to help. This statement is true whether we are looking at evidence from young children or adults, and
using measures that assess sensory perception, behavioral judgment, or activity patterns in the brain.
Beginning with an evolutionarily ancient brain system that was designed to distinguish friendly ingroup
members and antagonistic outgroup members, we populate the inner sanctum with people who we
perceive as most like us, using both fixed and variable features. With time, the walls surrounding this
sanctum close, attributing the full richness of human nature to those within, and bleaching it from those
outside.
Bleaching humanity
Draw an imaginary circle around yourself with a diameter of about fifty feet. Now imagine packing this
circle with people, forming an expanding set of concentric circles that radiates out from those closest to
you to those you don’t know at all. Based on social network analyses by sociologists such as Nicholas
Christakis, the majority of people within the inner circles will be like you in a number of ways, including
their race, religion, political affiliation, food preferences, and aesthetics. This includes family members
and close friends, but also those we work with, vote for, and play with. As you travel from the inner core
to the outside, you will find less in common. Some in the outer core will not only have less in common,
but as noted earlier in this chapter based on work by Gray, Wegner and Haslam, will be perceived as less
human, stripped of dimensions of experience and agency that define humanity. Some will appear like
objects, others like animals. When we transform others into objects, we have stripped away core aspects
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 100
of human nature, including emotional sensitivity, warmth, and flexibility. When we transform others into
animals, we have stripped them of uniquely human qualities such as rationality, self-control, moral
sensibility, and civility. Of those who are like animals, some will seem like kin to the domesticated form
and thus controllable as property; others will seem like wild animals and thus dangerous, dirty and
deserving of elimination. However we engage this process, we have bleached individuals of their
humanity. This process, one that occurs in both everyday life and in cases of conflict, has allowed us to
treat the mentally and physically disabled like animals, to consider women as sexual property, justify
slavery and slave wages, deny certain races the opportunity to vote and receive education, and mandate
ethnic cleansing.
Before I describe a shocking set of experimental findings on dehumanization, consider first a
snapshot into some of our historical attitudes, shared across many countries and cultures. Before we
knew much about human evolution and the causes of variation, scientists made sweeping statements
about the relationship between brain structure and differences in intelligence and behavior among men,
women and the variety of races. It was commonly believed that, compared with white men, women and
all other races had smaller brains, approximating our cousins the apes. Listen to Gustave LeBon, a
distinguished social psychologist, writing in 1879:
In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large
number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas
than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious
that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth
discussion. All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of
women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they
represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are
closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They
excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and
incapacity to reason. Without doubt there exist some distinguished
women, very superior to the average man, but they are as exceptional as
the birth of any monstrosity, as, for example, of a gorilla with two heads;
consequently, we may neglect them entirely.
By elevating white men to the gold standard of perfection, it was easy to see everyone else as a
degenerate form of God’s creation or, in biological terms, of arrested evolution, with non-Caucasian races
showing greater affinity to our furry cousins the apes. Looked at today, backed by our understanding of
genetics and the evolutionary process, these accounts are absurd and offensive. Sadly, despite efforts to
clean up our explicit racist and sexist attitudes, overwhelming evidence reveals that the brain holds dear a
suite of unconscious prejudices that serve to dehumanize those unlike us.
Now the shocking experiments. The American social psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt dared to
ask whether US citizens unconsciously associate Black people with imagery ofd apes, using the
disturbing history of this association as her jumping off point. In parallel with the studies of race
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presented in the last section, Eberhardt was also interested in the possibility that if people carry this
association around in their head, they do so unconsciously, despite explicit avowals that they are not at all
racist. And if they carry this association around unconsciously, how does it impact upon their judgments
and actions?
In one experiment with both Caucasian and non-Caucasian subjects, Eberhardt used a technique
called subliminal priming. Subliminal priming involves rapidly presenting pictures, sounds or other
experiences under the radar of awareness and then presenting material that falls within our radar. If the
two experiences are similar, the unconscious version affects subjects’ perception of the conscious one.
For example, if you first prime people by flashing the picture of a woman’s face, subjects then respond
faster to faces of women than to faces of men. In other words, despite the fact that subjects are unaware of
the prime, it affects their judgments. Eberhardt first primed subjects with photographed faces of
Caucasian or Black people or an unrecognizable non-face. They then watched a short movie that started
off with an unrecognizable object that looked like it was covered by dense snow. As the movie
progressed, the snow lifted, making it easier to recognize the object as a line drawing of either a duck,
dolphin, alligator, squirrel or ape. Subjects stopped the movie as soon as they recognized the animal.
Compared with Caucasian faces and non-faces, priming with Black faces caused subjects to stop
the movie much sooner for apes, but not for any other animal. Compared with non-faces, priming with
Caucasian faces caused subjects to stop the movie much later for apes, but not for any other animal. This
suggests that Black faces made it easier to identify apes, whereas Caucasian faces made it harder to
identify apes, with no comparable effects for any other animals. Caucasian and non-Caucasian subjects
showed the same pattern of response, and so too did individuals with and without strong, explicit racial
attitudes. Although the similarity among Caucasian and non-Caucasian subjects is of interest, and
suggests that the association is held even among those who were perhaps less strongly associated with
this form of dehumanization, there were relatively few Black subjects in this non-Caucasian group. This
first set of experiments suggests, therefore, that among a racially heterogeneous group of educated
Stanford undergraduates, individuals carry an unconscious association between Black people and apes,
and thus, an unconsciously dehumanized representation of another human being. Given the animal form
of this dehumanization, the implication from Haslam’s work is that Caucasians associate Blacks with less
rationality, civility, and self-control, in essence, less uniquely human qualities.
These are remarkable and disturbing findings. They can’t be explained by some superficial
similarity between human faces and animals because Eberhardt found the same results when she
presented either line drawings or words of animals. Had Eberhardt used actual photographs of animals,
subjects could have used similarity in skin color or nose shape ⎯⎯ for example, seeing a black human face
would prime seeing a black ape face because both have the color black in common. Line drawings and
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written words cut the legs out of this account. Eberhardt’s results suggest that apes are associated with the
socio-cultural, racial category “Black.”
These findings reveal a deep seated, dehumanized representation that is readily triggered even in
highly educated people. But perhaps they are less disturbing then we might imagine. not so bad if the
take home message is that we are closet racists with antiquated theories of evolution or God’s design.
Outside of these artificial studies, we are well educated citizens who keep our isms tucked away, locked
up in our unconscious. Unfortunately, the unsettling feelings that many will have to these studies are
exacerbated by an additional set of results collected by Eberhardt, linking unconscious impressions to
harmful actions. Caucasian male subjects watched a video of a policeman using force to subdue a suspect
who was either Black or Caucasian. When primed with an ape drawing, but not that of a tiger, subjects
were more likely to say that the policeman was justified in subduing the Black suspect than the Caucasian
suspect. We are more than closet racists. We are out of the closet, armed for prejudice and
dehumanization.
To unconsciously think that Blacks are more like apes than other racial groups is to strip them of
characteristics that are uniquely human. As Haslam notes, when we dehumanize others in this particular
way, we no longer see them as human, but as incompetent wild animals or immature children lacking in
intelligence, etiquette, rationality, and moral wherewithal. This mode of dehumanization is ancient,
reflected in the writings and paintings of European explorers who encountered indigenous cultures in
Asia, Australia, and Africa. Dehumanizing others into objects is equally ancient, unflattering and
dangerous. In one study, American adults were told to focus on either the physical appearance or
personality of the actress Angelina Jolie and the ex-governor of Alaska and presidential hopeful Sarah
Palin ⎯⎯ both famous personalities within the United States. When subjects focused on appearance as
opposed to personality, they judged both Jolie and Palin as relatively lacking in traits of experience or
human nature. Jolie and Palin were seen as objects. In other studies, carried out by Haslam, subjects
judged objectified men and women as less capable of suffering and less deserving of moral compassion
and protection, reinforcing the age old attitude we once held toward slaves, and that many hold today
toward prostitutes. When people become property, they fall outside of the circle of moral patients. Studies
of the brain provide further support for these dehumanizing transformations, and highlight, once again,
both the beneficial and malignant consequences of our mind’s promiscuity.
