The Psychology of Cruelty

Josh Landy
Are people cruel because they lack empathy?

Alison Gopnik
Is cruelty always a matter of seeing other people as if they’re less than human?

Josh Landy
Or are there some who simply enjoy watching other people suffer?

Alison Gopnik
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy.

Alison Gopnik
And I’m Alison Gopnik sitting in for Ken Taylor, who’s away this week.

Josh Landy
We’re here at the studios of KALW San Francisco,

Alison Gopnik
Continuing a conversation that spans the Bay, from philosophers corner at Stanford, where Josh directs the philosophy literature initiative to Berkeley, where I’m in the psychology and philosophy departments.

Josh Landy
So it’s great to have you here today, Alison,.You know, I’m particularly happy that you’re around today, because you’re a professional psychologist, indeed, a star psychologist, and, and today, we’re thinking about the psychology of cruelty.

Alison Gopnik
Great to be here, Josh.

Josh Landy
So okay, so tell me if I’m wrong. From what I can gather, when someone’s really cruel, there’s a problem with that person’s empathy circuits. That’s why you get all that violent and abusive behavior.

Alison Gopnik
Well, that’s certainly one popular theory about cruelty. The idea is that when people are cruel to one another, there’s a kind of empathy erosion, there’s a basic failure to see the other person as if they’re really human. And when we don’t see the other person is human, it’s much easier for us to treat them badly.

Josh Landy
Right, exactly. I mean, it’s so many awful examples of this. So the Holocaust through London genocide, and, you know, in cases like that, victims often get characterized as cockroaches or vermin, things that need to be exterminated by the by the perpetrators.

Alison Gopnik
Well, there’s something to that. But you know, I don’t think it’s the whole story. Cruelty isn’t always driven by a lack of empathy. Think about road rage.

Josh Landy
But doesn’t road rage prove my point? I mean, look, what you know, we all drive around in these little metal boxes separated from each other. And so, you know, we often fail to recognize each other’s humanity. So when somebody cuts you off, that’s when the bad behavior begins.

Alison Gopnik
Yeah, but listen to what you just said—when someone cuts you off.

Josh Landy
Right, so what?

Alison Gopnik
So it’s a response to something that someone else has done something mean to you road rage is reactive. It’s not like as soon as you get behind the wheel of a car, you suddenly start being mean to every motorist you come across. But if somebody cuts you off, if they’re mean to you, that’s a different story. With road rage, cruelty seems to be a reaction, a reaction to the mistreatment other people give you.

Josh Landy
Okay, yeah, but but don’t you think that windshield has some effect, you know, on our ability to empathize with the other person? I mean, it creates distance between us, you know, the same way that our computer screens doing? Isn’t that one, we have so much nasty behavior online.

Alison Gopnik
So just you really think cruelty is just a failure to see other people as human?

Josh Landy
Well, yeah. I mean, look, I’ll grant you road rage. I mean, maybe that’s a case where people think they’ve been harmed. But what about online trolls? I mean, they do they’re trolling for fun for kind of sick, sadistic satisfaction. Surely, that’s a case where it’s really all about dehumanization.

Alison Gopnik
I’m still not convinced.

Josh Landy
Why not?

Alison Gopnik
Well, because trolls are trying to get a rise out of the other person. They’re trying to provoke an emotional reaction. Okay, so what follows from that? Well, what that means is that they know that the other person’s human, in fact, they’re exploiting the human emotions to the other person to get their sadistic thrills. It’s just because the victims human and has a human emotional reaction, that the troll can make them suffer.

Josh Landy
Okay, that that’s a good point. But let me try one last push back. Surely these trolls are still lacking in empathy?

Alison Gopnik
Well, it depends what you mean by empathy, if you mean caring and compassion, okay? But if you just mean being able to tune into other people’s feelings to understand how other people feel, well, I’m afraid that’s exactly what the trolls are doing, say to so great and knowing what the other person’s feeling that’s precisely how they get to torture them so effectively.

Josh Landy
I knew I shouldn’t have gotten myself into debate with a psychologist about the psychology of cruelty. I bet you’ve enjoyed tormenting me, Alison.

Alison Gopnik
Oh, but I knew exactly how you would feel.

Josh Landy
Touché. Well, we clearly have some work to do before we have a good sense of what’s going on when people are cruel to each other, for example, when they troll each other online.

Alison Gopnik
Is online harassment about dehumanization, or is it a reaction to injury? Or is it just the enjoyment of seeing other people suffer? We sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Liza Veale, to find out—she files this report.

Josh Landy
And just a quick heads up, the report covers some somewhat delicate ground, so listener discretion is advised.

Liza Veale
Rafaella Gunz was in her early 20s when she started managing a private feminist Facebook group. It was around 400 members, all trying to make sense of their experiences of gender-based exploitation.

Rafaella Gunz
Some people would discuss personal things like being raped or something like that. Some people would just share articles for discussion, but it was just like a small sort of like close-knit group.

Liza Veale
This is one of the things the internet does best. It gives us a way out of isolation and shame. But then in 2016, a much larger Facebook group called Anti-Social Justice Warriors infiltrated Gunz’s group, apparently this is the anti-SJW group’s m.o.

Speaker 4
They started plan attacks on certain groups like they’ll be in their own grouping like oh, look at this group, Let’s all make fake accounts and take screenshots back to our group and laugh at them.

