9 ms·

When Power Goes To Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart

56 points by Libertatea 13y ago

PavlovsCat 13y ago
Leashes diminish those at either end of them.. there's an emerging field of research that suggests powerful people who begin to forget their subordinates can be coached back toward their former kindness I know one way that ought to work, and has the added benefit of being just: stripping them of their power (over others). If there is another way, I'm curious.
- alexjeffrey 13y ago
  that may not always be practical though - how would you go about stripping the power of the employer over the employee? without an employer's power to say, decide whether an employee gets fired or a raise, the relationship would no longer be there.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    Humanity threatening its own survival like it currently does is not practical either. Even going back into the ocean like the dolphins is more practical than that. And more importantly, I think there is a difference between justified authority and power. Not that I'm automatically accepting employer and employee relationships as desirable, just like with "citizen vs. politician", but for example it's perfectly okay that parents can yank their kids at the arm when those are about to run into traffic, and otherwise curtail their autonomy, as long as it's justified. That's not power, that's authority, and even authority needs to be constantly re-evaluated and justified. If you're on an expedition and the most experienced person leads it, one would expect that when they get sick, they would pass that job on without any fuss at all, since it's about the well-being of the expedition, not about their personal power, right? Notice how in many cases instead we have people asserting ownership, certainly when it comes to employers, and even in politics. When was the last time you strolled into a place and up to the manager/president, proved you're smarter in all ways, and successfully convinced them they should give you their job and work under you? Thought so :P
    - loceng 13y ago
      One way I feel we can give people more power, on the individual level and even out the playing field in employer-employee relationships, is to have the government taking care of all basic living needs - where you don't actually need to work in order to survive. For a business to succeed then, they would have to be kind and people would want to have to work for them out of other options - of which I could see that leading to many more co-operatives and the like.
      - PavlovsCat 13y ago
        I like the place you're describing! But finding a way from here to there is the tricky part, isn't it.
        anigbrowl 13y ago
        http://flights.expedia.com/cheap-flights-to-sweden/ http://flights.expedia.com/cheap-flights-to-sweden/
        PavlovsCat 13y ago
        I'm a big fan of changing where I am, rather than going where others prepared the soil for my liking. Also, if anything: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania :P
        loceng 13y ago
        I laughed out loud. Thanks. :)
        loceng 13y ago
        Me too! It is tricky. I've been working on this problem, and evolving my understanding of the systems influencing it for 12 years now or so. I've been designing a growing plan that I feel has a good chance of getting there or starting the path that will lead there. :) This will incorporate business plans / projects, a charity I am starting, and political aspirations - as policy will eventually need to change, and noise will need to be made to at minimum start discussion and have people raise questions about the status quo.
  - _delirium 13y ago
    That's one reason skepticism for the employer-employee relationship ends up recurring in a lot of liberty-oriented philosophies. You can find it anywhere from more on the left (e.g. Emma Goldman), to more on the right (e.g. Lysander Spooner), and even in a form in Thomas Jefferson's "yeoman farmer" ideal (though he didn't follow it himself), since he thought industrial-style mass employment fit poorly with democracy. An alternative is to constrain the power, as is done in more consensus-oriented labor systems like Scandinavia's, treating the company as a kind of partnership of multiple stakeholders, and having many decisions made by committees with both employer and employee representatives. A kind of weak importing of a few ideas from worker's cooperatives, without actually moving all the way there.
  - nhaehnle 13y ago
    One obvious way to do that would be to get rid of the employer-employee relationship. Flat management styles attempt to work in this direction, but really you end up with worker cooperatives when you take the thought to its logical conclusion.
chunky1994 13y ago
I suspect that the evolutionary mechanism behind this is that the members of the species (or tribe etc.) who are powerful (leaders?) must have some sense of ruthlessness in order to enable their whole group to survive; and empathy is directly counteractive to ruthlessness.
- exit 13y ago
  does it have to be a socially advantageous? maybe powerful leaders who happened to be ruthless spread their genes ruthlessly, more so than the powerful and benevolent
  - consonants 13y ago
    The post you are replying to is why I take evo-psych explanations with a grain of salt, as your post is just as plausible while it doesn't try to stretch the findings in the article by reducing complex evolutionary processes to explain human society. edit: ugh, grammar. this is what I get for posting from a phone
- negamax 13y ago