Brains without borders
Dehumanization enables doctors to treat their patients ⎯⎯ human or nonhuman animal ⎯⎯ as mechanical
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devices that require repair. This allows for cool-headed, rational, and skillful surgeries, while fending off
the humanizing emotions of compassion and empathy. This is adaptive. This is a transformation that
enables doctors working in war-torn areas or regions afflicted with a disease outbreak, to treat hundreds
of suffering patients as if they were treating inert cars on an assembly line. Good doctors allow their
compassion and empathy to return as their patients regain awareness. Bad doctors maintain their cool,
detached manner, insensitive to the physical and psychological pain of their waking patients. Bad doctors
continue to perceive their patients like cars on the assembly line. Really bad doctors see their patients like
cars that were created for personal R&D.
Recall from earlier sections that when we see someone else in pain, particular areas of the brain
activate as we imagine their suffering. Many of the same areas of the brain also activate when we
personally experience pain. This is the circuitry for pain empathy. The French cognitive neuroscientist
Jean Decety showed that when physicians look at video clips of people experiencing pain from a needle
prick, this circuit is suppressed relative to non-physicians. For physicians, it’s as if they were watching a
needle prick a pillow. Though we don’t know how much experience was necessary or sufficient to cause
the physician’s lack of pain empathy, or the extent to which physicians are physicians because they were
born with less empathy, Decety’s findings point to individual differences in our capacity to feel what
others feel and the potential modulating role of experience.
Several studies now show that based on individual experience, the human brain readily flip-flops
between empathy and callousness. In two similarly designed experiments, one recording from pain related
areas in the brain, and the other from a motor area associated with the hand, Caucasian and Black subjects
watched a video of a needle penetrating a human hand. Consistently, subjects showed weaker activation
in the pain and motor areas when watching the needle penetrate the hand from another race. This lowering
of pain empathy and motor response for the out-group was greatest for subjects with the highest implicit
or unconscious racial biases, as measured with the IAT tool noted earlier.
These studies of the brain, like the behavioral studies I discussed earlier, add to the idea that we
have a racial bias for pain empathy. We feel others’ pain, but only for those who share the same race. But
since, by definition, we look more like those from within our racial group than those outside it, perhaps
the bias is less about race and more about those that don’t look like us. To explore this possibility, Black
and Caucasian subjects saw a needle penetrate a violet-colored hand. Violet hands are not only different,
but far more different than either black or white hands in terms of our experience of skin coloration.
Nonetheless, the activation pattern in the brain matched the subject’s own race. When we feel less
compassion for someone of another race, it is because of racial biases, not because of superficial
differences in appearance. Color is simply a cue that reminds us of our prejudice.
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The fact that we feel less empathy for people in pain if they fall outside our inner sanctum
suggests that we have dehumanized them, stripping away dimensions of experience that humanize those
within the sanctum. These are the dimensions associated with emotion, and when taken away, cause us to
perceive the other as an object. Since objects can’t feel pain or joy, we can’t share in their experience
because they lack experience altogether. If that is the case, then when we perceive any human group that
has been dehumanized in this particular way, there should be little to no activity in those areas of the brain
associated with thinking, feeling, wanting, and believing. To explore this possibility, the social
psychologist Susan Fiske placed subjects in a brain scanner and presented photographs of either extreme
out-group members, such as the homeless and drug addicts, or photographs of other groups such as the
elderly, middle-class Americans, and the rich. When viewing the extreme out-group, not only did Fiske
see little activity in an area critically related to self-awareness and the process of thinking about others
thoughts and emotions ⎯⎯ the medial prefrontal cortex ⎯⎯ but she also observed an intense increase of
activity in the insula, a brain area that is recruited when we experience disgust.
Fiske’s results highlight the dangers of dehumanization. Once we turn off areas of the brain that
are involved in thinking about others’ thoughts and emotions, and turn on areas involved in disgust, we
have set ourselves up for moral disengagement. As the distinguished American psychologist Albert
Bandura has documented through decades of research, moral disengagement allows people to justify harm
by transforming lethal motives into morally justified and even benevolent ones. Moral disengagement
allows us to excuse ourselves from moral responsibility, either disregarding the harm imposed or
convincing ourselves that it was justified, even obligatory. In several international studies of school-aged
children, results consistently show that those who are most morally disengaged are most likely to engage
in various forms of aggression, including bullying and repeated criminal offenses. These same children
are also least likely to engage in helpful behavior, revealing that moral disengagement dispenses with the
typical process of self-censure and sanctioning that we carry around when we are morally engaged. In a
study of American prison personnel involved in death penalty sentences, executioners were more morally
disengaged than support staff or prison guards. Executioners were more likely to dehumanize the
convicted prisoner and provide moral and economic justifications. Executioners also felt less guilt
because they had developed a narrative to justify their actions, one that ascribed complete fault and
responsibility to the victim. Support staff flipped in the opposite direction, fully involved with the
weighty moral issues associated with ending someone’s life. In a study of people’s political attitudes,
those with strong right wing authoritarian views, commonly associated with fascism and submission to
authority, were more likely to support war by means of morally disengaging. In particular, they were most
likely to support war by justifying its necessity and trivializing the harm that will necessarily arise ⎯⎯ for
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example, invading another country is not aggressive, but designed as a pre-emptive strike to protect group
interests.
Moral disengagement enables behaviors that are either immoral, illegal, or counter to deeply
rooted intuitive prohibitions against harming others. It is a process that has the beneficial consequence of
empowering soldiers to go to war under just causes, as well as the toxic consequence of empowering
rogue leaders to carry out genocide under unjust causes. It is a process that allows us to hibernate from
our moral responsibilities. It is a form of self-deception, a partner to dehumanization in the denial of
reality. But self-deception, like deception of others, is not always harmful. In fact, it is often highly
adaptive.
Angelic denial
In a nationally televised address in 2005, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pronounced that
the Jews had "created a myth in the name of the Holocaust and consider it above God, religion and the
prophets." Judge Daniel Schreber believed that his brain was softening and that he was turning into a
woman in order to form a sexual union with God. During a doctor’s visit, a man reported that his pet
poodle had been replaced by an impostor, masquerading as if he was the real deal. Judge Patrick
Couwenberg stated under oath that he received the Purple Heart for military operations in Vietnam, and
soon thereafter carried out covert missions in Southeast Asia and Africa as a CIA agent. The pilots of Air
Florida flight 90 ignored signs from their dashboard indicating engine trouble and then proceeded to crash
into a bridge, killing 74 of the 79 people on board. In 2008, while Hilary Clinton was running for
President of the United States, she regaled admiring supporters with stories of her international
experience, including her visit to Bosnia in 1996 where her plane was forced to land “under sniper fire”,
followed by a rapid evacuation for cover. When I was a teenager, I often walked onto the tennis court
thinking that I was John McEnroe, serving and volleying like the world’s number one player.
Each case above tells the story of a person who acted as if the world was one way even though it
wasn’t. The Holocaust and its trail of atrocities were real, confirmed by thousands of scarred survivors
and the relatives who have heard their accounts. Judge Couwenberg was never in Vietnam, never earned a
Purple Heart, and never had a connection with the CIA. There are no pet poodle impostors. Our brains
don’t soften, though they do deteriorate with age. When dashboard indicators suggest engine trouble,
better to be safe than sorry when you are responsible for the lives of many people. Hilary Clinton landed
in the exceptionally safe airport of Tuzla where she was warmly greeted by US and Bosnian officials. I
am no McEnroe.
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In each of these cases, there was a mismatch with reality. The person harbored a false belief, but
believed it was true. In some cases, the mismatch was due to psychosis, some kind of delusion or
malfunctioning of the brain. These people didn’t know that their beliefs were false. In other cases, the
mismatch resulted from an intentional lie or distortion, a process that is adaptive, designed to promote
self-confidence and manipulate others. When I conjured up images of McEnroe, I momentarily deceived
myself. I believed it helped my game. I never thought I was McEnroe. I carried my self-deception
honestly. When Hilary Clinton misreported her trip to Bosnia, perhaps she misremembered or perhaps she
distorted her memory to convince voters that she had what was necessary to run the country ⎯⎯ toughness
and international experience. Unfortunately for Clinton, her comment about Bosnia was accompanied by
other distortions, which led the American essayist William Safire to write “Americans of all political
persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady... is a congenital liar.”