Liza Veale
They infiltrated and then fed private posts back to their anti-SJW group—to people bent on mocking and humiliating the posts authors. This kind of cruelty is the other thing the internet does best. Here’s some examples of what the anti-SJW Youtube world sounds like, though. Honestly, it’s gotten a lot more tame in the last two years due to YouTube censoring.

Anti-SJW 1
Let’s face it, you don’t have to be a cis het white male—SJWs are triggered and offended by basically everything that exists.

Anti-SJW 2
Never can she ever have a counterpoint brought to her attention. Never can something like that be said because if she’s ever questioned, then you’re a misogynist and you’re a sexist.

Speaker 5
Carrots? Too phallic—they reinforce gender norms. Wall sockets? Look how they are violated against their will by plugs, and the plugs derive power from this act of electric rape.

Speaker 6
And as for the deference that she received, I say this: don’t bother. You wanna know why? This bitch was getting off on it.

Liza Veale
When Gunz tried to get the anti-SJW Facebook group shut down for infiltration, its members began targeting her specifically.

Speaker 4
And it went on for months. Like there’s this one guy who made like mean YouTube videos about me.

Liza Veale
They did elaborate pranks, like pretending to be a worried friend of hers and sending emails to her mother and school guidance counselor warning that she was suicidal, presumably hoping to freak them out or even get her institutionalized. They also found Gunz’s writing about her experience with genital herpes.

Speaker 4
They were sort of using that as fuel against me calling me like herpes riddled dirtbag and like herpes-infected bitch.

Liza Veale
If the harassment was just words online, she could have tried to brush it off. But there was no way to know if the trolls constituted a threat and real physical life.

Speaker 4
They’re probably sad and pathetic people. But then again, like there are a lot of these like men’s rights activist types who do have history of, you know, domestic violence and misogyny and things like that. It’s really a gamble. Like it could just be some kid wanting to be in a hole because he’s bored or it could be some grown man who’s you know, seriously disturbed and like really hates women/

Liza Veale
Gunz was most worried about being doxxed that they’d find her identifying information like her address and put it online, then any deranged violent person will be able to find her. She became paranoid and anxious and full of rage.

Speaker 4
You can sit behind a keyboard and type what you want. And when you press send, like you’re sort of off the hook from seeing the person on the other end his reaction to it. I don’t think that they fully grasp there is like a living breathing person on the other end reading their horrible, vile comments.

Liza Veale
The anti-SJW world is not the internet’s only source of cruelty and social justice spaces themselves. Gunz has experienced the prevailing ethic of “callout culture” to be: if you’re not perfectly in line with us, you deserve the full extent of the internet’s wrath. Get dragged—you’re cancelled.

Speaker 4
For example, there was a girl who had like a Chinese prom dress and she was white. So then people started harassing her on Twitter. And you know, a lot of it’s like, really uncalled for, like, I don’t think that that girl, like whether or not her prom dress was culturally appropriate is kind of irrelevant. I don’t think she deserved to have random strangers on the internet harass her for it.

Liza Veale
Publicly calling people out like this, dunking on them, owning them, getting them wrecked to use internet parlance—that’s what’s rewarded and a lot of Internet communities. So are these hecklers mostly just after those likes, regardless of the suffering it causes, or is witnessing the suffering itself the reward? For Philosophy Talk, I’m Liza Veale.

Josh Landy
Thanks, Liza for that disturbing but important and really timely report. I’m Josh Landy. And sitting in for my Stanford colleague Ken Taylor is Berkeley psychologist Alison Gopnik. Today we’re thinking about the psychology of cruelty.

Alison Gopnik
We’re joined now by Paul Bloom, professor of psychology at Yale University. He’s the author of “Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion.” Paul, welcome back to Philosophy Talk.

Paul Bloom
Hi, Alison. Hi, Josh. Very nice to be here.

Josh Landy
So Paul, what first got you interested in this topic, the psychology of cruelty. I mean, did someone troll you online? Did you troll somebody else online?

Paul Bloom
Well, bit of both. Nobody. Nobody killed my dog or burned down my house. But I, you know, been a victim of some cruel behavior. I’ve seen a lot of cruelty and others. And I look at my own life and I see cases where I myself have been cruel to people, including people I love. And I became fascinated in the best ideas about what’s going on and it turns out some Very smart philosophers and very smart psychologists have been diving in. So I began to study literature I tried to figure out, you know, what makes us cruel.

Alison Gopnik
Paul, before Josh was pushing this theory that cruelty happens when there’s a breakdown of empathy when we dehumanize people and fail to see them as fully human, and I was kind of skeptical. What do you think?

Paul Bloom
Well, I’m friends with both of you. And Josh, Josh is a very sweet man. And so it’s so kind to hear him say like, if only you, you felt what another person felt when you recognize their humanity as you’d be kind to them, you’d never be cruel to them. But Alison unreleased siding with you on this one. I think Josh is right about his dehumanization, or something that that generates some cruelty. But a lot of the very worst things we do in the worst things we think, are driven by an appreciation of the humanity of another person, and appreciation of them as people as people have motives. And sometimes, this this closeness, this intimacy with others, leads her most awful behavior.

Josh Landy
So tell us a bit more about that. What’s an example of a case where people are cruel, while appreciating the humanity of the of their victim?

