Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

neurosciencenews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 128 posts

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

#81

Post by anigbrowl »

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.…

A more charitable way to look at it might be 'we identified the specific neural correlates of competitive vs aggressive activity', but that's not as catchy. The authors make the point that they deliberately picked a mild kind of rivalry because it was fun and socially desirable, vs selecting for some deeply held antagonism that might be stressful to the subjects.

There is prior evidence that some people actively prefer seeing an opponent worse off (even at a cost to themselves) than merely outcompeting an opponent.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451

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

#82

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

dahart wrote: post #73
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

Well, considering that we have an extremely large number of folks that refuse to take treatments that would save their own lives, as well as the lives of those around them, and the Venn diagram of those folks, and ones that want to hurt "others," has a significant overlap, what odds do you give, of them participating in the treatments?

One word: "Miranda."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hVuzOamXEk

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

#83

Post by djmips »

acheron wrote: post #18
feet wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Excellent example of what the article was talking about. What kind of dopamine hit did you get when you posted that?

Good point actually. :) This effect is all over comments in general.

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

#84

Post by feet »

djmips wrote: post #83
acheron wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent example of what the article was talking about. What kind of dopamine hit did you get when you posted that?

Good point actually. :) This effect is all over comments in general.

Claiming that someone is doing this is also a great way to deflect conversation away from the actual and material harm that many politicians inflict on the populace through their greed

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

#85

Post by cardanome »

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…

> It seems that the only thing that causes change in our innate bias, is pain.

Funny enough, it is quite often love. Many former neo-nazis left the scene because they fell in love with a member of the "wrong race". It is kind of a cliche at this point.

Now whether it is that is getting to know a person of another race/culture/faith helps overcoming biases or if reproduction is simply biologically more pleasurable than bashing the outgroup, who knows.

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

#86

Post by charlie0 »

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…

This. I understand that researching this is a step in the right direction, but am disappointed that there are no good solutions to problems like these because they stem from basic biological functioning at some very deep level and this affects everyone, not just a tiny portion of people.

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

#87

Post by salt-thrower »

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.…

This is the classic trope that psychology studies in general don’t reveal truths about humanity, they reveal truths about (mostly white) American college students.

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

#88

Post by ChubbyGlasses »

charlie0 wrote: post #45

In otherwords, water is wet. It's very easy to see that tribal behavior is hardwired into the brain. One just has to look at history and current events to see that. I own a sports motorcycle. One of the first things you learn at the track is that your initial instincts in certain situations are wrong because physics says so. During the course you learn to remold or even completely change your instincts. I've often wo…

> It's very easy to see that tribal behavior is hardwired into the brain

All this study showed was that it was present in adult men, nothing about whether or not this is learned behavior or instinctual, or gender differences.

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

#89

Post by dahart »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #82
dahart wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.”

Well, considering that we have an extremely large number of folks that refuse to take treatments that would save their own lives, as well as the lives of those around them, and the Venn diagram of those folks, and ones that want to hurt "others," has a significant overlap, what odds do you give, of them participating in the treatments? One word: "Miranda." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hVuzOamXEk

I don’t know, but I don’t see any reason to be skeptical that the future can’t improve, given history. You could have made the same argument about most medical treatments 400 years ago, and it’d turn out to be more or less completely wrong.

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

#90

Post by dopeboy »

azinman2 wrote: post #61
charlie0 wrote: post #45

In otherwords, water is wet. It's very easy to see that tribal behavior is hardwired into the brain. One just has to look at history and current events to see that. I own a sports motorcycle. One of the first things you learn at the track is that your initial instincts in certain situations are wrong because physics says so. During the course you learn to remold or even completely change your instincts. I've often wo…

Curious - what are these specific track lessons?

As a super sport rider who has never been on the track, I am curious as well.
Post reply on HN