Search for the neural basis of immoral behaviors. The objective of Moral and social brain laboratory directed by the Belgian Emilie Caspar It’s ambitious. They attempt to “understand how humans take initiative and responsibility for their actions and how they perceive and feel the pain they might cause others.” In other words, Caspar and his team try to find the scientific basis for the banality of evil.
at the conference Falling Wallsin Berlin, Caspar gave a talk on how to break down “the wall of blind obedience.” An obedience, which, as we see throughout history and planetary geography, can lead human beings to commit the worst atrocities. Again and again.
As a researcher, she has not hesitated to sit in prison with the perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda or the genocide in Cambodia to study their way of thinking. Is it difficult to spend so much time with these types of people?
Indeed, it is a difficult population to manage. I think it’s also one of the reasons why there is so little research on these profiles. What they say is very difficult to understand. When I started doing that, I had to psych myself out for months and months just to make sure I was prepared. I read books by other scholars who had worked with former perpetrators and told their stories.
One in particular, called A saison of machettes (Machete Season), where the stories of the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 are told, without sparing horrible details. I started reading the first three pages, but then I had to pause. I had many nightmares. Then I read again, three more pages, then a few days off. Many nightmares, and so on.
It’s easy to say that they are monsters who love to hurt others. The reality is much more complex. They are normal human beings, who did things within a context
After a while, you get used to it. And you learn to manage your emotions when you read or listen to those stories. But you also learn not to judge, because my role is not to judge them. I am a neuroscientist, I am a psychologist. I am not a lawyer, nor a judge. What I’m doing is trying to understand them, to understand their perspective. It’s easy to say that they are monsters who love to hurt others. The reality is much more complex. They are normal human beings, who did things within a context. Yes, some have dark features, but not all. And then actually – I know it sounds strange – when you interact with them in the short distance, they are very nice people. So you have to learn to manage a lot of ups and downs in your emotional balance, especially when on the same day you talk to them, you have also worked with the victims and heard their terrible stories.
Can you end up having empathy towards the executioners?
Well, I would say not with all of them. But there are people you talk to, and you see sadness in their eyes when they tell you what they did. Some of them can barely deal with this feeling. For example, in Rwanda. You have to think that when you understand how all that happened, when you imagine that they had no education, that they lived in small towns, that they had no information, except from the Government media that for years had talked about the other group, the Tutsi, as a constant threat and the cause of all their problems.
Let’s talk about your research. Can morality be studied scientifically?
It’s complicated. Also because the definition of “morality” differs greatly between individuals, but also between different cultures, populations, and also throughout history. There are different ways to do it. In Europe, the experimental method we would use would be to examine situations in which participants are faced with a moral decision.
Human beings separate themselves a lot from each other. We have strong intergroup prejudices toward people we do not recognize as being in our own group. That is a typical step of every genocide that has occurred
For example: would you harm someone to increase your own financial gain? In our Western cultures, we would agree that it is a moral decision to make. Or we put them in front of some moral dilemmas. So, for example, we asked them: would you kill that person if it would allow you to save five more people? This would be the experimental approach. We measure their behavior and, for example, we measure what happens in their brain when they make those decisions using a scanner. An MRI or, above all, an electroencephalography.
But then they also interview Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or prisoners in Belgian prisons.
Exact. The second approach is to study people who at some point committed immoral or illegal acts and try to learn their point of view. The perpetrators I have worked with did things that went against all moral standards in all cultures. In general, human beings accept that we should not kill or torture another human being who has done nothing to us. We interviewed them and tried to understand why they did what they did.
And what conclusion have they reached so far?
It is a very difficult question. From the perspective of the brain, morality is not like a single brain region – on the other hand, we already know that nothing is like a single brain region. There is always an interaction between many different brain regions that come into play and the environment. That’s why it’s very difficult to give you a simple answer. There are many MRI studies that show that there are many areas involved in making moral decisions.