Paul Bloom
Well, I’ll take an example from Kate, Matt and philosophy wrote a wonderful book called down girl, she talks about misogyny and her example is a lot of men who hate women, and sometimes try to murder women. It’s not that they think of women as objects are not neutral, they’re not indifferent. Rather, they feel humiliated. If you only haven’t gotten there, do they? They feel that these women disrespect them. And all of these emotions are driven by viewing these women as human, as terrible humans.

Alison Gopnik
Yeah, it’s interesting in in psychology, one of the things that people find with aggressive children, for example, is that the most common cause of aggression is what they call reactive aggression, which is really feeling threatened, it’s not so much that you want to go out and hurt the other person is you think that person is just about to get you and you better get them first.

Josh Landy
Is that the kind of thing you think is operative in these cases of domestic abuse?

Paul Bloom
I think a lot of cases, it’s sort of a cliche, that we often, you know, hurt the ones we love, we often kill the ones we love. And it’s, I think it is I think it’s it’s the closeness of people the feeling that they’re striking back at you that they’ve humiliated you to Dave and salted you is, I think, often the cause of terrible violence. Well, if you dehumanize people, you can do terrible things for them, but you won’t typically wish to make them suffer. You just you know, you just don’t care about them. Yeah, that’d be bad, but then made the desire to make others suffer seems to be born into the sort of thing that Allison and I are talking about.

Alison Gopnik
Although I wonder about that, you know, for things like intimate domestic violence, or some kinds of misogyny that might be true, but but think about the really kind of mass scale cruelty, the kind of cruelty that comes when, say, people are bombing hundreds of people that they can’t even see nowadays, even a soldier who’s using a drone, who’s you know, sitting in a room in Michigan and killing people in Iraq, that does seem to be more connected to dehumanization.

Paul Bloom
I would agree with that. I think a lot of the murders we do a lot of the bad acts we do are just because we grow indifferent to the fate of other people. drone attacks are an excellent example. Another hand, even for mass atrocities is kind of a mixed bag. So you look at the literature on the Holocaust. And there is a lot of dehumanization, but there’s also a lot of active willing cruelty. When Hitler introduced the idea of concentration camps for the Jews, he was very explicit. He says, This is payback for what they’ve done.

Josh Landy
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you know, there’s that whole idea of the banality of evil coming out of Hannah Arendt and the idea that the Nazis were just kind of drones. They were just doing what they were told to do. But you know, she turns out she wasn’t right about Eichmann. Eichmann was a zealot. He actually really really wanted all the Jews to be exterminated. So I agree with you. I think it’s not as simple as just thinking. Everyone just went with the program and dehumanized. But we’ll keep talking about this. After the break. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re asking about the psychology of cruelty with Paul Bloom from Yale University.

Alison Gopnik
What makes people act cruelly towards one another? Have you ever been tempted to punish someone just for cutting you off in traffic? Have you ever felt as if someone else was being mean to you just for pure sadistic pleasure?

Josh Landy
Cruelty, sadism and revenge—when Philoaylor Swiftsophy Talk continues.

Taylor Swift
Why you gotta be so mean?

Josh Landy
Why do people got to be so mean? I’m Josh Landy and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Alison Gopnik
…except your intelligence. I’m Alison Gopnik, sitting in for Ken Taylor, and we’re thinking about the psychology of cruelty. Our guest is Paul Bloom from Yale University, author of “Against Empathy.”

Josh Landy
So Paul, you were saying before the break that dehumanization isn’t actually necessary for active cruelty, acts of violence or abuse. So you tell us a little bit more about what you think is going on when people are cruel to each other.

Paul Bloom
So often, it’s, as Alison put a response to perceived threat. If I feel that you are going to attack me as an eerie, perfectly normal, intelligent person, then that rouses me to want to strike back at you. I think sometimes it kind of runs deeper, where I could be responding to what I perceive as your, your disrespect towards me, Your scorn towards me, your refusal to treat me properly, these are in and this is what you know, the philosopher Strawson calls, you know, reactive attitudes, these are the sort of things you only feel towards a person you wouldn’t feel it towards a rat or towards a hurricane. But if you’re a person, there’s all sorts of things you could do that could really really upset me. And I think more generally, if you’re a person you’re capable, being morally terrible, you could do terrible acts. And so there’s a wonderful book by by tater i and Alan fiscal virtue is violence when they argue that a lot of the violence people do towards other people they feel is virtuous. There’s they are correcting and responding to a moral wrong. So punish tries to do something terrible. You molest kids, or you you know, you murder babies. Well, I’m justified in making you suffer,

Josh Landy
Right, I see. So there are cases, cases like these where you’re responding to disrespect or perceived disrespect, or you think you’re punishing somebody virtuously? These are cases of cruelty that depend on the opposite of dehumanization.

Paul Bloom
Exactly. Exactly. So if my if a dog bites make it really angry, but I typically wouldn’t want it or hunted down murder it and you know, kill its family, because it’s just a dog. But if you do something terrible to me, it’s a whole different story if if you do something terrible to other people, and so you know, people who chronicle these mass atrocities often point out that many of the participants are not in all Externen Milgrom would say, simply being obedient or dumb, anally of evil, really date the people who are cruel in these cases often feel they’re doing the right thing. They’re proud of it.

Josh Landy
Right, that’s certainly how Eichmann describesit.

Paul Bloom
Yes, yeah, absolutely. Eichmann’s a very interesting case here.