  Or it could be the way for nature to lead a group to a disaster, a fight with another group. So that better group survives.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    That ascribes a lot of agency to nature, and I think will lead you to flawed conclusions.
    - negamax 13y ago
      I am not drawing any conclusion. Just proposing a counter point. Nature has no plans for humanity ofcourse.
      - dllthomas 13y ago
JackFr 13y ago
Can we please stop with "emerging neuroscience" crap. http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless-Neuroscience/dp/0465018777/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless-...
- wtvanhest 13y ago
  I think you got downvoted because your comment didn't add value, but I suspect there is something behind it, so I'd be interested in learning more without reading that entire book.
  - quantumpotato_ 13y ago
    Book Description: "What can’t neuroscience tell us about ourselves? Since fMRI—functional magnetic resonance imaging—was introduced in the early 1990s, brain scans have been used to help politicians understand and manipulate voters, determine guilt in court cases, and make sense of everything from musical aptitude to romantic love. But although brain scans and other neurotechnologies have provided groundbreaking insights into the workings of the human brain, the increasingly fashionable idea that they are the most important means of answering the enduring mysteries of psychology is misguided—and potentially dangerous. In Brainwashed, psychiatrist and AEI scholar Sally Satel and psychologist Scott O. Lilienfeld reveal how many of the real-world applications of human neuroscience gloss over its limitations and intricacies, at times obscuring—rather than clarifying—the myriad factors that shape our behavior and identities. Brain scans, Satel and Lilienfeld show, are useful but often ambiguous representations of a highly complex system. Each region of the brain participates in a host of experiences and interacts with other regions, so seeing one area light up on an fMRI in response to a stimulus doesn’t automatically indicate a particular sensation or capture the higher cognitive functions that come from those interactions. The narrow focus on the brain’s physical processes also assumes that our subjective experiences can be explained away by biology alone. As Satel and Lilienfeld explain, this “neurocentric” view of the mind risks undermining our most deeply held ideas about selfhood, free will, and personal responsibility, putting us at risk of making harmful mistakes, whether in the courtroom, interrogation room, or addiction treatment clinic. A provocative account of our obsession with neuroscience, Brainwashed brilliantly illuminates what contemporary neuroscience and brain imaging can and cannot tell us about ourselves, providing a much-needed reminder about the many factors that make us who we are."
Libertatea 13y ago
There are a few studies on the same subject. Most notably by Paul Piff Here is the peer-reviewed paper: "Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior": http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109 New York Magazine did a feature story about the study: http://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/ http://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/ A PBS piece on the study: http://youtu.be/IuqGrz-Y_Lc http://youtu.be/IuqGrz-Y_Lc And the documentary: "Park Avenue: money, power and the American dream - Why Poverty?" http://youtu.be/6niWzomA_So http://youtu.be/6niWzomA_So - also exams the psychology behind power.
- gwern 13y ago
  More than a few; I cite a number of others at http://lesswrong.com/lw/dtg/notes_on_the_psychology_of_power/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/dtg/notes_on_the_psychology_of_power...
mojuba 13y ago
It could be that our brain takes every chance to reduce its energy consumption. You could save on empathy/theory of mind big time, it seems.
AznHisoka 13y ago
I think having some sense of power important to the well-being of humans? Feeling powerless can lead one to feelings of despair and helplessness. Of course feeling superior over others and pointing them down is not healthy either. But feeling like you have some control over one's live is essential.
- northwest 13y ago
  > I think having some sense of power important to the well-being of humans? Of course it is. That's not the question, I guess. The question is: How much difference regarding power (generally expressed in money/wealth) is healthy to society?
northwest 13y ago
> "What we're finding is power diminishes all varieties of empathy" Another reason to stop the decline of the middle class and to begin to reverse this trend.
- Roboprog 13y ago
  OTOH - when we reach the end game, only 1% will be apathetic, and the other 99% of serfs will be highly empathetic. Oh, I forgot: The Singularity is going to make all of us fine upstanding members of "The Culture" or some such thing :-)
zzzeek 13y ago
and that's why gun ownership is bad for society.
- thatswrong0 13y ago
  Better make it illegal so only criminals can feel the power.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    Like in every other place of the Western world, where gun ownership is illegal (or very resticted), but murders by criminals are still way lower than anywhere in the US? I thought hackers were for science and understood numbers...
    - thatswrong0 13y ago
