In this session we conclude our discussion of Robert Sapolsky’s book. Please submit your comment on this entry by Tuesday at 6pm.
Please also come to class with a ranking of 2-3 books out of which you will present one during Student Presentations in Week 10 and Finals Week. See the suggested books on the course website for ideas. Read through the list completely before you make your selections.
Also this week, check your schedule for Finals Week, so we can discuss the optimal evening for our Student Presentations II session.
SymSys 203 
Sapolsky talks about empathy and compassion in the context of socioeconomics. He says that “the wealthier people are, the less empathy they report for people in distress and the less compassionately they act” (534). Additionally, “wealthier people are less adept at recognizing other people’s emotions and in experimental settings are greedier and more likely to cheat or steal” (534). He offers experimental evidence where wealthier people are more likely to take more candy and also less likely to let pedestrians pass at crosswalks.
Additional research corroborates what Sapolsky talks about. Researchers have shown that people with college degrees are worse at correctly identifying emotions than those who just have a high school degree. Those of a lower SES are also more likely to accurately judge a person’s emotions during an interaction. It seems that the reason for this is that people of lower SES have to ask for help from others more, making them highly attuned to emotional cues. Being better at perceiving these social and emotional cues helps those in a lower SES live a better life. [1]
Sapolsky also hints that the fact that the wealthy are less empathetic and compassionate is not necessarily rigid. He notes that by priming people to feel wealthier or poorer, you can change how much candy the person might take (534). Outside of candy based experiments, the same sort of priming also produces similar effects when testing for empathetic accuracy.1
By noting that capacity for empathy and compassion amongst the rich and poor are flexible, Sapolsky doesn’t allow edge cases to undermine his argument, making it more sound. For ex., Bill Gates, one of the wealthiest men alive is also widely considered one of the most empathetic and compassionate due to the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
[1] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/you_cant_buy_empathy
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As “the biology of [behavior] […] is […] multifactorial” (602), we rely on affect and cognition to make our decisions. The Western tradition’s reliance on reason leads people to try to rationalize their decisions, but sometimes this can lead them morally astray: “More of the world’s misery arises from people who […] oppose that horrible act…but cite some particular circumstances that should make them exceptions. The road to hell is paved by rationalization” (674). Another example of when we might not want to let reason dominate: is it better to “keep empathy at bay,” as many people in careers of service are trained to do? (546). While I can follow the reasoning of Sapolsky’s arguments that people who are more highly distressed by seeing the suffering of others are more likely to be paralyzed by that pain or look the other way out of discomfort, I disagree that the answer is to detach yourself fully. I can see trying to detach the feelings so that you do not suffer empathy burnout, but I think there is a fine line between detaching in the name of doing good, and still feeling compelled to put yourself in tough situations where you work to meet others’ needs when you do not feel compelled to do so out of feeling their pain and thus wanting to reduce it. For example, in choosing careers after college, the people who do not feel as much empathy for people in need may choose to take high-paying jobs and amass fortune for themselves and their families, while the people who have more empathy for people in need are motivated to look for public service jobs. In that context, these artificial lab-based experiments may have different outcomes than what happens in the world.
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How can neuroscientific findings be incorporated into judicial proceedings? Sapolsky cites continua on which the criminal justice system draws lines. Sapolsky discusses IQ, age, and frontal cortex damage. He tells that “the IQ cutoff for someone to… be executed” is 70, though there exists a debate on whether it should be based on an average or single score (582). He reports that individuals cannot be executed “for… crime(s) committed before… eighteen” but rejects the claim “that something neurobiologically magical happens on… eighteenth birthday(s)” (589-590). He argues that “if someone had their entire frontal cortex destroyed, you probably shouldn’t hold them responsible for their actions,” but asks where along the continuum the line should be drawn (591). However, Sapolsky does not take a stance on where the lines should be drawn.
Given Behave’s thesis—that the biology of behavior is “multifactorial” (602)—, it may be tempting to reject generalized cutoffs in judicial considerations. Sapolsky’s critique of “categorical thinking” (6) may inspire the position that the effects of IQ, age, and frontal cortex damage on behavior cannot be considered uniformly because biology’s effect on behavior is multifaceted and average outcomes do not reflect individual circumstance. I accept these critiques and recognize that lines are often randomly drawn based on non-scientific cultural contexts. Nevertheless, I believe discontinuities must be defined in order to determine how evidence will be admitted in courts. With a population of 330-million, norms of interpretation for biological evidence likely differ nationally. Therefore, in order to avoid inconsistent legal treatment, it should not be left to judges’ discretion to determine at what point IQ, age, and frontal cortex damage should lessen punishment. I prefer consistently applied arbitrary cutoffs to inconsistently admitted evidence. Cutoffs along continua, though arbitrary, are necessary: without them, treatment under the law may itself become arbitrary.
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In Chapter Sixteen of Behave, Sapolsky discusses aspects of neuroscience in relation to the criminal justice system. He examines historical perspectives of justice, drawing on ideas from the witch trials in the 1500s (583). He discusses the “liberal reform of the witch justice system” by one physician who discovered that older women couldn’t produce tears as easily and pass one of the legal standards (584). He relates these historical perspectives to our present day knowledge of biology in relation to decision making. Sapolsky states, “we’re only a first few baby steps into understanding any of this, so few that it leaves huge, unexplained gaps that perfectly smart people fill in with a homunculus” (607). It is shown how only in very recent years have we begun to discover these brain and behavior connections (604). Knowing that there are guaranteed future discoveries involving the brain/behavior connection and free will, should we begin to reform the criminal justice system in a way that points towards that progress? There is so much that is unknown involving this connection and I wonder if it would be more useful to further the neuroscience research to have a more concrete understanding of the brain, or if the neuroscience and the criminal justice system should be co-evolving. Just like in the evolution of how seizures were explained, whether it was deemed an infectious disease or caused by immoral behavior, explanations in behavior has this same power to grow and show more causality (606). Currently, due to the “multifactorial” nature of behavior, I don’t think there is enough solid evidence to assign causality to an action in a way that could be systematically instituted within the criminal justice system. It is crucial to continue the research of the brain in order to motivate progress within the justice system.
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In concluding Behave, Sapolsky draws two large claims: with respect to neuroscience and criminal justice, he posits that, “… those people in the future will consider us and think, ‘My God, the things they didn’t know then. The harm that they did.’” (608). And with respect to humanity and our ongoing conflicts that they will, “… eventually look back at our current hatreds and find them mysterious” (668).
In comparing and contrasting these two large points, Sapolsky goes further in his epilogue. Acknowledging that “it’s complicated” (674), he calls upon those in the positions to read his book that we are in the point of privilege to try to make things better, as Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, and John Newton, were able to do, in their own unique ways.
Then where does this begin? What is the first step towards making a difference? While not everyone will make a kind of marked difference on the world, and the start is certainly different for every person, it also starts well before a person’s prominence becomes known – Mandela became involved in the African National Congress Youth League[1], and Parks worked for the NAACP[2]. For the average person having finished this book, what does this equate to?
Would Sapolsky say simply incorporating and, where appropriate, actively resisting aspects of Behave into life, such as “Us/Them-ing”, genetic influence on behavior (and lack thereof), and the ever-important aspect of context is enough? Or must we go further?
John Newton, as seemingly Sapolsky’s favorite, perhaps contains the answer. Remaining a self-fulfilling and by all means normal man, he is also able to still “slowly lurch his way toward being a moral titan” (661). In the end, it may just be the ability to do the right thing, once you’ve figured out what that is (478).
[1] https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/african-national-congress-youth-league-ancyl-timeline-1944-2011
[2] https://www.nps.gov/features/malu/feat0002/wof/rosa_parks.htm
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(Kindle edition)
The image [1] is stereotypical in advertisements for donations against food shortage. The imagery of showing a poignant, poor, and hungry child is meant to elicit empathy. The book, especially chapter 14, however, suggests that the imagery may not elicit the intended prosocial behavior.
In page 532, he says “recall Susans Fiske’s work showing how extreme out-group members such as the homeless of addicts are processed differently in the frontal cortex than other people” (call back to 412). He later mentions the Keltner study (533) that states “the wealthier people are, the less empathy they report for people in distress and the less compassionately they act.” This also applies to people who are primed about the social economic status difference. The donation advertisements tend to portray the receiver as low warmth and low competence in the Fiske category similar to the homeless. It also highlights the social economic differences to potential donors. This makes the receivers more “Them” than “Us” and reduces the amount of prosocial behavior from the potential donors.
The second problem is that the image emphasizes the suffering of the children. This tactic of creating empathy will only work on people who are able to distance themselves from other’s sufferings. In page (544), “Empathetic states are most likely to produce compassionate acts when we manage a detached distance”. This means a certain population will be excluded from potential donors. (This ties back to chapter 6 where adolescents are good at feeling the pain of others but do not act due to feeling too much pain.)