Some cases of self-deception are harmless and even beneficial, as in my illusion of tennis
grandeur. Others are only mildly harmful, as in Clinton’s distortion of her political experiences. And yet
others are deeply harmful, as when leaders such as Ahmadinejad deny the suffering of millions. The
problem is that anyone can harness the power of self-deception for ill gotten gains.
Why does our mind play tricks on us, allowing us to believe things that are false? Why didn’t
evolution endow us with a reality checking device that is vigilant 24/7? The answer here parallels the
refrain carried throughout this book: like its evil sister dehumanization, self-deception is Janus-faced,
showing both an adaptive and maladaptive side. Self-deception allows us to protect ourselves from the
reality of a current predicament or loss. Self-deception allows us to provide a better personal marketing
brand to defeat our competitors in attracting mates and garnering other resources. Self-deception may
even be critical to the functioning of a healthy and safe society: in a study of male criminal offenders,
those with the lowest levels of self-deception with respect to their own self-worth showed the highest
levels of recidivism. There is, however, a fine balancing act, revealing the slippery slope from adaptive to
maladaptive: as studies by Roy Baumeister reveal, individuals with the highest self-esteem and the most
overblown sense of themselves are also the ones most likely to lash out with extreme violence when
someone threatens the reality of their stature.
The evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers was the first to identify the adaptive significance of
self-deception and its connection to deception. As he insightfully notes in his book The Folly of Fools,
what appears completely irrational about self-deception evolved as a consequence of selection to deceive
competitors: “To fool others we might be tempted to reorganize information internally in all sorts of
improbable ways and to do so largely unconsciously.” The most effective self-deceiver acts without any
sense of his true motives. He is on autopilot, driven by a purely self-interested mind. No checks and
balances. Here, I build on this idea. I will show you how studies of pathology and healthy brain function
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 107
illuminate the mental chicaneries that lead us down the road to self-deception. As with the dangers of
dehumanization and its role in denying reality, so too is self-deception a dangerous state of mind,
allowing individuals to inflict great harm while feeling aligned with the angels.
What did William Safire have in mind when he called Hilary Clinton a congenital liar?
Congenital refers to a trait that is present in utero, at birth or soon thereafter. Congenital disorders,
diseases, or anomalies typically refer to defects caused by a combination of genetic and environmental
problems. A cleft lip is an example of a congenital anomaly, one that appears at birth as a gap in the
upper lip. Because we don’t have detailed records of Hilary Clinton’s life as a child, it is hard to say
whether her lying was congenital in the same way that a hair lip is congenital. We can rule out the in
utero and at birth periods because Hilary, like all other children, was not born speaking or lying. These
capacities mature. That she developed a tendency to exaggerate and distort is consistent with other
reports. She falsely claimed that she was centrally involved in the creation of a Children’s Health
Insurance Program, an initiative that was actually created by Senators Ted Kennedy and Orin Hatch. She
also claimed that she played a significant role in the Good Friday Agreement for Northern Ireland, a
comment that Nobel laureate Lord William David Trimble described as “a wee bit silly.” When Safire
described Clinton as a congenital liar, what he was referring to was the habitual pattern of fabrication.
When patterns of the mind become habits, they are hard to break. Each distortion, rehearsed over and
over, becomes part of the fabric of truth. It is a life story that starts as fiction and ends up as non-fiction in
the mind of the story-teller. We can begin to understand this transformation by looking at the clinician’s
notebook.
For more than 100 years, psychiatrists have described a syndrome known as pathological lying.
If lying is pathological, it must deviate from some norm. The psychiatrist Charles Dike sums up the
essence of this disorder:
Pathological liars can believe their lies to the extent that, at least to
others, the belief may appear to be delusional; they generally have sound
judgment in other matters; it is questionable whether pathological lying
is always a conscious act and whether pathological liars always have
control over their lies; an external reason for lying (such as financial
gain) often appears absent and the internal or psychological purpose for
lying is often unclear; the lies in pathological lying are often unplanned
and rather impulsive; the pathological liar may become a prisoner of his
or her lies; the desired personality of the pathological liar may
overwhelm the actual one; pathological lying may sometimes be
associated with criminal behavior; the pathological liar may
acknowledge, at least in part, the falseness of the tales when
energetically challenged; and, in pathological lying, telling lies may
often seem to be an end in itself.
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What seems most critical to the pathology is the lack of control which leads to repetitive lying over a long
period of time. Compared with run of the mill liars, pathological liars often seem unaware that they are
lying and do so many times a day as part of their daily habit. In the same way that birds have to fly and
fish have to swim, pathological liars have to lie. If pathological liars are unaware of their lies and
incapable of controlling themselves, then they are not responsible for the harm they impose. They have no
choice. Unbeknownst to them, their brain has been hijacked by a creative fiction writer. They are
following a script, but have no sense of its author.
Dike’s summary is based on a loose and eclectic set of clinical observations. Several clinicians
thus debate whether habitual lying counts as pathology and thus, whether it is worthy of an entry into the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. For example, how can the clinician establish
pathology given the evidence that healthy people lie about twice a day, physicians lie about 40-80% of the
time to help their patients gain better health care, and lying within an experimental context increases as
subjects generate more lies? My own sense is that despite the difficulty of defining the pathology with
precision, clinicians have identified individuals that lie with every breath and often identify psychopaths
by their calculated conning. These observations sharpen our approach to understanding the seeds of deceit
and self-deception in the non-pathological condition. For example, does excessive and sustained lying
stem from a specific problem associated with recognizing the truth or does it grow from a more general
problem with self-control? Or, does the habitual liar suffer from an emotional deficit such that when he or
she lies, there are no feelings of guilt and shame? Without these emotional regulators, it is impossible to
learn from the harm caused. When healthy people distort the truth, they often feel bad. When healthy
people think about distorting the truth, they often think about the potential harm and then silence the
option to lie in favor of the truth. Perhaps unhealthy people never hear these emotional alarms. The mind
sciences have begun addressing these issues.
The American neuroscientist Adrian Raine reported that individuals with a history of repeated
lying and con-artistry have structurally different brains from non-liars, including individuals with a
history of anti-social problems. Habitual liars have more white matter in the frontal lobes, but less grey
matter. White matter consists of axons and myelin. The axon is the part of a nerve cell that carries
information. It is like the electric cable that runs from the power station. Myelin covers the axon, at least
in healthy individuals. It is like the fat around your bones, protecting and insulating neurons. Fat helps
keep us warm. Myelin helps neurons transmit information. The grey matter consists of nerve cell bodies,
which lack myelin. The function of grey matter is to connect up the neurons to transmit information
between areas of the brain.
Raine suggests that the increase in white matter gives habitual liars the upper hand when it comes
to lying, helping them suppress the truth, control their emotions, and mind read what others believe and
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 109
desire. The decrease in gray matter allows habitual liars to lie without feeling guilty. The messaging
center that sends healthy subjects moral reminders about the virtues of truth, is shut down or barely
audible within the mind of a pathological liar. The brain of a pathological liar allows for the ultimate
poker face. The brain of a healthy individual allows us to perfect the poker face by repeating a distorted
narrative, converting a lie into a self-justified truth. This is dangerous denial.
When we lie, either to manipulate someone else or ourselves, we distort the truth. We can either
do this on the fly or use a narrative held in long-term memory. When Hilary Clinton told her supporters
that she had to dodge bullets in Bosnia, she either lied in the moment to convey a stronger image or she
developed this distortion over a long period of time. In the first instance, she knew that her comment
about Bosnia was false. She was deceptive, but not self-deceived. In the second case, she was selfdeceived
and most likely unaware. Her narrative was so clear that she could picture running for cover
without the usual welcoming party. Several studies now reveal that both forms of lying engage brain
areas associated with self-control and conflict⎯⎯ the right backside of the prefrontal cortex and the
anterior cingulate. This makes sense. To tell a lie, either to oneself or another, requires controlling what
we know about reality to convey an alternative reality. When we hold both versions of this narrative in
mind, there is conflict. As we rehearse one version more than the other, the conflict dissipates. The more
we rehearse, the more we push this narrative into long term memory. The more we push this narrative
into long term memory, the more it becomes part of what we believe is true. The more we believe it is
true, the more we hold onto a narrative that can be used to justify our actions.
