#34 Why cheating matters and what is the basis of empathy?

The neurology behind empathy

Oct 22, 2021

Saturday, October 23, 2021

We often forget that Facebook is just 17 years old. If it were a person it could drive, but not drink. It could be hyper emotional but incapable of handling them. A spoiled rich brat, always in an argumentative tone. The richest folk in the friend circle. Oh! This reminds me of one of my *ultra* rich friend I had in class 10th. He has changed his name recently. Just saying.

The other day I was having a deep conversation with one of my friend about people cheating. We have had this conversation numerous times and we both agree that it is because people want to present themselves as an epitome of perfection. Omniscient would be a good descriptive word I guess. But still, why? What is the driving force? Why are people afraid to make mistakes and why do they want to be someone who knows everything?

Have you ever used any of the social media platforms? SORRY.

Let me rephrase.

Is there any social media platform that you haven’t used? I know what the answer is

Maybe you don’t see a backslash when you accidentally make a typo in a tweet or in the caption you posted along with your beautiful picture. But if you happen to be someone who has a great following, you'll be trolled immediately. Maybe you'll be a scapegoat for the next catchy headline for a media agency. Social media is mostly (almost) about trolls. It's full of memes, mocking someone or the other. People generally pick up things from the environment. Social media mirrors the real life. And if you have ever been trolled, trust me, the feeling isn't great. Our brain takes up troll as a rejection. Rejection from the class of elites (which is not the case obviously). This is the distinguishing factor. One big lesson that people who have been successful in life teach us is the importance of a growing mindset. This habit affects how they behave in real life. They desire excellency and not mediocrity, hence they automatically think for long term instead of short term. Whereas people who cheat, don't want to make mistakes, because they fear rejection. They are surrounded by the human vice of greed. They just look for the shortcut to earn money. Rejection activates that same part of the brain which gets activated when we experience physical pain. It is proven scientifically. But there are many who get rejected everyday, they don’t choose to cheat. Then what is it apart from the mindset?

Another factor that we agreed upon was insecurities. Maybe they want to outperform their competitors by their (over)smartness. And what other way than cheating to defend your insecurities?

Cooperation > Competition, any given day.

“So much of people's identities get wrapped up in competition that they lose sight of what is important and what is valuable.”

Another way to look at this can be - STABILITY. Maybe they are looking at immediate stability by taking the elevator instead of climbing the ladder. But too much stability is injurious to health. Think of it this way, a person reaches his home sharp at 8pm everyday. He's so punctual that you can use their arrival to set your watch. But if someday they are late due to unavoidable reasons, this will leave everyone tensed. But someone with a more flexible schedule, say they arrive within a window of half an hour, it won't matter if they are late by a few minutes. Volatility is equally important. Too much stability is not good. You have to fight your way all the way to reach the top. All the hurdles, all the rejections matter.

So yes cheating matters. It matters if you want to satisfy your greed and your insecurities. It matters if you have a short vision. It matters if you are looking for a shortcut to earn money.

What do you think?

Let’s understand the basis of empathy. What happens when our brain goes through pain? Imagine someone stabbing your hand with a knife. There is no particular area of brain that processes the pain. Infact it is processed by different areas of the brain, collectively knows as the pain matrix. Experiments show that most of the pain matrix gets activated even when we see someone else getting stabbed! Most of the part implies that those parts which feel the emotion gets activated while those dealing with the sense of touch do not. In other words watching, watching someone in pain and being in pain use the same neural machinery. This is the basis of empathy. To empathise with another person is to literally feel their pain. But why do we have this facility? You can tell yourself that someone else getting stabbed is not your issue, but neurons cannot differentiate. From an evolutionary point of view this is an essential skill. By putting yourself in someone else’s shoes you get a better grasp of their feelings and hence can predict what their actions would be.

When we talk about evolution, we know about the survival of the fittest. But this theory fails to understand why do people help each other if the survival of the fittest is all that matters from an evolutionary point of view. Hence scientists added another theory of “kin selection”. This basically means that you’ll be willing to jump in a river to save your cousins. But this again fails to explain as to why people cooperate even if they are strangers. This leads to the idea of group selection. Hence this leads to the idea that if a group consists of people that share the same ideas, they are likely to live off better as compared to someone individual. As I mention before - Cooperation is better than competition. If empathy has an evolutionary point and evolution supports group selection, then why is our history full of wars and bloodsheds?

This is because of the darkside of group selection. Every ingroup (people within a group who share common ideas) has an outgroup (people belonging to a different group). Let us understand this through a famous experiment.

A random group of people were shown 6 hands and were asked to select any one of them. Upon selection, the hand was stabbed with a needle or touched by a piece of cotton and their brain activity was measured. These 2 actions yield the same activity is the visual system, but very different reaction in the rest of the brain. In particular, changes in the medical prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of the brain was observed. This region becomes active when we are interacting with people, but it’s not active when we are dealing with inanimate objects, like a piece of paper or a mug. As mentioned, the pain matrix gets activated even when we see someone else in pain. Now the question is, does it even get activated if we see someone getting stabbed from an outgroup?

In the next experiment, hands were given a label. They were labelled as Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Atheist, Jewish and Parsi. The same experiment was performed and the brain activity of the participants were observed. On average, people’s brain showed a larger empathetic response when they saw someone in their ingroup getting stabbed and a lesser response when they belonged to the outgroup. This result is really remarkable and ground breaking. It has nothing to deal with a religion, because even the atheist showed a larger response to the label “atheist” and less to others. It has to with the group one belongs to. People belonging to one group do not see people of other groups as humans. They see them as objects. This is what the brain activity of mPFC tells us. This is the reason genocides happen. This is the reason wars happen because people lose the evolutionary point of empathy and see each other as mere objects. Genocide happens when dehumanisation happens on a massive scale. And experiments show that dehumanisation is very much possible on a deeper level in individuals - on a neural level, by spreading propaganda. How to stop falling for propaganda is a completely separate topic. Let’s leave that for some other day.

See you next Saturday, until then have a great weekend :)

Cheers!

Some things that you may find interesting-

Article: Lock the doors by Mike Solana

Podcast: The Joe Rogan Experience - Jack Dorsey

Song I am listening to: I Love You Always Forever by Betty Who

Thought of the week: “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

Thread: The Compound Effect

Here are the last three posts if you were too occupied to read them: