalid because they explicitly disavow any groupish biases. But that’s the
point! What we disavow explicitly has less impact than we would like on what we hold implicitly.
If our implicit system champions one view of racism and our explicit system another, then we are
continuously faced with an epic conflict. To resolve this conflict, and enable the explicit system to emerge
triumphant, requires self-control, keeping the implicit system quiet. Studies of the brain provide
interesting insights into this process. Recall that when we experience conflict, regardless of its content,
there is activation in the anterior cingulate. When we exert self-control, regardless of content, there is
activation in particular regions within the prefrontal cortex. When we feel threatened by a dangerous
animal or person, there is activation in the amygdala. These three brain regions tell an interesting story
about how we process race. When Caucasian subjects view faces of Black as opposed to Caucasian
people staring at them, there is greater activation in the amygdala. This racial difference disappears if
subjects view photos of faces looking away or with eyes closed. It is the potentially threatening aspect of
a face staring at you that engages the racial difference. If you briefly flash faces at Caucasian subjects so
that they are unaware of them, there is stronger activation in the amygdala for Black than Caucasian
faces. But if you present the faces for long enough, allowing them to enter conscious awareness, the
amygdala’s pattern of activity goes away, replaced instead by strong activation in the anterior cingulate
and prefrontal cortex. Staring longer at someone from a different race triggers a sense of conflict and
engages the system of self-control, pushing down our implicit racism to enable more explicit neutrality
and equality.
What this work shows is that understanding our attitudes and actions toward those of the same
and different race requires consideration of implicit and explicit components. Think of this process like a
hand pushing down on an automatic watering fountain. The machinery that produces the pressure to push
water out of the holes in the fountain operates without concern for what happens outside in the world. The
hand that pushes down is under human control, consciously guided, perhaps with the aim of simply
spreading the water or feeling its’ coolness on a hot day. Though the hand may try to control the
movement of the water, it may only do so to some extent, guided by the power of the automatic engine
below. Thus, we have an automatic bottom up mechanism and a controlled top down mechanism. So it is
with race. The bottom up mechanism operates automatically, pushing forward our implicit prejudice. The
top down mechanism attempts to exert control, when and where it can, to avoid looking racist, sexist, or
what have you. Somewhere, the two meet, creating a personality profile that is more explicitly racist,
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 99
sexist, or X-ist in some cases than others, either because the individual lacks top down control or because
they decide to relinquish it.
In parallel with Singer’s work on the relationship between pain empathy and our classification of
others as fair-minded cooperators or narcissistically-minded cheaters, so too does race influence our
expression of compassion toward those in pain. Both Caucasian, Black and Asian subjects showed
stronger activation in the pain-related areas of the brain when viewing individuals from the same race
experience pain than when viewing individuals of a different race. When Black subjects played a
computerized game involving social ostracism, they showed stronger activation in areas of the brain
involved in social pain when excluded by Caucasian players than when excluded by Black players. When
others suffer and we have the opportunity to help them, we are more likely to help those of the same race,
and feel good about it as evidenced by activation of brain areas involved in reward.
Our biases, both implicit and explicit, influence our compassion toward others and our motivation