The imaging results fit well with our understanding of which brain regions are involved in selfcontrol,
conflict, memory, and social knowledge. To understand which regions are either necessary or
sufficient for representing truths and lies, we turn to a technique called transcranial direct current
stimulation. This method allows researchers to safely increase or decrease activity in a brain area
through electrical stimulation. Think of this technique as a volume knob on an old fashioned radio. Turn it
clockwise and you amplify the signal. Turn it counter-clockwise and you quiet the signal. When the
German neuroscientist Ahmed Karim and his colleagues applied this technique to the right backside of
the prefrontal cortex, and decreased activity, healthy subjects were better at telling lies, lied without guilt,
and were less stressed out as measured by the sweatiness of their skin. This pattern mirrors the natural
state of pathological liars. Absent the circuitry in the brain that exerts self-control over our distortions,
Karim turned healthy subjects into conscience-free, poker-faced, liars.
If self-deception and deception are not only part of normal brain function, but adaptive processes,
then what makes this system turn toxic? What tips the brain over to the dark side, allowing self-deceptive
illusions to empower the individuals and groups to cause great harm?
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 110
I am God!
Across the globe, in Eastern and Western cultures, clinicians have reported a consistent pattern of
psychotic delusion, typically associated with schizophrenia: many believe that they are God, God’s
messenger, or the Devil, equipped with extraordinary, invincible powers. This is the same disorder that
led the Australian gentleman we encountered at the start of this chapter to believe that he had two heads
and heard the voices of Jesus and Abraham. Estimates reveal a greater number of cases among Catholic
than Islamic or Protestant societies, and the fewest among Hindu societies, although experts are uncertain
as to why such particular biases exist. The interesting point is that there are individual differences in the
expression of religious delusions that are at least partially mediated by the particular beliefs and customs
of the religion. Religious delusions are also held with greater conviction than other delusions, more
resistant to change, and often result in self-mutilation or harming others; when harm occurs, it follows
the narrative from a religious text, plucking out eyes or cutting off genitals as the means to cleansing
sins.
What makes religious delusions like these, in which the individual has created a narrative of
supreme confidence and power, different from non-delusional, non-psychotic forms of distortion? In a
Gallup poll, 10% of the Americans surveyed claimed they had spoken with the devil. In several
psychological experiments, healthy non-psychotic subjects consistently report that they are smarter than
most, more attractive, and more likely to win than lose an athletic competition. Though some of these
people are correct ⎯⎯ they are in fact smarter, more attractive, and better competitors ⎯⎯ most are wrong
and yet believe they are right. What this research reveals is that we all suffer, some more than others,
from positive illusions ⎯⎯ biases that distort our sense of confidence, control, and invincibility These
illusions differ from delusions in that they are less fixed, more flexible, and more amenable to change.
Delusions are highly maladaptive, a signature of brain dysfunction, and the source of great suffering.
Positive illusions, in contrast, are often highly adaptive, generating the confidence necessary to take on
great challenges and challengers, convincing an audience or a group of opponents that we are stronger,
smarter, and sexier. Positive illusions have been linked to direct mental and physical health benefits,
including evidence that distorted optimism can slow disease progression. Positive illusions are, as noted
by the biologists Richard Wrangham, Robert Trivers, and Dominic Johnson, a form of self-deception with
considerable evolutionary benefits. But like the runaway capacity of desire, so too can our illusions of
grandeur runaway. When this occurs, illusion and delusion are virtually indistinguishable. What was
once a narrative centered on the grandiose belief of being god-like has been transformed into the belief of
being God, leading individuals and groups to engage in extreme extortion or violence, not only blind to
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 111
obvious risks but incredulous that there would be any risks. This is denial. This is another way in which
we close off our senses to reality in order to create our own imagined reality. How does this process get
started?
It is not until the age of about 18-24 months that we acquire the ability to recognize ourselves in a
mirror. It is not until a couple of years later that we have a sense that our own beliefs can sometimes
differ from others that we interact with. It is not until this time that we develop the capacity to deceive,
along with a powerful suite of social emotions that enable us to feel embarrassed, envious, and elated.
These feelings link up our sense of self with our sense of others. These are comparative feelings and
beliefs, and they feed back to who we are, either building up our self-confidence or crushing it. When my
daughter Sofia was ten years old, she announced that she will one day go to Brown University ⎯⎯
attracted by their course offerings and the fact that Emma Watson, aka Hermione Granger of Harry Potter
fame, was a student ⎯⎯ be rich and have five children ⎯⎯ she wanted more siblings and has always had a
taste for the luxurious ⎯⎯ obtain a veterinarian degree ⎯⎯ my wife is a veterinarian and we have five pets
⎯⎯ open a restaurant ⎯⎯ I love to cook ⎯⎯ and be an Olympian in gymnastics ⎯⎯ sports run in our family.
Sofia was not delusional, but brimming with uncalibrated confidence. Her confidence was uncalibrated
because she had no sense of what it takes to get into Brown, become rich, take care of five kids, obtain a
vet degree, open a restaurant, and win gold. My wife and I would be horrid parents if we burst her
bubble. We would be irresponsible parents if we didn’t, over time, describe the exciting challenges
associated with each of these desirable goals.
Developing a sense of self depends on at least two capacities: looking inwards at what we know
and are capable of doing, and looking outwards at what others know and are capable of doing. When we
look inwards, if we honestly open our eyes to the richness of our autobiography, we will recognize cases
where we have succeeded and those in which we have failed. This history reveals our knowledge and
ignorance, our strengths and weaknesses, and our capacity to exert control or meld to external forces.
When we look outwards, again with an honest, panoramic perspective, we learn about those who know
more or less than we do, about those we can outcompete and those we lose to in defeat, and about
situations that undermine our capacity for self-control. Distortion enters these personal narratives when
we either lack information or filter it in some way, consciously or unconsciously.
The British criminology scholar Mandeep Dhami examined positive illusions in criminals
incarcerated in prisons within the United States and the United Kingdom. Because recidivism levels are
high among convicted criminals, with 40-60% of offenders re-convicted after 1-3 years from release, it is
important to understand risk factors. One possibility is that criminals believe that their prior offense was
just a one-off event or bad luck, and that, of course, they will never engage in crime again, having learned
their lesson and feeling fully confident in their capacity to lead a crime-free life. Based on a sample of
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 112
over 500 prisoners from medium security prisons, 60-80% believed that they would find a place to live as
well as employment once released, whereas less than 30% felt that they would commit another crime.
Prisoners also felt that they were much less likely to commit another crime than other prisoners. Thus,
whether prisoners were evaluating their own chances of success or their success relative to others, they
were living with a distorted narrative. The shorter the criminal record, the more distorted the narrative.
Repeated experience with crime appears to anchor the narrative in a more realistic assessment of the
future.
Certain experiences can also enhance positive illusions by giving individuals an unrealistic sense
of self-control, along with a distorted expectation that future outcomes are highly deterministic. For
example, people who are wealthy, highly educated, part of a dominant group, or citizens within a society
that values independence, are more likely to believe that they have control over the future and are more
likely to express optimism and high self-esteem. These attitudes often lead to a boosted sense of control
and an illusory sense of control over future outcomes. The American psychologist Nathanael Fast ran a
series of experiments to further explore the relationship between power and illusory control, specifically
asking whether subjects endowed with power expect control over outcomes that are strictly due to chance
or that are unrelated to the domain of power. Across each study, whether subjects recalled a personal
situation where they were in power or had to imagine being in power, they were more likely than those in
a subordinate position to express confidence about the outcome of rolling a six-sided die, predicting the
future of a company, and influencing the results of a national election. Power and winning distort, a tale
that has been told and retold countless times in the annals of industry and warfare. As the American
business administration scholars Francesca Gino and Gary Pisano note, the business world is full of cases
where leaders and leading companies crash because they fail to examine the causes of success. They
assume, for example, that their success is entirely due to their brilliance, control over the market, and the
weakness of the competition, as opposed to a shot of good luck. So too goes the story of unexamined war
victories, as supremely confident generals discount relevant information about their opponents, leading
battalions on a death march. Our willingness to accept victories without question stands in direct contrast
with our motivation to scrutinize failures, drilling down for explanations or causes. When we lose or fail
in some way, the negative emotions accompanying this experience focus our attention on working out an
explanation. When we win, we bask in the glory, fueled by the brain’s chemicals and the body’s
hormones. This physiological orchestration sets up the positive illusion of overconfidence, a winning
card in many competitive arenas, and a disaster in others.
