Now Ask Them About Coercive Interrogation

From the Times comes this account of the male lust for vengeance:

When Bad People Are Punished, Men Smile (but Women Don't)

 

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

 

ROME, Jan. 18 - In "Don Juan" Lord Byron wrote, "Sweet is revenge - especially to women." But a study released Wednesday, bolstered by magnetic resonance imaging, suggests that men may be the more natural avengers.

In the study, when male subjects witnessed people they perceived as bad guys being zapped by a mild electrical shock, their M.R.I. scans lit up in primitive brain areas associated with reward. Their brains' empathy centers remained dull.

Women watching the punishment, in contrast, showed no response in centers associated with pleasure. Even though they also said they did not like the bad guys, their empathy centers still quietly glowed.

The study seems to show for the first time in physical terms what many people probably assume they already know: that women are generally more empathetic than men, and that men take great pleasure in seeing revenge exacted.

 

Well may you ask - just what did the 'bad guys" do to deserve this?

Dr. Singer's team was simply trying to see if the study subjects' degree of empathy correlated with how much they liked or disliked the person being punished. They had not set out to look into sex differences.

To cultivate personal likes and dislikes in their 32 volunteers, they asked them to play an elaborate money strategy game, where both members of a pair would profit if both behaved cooperatively. The ranks of volunteers were infiltrated by actors told to play selfishly.

Volunteers came quickly to "very much like" the partners who were cooperative, while disliking those who hoarded rewards, Dr. Stephan said.

Effectively conditioned to like and dislike their game-playing partners, the 32 subjects were placed in scanners and asked to watch the various partners receive electrical shocks.

On scans, both men and women seemed to feel the pain of partners they liked. But the real surprise came during scans when the subjects viewed the partners they disliked being shocked. "When women saw the shock, they still had an empathetic response, even though it was reduced," Dr. Stephan said. "The men had none at all."

Furthermore, researchers found that the brain's pleasure centers lit up in males when just punishment was meted out.

"Just punishment"?  I expect I know what they mean, but really - it's a game.

Comments

[kim]

Ah now I understand why I cook better when I empathize with something someone enjoyed killing or gathering.
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[kim]

Interesting though this is, they are examining primitive areas, which have little to do with the fantastic constructions of meaning placed on them both by the researchers and the public.
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[kim]

And, despite the words, the vengeance in Giovanni is from within a male mind.
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[sbw]

Did the researchers screen to identify Republicans and Democrats?

[cathyf]

While the article did not mention it at all, it also adds some support to the notion that autism is somehow a kind of "hyper-maleness". Autism is fundamentally a deficit in empathy, and if two X chromasomes somehow give a person some other pathway to empathy, then the same thing that results in autism in men will not result in autism in women. (Approximately 80% of all autistics are male.)

cathy :-)

[kim]

This was competition for expensive toys. Since when have women sought vengeance over play money? This was a predictable finding, probably found for that reason.
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[Syl]

This was competition for expensive toys

Exactly.

Electric shock, somehow, seems like a harsh punishment for not being nice. I'd empathize too.

[Sue]

OT...new audio of bin Laden...

[richard mcenroe]

As Clive James once wrote: "What the scientists learned about the (test) cats was nothing compared to what the cats learned about the scientists..."

[kim]

I wonder just exactly what the speaker meant by a truce that would be 'fair and long-term'. I wonder if it is just possible that bin Laden is a greater political genius than he has been heretofore credited.
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[Sue]

Makes you consider that we are winning the WOT, if the enemy is offering a truce. Do we accept? My take: Hell, no. We stomp harder.

[Dwilkers]

There was a great article in Scientific American along these lines a couple months ago, The Neurobiology of the Self.

Unfortunately they have it behind a subscriber wall. A lot of progress is being made with determining what regions of the brain affect different feelings and emotional responses.

They had an example of a guy that suffers a brain injury that results in total amnesia. He can't even remember his name, yet when asked to identify whether he has a long list of personality traits his results are the same as people that know him says he would have. In other words, the sense of self, his knowledge of who he was as a "being", was stored in a different part of the brain than his conscious memories of who he was.

Fascinating stuff. I don't find it difficult to imagine that women might have different responses to certain stimuli than men. We are substantially different in significant ways.

[Joe Sixpack]

Every time I see Pelosi, Reid, Hillary or Dean make a speech, the pleasure center of my brain lights up like a Christmas tree! (and yes, it is from my enjoyment in watching them inflicting pain on their oblivious selfs).

