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Harming the ‘outgroup’ linked to elevated activity in the brain reward circuitry

neurosciencenews.com

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Re: Harming the ‘outgroup’ linked to elevated activity in the brain reward circuitry

#71

Post by feet »

briantakita wrote: post #16
feet wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I agree that Republicans are a group identity with the group problems. Just be careful that "the Republicans" is not the "out group" of any group identity that you may participate with. The effects described by the OP can be subtle & sneaky & applies to everyone. Just like a seemingly innocuous bug or an abstract primitive can cause deep cascading ramifications in a complex system. Symbols or proxies for thought effe…

Its all politicians, republicans are just the most insane and brazen about it

Re: Harming the ‘outgroup’ linked to elevated activity in the brain reward circuitry

#72

Post by sitkack »

casion wrote: post #63
nverno wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those campuses are seeped in that rivarly. You'll hear chants, speeches, etc. It's a tradition.

To add on to this, I have a co-worker from a specific university who would not buy a car because it was a rival universities colour. This person is ~30 years out of school, and the vehicle was an INCREDIBLE deal and exactly what the person was looking to buy (other than the colour). The person never competed in sports and was a comp sci major. It runs deep for at many schools.

They themselves might have cared, but damn if I wear a purple shirt in Seattle folks are like Go Huskies to me, to the point where I think twice about putting it on or wearing it outside the house. I could give a damn about sports or nationalism, but lots of other idiots do.

Re: Harming the ‘outgroup’ linked to elevated activity in the brain reward circuitry

#73

Post by dahart »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #67
glitcher wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've often wondered what we could accomplish as a species if we could just overcome some of these hardwired / knee-jerk instincts. And wouldn't studying the brain help lead us towards a better understanding of how to accomplish those goals? I'm not saying that this particular study is advancing us much, but helping identify how "obvious" human behaviors activate different parts of our brains does seem to be working…

As a member of an "outgroup" (I'm over 40, in the tech industry -I never considered myself to be "on the outs," but have learned that I am, indeed), I can confirm, that, when profit is involved, no one is interested in changing their bias, and a scientific study won't make one whit of difference. It seems that the only thing that causes change in our innate bias, is pain . When we are forced to confront our biases, b…

“The findings raise the possibility that one day treatments that disrupt the reward of intergroup aggression might help to reduce the costly and persistent human phenomenon of violence toward other groups, Chester said.”

Re: Harming the ‘outgroup’ linked to elevated activity in the brain reward circuitry

#74

Post by dahart »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #56
wanderingstan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This research gives evidence that outgroup aggression feels good/rewarding. I’d tend to think this is hard-wired biologically. You’re right that it could conceivably be trained, but that’s not what it felt like for me as a young male in college. While many people (myself included) could anecdotally say that aggression to an outgroup can feel good, it’s the job of science to look for the hard evidence in the brain. Th…

> This research gives evidence that outgroup aggression feels good/rewarding. I’d tend to think this is hard-wired biologically. This research gives evidence that rival college competition is fun to male college students. The point I was trying to make is that this is a specifically narrow finding with confounding factors (mirrors the structure of sports programs, which are significant social activities at many colle…

> This research gives evidence that rival college competition is fun to male college students

That’s not accurate. The research is based a-priori on knowing that competition is fun, and is asking the question “which specific parts of the brain are making it fun?”

The abstract concludes:

“Both before and after outgroup exclusion, aggression towards outgroup members was positively associated with activity in the ventral striatum during decisions about how aggressive to be towards their outgroup opponent. Aggression towards outgroup members was also linked to greater post-exclusion activity in the rostral and dorsal medial prefrontal cortexduring provocation from their outgroup opponent. These altered patterns of brain activity suggest that frontostriatal mechanisms may play a significant role in motivating aggression towards outgroup members.”

Re: Harming the ‘outgroup’ linked to elevated activity in the brain reward circuitry

#75

Post by feet »

TexanFeller wrote: post #66
feet wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

And that’s why us libertarians hate the Republican party as much as the Democrats.