Recall from chapter 1 that our brains, and the brains of other animals, are configured to reward
victory with a cascade of hormonal and neurobiological changes. Winning delivers a shot of testosterone,
and so too does observing others win. Winning also delivers a shot of dopamine, further generating a
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 113
honey hit to the brain when we shine. There is evidence that schizophrenia is associated with a
dysfunctional dopamine system, which might help explain the overconfidence in their beliefs, especially
beliefs in powerful religious icons. Winning boosts confidence, which increases the chances of winning
again. This is a highly adaptive cycle that can lead to overconfidence.
Dominic Johnson took advantage of the research on human and animal competition to explore the
link between overconfidence, testosterone, and war within the context of a simulated game. Each subject
played the role of a leader in a country at war with another over diamond resources. The goal of the game
was to accrue the highest level of resources or defeat the neighboring country. Though war games on a
computer can not capture the full reality of war, the fact is that military specialists throughout the world
use simulations to prepare combatants for some of the strategic and emotional problems they will
confront.
Most subjects judged that they would outcompete their opponents, and this was exacerbated in
males relative to females. Those who believed that they would whip their opponents actually had the
worst records, suggesting that they were not only uncalibrated but that their distortion of reality led to
costly outcomes. Those with the highest expectation of victory had the highest testosterone levels and
were most likely to launch unprovoked attacks on their opponents.
Whether in real life or in the simulated world of computer games, brimming overconfidence can
lead to a distorted sense of risk and the odds of victory in war ⎯⎯ or any competitive arena. Though this is
a costly strategy, there are clear evolutionary benefits under conditions explained by Trivers and Johnson.
Self-deception is favored when opponents have imperfect information about their strengths and
weaknesses, and where the payoffs are high relative to the costs. Self-deception leads individuals to go
for it, convincing themselves and others that the risks are low, the gains are great, and the standard social
norms are no longer applicable. This is a dangerous form of denial, recruiting moral disengagement to
justify horrific means and ends. This is a piece of the psychology that can facilitate the process of
runaway desire. This is a piece of the psychology that enables individuals to cause great harms.
My goal in this book has been to find the universal core of evil, the elements or ingredients that
are shared across all cases of evil. My suggestion is that the mixture of desire and denial are both
necessary and sufficient ingredients in the recipe for evil. All other ingredients are flourishes, creative
additions that do not take away from the universal core. Within each of us is a recipe for causing
excessive harm and for expressing exceptional compassion. We have choices. But as evidence
accumulates from the sciences, it has become increasingly clear that some of us have fewer choices than
others. Some of us are equipped to resist the temptations of a culture of evil, while others fall prey. This is
the story of our species. This is our story.
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 114
Endnotes: Chapter 3
Recommended books:
Baron-Cohen, S. (2011). The Science of Evil. New York: Basic Books.
Hamburg, D. (2008). Preventing Genocide. Denver: Paradigm Publishers.
Johnson, D. P. (2004). Overconfidence and war. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
Kelman, H.C., & Hamilton, V.L. (1989). Crimes of Obedience: toward a social psychology of authority and
responsibility. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P.R. (Eds.). (2011). The Social Psychology of Morality. Washington: American
Psychological Association.
Staub, E. (2010). Overcoming Evil. New York: Oxford University Press.
Trivers, R. (2011). The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life. New
York: Viking Press.
Notes:
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Quotes
• Racist, white male superiority: published in Gould, S.J. (1980). "Women's Brains" in The Panda's
Thumb, New York, W.W. Norton. Pages 152-159.
• Holocaust denier, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/12/14/AR2005121402403.html
• Hilary Clinton as congenital liar: W. Saffire, 1996, Blizzard of lies, New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/08/opinion/essay-blizzard-of-lies.html
• The adaptive logic of self-deception: Trivers, R. The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-
Deception in Human Life, New York, Viking/Penguin Press.
• Clinical liars: Dike et al. (2005). Pathological lying revisited. Journal of the American Academy of
Psychiatry and Law, 33 pp. 342-349; quote on p. 342
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial 118
Chapter 4:
Wicked in waiting
The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they
be born, speaking lies.
⎯⎯ Bible, Psalm 53:8
Growing up is a lottery. No one has a say over their genes or their parents, including the environment that
is created on their behalf. For individuals raised in poverty, abused by parents or abandoned by them,
there may come a time when it is possible to purge the past, rise above it, and lay down new tracks.
Success in this endeavor depends upon biological potential and the environment’s toxicity. Though every
healthy human being acquires the same basic biological ingredients, individual differences in how our
biology expresses itself can either provide immunity against toxic environments or deep vulnerabilities.
The unlucky ones inherit genes that predispose to sensation-seeking and risk-taking, callous and
unemotional attitudes toward others, weak self-control, and narcissistic leanings. With this lottery ticket,
it takes little to trigger the mindset of an evildoer. And yet some resist. An impressive accumulation of
scientific evidence helps explain the source of these individual differences, including its role in sculpting
different personality profiles that either deviate greatly from societal norms or follow them to perfection.
What’s normal?
Much of our fascination with evil stems from the distinct impression that evildoers are anomalies. Their
actions are inhuman, unimaginable, rarely witnessed, and detrimental to our species’ survival. This
impression carries with it an assumption about what is expected or typical of our species, as well as what
is possible. It assumes that evildoers have thoughts, feelings, and desires that fall outside of the repertoire
of an average human being. Their actions are unimaginable because most human minds lack the capacity
Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 119
to imagine butchering human bodies. Like so many simple claims that go unchallenged, we should be
puzzled by this one. We should ask: what’s normal?
The evolutionary history of each species’ brain does not provide a complete account of what the
brain can do. Consider again a topic from chapter 1: domesticated dogs and their ancestors, the wolves.
Though dogs live with humans, and are often raised by them, they never acquire a human language. In
this sense, the domesticated dog is just like the wolf. But what dogs can do, with greater facility than any
wild wolf, is understand a variety of human gestures such as pointing and the movement of our eyes. This
capacity emerged following a period of human domestication. Wolves were not part of this selective
regime. But, and this is the most interesting twist in the story, wolf puppies raised by human caretakers
develop into adults that can read pointing and looking extremely well. This tells us that even wolves
evolved the potential to read human gestures, but only human environments favor this skill. This tells us
that what animals express is not necessarily indicative of their potential. To uncover their potential, we
must alter the environment or wait for such changes to happen naturally.
When we ask What’s normal?, we are asking two questions: what is the evolved repertoire and
what is the evolved capacity? The evolved repertoire tells us something about the relationship between a
species’ biology and the environments that have shaped their behavior. The evolved capacity tells us
about a reservoir of behaviors that may only emerge in novel environments.
What’s normal human behavior? The same distinctions apply to us as to dogs and wolves, with
the extra complication that our species adds because of historical twists and turns orchestrated by legal,
political, ethical, religious, and medical points of view. History presents us with hundreds of cases where
an accepted normal mutated into abnormal, or where abnormal transformed into normal. During the
Italian Baroque ⎯⎯ a period of decadence that started in the late 16th century and ended in the early 18th
century ⎯⎯ some 500,000 boys were castrated in order to freeze their youthful voices for the enjoyment
of others. These castrati formed an essential part of music culture, of what people expected and wanted.
For many of these young boys, not only did castration end their reproductive careers, but often, their
lives.
As the 18th century drew to a close, so too did castration in the name of art. What was normal
then is perceived as abnormal and heinous today. The same story can be told for other sexual practices,
including female genital mutilation, circumcision, and homosexuality. In the United States,
homosexuality was considered a disease before the 1970s, with its own entry in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Thanks to an underground movement of gay psychiatrists and
the work of Evelyn Hooker who discovered that the manual’s classification entry was based entirely on
clinical interviews of gay prisoners, homosexuality has been freed from its jail sentence as a mental
disease ⎯⎯ as abnormal.
