Saturday, July 7, 2012

Quotes: Emotional irrationality

“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.”

Isaac Newton

Friday, July 6, 2012

I feel you

This Scientific American article discusses the link between mirror neurons, which allow us to vicarious experience particular sensations like feeling pain while watching someone hit their finger with a hammer, and empathy -- the ability to vicariously experience someone's emotional state.

First the sensory part:


When a friend hits her thumb with a hammer, you don't have to put much effort into imagining how this feels. You know it immediately. You will probably tense up, your "Ouch!" may arise even quicker than your friend's, and chances are that you will feel a little pain yourself. Of course, you will then thoughtfully offer consolation and bandages, but your initial reaction seems just about automatic. Why?

Neuroscience now offers you an answer: A recent line of research has demonstrated that seeing other people being touched activates primary sensory areas of your brain, much like experiencing the same touch yourself would do. What these findings suggest is beautiful in its simplicity—that you literally "feel with" others.


The comparison with the emotions part:

Despite the lack of a universally agreed-upon definition of empathy, the mechanisms of sharing and understanding another’s experience have always been of scientific and public interest—and particularly so since the introduction of “mirror neurons.” This important discovery was made two decades ago by  Giacomo Rizzolatti and his co-workers at the University of Parma, who were studying motor neuron properties in macaque monkeys. To compensate for the tedious electrophysiological recordings required, the monkey was occasionally given food rewards. During these incidental actions something unexpected happened: When the monkey, remaining perfectly still, saw the food being grasped by an experimenter in a specific way, some of its motor neurons discharged. Remarkably, these neurons normally fired when the monkey itself grasped the food in this way. It was as if the monkey’s brain was directly mirroring the actions it observed. This “neural resonance,” which was later also demonstrated in humans, suggested the existence of a special type of "mirror" neurons that help us understand other people’s actions.

The interesting part is that they seem to be related in that people who self report high empathy also show stronger mirror neuron activity:

Michael Schaefer and his colleagues also scanned their participants’ brains while they were watching movie clips of touches applied to human hands. Consistent with earlier results, participants’ primary somatosensory cortex (the brain’s representation of the body surface) responded vicariously to the observation of touch. However, participants also completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), a paper-and-pencil test measuring four specific dimensions of our ability to empathize with others. And guess what? The higher participants scored on the “Perspective taking” subscale of the IRI, the stronger their primary somatosensory cortex reacted to observed touch. These data suggest that the brain’s mirroring responses are in fact associated with personal empathic ability. How much you empathize with other people seems to reflect how strongly your brain—your primary somatosensory cortex—“feels with” them when you see them being touched.

It's interesting how little we understand the concept of empathy, including what role our physical sensations have in the process (and perhaps in feeling our own emotions?).  The whole thing sort of reminds me of studying music and honing my skill of audiation, which is the process of imagining (or basically hearing) pitches in one's head.  You can try it too -- sing a song to yourself without making a sound and you are audiating.  What I noticed about myself is that there is a physical connection with my audiating.  Specifically, when I audiate, my vocal chords, throat, and some muscles in my mouth and face adjust as if I were about to sing or hum the pitch I'm imagining.  When I think of a high pitch, my eyebrows and soft palate go up.  For a low note, my throat expands.

I know that I do other small physical manipulations like this to affect my mental state, for instance purposefully yawning to make myself more tired or making my face slack like I am already asleep to fall asleep more quickly.  I also do this with emotions, like smiling to be happy.  Sometimes I try them in response to a curiosity of other people's emotions.  But just like how I can't seem to imagine a pitch without being able to sing it (e.g. if it is out of my singing range), I can't seem to imagine an emotion without having experienced it once myself.  Do all forms of empathy have this limitation?   

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Ramzan Kadyrov

A reader discusses this photo of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov:

In regards to your recent post "Say it loud I'm S and I'm proud" I couldn't help remembering a picture I found of current Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov who is widely known to be a sadistic and dangeous s.o.b., many also say he is extremely charming, fits the profile of a sociopath. I attached a picture of him that needs no further description. Look at it carefully, notice the smirk and the t-shirt. Made me laugh, thinking he is proud of his reputation, and how you put it "I'm S and I'm proud!".