Alison Gopnik
Yeah, I think that’s true. But I also think there’s a kind of cruelty that just comes from neglect from shutting your eyes from not paying attention to what’s going on around you. And I think that’s more like the dehumanization kind of cruelty. So again, if you think about those terrible examples, people are doing cruel things, because they think they’re punishing people. And, you know, as as you know, poll, there’s even work that babies and young children have this idea that people who’ve done something wrong should be, should be punished. Yeah. But it’s also true that people perhaps end up inflicting more harm by just not caring, not paying attention.

Paul Bloom
It’s hard to tally it up again, I would definitely agree. There’s a lot of cases, your drone examples, a very good one, where we harm people without focusing on their humanity, we see them as obstacles, we see them as less than human. I don’t doubt that that happens. Maybe one good way to parse it apart is to consider the sort of harm. So we could murder we can neglect all of this if we don’t recognize the humanity of others, but sadism, cruelty, torture, humiliation, degradation, that sort of cruelty, which I sort of view as more prototypical cruelty seems to be born out of a recognition of humanity of others. So yes, if my government kills a bunch of people by dropping bombs on them, it may be that nobody involved really thought it most people. But if my government and some people enact torture and humiliation, all of that stuff, then I think we’re dealing with a case that isn’t dehumanization, but it’s a recognition of others’ humanity.

Alison Gopnik
Let me go back to thinking about empathy, though, right? So there’s one thing which is is it dehumanizing, but then there’s another piece, which is, are you taking the perspective of the other person, and after all, many moral systems are grounded in the idea of Do unto others as you would have others do unto you and it? It does seem as if in those cases, there’s a sense of losing the fact that I could be on the other end of this, here’s how I would feel. And that’s a kind of different definition of empathy, being able to automatically take the perspective of another person. What do you think about that, Paul?

Paul Bloom
So you correctly said there’s all these different senses of empathy and, and taking the feeling what another person feels is what I’m most interested about in my book, and I think it has all sorts of moral flaws. I’m all in favor of empathy in the sense of compassion and love, for instance, that’s fine. But But let’s think about what it’s like to feel another person’s pain and put ourselves in their shoes. I actually think that’s often part and parcel of cruelty. So, you know, forget about the Holocaust. Let’s think about ourselves. So think about our academic enemies. People and you know, okay, And then there we go. And imagine yourself doing something tweaking them maybe trying to strike back at them in a review or a comment or response to a vicious question. Don’t you sort of feel that you’re actually are understanding or trying to understand what it feels like to them—and you’re enjoying it.

Josh Landy
I for one couldn’t possibly comment.

Alison Gopnik
I’m not sure that’s true. I mean, Paul, you might have had this experience, or maybe you haven’t, because you’re such a sweet guy. But I’ve certainly had the experience of meeting someone face to face when I’ve written what I thought was a very justifiably critical review of one of their books and immediately feeling oh, why did I do that? I can see the look on their face. I can imagine what it would be like if I were the one who’d written the book and, and gotten that review. And it’s really different from what happens when you’re just sitting there and saying, Oh, this was really a terrible book I should have I should have. It was deserving of this kind of criticism.

Josh Landy
Haven’t you ever met someone who’s gone the other way? I mean, you know, think about Dziedzic, for example, one of the, you know, he was he’s the the philosopher who told everybody they should vote for Trump. Hillary is much bigger danger. And, you know, I feel like, I mean, yes, of course, there are many cases we meet someone face to face and you think, Gosh, this is a sweet person. And yes, I, you know, i My heart goes out to them. And I feel like even if I disagree with them, I should disagree in a very nice way. But there are other cases where you think no, this person, you know, yeah, so yeah, there’s that philosopher, Immanuel Revanesse. Who, who loves to talk about how the face you know, calls upon us to be moral. The face makes murder impossible. I don’t buy that at all. I think in some cases, yeah, sure. Face to face interactions breed a certain kind of compassion. But in other cases, look, I grew up with two SIP two older brothers. They saw my face every day. This did not prevent. They knew I was human. Yeah, no, this didn’t prevent them tormenting me all the time. So what do you think about that Paul? Is the face prevent is face to face interaction, prevent cruelty?

Paul Bloom
Um, if can I think a lot of the go to examples of cruelty tend to be over social media where people seem to the light in wanting to rub people’s nose in their in their humiliation? Like, you know, imagine? Yeah, I hope this person feels what it’s like to be so and so they voted for Trump, I hope they suffer for all what they’ve done. Face to face is complicated. I think in the case that Alison, you’re talking about, you probably hadn’t meant the person to suffer in the first place with your with your review, you just writing what you thought is an honest review. You had no animals. I think often, often, particularly for sort of genteel cosmopolitan people. It’s harder to be cruel face to face, it often diffuses things. But often it makes things worse. I think I could think of personal cases where I was feeling very fondly towards a person. And then I just saw her ugly face in front of me. And I want you know, I wanted to make them.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about the psychology of cruelty with Paul Bloom from Yale. And yeah, I mean, the question of empathy in the face link is a really deep one. I mean, again, think about the Nazi. So there were a lot of propaganda posters that used precisely featuring depictions of people’s faces, obviously caricature to make them look awful. Seems like you couldn’t use the face in a nefarious way.

Paul Bloom
Right, yes. And it speaks to you know, human nature is complicated in this regard. I think there are some cases for some people where the presence of a victim really diffuses situation, you know, I could drop bombs on you from a distance, but I can’t take a band that and put it through your heart. Right. On the other hand, I think particularly when there’s a lot of strong feelings, the presence of the person accelerates things. You know, you see this with people who are in families. I think I think people you just consider marital interactions gone bad. Were often people conduct conduct themselves perfectly well at a distance, but then they’re in the presence of the other person and you know, you need a security detail to keep them apart.

Alison Gopnik
Yeah, it’s funny though, because it works the other way. Round two, there’s a dramatic story about Mary beard, who’s the great classics, great feminist classic professor who, as with many women got trolled online in really horrible, awful ways, something I’ve experienced as well. But she did something that was incredibly courageous, which is actually find out the name of the guy who had trolled her and call them up and ask him to come and have lunch and and what she also did was say, Look, I’m going to say that you’re really not as horrible guy as you seem. Because if someone looks you up on Facebook, what their looks you up on Google, the first thing they’re going to say is that you’re this terrible. This terrible troll and her compassion actually completely converted him when he actually saw there was a real person. It changed his attitude and there are at least some studies that suggest that that kind of contact in a kind of compassionate setting can have that can have that effect as opposed to this kind of reactive cycle that you talked about Paul, where people just start screaming at each other more and more and and being threatened and protecting one another.

Paul Bloom
I think there’s both. The Mary Baird story rings true. And you know, there’s a famous anecdote by George Orwell. No, he’s a soldier and war is about to shoot at a man from a distance. And he sees the man squatting down to relieve himself. And he says, No, he’s just a guy, I can’t do this Damn, he’s just the person is not the enemy anymore. I can, I can imagine myself in his shoes. But you know, for every anecdote like that, you think of cases like the genocide in Rwanda, which was a very face to face matter where people would would would kill each other, you know, with with hatchets, their neighbors, their friends, you think of occupying armies going in raping and killing and torturing? Under some circumstances, at least, we have no problem with face to face atrocities.

Alison Gopnik
Yeah, I really wonder how much what we really need to do is to somehow interrupt these cycles of threat fear, reaction violence, followed by more threat, fear, reaction, violence, and the combination of that. And then, again, this dehumanization that comes with mass killing, that’s, that’s really something invented that really something that started in the last century, when we had industrial scale weapons where you could kill people without actually seeing them that, that those two things together seem to end up having cruelty on a on a scale that’s larger than just the human cruelty we’ve always had.

Josh Landy
Yeah, well, I mean, could we say something like this, that for these, these mass atrocities, these large scale murders, we need to humanization. Whereas for more everyday cases of cruelty, like, you know, siblings tormenting each other, or domestic abuse or things or trolling, maybe that those are cases where you don’t need to dehumanize and perhaps sadism comes in, which involves precisely the heat the humanity of the of the other person.

Paul Bloom
To some extent, I think, I think mass atrocities are a relatively recent invention. And dehumanization does play a big role, particularly for people who just are not that involved in it. And but I think even for these atrocities, you often get a lot of hatred, a lot of moral, strong moral attitudes. And I don’t want to put these issues too far away from us. These are issues which we engage in. So take the me to movement. I’ve read a lot of talk about people’s real hatred and real disgust at people like Harvey Weinstein. And so if you approach such a person, and I’m kind of such a person, you wouldn’t be able to well, you’re mistaken. I’m not mistaken and wanting him to be punished is a very human desire. And I do not think I’m not enough of a utilitarian to think that, Oh, I just want punishment because it brings on a greater good. I think somebody who did what He’s accused of doing should actually suffer for it. Yeah. This is what this is what I meant when I talk about reflecting on my own appetite for cruelty.

Josh Landy
Right. I mean, I’m not gonna say what I think that guy deserves, but it probably wouldn’t be very pretty. You’re listening Philosophy Talk. And we’ve got Paul from San Francisco on the mind. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Paul, what’s your comment or question?

Paul
Thanks so much. I really love the show. Yeah, I had a question about sort of, I guess the, you could say, the performative aspect of cruelty. I think about like, there’s an essayist-philosopher, Frank Graziano, who wrote an essay called the strategic theatrics of atrocity. And I just wanted to get your thoughts on, like, how much of cruelty is sort of an exercise of power and control and making an example, sort of, you know, marking one’s territory, if you will, or showing, you know, I think that that state or aggressors, or you know, kind of will use cruelty as a way of, you know, demonstrating power and yeah, making an example?

Josh Landy
Well, that’s a terrific question. Paul. Let me throw that over to the other Paul. What do you think?

Paul Bloom
I think that is a terrific point. We’re talking in terms of vengeance in terms of humiliation, but that, you know, we’re hierarchical creatures, we’re primates. And you know, we don’t have this and our desire for sort of status and power isn’t necessarily bad could drive ambition to drive good work sometimes, but one manifestation is a simple desire to dominate others. And, you know, to go back to the Holocaust, you know, noted scholar Holocaust says, may say, a lot of what you saw in the camps looked from a distance like dehumanization, but it was really the pleasure some took in dominating others, and making others beg before them and look at me, I’m on a top and you’re on the bottom. I love this. And it’s a terrible aspect to people but you know, it, I think it is a lot that goes on.

Alison Gopnik
I mean, that’s probably true. But I think there’s also a sense of, of a natural tendency we have To make alliances, so we actually want to be closer to other people. And I think the point about performing and signaling is interesting from that perspective, one, one point that a lot of people who come from authoritarian regimes have talked about is that, we say, Well, why would you just violate that norm just for the sake of violating the norm? Why just lie when everybody knows that you’re going to be caught out line, for example? And the argument is that violating the norms, a way of showing that you’ve actually got power, it’s a way of, of enforcing the authoritarian power.

Paul Bloom
I think that’s right. I also think that takes that thread of Paul’s comment. If you look at social media, you can see the affiliate of power of cruelty where, you know, if when I lash out at Donald Trump or Harvey Weinstein, or you know, more, I think, on a more sinister note, some poor innocent person who’s made a foolish mistake, I am showing the world look, I wanted a good guys, I am what it is, you know, what, what is my psychology because Allah a costly signal to, to lash out at somebody. So it’s not only expresses power, it’s also a way of expressing affiliation, and even see this in friendships. If, you know, you could tell when you becoming friends with a person, when you trash talk about somebody else, you’re sticking yourself a little bit out there, and you’re establishing an alliance with the other person. Often this is done through nastiness and even cruelty.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re thinking about the psychology of cruelty with Paul Bloom, author of “Against Empathy.”

Alison Gopnik
What can we do to reduce the amount of cruelty in the world? Do we need more empathy training? Or are there better ways to get people to be kind and fair?

Josh Landy
Defeating cruelty—when Philosophy Talk continues.

Magazine
And I nod my head oh so wisely to the rhythm of your cruelty.

Josh Landy
If there’s too much cruelty in your rhythm, why don’t change your tune? I’m Josh Land, and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Alison Gopnik
…except your intelligence. I’m Alison Gopnik, sitting in for Ken Taylor, and our guest is Paul Bloom from Yale. And we’re thinking about the psychology of cruelty.

Josh Landy
And we have a caller on the line. It’s Joey from San Rafael. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Joey, what’s your comment or question?

Joey
Oh, thank you. I’m wondering, I’m wondering about the impact that living in a culture. So based on systemic racism has on our ability to empathize. Because if we wake up every day, as we have for hundreds of years, knowing that racism is bad, but then thinking, well, there’s nothing we can really do about it. Wouldn’t that impact our ability to just, you know, really feel and because we would have to stop feeling for other people?

Josh Landy
Yeah, that’s a wonderful question. I mean, you know, it’s thinking earlier, we’ve talked about sadism, and humiliation. And we’ve talked about reactive aggression. We’ve talked about the desire for status. But we haven’t really talked about these sort of systemic types of cruelty, these cruelties that people were doing all the time, perhaps unaware, it’s just because the norms of our culture are set wrong. What do you think about that, Paul?

Paul Bloom
So racism is a really important case. And I’m glad Joey raised it. And to some extent, I think there is dehumanization in there. There’s a lot of studies suggesting that for instance, whites often think of blacks in certain regards as less than human. And you see this across the board in all different ways. But you will also see these in the most, I think, ugliest manifestations of racism, and appreciation of others humanity, you feel fear of them, you might feel guilt and shame about your treatment of the other group, you might feel this other group despises you, and disrespects you, you might feel as other group has done moral wrongs in the past, think of the clash between, say, Israelis and Palestinians. It’s not there dehumanizing each other, they’re hating each other. And so I think a lot of racism is powered by these attitudes you get when dealing with other people.

Josh Landy
And so what do you think we can do about me? You know, if we were to make you, you know, compassion czar, and give you full power? You know, how, how can we go about making the world a kinder and less cruel place?

Paul Bloom
I don’t know, if I’ll say is that my message is a resoundingly pessimistic one. If you’re if you believe in dehumanization is the cause of cruelty, then there’s this ready made solution, which is, well, we simply got to recognize other people or people. And since they aren’t people, it’s just a mistake, you have to clear up and we’d be so much nicer to each other. Right? And, but my view is that we actually do recognize people as people. That’s where the troubles lie. And so any solution is just going to be a lot more difficult. I think. One way is to change how we think about other people. So I’m Steve Pinker, and when he talks about decline of violence often talks about a shift From cultures of honor, where you know, Josh, your disrespect for me demands my retribution to cultures of dignity. And so I think somewhat maybe paradoxically, one way, we’ll become nicer to each other as establishing cultures, which is actual, actually a little bit of distance from one another. And obviously, you want also want to have intimacy in the world. And but those are two things you have to navigate. So it’s, there’s certainly, if I’m right, there’s no easy solution to cruelty in the world.

Alison Gopnik
Well, I wonder, you know, if you think about some of the studies and some of our intuitions, I think part of the problem is that we make this distinction between our kind of in group, which is where we have these intimate close relationships, and then the out group and a lot of the cruelty that sort of the in group cruelty seems to have a really different dynamic than our cruelty to the outcrop, which is where the racism example comes in. And it does seem as if having contact with people in the out group recognizing people in the out group taking their perspective, is something that we could do that would help to decrease the amount of violence. But the interesting fact is that might be quite different from the kinds of strategies we need to deal with things like domestic abuse or intimate violence, right?

Paul Bloom
Right. I think in some ways, we treat our group uniquely terribly in dissolving the in group out group boundaries is nothing but good. But like you pointed out, some of our worst acts of cruelty are towards the in group towards our, our partners, our lovers, our children, our parents, people who are resoundingly in our in group, and in some way, the fact that they’re in your in our in group, they’re so close to us, I think raises the stakes more. I’m not likely to, you know, set sick drones on them, but I am more likely to strangle them.

Josh Landy
We have a caller on the line. It’s Gwen from the East Bay, welcome to Philosophy Talk, Gwen, what’s your what’s your common question?