      And I thought that "hackers" would not be so close-minded as to not consider any of the other factors that go into gun-homicide rate. I wish I could be so willfully ignorant. If you ignore gang-violence, for example, our gun-homicide rate is much closer to that of Switzerland. Have you looked at the difference in poverty levels between the places in the U.S. where the rate is the highest when you compared it to other Western countries? Have you considered the fact that we share a huge border with a country ridden with crime and violence which provides a steady supply of illegal weapons? Have you thought about the U.S.'s drug and social policies and their effects on gun-homicide rates? Have you noticed how the rate has been steadily dropping for the past decade? Have you looked at the ratio of the number of guns in the U.S. to the number of homicides and done the same with other countries? Have you looked at the rate of other violent crimes in the U.S. and other western countries? Have you considered the affects of cultural differences? Differences in demographics? Have you thought about what some unintended consequences of implementing strict gun control in the United States could be? I sincerely doubt it, or you would not say what you have said. If you truly are "for science" then you should understand that things are not nearly as simple as your political ideology dictates. You need to go beyond the simple, obvious correlation and try to look at all of the variables. And even if it were demonstrated to be the case that the higher rates of gun homicides are directly attributable to lax gun policies in the United States, I would still not be in favor of severely restricting gun ownership. And don't be so presumptuous to assume that this makes me any less a "hacker". It just means that I have beliefs and morals that are not derived directly from science and numbers. Why? If we should let science exclusively dictate our political policies, then we should outlaw drinking. And smoking. And driving. These all lead to a large number of deaths. We should also implement a government controlled diet throughout the entire populace to reduce the rates of obesity and malnutrition. We should also have a computer program which determines the jobs and wages of everyone in the United States so that we maximize productivity and minimize poverty. Would that be your utopia?
coldtea 13y ago
"""If you ask a psychologist, he or she may tell you that the powerful are simply too busy. They don't have the time to fully attend to their less powerful counterparts.""" No real psychologist will tell you that. Not even the worse case of status-quo apologist psychologist.
- X4 13y ago
  So, what would they say?
  - coldtea 13y ago
    They would explain it in terms of personality traits, past history, sociopathic behavior, reward systems and tons of other insights etc. There are lots of studies in power relations, and I've never seen the lack of empathy exhibited by some powerful people explained away as "they are busy".
    - X4 13y ago
      That sir, is a generalization used to raise the importance of the article. I skip that. What you say is a relative explanation of the causes, but not showing evidence of a definitive neurological trigger, which they claim to have discovered as responsible. This is also one reason why many people I know, don't take psychology serious, because it lacks on the neurological background and tries to explain things that 'could, would, should' happen in cases like 'a,b or c' without giving a definitive answer. This leaves the asking person in a uncertain and unsatisfied state. definitely. There are other psychologists who explain things logically and simple, that convinces much more people and gives them more insight into the 'why's' rather than squishy explanations of the 'what's'.
      - coldtea 13y ago
        >This is also one reason why many people I know, don't take psychology serious, because it lacks on the neurological background and tries to explain things that 'could, would, should' happen in cases like 'a,b or c' without giving a definitive answer. That's exactly the reason why I take it seriously. Because it considers many factors, and the multiple facets and interactions between a person and other persons and/or surroundings, and understands that human psychology does not work like some antiquated naive reductionist machinery. The "definitive answers" on this front ("it's gene X that makes you behave Y, it's that substance in the brain that makes you violent", etc), are for people who believe in silver bullets and one-size-fits-all answers. IMHO they reek of pseudo-science, mixing cause and effect, correlation and causation and working at the wrong level of abstraction.
btilly 13y ago
This does not surprise. Research has repeatedly found that even momentary success boosts testosterone, and we know the effects that has on behavior, including a loss of empathy. And vice versa for failure dropping testosterone. See http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/200905/the-testosterone-curse-part-2 http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/20090... for a basic overview of the effects of testosterone. This fits evolutionary "just so" stories very well. Males in pair bonding species pursue a mix of alpha (impregnate lots of females) and beta (trade child care for access to one female) strategies. A successful male should become more willing to go for alpha behaviors. A successful alpha strategy requires not minding the real negative consequences of your behavior on others. Conversely beta strategies are going to fail hard if you're not deeply aware of the feelings of those around you. Which is precisely what testosterone does.
X4 13y ago
Thank you! That was a very useful source for my studies.
loceng 13y ago
"When Power Goes To Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart " This is also called not being grounded - though it doesn't necessarily mean you don't use logic to dictate your behaviour, though heart is an easier guide at times.

56 points by Libertatea 13y ago

Leashes diminish those at either end of them.. there's an emerging field of research that suggests powerful people who begin to forget their subordinates can be coached back toward their former kindness I know one way that ought to work, and has the added benefit of being just: stripping them of their power (over others). If there is another way, I'm curious.

alexjeffrey 13y ago
that may not always be practical though - how would you go about stripping the power of the employer over the employee? without an employer's power to say, decide whether an employee gets fired or a raise, the relationship would no longer be there.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  Humanity threatening its own survival like it currently does is not practical either. Even going back into the ocean like the dolphins is more practical than that. And more importantly, I think there is a difference between justified authority and power. Not that I'm automatically accepting employer and employee relationships as desirable, just like with "citizen vs. politician", but for example it's perfectly okay that parents can yank their kids at the arm when those are about to run into traffic, and otherwise curtail their autonomy, as long as it's justified. That's not power, that's authority, and even authority needs to be constantly re-evaluated and justified. If you're on an expedition and the most experienced person leads it, one would expect that when they get sick, they would pass that job on without any fuss at all, since it's about the well-being of the expedition, not about their personal power, right? Notice how in many cases instead we have people asserting ownership, certainly when it comes to employers, and even in politics. When was the last time you strolled into a place and up to the manager/president, proved you're smarter in all ways, and successfully convinced them they should give you their job and work under you? Thought so :P
  - loceng 13y ago
    One way I feel we can give people more power, on the individual level and even out the playing field in employer-employee relationships, is to have the government taking care of all basic living needs - where you don't actually need to work in order to survive. For a business to succeed then, they would have to be kind and people would want to have to work for them out of other options - of which I could see that leading to many more co-operatives and the like.
    - PavlovsCat 13y ago
      I like the place you're describing! But finding a way from here to there is the tricky part, isn't it.
      - anigbrowl 13y ago
        http://flights.expedia.com/cheap-flights-to-sweden/ http://flights.expedia.com/cheap-flights-to-sweden/
        PavlovsCat 13y ago
        I'm a big fan of changing where I am, rather than going where others prepared the soil for my liking. Also, if anything: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania :P
        loceng 13y ago
        I laughed out loud. Thanks. :)
      - loceng 13y ago
        Me too! It is tricky. I've been working on this problem, and evolving my understanding of the systems influencing it for 12 years now or so. I've been designing a growing plan that I feel has a good chance of getting there or starting the path that will lead there. :) This will incorporate business plans / projects, a charity I am starting, and political aspirations - as policy will eventually need to change, and noise will need to be made to at minimum start discussion and have people raise questions about the status quo.
- _delirium 13y ago
  That's one reason skepticism for the employer-employee relationship ends up recurring in a lot of liberty-oriented philosophies. You can find it anywhere from more on the left (e.g. Emma Goldman), to more on the right (e.g. Lysander Spooner), and even in a form in Thomas Jefferson's "yeoman farmer" ideal (though he didn't follow it himself), since he thought industrial-style mass employment fit poorly with democracy. An alternative is to constrain the power, as is done in more consensus-oriented labor systems like Scandinavia's, treating the company as a kind of partnership of multiple stakeholders, and having many decisions made by committees with both employer and employee representatives. A kind of weak importing of a few ideas from worker's cooperatives, without actually moving all the way there.
- nhaehnle 13y ago
  One obvious way to do that would be to get rid of the employer-employee relationship. Flat management styles attempt to work in this direction, but really you end up with worker cooperatives when you take the thought to its logical conclusion.

chunky1994 13y ago

I suspect that the evolutionary mechanism behind this is that the members of the species (or tribe etc.) who are powerful (leaders?) must have some sense of ruthlessness in order to enable their whole group to survive; and empathy is directly counteractive to ruthlessness.

exit 13y ago
does it have to be a socially advantageous? maybe powerful leaders who happened to be ruthless spread their genes ruthlessly, more so than the powerful and benevolent
- consonants 13y ago
  The post you are replying to is why I take evo-psych explanations with a grain of salt, as your post is just as plausible while it doesn't try to stretch the findings in the article by reducing complex evolutionary processes to explain human society. edit: ugh, grammar. this is what I get for posting from a phone
negamax 13y ago
Or it could be the way for nature to lead a group to a disaster, a fight with another group. So that better group survives.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  That ascribes a lot of agency to nature, and I think will lead you to flawed conclusions.
  - negamax 13y ago
    I am not drawing any conclusion. Just proposing a counter point. Nature has no plans for humanity ofcourse.
    - dllthomas 13y ago

