In the United States, they study the technologies and principles of dehumanizing the individual. And they do it at the biological level. Scientists from Duke University and Princeton University in the United States showed subjects photographs depicting homeless people or drug addicts, and monitored the reaction of the brain. It turned out that the images of marginal people did not evoke empathy in some of the subjects.
Crazy dog lovers who are ready to kill for their dog and deny the right to life to a bitten child, as well as individuals infected with materialism, who can strangle rivals for a discount of a few dollars, and other "maniac-like" characters of our difficult reality, are fundamentally different from other people.
American researchers showed 119 volunteers pictures of different people and asked them to describe the feelings they feel when looking at the pictures … Four types of photographs were demonstrated that were supposed to stimulate one or another reaction, according to Science Daily.
For example, a female college student or an American firefighter would elicit a spectrum of predominantly positive emotions. Images of clearly wealthy people were supposed to cause envy, an old man or a disabled woman - to "break through" the subjects to pity, and drug addicts and homeless people, according to scientists, could provoke a feeling of disgust.
The fact is that earlier sociological studies involving the capabilities of functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain showed which parts of the brain are standardly included when looking at certain images.
Photographs or paintings of human faces have activated certain areas of the neural network that scientists associate with the possibilities of social cognition and contact. Further, after fixing the emotions of the subjects in connection with the images shown, there was a discussion of the characteristics of the life of representatives of all social groups presented in the photographs.
After that, the participants in the experiment were again shown photographs, recording changes in the work of the brain using magnetic resonance imaging. It turned out that in some of them the neural network involved in social interaction does not respond to images of drug addicts, homeless people, immigrants and beggars.
When looking at such people, some of the subjects activated the brain zones associated with the formation of feelings of disgust, as well as attention and cognitive control.
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Simply put, these people were not perceived as human. This is the so-called "dehumanized perception", an example of which is the mixture of curiosity, alertness and disgust that many people have when looking at an insect, especially when shown in close-up.
What was the percentage of the subjects in whom the marginals were excluded from the number of people is not reported. In a sense, such information is a military secret …
“These results indicate significant dehumanization, that is, the other person is denied the existence of feelings. This is due to the lack of sympathy for these people. But what struck us the most was the transfer of empathy to other objects. So, we found that many people attribute emotions to animals and even cars, and they don't even look at the beggar on the street,”said the head of the study, Professor Lasana Harris.
It is worth noting that in nature, man is still not a brother to man, and such a perception of members of one species is not something out of the ordinary. However, the processes of turning on and off “humanity” and the control of empathy (empathy) are the traditional objects of manipulation by the groups that control society. The simplest example of this kind is the preparation of the population for the conduct of hostilities and the formation of an enemy image.
The most important element of the psychological campaign is always the maximum dehumanization of the enemy, which allows you to deal with him without any remorse. Military professionals are able to regulate feelings on their own (as well as some civilians, predominantly male), but among the bulk of the population, the philanthropy instilled by years of education still has to be turned off.
Best of all, this process goes under conditions of psychological shock. However, the more or less well-known previous developments were humanitarian in their content. That is, psychologists and sociologists understood that if definitely structured information was submitted through the channels of perception, the result would be a readiness to kill, spiced with hatred. At the same time, there was the problem of rollback and emotional burnout, when the actions already carried out to kill the enemy led to a drop in the level of aggression.
And here, finding out the location of neural networks responsible for recognizing a person as a person plays an important role in the process of technologization of methods of empathy management. First, it allows you to select psychologically ready performers of non-trivial tasks. Secondly, it creates opportunities for determining the percentage of the unresponsive in society at one time or another, and in a rather simple way - by passing an MRI.
Third, it opens up a new field for studying the possibilities of controlling this part of the brain. This can be genetic engineering, and, for example, the use of other biological objects that enter the human body for chemical suppression or stimulation of the activity of certain parts of the brain.
There is no doubt that individuals dehumanized by special and very subtle methods will behave quite adequately, be socially adapted and at the same time destroy entire groups of people without any "unnecessary" emotions. However, perhaps no technology will be required - the brain itself will do the bulk of the work for the manipulators.
There is a hypothesis that the brain of a person under constant stress can “turn off” those areas that are useless in this situation. And, unfortunately, the zones of empathy are exactly like this - after all, under stress, any creature needs to increase its aggressiveness, and not the ability to empathize (which, on the contrary, decreases aggressiveness).
Residents of large cities (from which volunteers were recruited for the aforementioned studies), and so constantly experience stress - primarily due to the fact that there are too many of them. And in this case, it is useless to try to somehow control it on a conscious level - instinctive behavioral programs that we inherited from ape-like ancestors work here. In human language, their attitudes can be expressed as follows: "If there are many creatures like you around, then you will get less food and sexual partners."
It is not surprising that people to whom the subconscious mind "whispers" this every day, simply do not get out of stress. And, accordingly, the zones of empathy are constantly "turned off" for them. All this leads to the fact that a person refuses to consider the fellows around him as people (not all of them, of course, just consciousness outlines a narrow circle of "friends" for whom the title of a person is preserved, and this does not apply to those outside of it), and first of all - those of them who are least like him. And hence the constant outbursts of hatred towards dissidents, representatives of a different nationality or race and those who lead a fundamentally different way of life - in particular, homeless people, drug addicts, alcoholics and the disabled.
Well, if this is so, then the only way to remain human in the modern world, that is, to avoid dehumanizing one's own personality, is to flee from big cities. And in general, more than two are not going to …
Authors: VITALY SALNIK, ANTON EVSEEV