Libertarians also don't seem to recognise the inherently exploitative characteristics of capitalism and refuse to accept that regulation is necessary for the protection of workers and the populace from assholes with too much time, money, and power

Re: Harming the ‘outgroup’ linked to elevated activity in the brain reward circuitry

#76

Post by yunohn »

dahart wrote: post #69
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #8

> The researchers had 35 male college students complete a competitive, aggressive task against either a student from their university or from what they were told was a rival university. Male college students, an “aggressive task”, and a rival university. College students are literally trained to associate out-competing rival universities as a fun and desirable activity. It’s the entire foundation of sports programs.…

The authors might even agree with that summary, the paper talks more or less about picking people that give the strongest competitive signal. But the point wasn’t to check whether people enjoy competition, the point was to understand more about how the brain works, right? That does seem like useful research - even when we know we behave a certain way, we don’t always know exactly why, and we certainly have a long way…

> Also interesting: left-handed people were excluded.

This is pretty common in brain research: https://www.freethink.com/science/left-handed-people-brain-r...

Re: Harming the ‘outgroup’ linked to elevated activity in the brain reward circuitry

#77

Post by yunohn »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #8

> The researchers had 35 male college students complete a competitive, aggressive task against either a student from their university or from what they were told was a rival university. Male college students, an “aggressive task”, and a rival university. College students are literally trained to associate out-competing rival universities as a fun and desirable activity. It’s the entire foundation of sports programs.…

I would go a step further, and question if this even counts as an “outgroup” in the commonly used sense. These are just rival college teams, not people with opposing beliefs or structures.

Re: Harming the ‘outgroup’ linked to elevated activity in the brain reward circuitry

#78

Post by bseidensticker »

sitkack wrote: post #72
casion wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add on to this, I have a co-worker from a specific university who would not buy a car because it was a rival universities colour. This person is ~30 years out of school, and the vehicle was an INCREDIBLE deal and exactly what the person was looking to buy (other than the colour). The person never competed in sports and was a comp sci major. It runs deep for at many schools.

They themselves might have cared, but damn if I wear a purple shirt in Seattle folks are like Go Huskies to me, to the point where I think twice about putting it on or wearing it outside the house. I could give a damn about sports or nationalism, but lots of other idiots do.

I think it's a little unfair to call people idiots for something that's extremely hardwired into their brains.

Re: Harming the ‘outgroup’ linked to elevated activity in the brain reward circuitry

#79

Post by dahart »

ben_w wrote: post #24
feet wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I'm not American and I've only visited for four months total, so my view of the politics is mainly from the news and forums like this one. From this, given how often I see Republicans saying it's the Democrats who are restricting freedoms, I have to assume the two camps (as in being or the other as identity, not necessarily just voting red or blue last time) actually want to do different things — if you'll bear with…

> reds want to have guns and limit birth control, while blues was to have birth control and limit guns.

This isn’t very accurate, FWIW (though easy to get this impression.) The vast, vast majority of Americans want access to birth control and want reasonable limits on guns (regardless of whether they would like to own guns themselves). I think it’s like over 90% in both cases.

You might be thinking of the debate over abortion, rather than birth control.

Reds might want to own guns more often, but they’re mostly in favor of more gun control than we have today. Blues also want more gun control that we have today, but are slightly more in favor of allowing abortions.

These debates, fwiw, are sideshow social signal and tribal politics. They are exaggerating and polarizing the reality of what the populace really wants. The actual distinction between red and blue is (was) fiscal policy. We’ve mostly stopped debating fiscal policy in good faith in this country, but nonetheless the terms “conservative” and “liberal” really came from how we want to tax and spend, and whether we believe in social services and safety nets especially at the federal level (democratic), or whether we prefer that states have more control and we spend less money on social services and disenfranchised people.

Re: Harming the ‘outgroup’ linked to elevated activity in the brain reward circuitry

#80

Post by TexanFeller »

feet wrote: post #75
TexanFeller wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that’s why us libertarians hate the Republican party as much as the Democrats.

Libertarians also don't seem to recognise the inherently exploitative characteristics of capitalism and refuse to accept that regulation is necessary for the protection of workers and the populace from assholes with too much time, money, and power

Some of us are very aware of such exploitation, but we’re skeptical that we’ll be less exploited by those given political power to deal with those immoral capitalists. History is full of examples of party leaders in Marxist countries wining and dining while the populace lives in poverty. It happens when too much power rests in any institution. So I personally oppose large businesses as much as I oppose large government, and pretty much all large institutions in general(though a few types of them are almost unavoidable).
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