The reasons why some choose to do evil remain a mystery, but are we beginning to understand what exactly provokes such behavior?
In 1941, on the way from the ghetto to a concentration camp in Ukraine, a Nazi soldier beat my grandfather to death. My father witnessed the murder. Of course, this is just one of millions of such stories, and I grew up knowing about human cruelty. The word "sapiens" in Homo sapiens does not fully describe our species: we are as cruel as we are intelligent. This may be the reason for our survival as the only representatives of the Homo species and such a resounding success in seizing dominance on the planet. But the question of why ordinary people are capable of such outrageous violence remains acute.
This duality is a mystery to ourselves, and therefore formed the basis of doctrines about nature, theological systems and tragic events, motivates moral codes and the tension that is the very essence of socio-political systems. We know both light and darkness. We are capable of both doing terrible things and thinking about them seriously and outside the box. The self-consciousness that characterizes the human mind is most confusing when it comes to the problem of the existence of evil, which philosophers have been discussing since the time of Plato. An obvious way to find explanations for this phenomenon is to study the patterns of behavior of individuals committing atrocities.
This is exactly what the professor-neurosurgeon Yitzhak Fried of the University of California did in his 1997 article entitled "Syndrome E" (from the first letter of the word evil), published in the British journal Lancet. A syndrome is a group of biological symptoms, whose totality makes up the clinical picture. Syndrome E Fried called a group of ten neuropsychological symptoms that occur at the time of committing atrocities: when, as he put it, groups of previously peaceful individuals turn into serial killers of defenseless members of society. Here are the ten neuropsychological symptoms:
1. Repetition: The aggression is repeated uncontrollably.
2. Obsessions: Criminals are obsessed with ideas that justify their aggression and underlie some of the missions of ethnic cleansing. They may regard as absolute evil, for example, all Westerners, all Muslims, all Jews or all Tutsis.
3. Obsessive repetition: circumstances do not affect the behavior of the offender, who stubbornly goes to the goal, even if the action leads to self-destruction of the personality.
4. Decreased emotional reactivity: the offender does not show an emotional response.
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5. Excitement: The delight experienced by the offender is due to the repetition of actions and the number of victims.
6. Adequacy of language, memory and problem-solving ability: the syndrome does not affect higher cognitive abilities.
7. Quick addictive: the offender becomes indifferent to violence.
8. Fragmentation: Violence can occur in parallel with normal family life.
9. Dependence on the environment: the possibility of an action determines the context, especially identification with a certain group of people and subordination to a certain authority.
10. Group "infection": the action is determined by belonging to the group, the behavior of each is reflected in others. Fried suggested that all of the above behaviors have neurophysiological reasons that are worth investigating.
Please note that the syndrome extends to those people who previously did not show the appropriate inclinations, and then were able to kill. The exceptions are: wartime, sanctioned killings by and against soldiers, resulting in multiple occurrences of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); recognized psychopathologies, such as dissocial personality disorder, which can cause a person to shoot at school children; as well as crimes motivated by jealousy and the sadistic pleasure of inflicting pain. When the philosopher Hannah Arendt, in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), used the expression "the banality of evil," she meant that the people responsible for the actions that led to the massacres may be ordinary citizens driven by such banal motives.,like the fear of losing your job. The very notion of mediocrity has been tested by social psychologists. In 1971, the Stanford Prison Experiment by psychologist Philip Zimbardo showed how ordinary students can turn into violent prison guards, although most of this was unfounded given the factual confirmation of the experiment's flaws. However, Syndrome E sufferers are indeed the most common citizens without any obvious psychopathology. Historian Christopher Browning described a similar story in his 1992 book Perfectly Ordinary Men (which Freed refers to). The soldier who killed my grandfather was also, most likely, an ordinary person. In 1971, the Stanford Prison Experiment by psychologist Philip Zimbardo showed how ordinary students can turn into violent prison guards, although most of this was unfounded given the factual confirmation of the experiment's flaws. However, Syndrome E sufferers are indeed the most common citizens without any obvious psychopathology. Historian Christopher Browning described a similar story in his 1992 book Perfectly Ordinary Men (which Freed refers to). The soldier who killed my grandfather was also, most likely, an ordinary person. In 1971, the Stanford Prison Experiment by psychologist Philip Zimbardo showed how ordinary students can turn into violent prison guards, although most of this was unfounded given the factual confirmation of the experiment's flaws. However, Syndrome E sufferers are indeed the most common citizens without any obvious psychopathology. Historian Christopher Browning described a similar story in his 1992 book Perfectly Ordinary Men (which Freed refers to). The soldier who killed my grandfather was also, most likely, an ordinary person.people with Syndrome E are indeed the most common citizens without any obvious psychopathology. Historian Christopher Browning described a similar story in his 1992 book Perfectly Ordinary Men (which Freed refers to). The soldier who killed my grandfather was also, most likely, an ordinary person.people with Syndrome E are indeed the most common citizens without any obvious psychopathology. Historian Christopher Browning described a similar story in his 1992 book Perfectly Ordinary Men (which Freed refers to). The soldier who killed my grandfather was also, most likely, an ordinary person.