JackFr 13y ago

Can we please stop with "emerging neuroscience" crap. http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless-Neuroscience/dp/0465018777/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless-...

wtvanhest 13y ago
I think you got downvoted because your comment didn't add value, but I suspect there is something behind it, so I'd be interested in learning more without reading that entire book.
- quantumpotato_ 13y ago
  Book Description: "What can’t neuroscience tell us about ourselves? Since fMRI—functional magnetic resonance imaging—was introduced in the early 1990s, brain scans have been used to help politicians understand and manipulate voters, determine guilt in court cases, and make sense of everything from musical aptitude to romantic love. But although brain scans and other neurotechnologies have provided groundbreaking insights into the workings of the human brain, the increasingly fashionable idea that they are the most important means of answering the enduring mysteries of psychology is misguided—and potentially dangerous. In Brainwashed, psychiatrist and AEI scholar Sally Satel and psychologist Scott O. Lilienfeld reveal how many of the real-world applications of human neuroscience gloss over its limitations and intricacies, at times obscuring—rather than clarifying—the myriad factors that shape our behavior and identities. Brain scans, Satel and Lilienfeld show, are useful but often ambiguous representations of a highly complex system. Each region of the brain participates in a host of experiences and interacts with other regions, so seeing one area light up on an fMRI in response to a stimulus doesn’t automatically indicate a particular sensation or capture the higher cognitive functions that come from those interactions. The narrow focus on the brain’s physical processes also assumes that our subjective experiences can be explained away by biology alone. As Satel and Lilienfeld explain, this “neurocentric” view of the mind risks undermining our most deeply held ideas about selfhood, free will, and personal responsibility, putting us at risk of making harmful mistakes, whether in the courtroom, interrogation room, or addiction treatment clinic. A provocative account of our obsession with neuroscience, Brainwashed brilliantly illuminates what contemporary neuroscience and brain imaging can and cannot tell us about ourselves, providing a much-needed reminder about the many factors that make us who we are."

Libertatea 13y ago

There are a few studies on the same subject. Most notably by Paul Piff Here is the peer-reviewed paper: "Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior": http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109 New York Magazine did a feature story about the study: http://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/ http://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/ A PBS piece on the study: http://youtu.be/IuqGrz-Y_Lc http://youtu.be/IuqGrz-Y_Lc And the documentary: "Park Avenue: money, power and the American dream - Why Poverty?" http://youtu.be/6niWzomA_So http://youtu.be/6niWzomA_So - also exams the psychology behind power.

gwern 13y ago
More than a few; I cite a number of others at http://lesswrong.com/lw/dtg/notes_on_the_psychology_of_power/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/dtg/notes_on_the_psychology_of_power...

mojuba 13y ago

It could be that our brain takes every chance to reduce its energy consumption. You could save on empathy/theory of mind big time, it seems.

AznHisoka 13y ago

I think having some sense of power important to the well-being of humans? Feeling powerless can lead one to feelings of despair and helplessness. Of course feeling superior over others and pointing them down is not healthy either. But feeling like you have some control over one's live is essential.

northwest 13y ago
> I think having some sense of power important to the well-being of humans? Of course it is. That's not the question, I guess. The question is: How much difference regarding power (generally expressed in money/wealth) is healthy to society?

northwest 13y ago

> "What we're finding is power diminishes all varieties of empathy" Another reason to stop the decline of the middle class and to begin to reverse this trend.

Roboprog 13y ago
OTOH - when we reach the end game, only 1% will be apathetic, and the other 99% of serfs will be highly empathetic. Oh, I forgot: The Singularity is going to make all of us fine upstanding members of "The Culture" or some such thing :-)

zzzeek 13y ago

and that's why gun ownership is bad for society.