As a result, I hypothesize that we can increase the number of donations by making the receivers appear more relatable or more ‘Us’, and have decreased emphasis on negative emotion.
[1] https://assets.change.org/photos/9/lr/fw/vQlRFWKkyMFBRqc-800×450-noPad.jpg?1521722815
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Sapolsky closes Behave by proclaiming that “you don’t have to choose between being scientific and being compassionate” (675). He also suggests we may not even have a choice. Regarding free will, Sapolsky criticizes the notion that our decisions are separable from our biology. He rejects the distinction between “‘causation’ and ‘compulsion’” (593), saying it is inconsistent to claim some of our actions result from free decision-making and others are biological reactions outside of our control. He notes that if you “activate or inactivate a part of the cortex (you) can change someone’s moral decision making, decisions about punishment… and empathy. That’s causality” (599). Even the areas where we feel “in control” are easily manipulated and heavily dependent upon our brains.
So, what does this tell us about compassion?
It seems that we can diagnose who is likely to be compassionate with biological and cultural knowledge. Biologically, “the prosocial ones are those whose heart rates decrease; they can hear the sound of someone else’s need instead of the distressed pounding in their own chest” (543). These people see helping others as “a simple, detached, self-evident imperative” (544). Socially, Sapolsky notes doing good “always contains some element of self-interest” (547), with rewards including interpersonal, reputational, and religious benefit.
If acting compassionately is tied to self-interest, why is it that “on average, the wealthier people are, the less empathy they report for people in distress and the less compassionately they act” (534)? Self-interest can generate apathy if wealth is equated with success. But if reputation or religion is defined as success, we might see more compassion. Sapolsky mentions religion as crucial to cooperation (623), but few religions are universal to even one country and religiosity overall is decreasing. How might we otherwise shift culture so that acting compassionately is acting in self-interest?
[299]
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In discussing how mitigated free will can aid in developing legal frameworks in our society, Sapolsky advocates for a criminal justice system with “utterly different underpinnings (581).” In order to advocate for the adoption of new legal frameworks, Sapolsky cites the imprisonment of innocent civilians (581), our growing acceptance of “It’s not him. It’s his disease (585)” thinking, our growing acceptance that mental illness can be a “mitigating circumstance (587),” and that ultimately “hardly anyone believes we have conscious control of our behavior (585).” However, I believe that Sapolsky’s strongest evidence in support of a renewed legal systems stems from illustrations of how flawed understandings of biology throughout history have led to flawed judgements of individuals.
Sapolsky cites “the three legal standards for deciding if someone is guilty of witchcraft (583),” the lessening of criminal sentences due to the “warrior gene variant of MAO-A (253),” and the violent aftermath of Mallus Maleficarum (606) as illustrations of how an improved understanding of biology can lead us to directly question our past judgements. These examples demonstrate that without the “reflecting disciplinary humility of archeologists (608)” we are not well-suited to apply advances in our understanding of the biology of behavior into legal frameworks.
Sapolsky’s current understanding of the “multifactorial (602)” biology of behavior changes the way we view behavior in a legal framework because it eliminates the reductionism that would allow judgement on the basis of specific biological traits, without consideration of the interaction of factors. Furthermore, Sapolsky’s viewpoint is strengthen by his acceptance that, despite the wealth of biological knowledge he has shared with us, future research may undo many of the accepted conclusions that govern biological thinking about human behavior and force us to reconsider our approach to applying biological understanding in a legal context.
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In the final chapters of Behave, Sapolsky dives deeper into the topic of empathy, focusing on the contextual and cognitive relationship that takes place during decision making. Sapolsky is skeptical of the typical idea of “empathy,” defined as our ability to feel the same as another person by “taking his perspective, walking in his shoes” (522). Instead, Sapolsky comes to advocate for the version of sympathy that he defines as an emotionally distanced feeling for someone rather than feeling as they do. In a nutshell, we are more inclined to behave prosocially if we work to feel compassion for the person rather than put ourselves in their position because at the end of the day, our good acts are not truly altruistic. When we feel empathy, we engage the anterior cingulate cortex, which “is about self-interest, with caring about that other person in pain as an add-on” (531). On that same vein, the same region of the brain is activated when we make Us vs. Them distinctions. An issue arises here as the Us/Them dichotomy heavily influences who we decide to help. We are inclined to feel much less empathy for people who are not in our “Us” group.