Modern biology can explain many human actions, but not the terrible tragic events caused by them. And even such a tool for self-knowledge as neuroscience is unable to explain our cruelty. The causal relationships of the harm people do to each other are best described by political history, not by science or metaphysics. The past century alone is rife with atrocities of incomprehensible scale and equally incomprehensible political origin. But it was the emergence of ISIS and the interest in it of young and enthusiastic recruits that breathed new life into Fried's hypotheses and prompted him to organize, together with neurophysiologist Alain Berthos from the College de France in Paris, three conferences on Syndrome E. From 2015 to 2017, they brought together leading experts in the field of cognitive neurobiology, social psychology, neurophysiology, psychiatry, as well as terrorism and law, whose theories and conclusions I will share in this article. Syndrome E provides an innovative, interdisciplinary discussion of this long-standing problem - and a compelling example of how to formulate neurobiological inferences for humans. This approach gives impetus to the emergence of interesting hypotheses and explanations.how to formulate neurobiological findings in relation to humans. This approach gives impetus to the emergence of interesting hypotheses and explanations.how to formulate neurobiological findings in relation to humans. This approach gives impetus to the emergence of interesting hypotheses and explanations.
As the functional anatomy of the brain is described more and more precisely, neuroscience improves its ability to address underlying complexities of our behavior, including violence. But since we evolved as animals, exploring the biological foundations of behavior means looking at both the materialized outcomes of evolutionary time and historical time and how different cultures influence and create evolved neural circuits. Given that we have evolved as social, interactive beings, neuroscience requires dialogue with other disciplines, since the evolution of the brain did not take place in isolation, and any action occurs at a certain point in time in a certain place with a certain meaning. The psychological and cultural environment plays a central role in determining whetherhow these biological processes will proceed and whether they will be at all. Thus, the traits Freed listed include a combination of neurological and environmental conditions.
Central to the context of Syndrome E is the symptom of "decrease in affect." Most people, with the exception of psychopaths, avoid or are extremely reluctant to hurt, let alone kill. As psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton has demonstrated, only through brainwashing, forced dulling of the emotional reaction and overcoming restraint can one cross the line beyond which “addiction” begins - a symptom of Syndrome E, in which the execution of an action is facilitated by its repetition. The perpetrators of mass murder and torture may love their children and wish for the best, but still feel absolutely nothing about the victims - an example of Syndrome E's “fragmentation” symptom. This is probably what happened in the case of the Nazi soldier who killed my grandfather. Family and social belonging are two different concepts. When they intersect, as was the case in Bosnia and Rwanda, when families pounced on each other, group identity prevails. Compassion is rarely all-encompassing.
Social neuroscientist Tanya Singer of the Max Planck Society for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig defines compassion as the ability to "resonate" with another person's feelings. It develops from infancy - first as imitation, then as joint attention - and transforms into the ability to accept the point of view of others, along with a shift in spatial perception from oneself to another, as if one person was literally in the place of another. Here, first of all, the ability to distinguish between oneself and others is needed, which is an aspect of the so-called "theory of consciousness" that a person acquires during the first five years of life. Developmental psychologist Philippe Rocha of Emory University in Atlanta has demonstrated thathow children by this time develop an ethical attitude and begin to realize how their actions can be perceived by others.
