Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

by Robert M. Sapolsky

In other words, the default state is to trust, and what the amygdala does is learn vigilance and distrust.

In other words, dopamine is not about the happiness of reward. It’s about the happiness of pursuit of reward that has a decent chance of occurring.

Testosterone makes us more willing to do what it takes to attain and maintain status. And the key point is what it takes. Engineer social circumstances right, and boosting testosterone levels during a challenge would make people compete like crazy to do the most acts of random kindness. In our world riddled with male violence, the problem isn’t that testosterone can increase levels of aggression. The problem is the frequency with which we reward aggression.

“Stereotyping isn’t a case of lazy, short-cutting cognition. It isn’t conscious cognition at all.” Such automaticity generates statements like “I can’t put my finger on why, but it’s just wrong when They do that.” Work by Jonathan Haidt of NYU shows that in such circumstances, cognitions are post-hoc justifications for feelings and intuitions, to convince yourself that you have indeed rationally put your finger on why.

These findings suggest that it’s easier to make a liberal think like a conservative than the other way around.35 Or, stated in a familiar way, increasing cognitive load* should make people more conservative. This is precisely the case. The time pressure of snap judgments is a version of increased cognitive load.

Going easy on ourselves also reflects a key cognitive fact: we judge ourselves by our internal motives and everyone else by their external actions.

Collectivist and individualistic cultures also differ in how moral behavior is enforced. As first emphasized by the anthropologist Ruth Benedict in 1946, collectivist cultures enforce with shame, while individualistic cultures use guilt.

Anthropologists, studying everyone from hunter-gatherers to urbanites, have found that about two thirds of everyday conversation is gossip, with the vast majority of it being negative. As has been said, gossip (with the goal of shaming) is a weapon of the weak against the powerful. It has always been fast and cheap and is infinitely more so now in the era of the Scarlet Internet.

Say there’s money sitting there, and it’s not yours but no one is looking; why not grab it? Virtue ethics, with its emphasis on the actor, would answer: because you are a better person than that, because you’ll have to live with yourself afterward, etc. Deontology, with its emphasis on the act: because it’s not okay to steal. Consequentialism, with its emphasis on the outcome: what if everyone started acting that way, think about the impact on the person whose money you’ve stolen, etc.

This is straight out of chapter 2’s overview of Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis: when we are making decisions, we are running not only thought experiments but somatic feeling experiments as well—how is it going to feel if this happens?—and this combination is the goal in moral decision making.

To cite a quote attributed to Oscar Wilde, “Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.”

In the words of Jean Decety, who did such research, this demonstrates that “empathic arousal [was] moderated early in information processing by a priori attitudes toward other people.”19 In other words, cognitive processes serve as a gatekeeper, deciding whether a particular misfortune is worthy of empathy.

Literal cleanliness and orderliness can release us from abstract cognitive and affective distress—just consider how, during moments where life seems to be spiraling out of control, it can be calming to organize your clothes, clean the living room, get the car washed.

Dehumanization, pseudospeciation. The tools of the propagandists of hate.

“Free will is an illusion, but you’re still responsible for your actions.”

If you had to boil this book down to a single phrase, it would be “It’s complicated.” Nothing seems to cause anything; instead everything just modulates something else. Scientists keep saying, “We used to think X, but now we realize that . . .” Fixing one thing often messes up ten more, as the law of unintended consequences reigns. On any big, important issue it seems like 51 percent of the scientific studies conclude one thing, and 49 percent conclude the opposite. And so on. Eventually it can seem hopeless that you can actually fix something, can make things better. But we have no choice but to try. And if you are reading this, you are probably ideally suited to do so. You’ve amply proven you have intellectual tenacity. You probably also have running water, a home, adequate calories, and low odds of festering with a bad parasitic disease. You probably don’t have to worry about Ebola virus, warlords, or being invisible in your world. And you’ve been educated. In other words, you’re one of the lucky humans. So try. Finally, you don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate.

From an informational standpoint, a neuron has two different types of signaling systems. From the dendritic spines to the starts of the axon hillock, it’s an analogue signal, with gradations of signals that dissipate over space and time. And from the axon hillock to the axon terminals, it’s a digital system with all-or-none signaling that regenerates down the length of the axon.