If you're going to write about Kadyrov, do a quick search on him, you'll find plenty of very interesting information. I remembered the charming part from an interview with him that I read somewhere, can't remember which magazine I read it in though, but the reporter specifically used the word charming when describing him, it stuck in my head. The reporter was questioning how could such a well mannered and charming man be considered such a ruthless dictator. He also likes paying celebrities to party with him, he enjoys being seen with famous or important people, it gives a boost to his fragile ego I guess. Also plenty of info on the torture he applies to his political enemies including the now infamous boiling alive of some of his opponents and some rather interesting speculation of him having a prison in which he enjoys making his prisoners watch him while he has sex. Interesting paralel between him and Saddam Hussein, which is why I got interested in Kadyrov in the first place. While both privately more or less neutral towards religion, in public they made efforts to appear devout muslims. Saddam especially in the later part of his rule, shaped his image after Salah ad Din (popularly known as Saladin), which was a brilliant military commander, devout muslim and national hero of Iraq and the arab world. Even statues or artistic representations pertaining to Saddam's cult of personality were modeled after ancient representations of Saladin. I was wondering if it was just simple politics or the power they held made them see themselves as divine or under divine protection. After the first Gulf war, even though the coalition defeated Saddam and drove him out of Kuweit, he interpreted it as a divine victory, added God is Great to the Iraqi flag, and started presenting himself as a very devout man.

This sort of reminds of me of a NY Times article I read recently of a Russian man who was barred from attending the memorial service of a 2002 airplane crash because he killed the air traffic controller whom he blamed for the murder of his family:

“The German authorities apparently do not want to let me attend the mourning ceremony,” Mr. Kaloyev told the Interfax news agency in a telephone interview. “They think for some reason that my presence there is unnecessary, although all my family perished in the plane crash.”

In the nighttime accident on July 2, 2002, a Bashkirian Airlines Tupolev passenger jet filled with children headed for a vacation collided with a DHL Boeing 757 cargo airplane, killing 71 people, including 52 children.
***
The only controller on duty at the time, Peter Nielsen, a Danish citizen, had instructed the Russian jet to descend, after noticing that the planes were on a collision course.

Partly because radar data was delayed, owing to technical repairs taking place at the time, and because a colleague was sleeping, Mr. Nielsen was slow in delivering the instruction to descend to the Russian pilots.

But the onboard collision-avoidance systems on the planes issued contradictory instructions, telling the Russian pilots of the passenger plane to ascend, while instructing the DHL jet to descend. The Russian pilots followed the air traffic controller’s advice and the two descending planes collided.

The Boeing’s tail fin severed the Russian fuselage, and both aircraft crashed, scattering debris and bodies over the surrounding countryside.

A German investigation partly blamed Skyguide for the collision.

After learning this, Mr. Kaloyev, an architect said to be overwhelmed with grief, flew to Switzerland in 2004, found Mr. Nielsen’s house and stabbed him to death in a garden. Mr. Nielsen’s wife and three children were home at the time. Mr. Nielsen was 36.

After the killing, Swiss police detained Mr. Kaloyev at a nearby hotel. A court sentenced him to the eight years in prison for murder in 2005, but the authorities released him after he had served two years of the sentence.

To the annoyance of the Swiss, he was welcomed back to his native region of North Ossetia as a hero; the region has a deep tradition of tolerating vendettas.

The story reminded me of this post about how certain societies really are more sociopathic seeming than others.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Interruption

A follow up from yesterday's posts, another piece of power behavior we can learn from our friend Oliver North -- interruption.


One source of power in every interaction is interruption. Those with power interrupt, those with less power get interrupted. In conversation, interrupting others, although not polite, can indicate power and be an effective power move, something noted by scholars in a field called conversation analysis. Men interrupt others more frequently than women, and doctors seldom listen to their patients for very long without interrupting. In each instance, patterns of conversation reinforce differences in power and status derived from other sources such as general social expectations and expert authority.

Watching the Oliver North and Donald Kennedy hearings illustrates this phenomenon. North on one occasion stops an interrogator’s anticipated interruption by holding up his finger and saying, “Let me finish.” He refuses to be interrupted and in several other instances talks over the lawyers and legislators questioning him. By contrast, at one point Donald Kennedy requests permission to continue speaking, asking, “Can I continue?” and thanks the congressman when permission is granted.

I can't stand it when people ask "can I continue?"  They are trying to shame the other person out of interrupting them.  Like most attempts to take the moral high ground, though, I find that it just comes off as whiny and ineffectual.  It's victim behavior.  Its message, at its core, is "I have been wronged, you have wronged me."  But it's very difficult to make victimization work for you as a power move.  I think most people look at victims and don't think "powerful" but "weak." Especially over something so small as interrupting and especially for a proceeding in which the ostensible aim is the truth, the overall effect of this type of behavior is to make the person seem overly defensive and like they are trying to hide something.  

I've actually seen a lot of people be taken down in the comments section via this weakness, trying to enforce false rules of engagement on others like good sportsmanship or good grammar or however it is that they think this gentleman's game of warfare should be played.  Courts use a certain degree of formality and adherence to rules, but in the court of public opinion I have found that being overly rigid in following any sort of "rules" just makes you look like you are trying and failing to play a game of smoke and mirrors.  There's a reason why everyone hates lawyers.  