While compassion builds cohesion in a group or society, it is also biased and limited. Through this, revenge flourishes. Its selectivity also explains how we pass by a homeless person without feeling the need to offer help, or rejoice in unpleasant gossip about an absent person we dislike. We all inevitably employ selective empathy, and this lack is manifested in everyday, life-threatening cases of violence that occur in social and family life, in business and politics. Therefore, what psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge University calls “the erosion of empathy” in his book Teaching Evil: Empathy and the Origins of Human Violence (2011) is not the only element that causes the outbursts of extreme violence. But it is he who opens up opportunities for discrimination and, ultimately, genocide. As social neuroscientist Jean Deseti of the University of Chicago put it, "There is a dark side to our hypersociality."
This analysis can partly dispel the mystery of our duplicity: the ability to help each other and kill each other or convince ourselves of the justice of wars. Like other hominins like chimpanzees, we have developed the ability to forge relationships, communicate and cooperate with those in our immediate environment, and attack outsiders and members of other tribes. Our humanity is determined by our developed self-awareness. The only mystery is our constant ability to destroy, even though we are able to understand ourselves and create complex scientific models of our own mind.
Neurobiology provides an interesting physiological model of empathy as a complex, dynamic process that combines the ability for purposeful activity, premotor and sensorimotor functions. It employs, in particular, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), with which the former partially overlaps and which is critical in terms of processing the emotions generated in the amygdala, an ancient structure in the limbic system. Damage to the OFC negatively affects emotional feelings, and with it, the decision-making process. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California at Los Angeles has shown with his "somatic marker theory" how physical sensations that are involved in signaling emotions processed in OFC and vmPFC,allow us to make appropriate socially determined decisions, thereby demonstrating our value judgments about the world around us, including the ability to give the correct moral assessment of an act.
With reduced affect, hyperactivity in the same areas of the frontal lobe inhibits the activation of the amygdala. Research has identified dysfunctional activity in the orbitofrontal cortex in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Thus, she may also be implicated in the compulsive nature of attitudes towards one group, which justifies murderous intentions towards its members. And the feeling of overexcitement - as, for example, after using cocaine - which projects action on these ideas, includes information processing in the prefrontal cortex (mPFC). In other words, with Syndrome E, the emotional channels in the brain stop regulating judgment and action. There is a breakdown of the feedback between the amygdala and the higher, cognitive cortical structures. The acting self is separated from the sender, a phenomenon that Freed calls a "cognitive break." He believes that in the current environment, about 70% of the population could be subjected to this, which will induce them to become participants in crimes as part of a group, as probably happened during the Stanford Prison Experiment, despite reservations about its results.
The acting self of a person with a cognitive fracture is incapable of compassion. But empathy is not always a sure sign of good behavior: we do not empathize with insects that die, for example, due to climate change, but we can make rational decisions in the event of a disaster itself. It can even lead to wrong decisions about those to whom it is directed: the surgeon who sympathizes with the patient on the table should not be allowed to operate. There is such a thing as an excess of feelings. Psychologist Paul Bloom of Yale University spoke out “against empathy” in the 2016 book of the same name and other publications, suggesting that the best barometer is “rational compassion”, which can be used to assess the environment and our impact on it. In other words, the members of the groupwhose mission is to kill alleged enemies may have the ability to emotionally empathize with their group and not have rational compassion for the alleged enemy.
Analyzing our inability to feel emotion about such perceived enemies can bring us closer to understanding what it’s like to cross the line beyond which to maim and kill in cold blood. Observers of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague often note a lack of remorse on the part of criminals. Clinical psychologist Françoise Sironi, who helps the ICC assess the condition of criminals and treats both themselves and their victims, has seen first-hand what Lifton called “killing his own self,” especially in the case of a man named Kan Kek Yeu. known as "Blow", who proudly established and ran the Khmer Rouge torture and extermination center in Cambodia. Blow was one of those who felt absolutely no remorse. His only distinguishing feature was the role he had assumed.supported by the fear of losing oneself and falling into a state of powerlessness. He did not understand what Sironi meant when she asked, "What happened to your conscience?" From his point of view, the question was a meaningless collection of words.