Empathy leads to biases, especially seen in the criminal justice system. In an interview with Paul Bloom, author of “Against Empathy,” he explains how victim statements often determine sentencing. What then, if the victim is an articulate, attractive white woman or if she is a sullen, African-American man? It becomes a question of how much does one feel for the victim – an unfair metric to make a ruling.
On a different topic, one thing I found interesting and potentially problematic that Sapolsky wrote was how doing the right thing is “an act of implicit automaticity, the product of a childhood in which doing the right thing was ingrained as an automatic, moral imperative, light-years away from the frontal cortex calculating costs and benefits” (542). If this is the case, how are people who had difficult abusive childhoods able to learn to commit good prosocial acts? Is it all dependent on if you were lucky with kind, moral parents?
Article: The case against empathy
https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/1/19/14266230/empathy-morality-ethics-psychology-compassion-paul-bloom
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My comment this week will specifically address Sapolsky’s claim, first surfaced in Chapter 6, on whether “the science encapsulated in this book should transform every nook and cranny of the criminal justice system” (170), a claim he elaborates on for much of Chapter 16. I will argue that while significant, Sapolsky’s framework need not result in a complete and total transformation of the way justice is dealt in our society.
First we examine his conclusions on justice and punishment. Let us assume for the sake of argument that Sapolsky’s arguments on the nature of determinism and free will are cogent and true. An absence of free will might be taken to completely undermine the idea of imprisoning criminals, but Sapolsky shirks from this claim, instead positing that “precluding free will precludes punishment being an end in and of itself” (609). And although punishment is often met by an accompanying dopamine rush in humans, Sapolsky thinks we should culturally un-learn this conditioned tendency (651-652) and use punishment past imprisonment only “in an instrumental fashion, to acutely shape behavior” (610). Later he walks back this claim slightly, allowing that punishment can occasionally serve as an effective deterrent for the general public (611). Finally, he hopes that our new knowledge of brains and determinism causes “words like ‘evil’ and ‘soul’” to become irrelevant in our society (611).
Taken in totality, his arguments do not appear to merit a complete transformation of the criminal justice system. Sapolsky concedes that traditional punishment can serve as an important tool in the process of rehabilitation, a tool that not only reconditions a “guilty” individual but also conditions society at large by sending the signal that similar crimes will be met with a similar punishment. Beyond better rehabilitation, Sapolsky appears to be arguing that rather that change the institutions of the justice system, we must simply reframe them– as something like giant B.F. Skinners, shaping society through conditioning to do some things and avoid others.
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(Note: Kindle copy of Behave, paperback copy of How emotions are made)
Back in Sapolsky’s book, he mentions how he thinks that “a term like ‘forgiveness’ and other related to criminal justice (e.g. “evil,” “soul,” “volition,” and blame) are incompatible with science and should be discarded.” (Sapolsky 79). He later on gives a historical anecdote about witch hunting (605) to suggest that these terms will be later replaced with more scientific explanations.
The words mentioned by Sapolsky are similar to how emotions are described in Barrett’s book. She discusses throughout in chapter 1 how there is no clear biological markers for particular emotions whether facial (experiment in page 10), or brain region (32). In chapter 2, she describes how emotions are socially constructed boundaries as shown in the experiments with the Himba tribe (48). In chapter 5, she describes how this the concepts are formed through the anecdote of her daughter learning the word ‘anger’ (101).
A question that arises from both readings is whether emotions will become replaced by more biological concepts the way Sapolsky did with moral terms? Will the our categorization of emotion change from how it is?
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(Note: Kindle copy of Behave, paperback copy of How emotions are made)
Back in Sapolsky’s book, he mentions how he thinks that “a term like ‘forgiveness’ and other related to criminal justice (e.g. “evil,” “soul,” “volition,” and blame) are incompatible with science and should be discarded.” (Sapolsky 79). He lateron gives a historical anecdote about witch hunting (605) to suggest that these terms will be later replaced with more scientific explanations.
The words mentioned by Sapolsky are similar to how emotions are described in Barrett’s book. She discusses throughout in chapter 1 how there is no clear biological markers for particular emotions whether facial (experiment on page 10), or brain region (32). In chapter 2, she describes how emotions are socially constructed boundaries as shown in the experiments with the Himba tribe (48). In chapter 5, she describes how the concepts are formed through the anecdote of her daughter learning the word ‘anger’ (101).
A question that arises from both readings is whether emotions will become replaced by more biological concepts the way Sapolsky did with moral terms? Will our categorization of emotion change from how it is?
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