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When clinicians diagnose individuals with a mental disorder, they are making a statement about
deviance, about what falls within and outside the range of normal mental states. Unfortunately, there are
no clear categories, no bright lines separating normal from abnormal or uncommon. As the distinguished
American psychologist William James noted, however, studying “the abnormal is the best way to
understand the normal.” Let’s follow this logic.
Consider the developmental disorder of autism. This disorder, typified by difficulties
understanding what others believe and feel, ranges from individuals who appear locked out of the world,
rocking back and forth to their own internal rhythm, to high functioning individuals such as Professor
Temple Grandin, who not only teaches college-level courses, but has done wonders as a spokesperson for
autism and for the animal welfare movement. This range already tells us that autism is represented by a
spectrum, once identified by purely behavioral measures, but joined today by genetic and neurobiological
markers. The genetic evidence is particularly helpful for explaining the observed variation. For example,
the MAOA gene, located on the X chromosome, is involved in the regulation of social behavior and has
different forms that map to differences in brain activity and stress physiology. The different forms
correspond to the number of copies of the genetic material. This copy number is, in turn, partially
responsible for the spectrum of autism observed, especially the degree of social dysfunction, including
stress and aggression. Once we admit to a spectrum, and begin to pinpoint the factors that push
individuals to stand on one end or the other, we must admit to admitting virtually everyone onto this
spectrum. All of us, at some point in our life, have lacked sensitivity to the feelings and beliefs of others.
All of us have been self-absorbed and locked out from the rest of the world. All of us have failed to
express empathy and compassion to others. All of us have been a bit abnormal in this sense. All of us
fall, on occasion, within the spectrum of autism as well as other disorders of the mind such as
psychopathy.
Like autism, psychopathy is not one neat and tidy disorder, but a spectrum. Diagnostically,
psychopaths are impulsive, narcissistic, and lacking in social emotions such as empathy, remorse, and
guilt. These behaviorally defined characteristics are complimented by genetic and neurobiological
markers, some pointing to risks in the pre-school years, and linked to the same MAOA gene noted above.
The spectrum that defines psychopaths ranges from hyper-smart, calculating, and powerful politicians to
low IQ, downtrodden, serial murderers. Everyone of us occasionally shows our psychopathic face: selfabsorbed,
impatient, manipulative, and uncaring. What is abnormal, then, is living with these
characteristics, all the time. Clinically diagnosed psychopaths, like clinically diagnosed individuals with
autism, have the characteristic traits as stable components of their personality. An honest clinician will
tell you, however, that stability is difficult to define, and so too are the essential traits. An honest brain
scientist will also tell you that, despite the observation that psychopaths have hyperactive dopamine brain
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circuits that may drive sensation seeking, along with smaller frontal lobe circuits that may minimize their
sensitivity to punishment and the capacity for self-control, these differences are statistical. What
“statistical” means is that if you were to stack up all of the brains with hyperactive dopamine circuits and
smaller frontal lobes into one pile, most, but not all would be from psychopaths. You would also find
psychopaths in the pile of brains showing normal dopamine activity and average-sized frontal lobes.
These brain differences are interesting, but they are not yet like fingerprints, absolutely and uniquely
distinctive and diagnostic of a disorder. Such honesty reveals the challenges we face in answering the
simple question What’s normal?
Lawyers, judges and juries face the same problem as clinicians, often relying upon documents
such as the DSM to determine when someone has acted outside the range of normal behavior. But for
legal cases, there are two relevant layers of the normalcy problem. The first concerns whether the
supposed criminal was sane or insane. An insanity defense requires evidence of a disease or defect of the
mind. It requires evidence that the individual lacked the capacity to appreciate the criminal nature of the
act as well as the capacity to conform. This is the part that relies on the DSM, as well as clinicians who
can testify based on their expertise. The second concerns a more general understanding of what a
prototypical or normal human would or could do in a given situation. The idea seems straightforward
enough, but as I mentioned above, is only deceptively straightforward.
Crimes of passion provide a useful illustration of the challenges we face, especially with respect
to understanding how harm is ignited in the face of moral norms against it. Highlighting the truism that
love makes you crazy, the crime of passion defense is invoked for cases where, in the heat of the moment,
an individual finds and kills his or her spouse in bed with a lover. The defining feature of a crime of
passion is that it was not planned and most people faced with the same situation would act similarly,
unable to control their emotions.
The crime of passion defense seems straightforward. Like autism and psychopathy, however, it
too relies upon a diagnosis of what a prototypical or average person would do in the same situation. This
diagnosis requires an understanding of two difficult mental states: planning and self-control. Planning
involves imagining the future, time traveling to a new world, dreaming up what we might do and how we
might feel. We plan in the short and long term, filling up our mental sticky notes with to-do lists. Selfcontrol
enters into planning because what we imagine for ourselves ⎯⎯ what we desire ⎯⎯ is often
inappropriate or unethical because it harms others or ourselves. As noted in chapters 2 and 3, the capacity
to keep desire in check relies on moral engagement. Moral engagement requires self-control. Moral
disengagement requires denial in order to loosen the grip of self-control and enable desire to have its
way.
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When Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husband John Bobbitt’s penis, she fulfilled her desire to harm
another. She carried out this gruesome act despite the moral and legal sanctions against it. But she did
not plan this act in advance, and nor did it occur in the heat of the moment, triggered by finding her
husband in bed with a lover. It followed in the wake of his repeated philandering, attempted rape and
psychological abuse. As an act, it fell between the cracks of a long-term plan and a reflexive response ⎯⎯
it was hatched on the night of the fatal attack, triggered by seeing a carving knife in the kitchen. Lorena
either lost self-control for that fatal moment or she was in complete control, aware of what she was about
to do and justified by her own moral convictions, believing that harming John was just deserts. John was
most definitely not innocent. The jury delivered a “not guilty” decision, appealing to a crime of passion
defense. This decision effectively excused Lorena’s harmful act as normal and justified given the
mitigating circumstances.
When we consider the nature of evil, we must pause to consider our own biases and prejudices
about what’s normal. We must ask about the human potential, about our evolved capacities and our
ability to behave in novel ways in novel environments. When we say that a person, group or nation is evil,
we are saying something important about human nature, about our capability as a species. We are saying
something important about the relationship between nature and nurture.
Evil eggs and corrosive coops
How much do career criminals cost? Estimates from the United States suggest that if you can prevent a
high risk child from entering this career, you save $1.5-2 million in costs of education, mental health, and
criminal fees. Educational facilities such as the Penikese Island School in Massachusetts, where I have
had the privilege of working, spend about $100,000 per student per year to keep high-risk teens off the
streets and out of jail. Based on statistics collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, approximately
100,000 individuals under the age of 18 years were arrested in 2007 for violent crimes ⎯⎯ murder, forcible
rape, and aggravated assault. If we had nurtured and educated these teenagers before they committed
such crimes, we would have saved close to $100,000,000,000. Violent crime prevention pays. How does a
career of violent crime start? Are there early warning signs? How early? How much starts with the egg
and how much with the coop in which it was raised?
Early scientific interests in this chicken and egg problem can be traced to the efforts of the Italian
physician and psychologist Cesare Lombroso. In 1876, he published his magnum opus The Criminal
Man. This was a serious, scholarly book aimed at understanding “whether there is a force in nature that
causes crime.” Based on measurements of both anatomical and psychological characteristics, Lombroso
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concluded that criminals were born not made. Their defining features were throwbacks to our
evolutionary ancestors, dehumanized by biological defects. Modern man was civilized and elegant.
Criminal man was barbaric, a savage with slanted forehead, jutting jaw, and excessively long arms.
Criminal man was more ape-like than human-like. Because the cause of these differences was biological,
Lombroso argued that a life of crime was inevitable. Change through rehabilitation was hopeless. To
protect society, these natural born criminals had to be taken out of society, either locked up or executed.
These ideas formed the basis of several eugenics’ movements, with the aim of weeding out the
undesirable, less than human elements of society, be they less intelligent, from a non-Caucasian racial
group, or from a culture with different religious beliefs.