Along with what Freed calls "catastrophic" desensitization to emotional cues, cognitive function remains intact - another symptom of Syndrome E. The tormentor knows exactly how to hurt and is fully aware of the victim's suffering. He - more often it is a male - has the necessary, but not sufficient for empathy, cognitive abilities, to understand what exactly the victim feels. He doesn't care about someone else's pain. Don't give a damn about your own indifference. And do not care about the very importance of indifference. Emotional sanity, which is the basis of the ability to give the correct moral assessment of an act, disappears.
Such a state presupposes the merging of identification with a larger system, within the framework of which a splitting of the feeling “I” and the cognitive “I” occurs, and the accompanying replacement of individual moral values with the norms and rules of this system. Chemistry takes place everywhere, as in all cerebral and somatic functions, and is regulated by pharmaceuticals. Neuroscientist Trevor Robbins of the University of Cambridge has studied "pharmacoterrorism" and how, for example, the amphetamine "Captagon" - used in particular by ISIS members - affects the action of dopamine, depletes serotonin stores in the orbitofrontal cortex and leads to rigid psychopathic behavior. increasing aggression and leading to compulsive repetition, which Freed attributes to Syndrome E. It shuts off social attachment and all emotional feelings (including empathy) - a condition called alexithymia (difficulty recognizing and describing one's own emotions - approx. Trans.).
This is a simplified neurological analysis of exactly how lethal actions become possible. Orbitofrontal cortex is possessed only by humans and primates. As demonstrated by Edmund Rolls of the Oxford Center for Computational Neuroscience, it plays a critical role in determining the value of reward in response to stimulus: we make choices based on the assignment of value - about an object, idea, action, norm, person. Our emotions are rich in values, and our actions vary and can be actualized depending on how they are perceived in the world around us, in turn motivating us to seek or avoid stimuli. Our behavior may persist in search of absent reward - this would be one explanation for the compulsion symptom of Syndrome E. The Parisian neuroscientist Mathias Pessillone and colleagues have also identified the central role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in attributing value to a stimulus or idea, so we decide to take action based on a tempting reward or unpleasant outcome. But if this function is over-activated, new factors - such as pleas for mercy - do not affect the attribution of value to the idea, for example, that "all people deserve to die," and changing the action is impossible. It becomes automatic and is regulated by some external factor or leader, regardless of any moral criteria.based on a tempting reward or unpleasant outcome. But if this function is over-activated, new factors - such as pleas for mercy - do not affect the attribution of value to the idea, for example, that "all people deserve to die," and changing the action is impossible. It becomes automatic and is regulated by some external factor or leader, regardless of any moral criteria.based on a tempting reward or unpleasant outcome. But if this function is over-activated, new factors - such as pleas for mercy - do not affect the attribution of value to the idea, for example, that "all people deserve to die," and changing the action is impossible. It becomes automatic and is regulated by some external factor or leader, regardless of any moral criteria.
But these neurological facts become a sign of criminal acts only under certain circumstances of the environment. Psychiatrist David Cohen and colleagues at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris assessed adolescent candidates for radicalization. They found that certain socio-psychological conditions that existed in childhood - such as the absence of a father, an unstable mother, or living with foster parents - affect the development of the personality, in some cases leading to the need to assign it to a wider group. Again, group matters more than family. As anthropologist Scott Atran found out, conflicts are often insoluble and non-negotiable, because they occur in the name of absolute, spiritual values - secular or religious - and not with the expectation of any practical outcome. These values can seem very attractive - stronger than family ties.