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Oliver North

I have always thought that Oliver North was an interesting character in history, so I was pleased to see him featured in the book "Power" as a positive example:

In November 1986, U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Colonel Oliver North was fired by President Ronald Reagan from his position at the National Security Council for his involvement in the Iran-contra scandal. Iran-contra involved selling weapons, via intermediaries, to Iran and using the funds from these sales to finance the Nicaraguan resistance then trying to overthrow a left-leaning government. After testifying before Congress in the summer of 1987, North was indicted the following year on 16 felony counts, including accepting illegal gratuities, aiding and abetting the obstruction of a congressional inquiry, and destroying documents and evidence. Although he was convicted on three counts, his conviction was overturned on appeal on the basis that jurors had been influenced by the congressional hearings, during which he had been granted immunity for his testimony. During the nationally televised hearings, North admitted that he had shredded documents, lied to Congress, and violated, or at least come exceedingly close to violating, a law prohibiting giving aid to the Nicaraguan resistance.

But Oliver North knew how to act and speak with power. These abilities would produce an amazing effect on his reputation and his subsequent career. North defended himself and his actions by appealing to a higher purpose—protecting American interests, saving American lives, protecting important U.S. intelligence secrets, following the orders of his superiors, and doing what he was told to do as a good Marine lieutenant colonel—in short, being a good soldier. North wore his ribbon-decorated uniform to the hearings, even though he was seldom if ever in uniform at his job at the NSC. He took responsibility for what he did, saying that he was “not embarrassed” about his actions or about appearing to explain them. And he asserted that he had controlled what had occurred, frequently using phrases such as “I told” and “I caused.” This phrasing demonstrated that he was not running away from what he had done. Observers watching people who don’t deny or run away from their actions naturally presume that the perpetrators don’t feel guilty or ashamed, so maybe no one should be too upset. This phrasing also communicated power, that North was in charge rather than a “victim” of circumstance.

Only seven years after this incident, using the celebrity and sympathy that his testimony created, Oliver North ran for the U.S. Senate from Virginia and lost by just 3 percent of the vote to the incumbent, Charles Robb. During that campaign, North raised some $16 million through direct-mail solicitations, making him the top recipient of direct-mail political funds in the United States that year. Today, North, author of several books, is a television commentator on Fox News and a well-paid speaker at both public and private organizations. And even at the time of the hearings, he enjoyed a positive image. The Wall Street Journal asked dozens of senior U.S. executives if they would hire Oliver North. “The majority said they would…. A poll of the general public reflected the bullishness on Col. North…56 percent of those surveyed said they would hire Col. North; 35 percent said they wouldn’t hire him and 9 percent weren’t sure.”1

Donald Kennedy, a biology professor and former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, served as president of Stanford University. Kennedy got caught up in a scandal over indirect costs in the early 1990s. Because it is impossible to associate all the costs of running any organization, for instance, the water and power, police and fire protection, and infrastructure such as libraries, with specific research projects, research grants have an overhead rate that reflects these costs. That rate is then charged to the government for all contracts. In the case of Stanford and other research universities, the claim was that unallowable charges, for instance, for lobbying, liquor, a yacht used by the sailing club, silverware and furniture for the president’s house, and other items, had been included in the cost pools used for calculating the overhead rate.2 After several years of investigation, litigation, and audits, the government found no basis for its claim. Stanford agreed to pay just $1.2 million to the government for overcharges for over 18,000 research grants covering the fiscal years from 1981 to 1992 that involved hundreds of millions of dollars in total funds.3

After the brouhaha broke, Kennedy, like North, appeared before a congressional investigating committee. Donald Kennedy’s performance could not have been more different from North’s. North appeared at the witness stand with just his attorney. Kennedy came with a team that included the head of government contracts from the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, the controller and assistant controller from the university, and the chairman of the board of trustees, James Gaither. This coterie of colleagues conveyed the image that Kennedy could not answer the questions on his own. Using long, convoluted sentences full of subordinate clauses, answering questions indirectly, admitting that he was “embarrassed,” and looking extremely uncomfortable, Kennedy made a weak impression—he looked guilty. He left his position as Stanford president soon thereafter.

The differences between Oliver North’s and Donald Kennedy’s presentations may have had little to do with personality or individual style. Kennedy was not only a distinguished scientist but a successful and effective teacher; he had testified in front of Congress numerous times before, and many people watching his testimony who knew him say he seemed like a different person. He came to the hearings prepared, as did North. What differed was how they chose to present themselves, how they decided to act, and the impression they made. Kennedy wanted to express contrition; North chose to convey incredulity—how could he be questioned?—and some righteous anger. As we will see later in this chapter, expressing anger is usually much more effective than expressing sadness, guilt, or remorse in being seen as powerful.

We choose how we will act and talk, and those decisions are consequential for acquiring and holding on to power.

I think the sociopath has a natural advantage in acting without shame, because we don't react the same way to other people's sense of moral outrage.  Not that sociopaths have the monopoly on shamelessness, but I do think it is one of our more potent weapons in getting away with things and getting what we want.
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