Lombroso’s theory of criminality was soon rejected as scholars from a variety of different
disciplines unearthed its racial stereotypes and shoddy methods, including a failure to include the many
people with slanted foreheads, jutting jaws, and long arms who never committed crimes, and those with
statuesque anatomy who did. This initiated a general skepticism and even fear of biological explanations,
causing a swing in the opposite direction. Criminals were not born but made by corrupt societies.
Humans are not born with biologically encoded scripts for behaving with malice or virtue. Rather, we are
born with blank slates, waiting for society to inscribe its distinctive signature. So began a pendulous
swing from nature to nurture. Though the oscillation continues to this day, there is increasing
appreciation, perhaps especially in the arena of criminology, that both nature and nurture make important
contributions. This change comes, in part, from a far greater understanding of genetics, combined with
long term studies of how humans and other animals develop within environments that are either nurturing
or damaging.
Consider the MAOA gene that I mentioned in the last section. This gene produces an enzyme that
goes by the same shorthand of MAOA, or MonoAmine Oxidase A. MAOA is evolutionarily ancient,
shared with other animals, and has two different forms ⎯⎯ low and high ⎯⎯ that influence the level of
serotonin as well as the brain areas involved in social evaluation and emotional regulation. Early
evidence for the critical role of this gene in social behavior emerged from a study that knocked it out of
operation. If you knock out the MAOA gene in mice, they quickly become hyper-hyper-aggressive.
These genetically transformed mice have no capacity to regulate their social behavior. Consequently, all
interactions are treated as confrontational and handled by aggressive attacks. These results are consistent
with a large body of work in animals showing that heightened aggression and low levels of serotonin go
hand in hand. These results are also consistent with work on humans. In, 1993, the Dutch biologist Hans
Brunner analyzed the genetics of a large, extended family. Some individuals within this family were born
with a defect that silenced the operation of the MAOA gene; they were like the mice who had this gene
silenced. Relative to others in the family, these individuals had a pronounced history of violence,
Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 124
including murder, rape, and arson. Oddly, although this work provided one of the cleanest links between
genes and violence in humans, it slid under the radar of scientific attention, only to be resuscitated and
enriched about ten years later.
The behavioral geneticists Avshalom Caspi and Terry Moffitt studied a large population of young
boys over several years. Though boys and girls have the MAOA gene, its effect on behavior is easier to
study in boys because they have only one copy whereas girls have two, one for each of their two X
chromosomes. For each boy, Caspi and Moffitt collected information on the presence and frequency of
their antisocial behavior and whether they were raised by parents who were caring, mildly abusive, or
severely abusive. For each boy, they also noted whether they had the low or high expressing form of
MAOA.
Caspi and Moffitt’s results provided a textbook example of nature’s interaction with nurture. If
the parents were caring, the genes made no difference in their child’s personality or behavior. If the
parents were mildly abusive, the boys with the low activity form were nine times more likely to fight,
steal, bully, and defiantly break rules. For those boys with severely abusive parents and the low activity
form of MAOA, 85% developed into violent, delinquent criminals. What these findings tell us is that in
humans, it makes little difference which form of MAOA you have if you grow up with nurturing parents.
But if you grow up with abusive parents, your genes make all the difference in the world. Those with the
low expressing form are more likely than not to develop into delinquents, whereas those with the high
expressing form are more likely than not to develop immunity. By a double dose of bad luck, one shot
from the genes and one from the environment, some have a high probability of entering into the pool of
potential evildoers.
The German neuroscientist Andreas Meyer-Lindenburg took the genetic work one step further,
linking the particular form of MAOA up to differences in the brain. Those with relatively poor social
regulation and the low expressing form of MAOA had significantly smaller brains, specifically in regions
associated with the control of emotion and social behavior ⎯⎯ the amygdala, anterior cingulate, and
prefrontal cortex. These individuals also had less connectivity between these regions, harking back to the
importance of promiscuity both between humans and other animals, but also within our own species. Less
connectivity translates to less control by the frontal areas of the brain over emotion-relevant areas such as
the amygdala. When individuals with the low expressing form viewed angry or fearful facial expressions,
the emotionally-relevant brain areas went into hyper-drive, whereas those areas involved in regulating
emotions hibernated. Thus, in contrast with individuals who have the high expressing form of MAOA,
those with the low expressing form are overwhelmed by emotionally charged experiences, lacking the
mental brakes to stay cool. By luck of the draw, the low expressing form of MAOA builds a child that is
Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 125
more likely to get angry and violent in the face of frustration and other emotional challenges, whereas the
high expressing form builds a child that is walled off, immune to the same challenges.
MAOA is crucial not only in long term human development, but also in everyday, ephemeral
social interactions. In a laboratory study, an experimenter offered subjects the opportunity to earn up to
$10 on a vocabulary quiz. Once they finished the quiz, they learned that an anonymous person in another
room either took some of their earnings or left it alone. With this information in hand, the quiz-taker
could either vindictively punish the person by giving them some hot sauce or they could cash out of the
game and recover the money lost. In other words, they could either vindictively burn their opponent or
recover their losses at no cost. In reality, there was no partner in the other room. When subjects with the
low expressing form of MAOA lost most of their earnings, they were far more likely to deliver the hot
sauce than those with the high expressing form; they were also most likely to deliver the highest amount
of the sauce. Like long-term parental abuse, even short-term provocation invoked in a laboratory
environment can cause those with the low expressing form of MAOA to act out and attack.
As with all genes that have different forms, the number of individuals with the low expressing
form of MAOA varies by population, including different ethnic and culturally identified groups.
Caucasian and Hispanic males show some of the lowest frequencies at 34 and 29 % respectively, whereas
Maori, Pacific Islander, and Chinese males show the highest at 56, 61, and 77% respectively. In a study of
over 1000 men, individuals with the low expressing form of MAOA were more likely to be in violent
gangs, and once in gangs, were more likely to use guns and knives than individuals with the high
expressing form. Variation in the frequency of these two forms is interesting as it provides the signature
handiwork of natural selection. When the frequency of one form goes up, the most likely explanation is
that this form benefits the individual carriers. When the frequency goes down, there is a hidden cost. In
light of this teeter-tottering of frequencies, the Maori are of interest. As celebrated by many New
Zealanders today, the Maori were a highly adventurous and warring people. Individuals who took risks
and fiercely defended their resources were heroes. Heroes may have been carriers of the low expressing
form of MAOA. Heroes often leave more offspring, who were also carriers of the low expressing form.
In the Maori environment, selection may well have favored this form of the gene. The important point is
that different environments will favor different frequencies of the two forms of MAOA. This helps
explain both the cause of individual differences and the challenges we face in confronting cultures of
violence that are fueled by nature and nurture.
Many other labs have followed up on Caspi and Moffitt’s long term, developmental study. Most
find the same relationship between the MAOA gene and antisocial behavior. Others add to this account
by showing how different genes and early appearing physiological differences contribute to a highly
aggressive and antisocial starting state. In one study, the German psychologist Alexander Strobel put
Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 126
subjects in a brain scanner and invited them to play a bargaining game where they could punish someone
who acted unfairly to them ⎯⎯ personal revenge ⎯⎯ or punish someone who acted unfairly to someone
else ⎯⎯ impersonal punishment. For each subject, Strobel also collected information on a gene called
COMT Met. This gene has three different forms, linked to differences in activity level in the frontal lobe
of the brain, which are linked to differences in the levels of dopamine, which are linked to differences in
the experience of reward. Given the different forms of COMT Met, at least part of what we experience as
the feeling of reward or gratification was determined by our parents, and our parent’s parents, and their
parent’s parents, all the way back to our ape-like cousins who evolved this gene.
When Strobel looked at the brain scans of his subjects, he found that the same circuitry was
engaged for personal revenge and impersonal punishment, with significant activity in the striatum ⎯⎯ a
reward area ⎯⎯ as well as in the insula ⎯⎯ an area involved in the feeling of disgust. When we detect an
injustice, we feel disgusted, a feeling that may motivate our desire for retribution. The striatum finishes
off the process, rewarding us for our punitive response, and wiping out the negative feeling of disgust.