Gwen
Yes, I know, I had a have had a very long time running with one of these cruel people. And the professional advice I was given was to get this book and the name of it is the Sociopath Next Door. And the big shock, and that really straighten me out was that one out of every 25 People born since the Stone Age is born as a sociopath. And it’s the only psychological condition where you can be born with no conscience. So if there’s one out of every 24 people on the face of the earth all the time, my question is, and it looks like, one of the studies that needs to be really delved into is why doesn’t the psych world study this more? Because those are the people that will be attracted to and, and sought after to be the killers for the bullies. Okay, it’s the Sociopath Next Door. It’s, it’s by Martha Stout. And it’s the textbook for university psych departments.

Josh Landy
Thanks for that recommendation. So we have a couple of psychology experts here. What do you what do you guys think?

Alison Gopnik
Well, I think there’s is evidence that there’s a minority of people, probably not as many as you’re suggesting, but there do seem to be people who just seem to, at least very, very early on in development show a really different kind of cruelty than the kind of cruelty that we’ve been talking about before. People who really don’t seem to have this kind of impulse of empathy and identification with other people. Sometimes they become killers, sometimes they become CEOs that can also be a way of functioning well in the world.

Josh Landy
That’s functioning well?

Alison Gopnik
Wll, I mean, it can be a way of succeeding, it can certainly be a way of getting what you want in the world. But I don’t think that’s the locus of most of the cruelty in the world. There certainly are such people out there. But one of the things that’s most striking, and psychologists have done a lot of studies of these people is that that’s not really where most of the, of the cruelty is coming from. And ironically, the sociopaths aren’t always cruel, because cruelty isn’t always a good way of getting what you want. So high functioning intelligence sociopaths often will just treat people instrumentally. And being performative Lee cruel isn’t actually a good way of, of being successful. So I think it certainly is true that that people are seeing—

Josh Landy
I’m not gonna name names, but aren’t we seeing in our current political climate, some performative cruelty, you know, leading to successful electoral results?

Alison Gopnik
Well, that’s not to say that a performative cruelty can’t always be a means of success. The point is just it isn’t like just sociopaths, or even sociopaths, more than other people are the ones who are engaging in that kind of performative cruelty.

Paul Bloom
Yeah, I think that’s entirely right. I think sociopath could be a problem. That sort of instrumental use of cruelty can be a terrible thing. But I think we shouldn’t be distracted from the fact that the cases of cruelty to worry about to think about are done by people like us, they’re done there. You could you could look at your own life. And think of times where you’ve been cruel. And if your immediate temptation as well, in that case, the other person deserved it, they had it coming, then you understand cruelty, because that’s what cruel people think.

Alison Gopnik
Josh, a question for you, or a comment that would be relevant to you. You know, one thing that we often think is that literatures a kind of means of ameliorating cruelty. And to get back to some of the points that you were making Paul, I’ve had this thought about, you know, if you read Lolita, or you read David Mamet, those are examples where you can kind of see what’s going on in the mind of someone to whom your first response would be, this is just a terrible person, and they should just be punished. But there’s a funny ambiguity, you feel like, yeah, they should be punished. But there’s something about being able to see what the world is like through their eyes, that changes your own impulse to something that’s less cruel.

Josh Landy
Well, I’d like to believe that I think that does happen sometimes. But unfortunately, you know, literature is a broad field. And you also see people, you know, reading ein Rand, and apparently becoming less empathetic as a result. And not to mention the, whatever that novel was that Steve Bannon loves. So I think it’s, it’s complicated there, too. But you know, one of the things I’ve been interested in lately is an sort of extension of this, which is virtual reality, I’d love to ask the two of you about this, you know, there are these VR simulations now, where you can experience the world through the body of some other kind of person, which seems as though might be very promising as a way to increase.

Paul Bloom
And so he, so I have a strong view on this, okay, I think they’re terrible. Because, because that the claim is delay, you feel what it’s like to be homeless, or elderly are blind. But in fact, what you feel like is the physical experience of being none of these and, and being in a physical experience of someone who has, who has long been in the States, and it’s nothing like it. So you know, long before the technology got really going. They did the simulations where they got people to wear blindfolds for a day, and said, This is what’s likely to be blind. And you ask them, What do you think of being blind, and he said, I would kill myself, it’s the worst, they need help, they should just die. And this is because putting a blindfold on is physically like what it’s like to be blind. You know, living outside for for a few hours about your wallet is physically like what it’s like to be homeless. But these are long standing states of a person. And and the idea of physical stimulation. I’m just going to jump in with this example. Donald Rumsfeld was once told about prisoners in Guantanamo, who were forced to stand all day. He said, What’s the big deal? I have a standing desk. And and so he was he was VR’ing, and he was saying, this is fine.

Alison Gopnik
Well, I think that’s the point where art comes in. So I think the important part is not about whether you can tell the story on whether it’s a bunch of words on a page that make you think or, or a VR experience that you have. But I think the important thing is the thing that the artists can do is to is to give you a sense of perspective, give you a sense of what things are like from the perspective and other people and another person. And although that by itself isn’t going to be enough to interrupt these kinds of cycles, it does seem as if Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Huckleberry Finn, are good examples. Were just being able to participate in the way that another person felt a made a difference. And I think that’s been true. With me to movement, for example, we’re just reading the narrative seeing or, you know, seeing a need a need to help testify, has made a big difference to people.