thatswrong0 13y ago
Better make it illegal so only criminals can feel the power.
- coldtea 13y ago
  Like in every other place of the Western world, where gun ownership is illegal (or very resticted), but murders by criminals are still way lower than anywhere in the US? I thought hackers were for science and understood numbers...
  - thatswrong0 13y ago
    And I thought that "hackers" would not be so close-minded as to not consider any of the other factors that go into gun-homicide rate. I wish I could be so willfully ignorant. If you ignore gang-violence, for example, our gun-homicide rate is much closer to that of Switzerland. Have you looked at the difference in poverty levels between the places in the U.S. where the rate is the highest when you compared it to other Western countries? Have you considered the fact that we share a huge border with a country ridden with crime and violence which provides a steady supply of illegal weapons? Have you thought about the U.S.'s drug and social policies and their effects on gun-homicide rates? Have you noticed how the rate has been steadily dropping for the past decade? Have you looked at the ratio of the number of guns in the U.S. to the number of homicides and done the same with other countries? Have you looked at the rate of other violent crimes in the U.S. and other western countries? Have you considered the affects of cultural differences? Differences in demographics? Have you thought about what some unintended consequences of implementing strict gun control in the United States could be? I sincerely doubt it, or you would not say what you have said. If you truly are "for science" then you should understand that things are not nearly as simple as your political ideology dictates. You need to go beyond the simple, obvious correlation and try to look at all of the variables. And even if it were demonstrated to be the case that the higher rates of gun homicides are directly attributable to lax gun policies in the United States, I would still not be in favor of severely restricting gun ownership. And don't be so presumptuous to assume that this makes me any less a "hacker". It just means that I have beliefs and morals that are not derived directly from science and numbers. Why? If we should let science exclusively dictate our political policies, then we should outlaw drinking. And smoking. And driving. These all lead to a large number of deaths. We should also implement a government controlled diet throughout the entire populace to reduce the rates of obesity and malnutrition. We should also have a computer program which determines the jobs and wages of everyone in the United States so that we maximize productivity and minimize poverty. Would that be your utopia?

coldtea 13y ago

"""If you ask a psychologist, he or she may tell you that the powerful are simply too busy. They don't have the time to fully attend to their less powerful counterparts.""" No real psychologist will tell you that. Not even the worse case of status-quo apologist psychologist.

X4 13y ago
So, what would they say?
- coldtea 13y ago
  They would explain it in terms of personality traits, past history, sociopathic behavior, reward systems and tons of other insights etc. There are lots of studies in power relations, and I've never seen the lack of empathy exhibited by some powerful people explained away as "they are busy".
  - X4 13y ago
    That sir, is a generalization used to raise the importance of the article. I skip that. What you say is a relative explanation of the causes, but not showing evidence of a definitive neurological trigger, which they claim to have discovered as responsible. This is also one reason why many people I know, don't take psychology serious, because it lacks on the neurological background and tries to explain things that 'could, would, should' happen in cases like 'a,b or c' without giving a definitive answer. This leaves the asking person in a uncertain and unsatisfied state. definitely. There are other psychologists who explain things logically and simple, that convinces much more people and gives them more insight into the 'why's' rather than squishy explanations of the 'what's'.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      >This is also one reason why many people I know, don't take psychology serious, because it lacks on the neurological background and tries to explain things that 'could, would, should' happen in cases like 'a,b or c' without giving a definitive answer. That's exactly the reason why I take it seriously. Because it considers many factors, and the multiple facets and interactions between a person and other persons and/or surroundings, and understands that human psychology does not work like some antiquated naive reductionist machinery. The "definitive answers" on this front ("it's gene X that makes you behave Y, it's that substance in the brain that makes you violent", etc), are for people who believe in silver bullets and one-size-fits-all answers. IMHO they reek of pseudo-science, mixing cause and effect, correlation and causation and working at the wrong level of abstraction.

btilly 13y ago

This does not surprise. Research has repeatedly found that even momentary success boosts testosterone, and we know the effects that has on behavior, including a loss of empathy. And vice versa for failure dropping testosterone. See http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/200905/the-testosterone-curse-part-2 http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/20090... for a basic overview of the effects of testosterone. This fits evolutionary "just so" stories very well. Males in pair bonding species pursue a mix of alpha (impregnate lots of females) and beta (trade child care for access to one female) strategies. A successful male should become more willing to go for alpha behaviors. A successful alpha strategy requires not minding the real negative consequences of your behavior on others. Conversely beta strategies are going to fail hard if you're not deeply aware of the feelings of those around you. Which is precisely what testosterone does.

X4 13y ago

Thank you! That was a very useful source for my studies.

loceng 13y ago

"When Power Goes To Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart " This is also called not being grounded - though it doesn't necessarily mean you don't use logic to dictate your behaviour, though heart is an easier guide at times.