Today I addressed the cruelty which continues to be witnessed among those on the far right. I cite several examples in my verse. I found what I could on recent thoughts on cruelty among psychologists, and found two very recent publications to share excerpts from. It is apparent that this phenomenon is being rethinked by modern psychologists, and perhaps I’m starting on this writing project with an older version on the subject. Seems things have changed in this century on this subject. Not being trained I can’t really dispute what I have found. But I thought the three publications quoted below might be of interest and expand and update some thinking about cruelty in us humans.
I will start with my verse today.
I came across a paper from 2006 which I found rather interesting. I have shown part of the discussion in the image below. The pdf can be found here.
From last month is new information on the process of cruelty in humans. It has been misunderstood for some time apparently.
JULY 13, 2023
Controlled cruelty: New study from VCU finds aggression can arise from successful self-control
By Mary Kate Brogan [@MaryKateBrogan]
A new study by a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher has found that aggression is not always the product of poor self-control but, instead, often can be the product of successful self-control in order to inflict greater retribution.
The new paper, “Aggression As Successful Self-Control,” by corresponding author David Chester, Ph.D., [@daveschester] an associate professor of social psychology in the Department of Psychology at VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences, was published by the journal Social and Personality Psychology Compass and uses meta-analysis to summarize evidence from dozens of existing studies in psychology and neurology.
“Typically, people explain violence as the product of poor self-control,” Chester said. “In the heat of the moment, we often fail to inhibit our worst, most aggressive impulses. But that is only one side of the story.”
Indeed, Chester’s study found that the most aggressive people do not have personalities characterized by poor self-discipline and that training programs that boost self-control have not proved effective in reducing violent tendencies. Instead, the study found ample evidence that aggression can arise from successful self-control.
“Vengeful people tend to exhibit greater premeditation of their behavior and self-control, enabling them to delay the gratification of sweet revenge and bide their time to inflict maximum retribution upon those who they believe have wronged them,” Chester said. “Even psychopathic people, who comprise the majority of people who commit violent offenses, often exhibit robust development of inhibitory self-control over their teenage years.”
Aggressive behavior is reliably linked to increased – not just decreased – activity in the brain’s prefrontal cortex, a biological substrate of self-control, Chester found. The findings make it clear that the argument that aggression is primarily the product of poor self-control is weaker than previously thought.
“This paper pushes back against a decades-long dominant narrative in aggression research, which is that violence starts when self-control stops,” Chester said. “Instead, it argues for a more balanced, nuanced view in which self-control can both constrain and facilitate aggression, depending on the person and the situation.”
The findings also argue for more caution in the implementation of treatments, therapies and interventions that seek to reduce violence by improving self-control, Chester said.
And finally a young Psychologist from the United Kingdom talks about how we have perhaps been viewing cruelty in humans as more common than it actually is. First a very recent ‘tweet’ by him which has bearing on the subject, and then some of his writing.
Published: July 19, 2023 1.11pm EDT in The Conversation
Author
Steve Taylor [@SMTaylorauthor]
Senior Lecturer in Psychology,
Leeds Beckett University
There are a number of classic experiments and theories that every psychology student learns about, but more recent research has questioned their findings so that psychologists today are reevaluating human nature.
One example is Philip Zimbardo’s 1971 Stanford prison experiment, in which 24 participants were randomly separated into groups of would-be prisoners and guards. Within days, the research recorded that the guards were mistreating the prisoners, who began to display signs of distress. The abuse and distress became so acute the experiment had to be curtailed after six days.
Such theories and studies from the 1960s and 1970s implied that the “evil” sides of our character lie just below our civilised surface, while the moral and altruistic side is a thin veneer. They encouraged a view that human beings are essentially callous and selfish. The problem is that the findings of these experiments have now been contested and even discredited by other researchers.
Recent research found the cruelty of Zimbardo’s prison guards didn’t emerge spontaneously; some behaviour was encouraged. Some of the “prisoners” later admitted that they were pretending to be distressed.
In my view, early psychologists may have been unconsciously tailoring their experiments to confirm a view of human nature as innately cruel. These studies were carried out less than 20 years after the second world war and the Holocaust, when the horrors of WWII were still fresh in people’s minds.
Around the same time, genetic theories were published that suggested that human beings are biological engines, caring for nothing but replication and survival.
Now, research from a variety of areas points to a more positive view of humanity. Along with the study of heroism, the field of positive psychology (established during the early 2000s) studies human wellbeing and researches traits such as wisdom, courage, gratitude and resilience. Positive psychologists like Martin Seligman argue conventional psychology had for too long been essentially “the study of unhappiness” and that a new field was needed to study what “is good or virtuous in human nature”.
The consensus from anthropologists is that, for the vast majority of the time that we’ve inhabited this planet, human societies have been egalitarian and peaceful. This challenges the neo-Darwinist idea that human life has always been a competitive struggle for survival, conditioning us to be selfish and individualistic.
As the forerunner of positive psychology, Abraham Maslow, said in 1968: human nature has been “sold short” by psychology. Human beings can be brutal and selfish. But we can be heroically kindhearted too.
And I finish with Bertrand Russell and from an essay from the war years of 1943. I’m quite sure I can’t identify with this quote easily in the American age of Trump and what he has brought, or has enhanced. I’m just not sure if I have a view of human goodness in these times. Perhaps I’ll change my mind in time.
An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish: A Hilarious Catalogue of Organized and Individual Stupidity by Bertrand Russell 1943
“I have seen cruelty, persecution, and superstition increasing by leaps and bounds, until we have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age. All this is depressing, but gloom is a useless emotion.”
69th posting, August 8, 2023.