So in effect they found the biological basis for hate? > But why do people show such a ready tendency to harm people in opposing groups? A new study led by re

So in effect they found the biological basis for hate? > But why do people show such a ready tendency to harm people in opposing groups? A new study led by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University has used functional brain imaging technology to reveal a potential answer: It increases activity in the brain’s reward network. I think the underlying assumption here is already worth thinking about: That interpersonal and societal behaviour might be a lot more driven by instincts than we'd like to believe - and that in particular the tendency of people to structure the social landscape into "us" and "them" groups might be biologically hardwired. The other thing I believe would be useful to study at some time would be if there is some innate biological mechanism for sadistic behaviour, which in effect "flips the sign on the reward function" when we consider an action in particular contexts - so doing harm suddenly feels good and doing good feels bad. At least, that would explain to me, why in so many situations where a person has the power to make rules that others have to follow, the rules seem to skew towards being unpleasant, even if they wouldn't have to be rationally.