Importantly, individuals with the high expressing form of COMT Met, and thus, higher levels of
dopamine, showed stronger activation in the striatum, and were more likely to punish those who act
unfairly. Strobel suggests that those with the high expressing form punished more because they
anticipated a higher level of reward. If this explanation is right, it has profound consequences for how we
think about individual participation in the policing of norms and the honey hits associated with
aggression. Some people will have a natural bias to shy away from punishment, not because they fail to
see the importance of ratting out cheaters, but because they don’t anticipate feeling good about it. Others
will be prone to punish even the most minor infractions because they feel empowered and good about it.
Those who are empowered to punish because it feels good have forged a stronger association between
aggression and reward. Unbeknownst to these individuals, they started life with a bias, one that colored
their willingness to harm others. This bias is joined by many others that I discuss in the next few sections.
The take home message is that if you are born male, endowed with certain genetic variants such
as the low activity form of MAOA, and experience physical and psychological abuse by your parents, the
odds of delinquency are frighteningly high. That’s the bad news. The good news is that if you are born
male, have the high activity variant of the MAOA gene, and experience physical and psychological abuse
by your parents, you are vaccinated by nature against the harms of your unfortunate nurture. The
problem, of course, is that you have no say over which endowment you get, nor over the kinds of parents
you receive.
One of the reasons I have worked through this case study of genetic constraints and
environmental sculpting is to provide an antidote to the often polarized views that have dominated much
of the historical and psychological literature on evil. Many of the earliest, and most famous psychological
Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 127
experiments were related in one way or another to Hannah Arendt’s thoughts about Adolf Eichmann and
the fact that good people are capable of horrific things: the banality of evil. Hiding behind every average
Joe is a person equipped with an engine of malice. Banality is the veil of evil. Thus, the American
psychologist Stanley Milgram showed that normal people were capable of shocking innocent others when
an authority figure told them to do so; of course, there were no shocks, but the subjects believed they
were real. Similarly, the American psychologists Solomon Asch and Philip Zimbardo showed that
normal people followed group attitudes and instructions, bleating like mindless sheep, no reflection, no
critical thinking, no concern about the consequences of their actions. In Zimbardo’s study ⎯⎯ the famous
Stanford prison experiments ⎯⎯ run of the mill undergraduates playing the role of prison guards turned
into little dictators, mentally and physically abusing their run of the mill undergraduates playing the role
of prisoners. Together, these studies seemed to support a blank slate view of the mind, a tablet waiting for
inscription by the local culture, with no constraints on the written matter.
A closer look at many of these studies reveals far more variation in how individuals responded,
suggesting that differences in their genetic make-up and personal experience either facilitated their
willingness to follow authority and ideology or prevented it. Many subjects in both the Milgram and
Zimbardo studies refused to follow the orders or rules of the game. Those who refused tended to identify
more with the victim and less with the authority figure or ideology. This suggests important differences in
the capacity to experience empathy and compassion for another. Studies by the cognitive neuroscientist
Esse Viding show that by the pre-school years, some children have a diminished capacity for empathy,
expressing a deeply callous and unemotional character. These children exhibit severe conduct problems,
especially violence. These children lack remorse and an awareness of others’ distress. They are cold,
heartless kids. If they have a twin, they are more likely to share this callous-unemotional personality than
two unrelated children, revealing the trademark of a powerful genetic engine. More boys than girls fall on
the high end of this callous-unemotional scale ⎯⎯ where high translates to colder and more callous. Those
who score highest on the scale engage in more direct physical bullying than those who score lower. High
scorers lack the skills to modulate their behavior following direct or anticipated punishment. These
individuals also show reduced activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that is critically involved in
regulating emotion, especially the assignment of a positive or negative value on our actions and
experiences. These individual differences persist into adulthood. These are the kind of individual
differences that can explain why some followed Milgram and Zimbardo’s instructions to perfection, while
others resisted, exerting self-control.
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The sweetness of control
When humans and other animals travel the road to excess, whether for food consumption, violence,
power, or sex, it is either because they gave in to an in-the-moment impulsive itch or because a history of
losing self-control turned into an addictive habit. What causes us to lose our sense of moderation, allow
our mental brakes to slip, and give in to temptation? What causes our preferences to inconsistently and
irrationally shift over time, allowing seductive offerings to win? If you are the eminent social
psychologist Roy Baumeister who has contributed fundamental insights into the nature of evil, the answer
is simple: sugar. Love it. Want it. Need it.
When we work hard, focusing on a difficult problem or trying to figure out the best decision,
exhaustion strikes. Part of our exhaustion comes from the fact that we have depleted a critical resource:
sugar, or more precisely, glucose. When the availability of this resource diminishes, we also lose selfcontrol.
This is why the loss of self-control has a cycle that follows the time of day, with the greatest
losses occurring late rather than early: diet breakers are more likely to pig out in the evening than early in
the morning; shoppers are more likely to buy impulsively as the day moves on; impulsive crimes and
relapses of addiction are evening affairs; judges are more likely to dole out punishment at the end of a day
in court than when they start a new day. Dozens of experiments show that if you have to exert selfcontrol
in one context it taxes your capacity to exert self-control in another. For example, if you ask
subjects to avoid laughing while watching a comedy routine, avoid thinking about a white bear, or avoid
eating chocolates now to have radishes later, these same subjects will squeeze a hand grip for a shorter
period of time than subjects who never contended with the various self-control tasks. When you deplete
your personal resources, you lose your grip, opening yourself up to binge eating, unnecessary violence,
sexual promiscuity, and drug relapses.
How do we know that glucose is responsible? If you give people a milkshake with real sugar
before they have to take a hard test involving self-control, they do better than if you give them a
milkshake with an artificial sweetener. If you first make people take a test that taxes their attention, and
causes their glucose to drop, they do worse on a subsequent test, including the hand grip squeezing test. In
an extraordinary series of experiments and observations, the American psychologist Nathan DeWall
found that subjects who drank lemonade with glucose were less likely to respond aggressively to an insult
than subjects who drank lemonade with artificial sweetener; individuals with diabetes ⎯⎯ who have
difficulty regulating blood glucose, and thus have less of it ⎯⎯ reported higher levels of aggression on a
questionnaire than non-diabetics; within the United States, those states with higher numbers of diabetics
showed higher crime rates; and countries with a higher frequency of a genetic disorder that lowers
glucose levels showed higher killing rates both in and out of war.
Hauser Chapter 4. Wicked in waiting 129
To accept DeWall's striking results, it is necessary to accept one connection between self-control
and aggression and a second between glucose and self-control:
SELF-CONTROL DOWN � AGGRESSION UP
GLUCOSE DOWN � SELF-CONTROL DOWN
That aggression often follows from a loss of control is backed up by considerable evidence, including
clinical studies that link lack of inhibition in psychopaths to extreme violence. Also of interest is the fact
that impulsive aggression is more likely to arise when individuals are drunk than sober. Alcohol, as we all
know, lowers our inhibitions, but also lowers glucose in both the brain and body. Though scientists such
as Baumeister and DeWall have not yet worked out in detail how glucose is used or replenished in the
context of self-control, there are far too many studies using different methods and subjects to ignore this
relationship. Minimally, these studies indicate that we should think about self-control like a resource,
something that can be used up and replenished, something that can be depleted, tipping the scale toward
violence.
One of the interesting implications of DeWall’s work is that individual differences in glucose
availability are coupled with individual differences in self-control. Diabetes shows a high level of
heritability, meaning that some individuals are more likely to develop this problem than others simply
based on what genes they receive from their parents. The prevalence of diabetes is on the rise in many
countries, with some estimates suggesting that by 2025, there will be 325,000,000 diabetics world wide,
more than double current estimates. The genetic disorder that lowers glucose levels arises because of a
deficiency in a key enzyme, glucose-6-phosphate-dehydrogenase. This is one of the most common
enzyme deficiencies in the world, affecting over 400,000,000 people, and in many cases, triggered by the
consumption of fava beans. As with variation in the frequency of MAOA, so too can variation in this
glucose-related gene be subject to selection pressures, especially given its link to violence. Once again,
we see nature and nurture contributing to individual variation and cultural differences in our capacity to
harm others.
Together, these observations of glucose-related disorders speak to a disconcerting reality: we are