[cathyf]

You'd better hide, Dwilkers. Look what happened to Larry Summers...

cathy :-)

[kim]

All men are created equal is a falsehood foisted upon the gullible. We are equal before the law. Period.

And I think that if bin Laden wants a truce, he should get it. There is no real need for this conflict he has invented. The Saudis are capable of keeping the Wahabbis in the tents. Madmen in Iran are the problem, now.
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[kim]

Sans bin Laden rhetoric, Pakistani madrassahs shrivel, and they're the next big problem.
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[Gary Maxwell]

News Flash

Bin Laden offers truce! Pelosi and Murtha in a mad scramble to the first available microphone to accept on behalf of the Democrats. (Of course then they went back to picking cotton on the House "plantation").

/sarcasm off

[maryrose]

{ of course then they went back to picking cotton on the House"plantation" "
This comment gave me my first really hard laugh of the day. Thank you.

[trentk269]

Does this experiment explain why the Cindy Sheehans of the world are female, instead of male?

[topsecretk9]

Gary, your comment made me think of this.

(not a sneaky Larry Johnson link, I promise)

[Gary Maxwell]

No doubt the nutters are wondering how they can get the discussion back to no warrants and bashing Walmart. I have even read a moonbat who seriously thought that Bin Laden was working in cahoots with the White House. Right before the 2004 election and now right before a hearing on FISA. How can you smooth out your karma when Bin Laden keeps sending in signals reminding the American people that the enemy thinks he is in a war, even if our lefties do not. Thanks for not making me read LJ too, Top Doggie.

[topsecretk9]

Gary

tonight, in the face of bin ladens' peace offerings, they are all in a twitter that the W.Post pulled down their blog sites because of the lefts crusade to spam with their usual brand of lovely, mature, cohesive, profanity laced criticisms!

Head. In. The. Sand.

[Gary Maxwell]

Head buried somewhere. Exact location subject to some dispute.

[topsecretk9]

whoops.

scratch that. Matthew's compared Osama to Michael Moore. New a-twitter.

I actually agree with their point, at least I think bin laden in uncomparable and I'm glad to see they acknowledge what a monster bin laden is.

Now, if Matthew's had compared Moore to a "big, fat swine", I'd might be cool with that.

[clarice]

Matthews is kind of a stream of unconsciousness tv host, isn't he? But eat your heart out, for the kind of crap he does he makes enough to live high on the hog here and in fancy new digs on Martha's Vineyard where he can shmooze with other rich empty suits about how the nasty Republicans are just for tax cuts for the rich.

[Gary Maxwell]

Careful about hanging out at that Crooks and Liars site TS9. That stuff is toxic except in very small doses and even then be sure to delouse upon exiting.

[Daddy]

Seems to me this whole theory can be easily proven by conducting a thorough scientific interview with the individuals in the following 2 control groups:
(A) All the free males who go into female prisons and try to marry incarcerated female mass murderers (you know, the boy equivalents of those gals who try to marry the Zodiac killer etc), and;
(B) All females who laugh their butts off watching Moe slap Curly on 3 Stooges Episodes.
And then we...What's that you say? There's no actual humans in either of those 2 control groups? Darn it all, another outstanding theory of mine up in smoke.

[kim]

Easy answer, historically boys won the punishment sessions. Why do you think the girls had to find the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It's a step up the ethical ladder.
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[kim]

It was necessary for the development of such a powerful survival tool as culture to develop an ethic that repudiates 'Might makes Right'. For that we thank the very able distaff.
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[ronnie schreiber]

I'm not sure who said it, perhaps Ann Althouse, but this is another example of how politically correct science works. If differences between men and women cannot be denied, they must be portrayed in a way that makes women look normal and men as abberant, or similarly women as morally superior and men as moral cretins.

[kim]

Interesting point, but why is it that women got blamed for the fall from innocence, and why, domestically are they the umpires? My kids, when they first saw a baseball game, called the umpires, Mommas.
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[note]

"I'm not sure who said it, perhaps Ann Althouse, but this is another example of how politically correct science works. If differences between men and women cannot be denied, they must be portrayed in a way that makes women look normal and men as abberant, or similarly women as morally superior and men as moral cretins."

Differences between men and women cannot be denied.

[kim]

'All men are created equal' is manifest foolishness. The point is that we are all equal before the law.
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[notebook]

This problem has existed hundreds of years.
And I do not think it will be changed in a short time without the efforts of the whole
world.