Archetype0ne
Regular Member
- Messages
- 1,715
- Reaction score
- 595
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Albanian
- Y-DNA haplogroup
- L283>Y21878>Y197198
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-06-outgroup-linked-elevated-brain-reward.html
"At a time of deepening political divisions and global conflict, it is crucial for us to understand why people divide each other up into 'us' and 'them' and then show a profound willingness to harm 'them,'" said corresponding author David Chester, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Humanities and Sciences. "Our findings advance this understanding by suggesting that harming outgroup members is a relatively rewarding experience."
They found that participants who were more aggressive against outgroup members (students from a rival university) versus ingroup members (students from their own university) exhibited greater activity in core regions of the brain's reward circuit—the nucleus accumbens and ventromedial prefrontal cortex—while they decided how aggressive to be.
"This finding helps to balance the narrative about the psychological processes that underlie aggression against outgroup members, which typically emphasizes negative emotional states such as anger and fear," Chester said. "This study showed that positive emotions may play a role in motivating intergroup aggression, which suggests many new directions for future research on this topic and informs potential interventions that seek to reduce group conflict."
"These new findings fit nicely with our previous research, which has repeatedly implicated the brain's reward circuitry (i.e., the nucleus accumbens and ventromedial prefrontal cortex) in promoting aggressive acts," he said. "We have advanced this line of investigation by showing that such reward activity during aggression exerts even more of an effect in an intergroup context than in a nongroup context."
The area of the brain implicated in the study is not only associated with reward, it is also involved in other psychological processes such as learning, motivation and identity. While Chester said it is possible that the brain activity was not reflecting the subjective experience of pleasure, decades of brain research suggests that area's core functions are reliably reward-linked to the point where the researchers felt comfortable making the inference, Chester said. More research would be needed to definitely say that reward is the "culprit underlying intergroup conflict," he said.
More information: Emily Lasko et al, Neural Mechanisms of Intergroup Exclusion and Retaliatory Aggression, Social Neuroscience (2022). DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/fj5ht, psyarxiv.com/fj5ht/
I wonder if brain chemistry/anatomy along the politics of intergroup division are partially to blame, for what in my subjective opinion draws unstable people to genetics fora.
"At a time of deepening political divisions and global conflict, it is crucial for us to understand why people divide each other up into 'us' and 'them' and then show a profound willingness to harm 'them,'" said corresponding author David Chester, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Humanities and Sciences. "Our findings advance this understanding by suggesting that harming outgroup members is a relatively rewarding experience."
They found that participants who were more aggressive against outgroup members (students from a rival university) versus ingroup members (students from their own university) exhibited greater activity in core regions of the brain's reward circuit—the nucleus accumbens and ventromedial prefrontal cortex—while they decided how aggressive to be.
"This finding helps to balance the narrative about the psychological processes that underlie aggression against outgroup members, which typically emphasizes negative emotional states such as anger and fear," Chester said. "This study showed that positive emotions may play a role in motivating intergroup aggression, which suggests many new directions for future research on this topic and informs potential interventions that seek to reduce group conflict."
"These new findings fit nicely with our previous research, which has repeatedly implicated the brain's reward circuitry (i.e., the nucleus accumbens and ventromedial prefrontal cortex) in promoting aggressive acts," he said. "We have advanced this line of investigation by showing that such reward activity during aggression exerts even more of an effect in an intergroup context than in a nongroup context."
The area of the brain implicated in the study is not only associated with reward, it is also involved in other psychological processes such as learning, motivation and identity. While Chester said it is possible that the brain activity was not reflecting the subjective experience of pleasure, decades of brain research suggests that area's core functions are reliably reward-linked to the point where the researchers felt comfortable making the inference, Chester said. More research would be needed to definitely say that reward is the "culprit underlying intergroup conflict," he said.
More information: Emily Lasko et al, Neural Mechanisms of Intergroup Exclusion and Retaliatory Aggression, Social Neuroscience (2022). DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/fj5ht, psyarxiv.com/fj5ht/
I wonder if brain chemistry/anatomy along the politics of intergroup division are partially to blame, for what in my subjective opinion draws unstable people to genetics fora.