Writer Kamila Shamsi, in her novel Home (2017), showed how a loving, innocent, but maladapted and lost young man of Pakistani descent can fall prey to a call by ISIS recruiters to reunite with his lost father and find himself in a supposedly well-intentioned society. Our ideological stereotypes, internal and external, shape and justify the choices we make, endowing them with encouraging reasoning. The latter relies on the ability to give the correct moral assessment of actions and disguises itself as it, causing a cognitive dissonance "between what we think and what we do," as Zimbardo once put it - between what, as we convince ourselves, was a necessary action and our deeply rooted underlying beliefs. The hero of the book, Shamsi, soon begins to regret his choice and tries to get away from violence, which he cannot bear, being unable to withstand cognitive dissonance. The Nazi doctors, who convinced themselves that they were acting for the greater good, were a different matter. A chilling example of such an arrogant justification for criminal behavior is Heinrich Himmler's speech in Poznan in 1943: "We have the moral right, [even] a duty to our own people, to kill this people who want to kill us." Once moral justification is separated from emotionally calibrated responses to others, violence can become rationalized. This has happened more than once throughout history.who have convinced themselves that they are acting for the greater good. A chilling example of such an arrogant justification for criminal behavior is Heinrich Himmler's speech in Poznan in 1943: "We have the moral right, [even] a duty to our own people, to kill this people who want to kill us." Once moral justification is separated from emotionally calibrated responses to others, violence can become rationalized. This has happened more than once throughout history.who have convinced themselves that they are acting for the greater good. A chilling example of such an arrogant justification for criminal behavior is Heinrich Himmler's speech in Poznan in 1943: "We have the moral right, [even] duty to our own people, to kill this people who want to kill us." Once moral justification is separated from emotionally calibrated responses to others, violence can become rationalized. This has happened more than once throughout history. Once moral justification is separated from emotionally calibrated responses to others, violence can become rationalized. This has happened more than once throughout history. Once moral justification is separated from emotionally calibrated responses to others, violence can become rationalized. This has happened more than once throughout history.
But “ordinary people” are driven by circumstances to cross the line where Syndrome E symptoms reign. The neuroscientist Patrick Haggard of University College London provides an insight into what happens during this transition. He demonstrated the full power of that initial impact that allows us to go beyond. After the 1961 Jerusalem trial of Adolph Eichmann, who did not consider himself guilty because he “just followed orders,” psychologist Stanley Milgram from Yale University demonstrated, or rather exaggerated, claims that most people would not refuse to obey orders some authority, even to the detriment of another person. Milgram was interested in the problem of obedience. Haggard, who studied the feeling of free will - the feeling ofthat it is we who initiate our actions and keep them under control, which is central to our lives, as well as in the context of legal discussions about criminal liability - asked what it feels like when you are coerced and to some extent deprived of independence. Through an experiment that focuses somewhat on Milgram (but also touches on some of his ethical and methodological issues) and uses the notion of a deliberate binding character, Haggard discovered that people, when forced to do something, experience a marked decrease in the sense of free will. … Coercion turns off the sense of responsibility - a find more than frightening.when you are forced and to some extent deprived of independence. Through an experiment that focuses somewhat on Milgram (but also touches on some of his ethical and methodological issues) and uses the notion of a deliberate binding character, Haggard discovered that people, when forced to do something, experience a marked decrease in the sense of free will. … Coercion turns off the sense of responsibility - a find more than frightening.when you are forced and to some extent deprived of independence. Through an experiment that focuses somewhat on Milgram (but also touches on some of his ethical and methodological issues) and uses the notion of a deliberate binding character, Haggard discovered that people, when forced to do something, experience a marked decrease in the sense of free will. … Coercion turns off the sense of responsibility - a find more than frightening. Coercion turns off the sense of responsibility - a find more than frightening. Coercion turns off the sense of responsibility - a find more than frightening.
Neurological analogues of what can lead to our worst actions do not indicate clinical condition. Syndrome E is neither a disease nor a disorder that should be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. Its formalization would have complex legal implications: as the former President of the European Court of Human Rights lawyer Jean-Paul Costa said, the use of neurological evidence in court is problematic, since it requires expert reading of inaccurate and opaque data. It is nearly impossible to pinpoint exactly what reactions in the brain - including those underlying feelings of free will - can or should be legally mitigating factors.
However, introducing - like Freed did - a set of traits that characterize our most abhorrent traits of character, and initiating widespread discussion in relevant areas, especially neurology, will only complement prevention and rehabilitation programs when they are badly needed. Evil may be dead, but evil deeds will always exist. The reasons for this remain a metaphysical conundrum, and I am only one of the millions of people whose lives pass under this question mark, which I personally inherited from my surviving father. But at least some of the answers to the question "why?" are within our reach.
Noga Arikha is a historian of ideas, particularly interested in the connection between mind and body, as well as tracing the genealogy of related concepts. She taught at Bard College, was a member of the advisory board for Prospectus magazine and chair of the Humanities Research Project at the Paris College of Art. He is the author of the book Passion and Mores: A History of Humor (2007). Lives in Paris.