Josh Landy
I totally agree. I just wanted to repeat something that Paul said in one of his books that, unfortunately, empathy can be used by different groups, right. And so yes, of course, those cases, those are good cases. But there’s also cases so you know, the Birth of a Nation was just as influential unfortunately, as Uncle Tom’s cabinet to use empathy. It drew people into the I mean, you know, purported lives of individuals and got them to act even worse. But we’re coming to the end of the show. And this has been a fantastic conversation. And I really want to thank you, Paul, from the bottom of our heart for joining us today.

Paul Bloom
Oh, thank you for having me on. Thanks both of you for this great conversation.

Josh Landy
Our guest has been Paul Bloom, professor of psychology at Yale University, and author of “Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion.” And this conversation continues at Philosophers Corner, at our online community of thinkers where our motto (with apologies to Descartes) is Cogito ergo Blogo—I think, therefore, I blog. And you too can become a partner in the community by visiting our website, philosophytalk.org.

Alison Gopnik
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send it to us at comments@philosophytalk.org, and we might even featured on the blog. Now, a man who talks so fast, it’s almost cruel—it’s Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… As a culture we take empathy with a grain of salt. It’s fine if you’re a Quaker, otherwise it’s tough love, mister. This is on paper of course. In real life, we often deploy empathy to puppies, and kittens, and endangered species if they’re photogenic. We sympathize with our own offspring’s owies and such. But we’re more keen that we used to be about throwing prescription drugs at their twinges, so we can get back to Twitter. That’s hypocrisy one oh one. I get it. The default cultural attitude, at least when I was growing up, was we are spoiling our kids, which did not keep us from spoiling our kids, but we would watch John Wayne movies with a swelling of pride. John Wayne was the pop culture acme of parenting, in a way. Throw kids into the deep end, they’ll learn to swim or drown. No crying. No whining. No need to be mean, but you got to be cruel to be kind. The young cowboy on the trail. Learning the ropes. Learning how to spit and chaw and roll his own. And then, one awesome day, when he’s old enough, bring him into town for his first fist fight. His first prostitute. His first showdown. His first falling down drunk in the street, to be hauled back to the camp by his buddies, and sing sentimental Irish songs til dawn, then get back to the cattle hungover, yes, but all grown up, and ready to die for your country if it came to that. Scabs and bruises and cuts and scrapes were part of the deal, if you were a boy. Girls, keep out of the way, we’ll get to you later, when we need somebody to kiss our owie. Many of still believe we should churn our own buttermilk, make our own barbed wire out of old soda cans, and get baby rattlers to nibble at the babies so they’ll grow up able to take it. We don’t actually do this of course, we vote for Republicans instead. Which is why Reagan was so perfect. He lived in his dreamworld and took us along. Reagan time was a time of cocaine, and arms for hostages scams, and Werner Erhard Seminars Training, and the birth of the turgid box office blockbusters. But he smiled through it all like it was so much nothing. Much like now, money was everything, and if you were poor it was your own fault. Nowadays we’re not mean to the poor, we just ignore them, forbid them the right to vote, take away their food stamps and welfare, and make fun of them for living in tents under freeway overpasses. Something must be done with those slackers! Send in ICE, put em on trucks, ship them south. Who’s gonna know if they’re citizens or not, who cares? We already went down this road in the fifties. America went crazy from too much success, stopped thinking, drank too much, took too many downers and or uppers, and before you know it—hippies v fascists and no inbetween. Reagan, bless his heart, did have empathy, but he never let it interfere with throwing poor people under the bus. So maybe it does become an issue of hypocrisy. Clinton felt our pain, but he also was the thought leader of what we call neo liberalism. At the time, it was a way of splitting the difference between the Republican throwing poor people under the bus, and the Democrat preference of putting poor people on the bus, but then not letting the bus go anywhere. Neoliberalism means poor people can get welfare if they have a job. I feel for the poor. But empathy is a red herring. We feel empathy now for the poor kids separated from their parents at the border. But this seems to be in the spirit of this new America. We’ll teach you: we’ll take your kids and they’ll be adopted by a nice Republican couple in Indiana. Eventually. They’ll be better off. Until they get addicted to Fentanyl in high school. Because they were adopted. Thanks, Hillary. Thanks Obama. Bitterness trumps empathy every time. Our most empathic citizens are soccer Moms, and they’re just going tsk tsk until it’s their turn to kvetch. We wanted to be a nation of Audie Murphys taking out Nazi pillboxes with a broken flame thrower. But these are not skills that translate into bankable careers. How many CEOs do you know who go after concrete bunkers with flame throwers. Well Elon Musk, okay. And how much sympathy is he getting these days? I’m thinking zero. I gotta go.

Ken Taylor
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW local public radio San Francisco and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2018.

Josh Landy
Our executive producers are David Demarest and Matt Martin.

Ken Taylor
The Senior Producer is Devon Strolovitch. Laura Maguire is our Director of Research. Cindy Prince Baum is our Director of Marketing.

Josh Landy
Thanks also to Merle Kessler, Angela Johnston, and Lauren Schecter.

Ken Taylor
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from Stanford University and from the partners at our online community of thinkers.

Josh Landy
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Ken Taylor
Not even when they’re true and reasonable.

Josh Landy
The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you too can become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m Josh Landy.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking.

Mean Girls
There are two kinds of evil people: people who do evil stuff and people who see evil stuff being done and don’t try to stop it. Does that mean I’m morally obligated to burn that lady’s outfit?