When we are shown an individual who is suffering, activities are triggered in brain regions in the ACC (anterior cingulate cortex) and it has been shown that when he is not from our own group – due to ethnicity, religion, etc. – our brain processes his pain less. pain
I have to say that something I am not satisfied with in neuroscience is that it bases almost all of its conclusions on Western values. We use the same definition of ‘morality’ that applies to most of us. But the Western world only represents 12% of the world’s population, so almost our entire field of research bases its conclusions on a restricted sample. It doesn’t make any statistical sense. That is why I try to expand the sample by accessing populations from all over the world that are different, that may process morality differently, to try to have a more global image without drawing conclusions exclusively focused on the West.
Okay, let’s broaden the look. But we cannot ignore that genocides continue to happen, just look at Palestine. And we seek answers about the horrors that happen now, not just after they have happened, like the examples you have given us.
Each case is different, and each current war or genocide is complex. But at the same time it is easy to understand. There are different groups, and one wants power over the other.
Human beings separate themselves a lot from each other. We have strong intergroup prejudices toward people we do not recognize as being in our own group. That is a typical step of every genocide that has occurred. First, there is a categorization of people; then there is a process of dehumanization; and finally that is where violence can start. There are patterns to genocides. The website Genocide Watch details 10 stages that characterize each genocide. There you can see real and current examples, and they tell you what stage they are in. There are similar patterns throughout the world and in all societies.
And how do you explain from a scientific point of view this process of dehumanization that is so important for a genocide to take place?
You have to think: why do we separate people into groups? It’s hard to prove it, but I think it’s part of evolution. We are very large societies. We have evolved as a group. And being part of a group gives us protection. That’s where we can have support. It’s as if we were made to protect our own group. That is a natural tendency that all human beings have. And neuroscience sees this in our brain.
For example, when we are shown an individual who is suffering, activities are triggered in brain regions such as empathy, in the ACC (anterior cingulate cortex) or the insula. And it has been shown many times that when we show someone who is not from our own group, but from another group – by ethnicity, religion, or where the person lives, or may also be a fan of another football team – in In this case, our brain processes its pain less.
There is a difference in brain activity in these regions in the brains of perpetrators, rescuers or bystanders who do nothing in the face of barbarity.
These intergroup biases are strongly hardwired into our brains. And dehumanization also affects many different brain regions associated with social cognition. When we see, for example, typically dehumanized people, such as drug addicts or homeless people, we use less of the brain regions associated with social decision-making. This has a lot of impact. If we add to this the fact that obeying commands has a strong impact on the brain, then we can better explain why people follow these types of movements instead of resisting them.
Is it easier, morally, to follow orders than to make decisions for yourself?
I think so. But this is something we are still studying in the laboratory. Much data tells us that people follow orders because it is easier. And I think our brain likes to do that because you don’t have to stop and think. Our brain likes to save resources when it can. And we have also evolved in hierarchical societies, in organized societies. It is easier to follow what our peers tell us, and it requires more resources to go against it.
But not everyone decides to torture or kill.
It’s like that. There is a difference in brain activity in those regions in the brains of perpetrators, rescuers or bystanders who do nothing in the face of barbarity. In the brains of the rescuers, the people who do intervene to save the victims, the empathy activity is not attenuated, they continue processing it. And that is perhaps what helps not to deviate from the pain of others, but to act.
And what is the reason for this difference?
It’s a good question, and we’re trying to look into it. We have contextual data. For example, some rescuers say that because they have seen their family members help other people in the past, they have been raised with compassion. In empathy, perhaps education can be a factor. However, much of the research is seeking an answer to this question.
So we can’t say if empathy is an innate tendency or if we are taught it.
Probably in most cases both things are at play. But studying the intersection of the two experimentally is tremendously difficult because I can’t scan every person in the world. It is very difficult to study human behavior, and it is not easy to compare cases with different types of upbringings. At the moment, I don’t know how to answer. It would be my dream to be able to do it.
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