WHAT ARE WE LIKE? 10 PSYCHOLOGY FINDINGS THAT REVEAL THE WORST OF HUMAN NATURE

By: Christian Jarrett

Published: October 12, 2018, The British Psychological Society Research Digest https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/10/12/what-are-we-like-10-psychology-findings-that-reveal-the-worst-of-human-nature/  

Level of Difficulty: ***

PREPARATION

·         Copy paste the text on to https://ttsreader.com/ , listen, highlight your own hard copy and make notes in the margins.   

QUESTIONS

1.       What does “It” in the phrase “It is a question…” refer to?

2.       Click on the following link:  https://digest.bps.org.uk/2006/11/10/seeing-others-as-less-than-human/ and read the brief account of the study. What surprising observation was made during the study?

3.       What conclusion can be drawn from this observation?

4.       Some years ago, research was carried out to try and verify the hypothesis that black people were less intelligent than white people. What could have prompted such research?

5.       What even scarier observation is made in the text concerning dehumanization?

6.       Click on the following link: https://digest.bps.org.uk/2013/06/03/kids-experience-schadenfreude-by-age-four-maybe-earlier/ What disturbing conclusion was reached in the study? 

7.       Refer to the same study. What comforting conclusion was reached in the above study?

8.       Refer back to the original text. The kindness very young children show you is positively correlated with…

9.       What is the disadvantage of our belief in universal justice?

10.   Read the account of the Milgram test. What was the underlying reason for the subject’s attitude to the female learner?

11.   If someone believed that Obama is a secret Muslim born in Kenya and he was shown Obama’s birth certificate, how would he react? Why?

12.   What general conclusion can we draw from the Obama example?

13.   Read the examples of the studies concerning electrocution. We can deduce from all these examples that…

14.   Watch the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnQ-_bKC1tU People with this problem can be described as…

15.   Watch the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZxCuymd_3E Why do the people in the study in the video claim they love the band that doesn’t exist?

16.   Read the section titled “We are moral hypocrites”. The various cases described in this section are all examples of ……………….and prove that we are……….

17.   All the studies concerning trolling reached the common conclusion that…

18.   Click and watch: https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/inside-the-mind-of-donald-trump-687167555590 Which of Trump’s personality traits emerge the most strongly? What has his goal always been?

19.   The fact that psychopathic traits are more common than average among leaders proves that ….

20.   What appears to be the reason for being attracted to people with the dark personality traits?

WHAT ARE WE LIKE? 10 PSYCHOLOGY FINDINGS THAT REVEAL THE WORST OF HUMAN NATURE KEY AND TEACHERS’ NOTES

This is a fascinating text analyzing what we humans are really like. I have tried to cover as many of the main points in the article as I could but that has had a downside too: 20 questions. The solution is to cover them in batches; students don’t have to do them all in one sitting. I found the text fascinating; I hope you all do too.

1.       The following two questions. Strictly speaking, you can’t begin a sentence with “Or”; imagine this sentence as a continuation of the previous one.

2.       Pictures of the homeless or of drug addicts failed to trigger activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, and instead prompted activity in the areas of the brain related to disgust. OR Students exhibited less neural activity associated with thinking about people when they looked at pictures of the homeless or of drug addicts, as compared with higher-status individuals

3.       Members of some social groups seem to be dehumanised (at least as indicated by the absence of the typical neural signature for social cognition) 

4.       Blatant dehumanization of black people

5.       The inclination to dehumanise starts early (children as young as five view out-group faces as less human than in-group faces.)

6.       Even four-year-olds seem to experience modest amounts of Schadenfreude

7.       Overall the children’s levels of schadenfreude were low (is enough)

8.       Whether you are indebted to them

9.       We perceive the vulnerable and suffering as to some extent deserving their fate

10.   Derogating the woman made them feel less bad about her dismal fate

11.   He would double-down on his initial view / We see opposing facts as undermining our sense of identity and many of us are overconfident about how much we understand things

12.   We humans are worryingly close-minded

13.   The prospect of spending time in our own thoughts is so anathema we’d actually rather electrocute ourselves

14.   Vain and overconfident

15.   No one wants to appear clueless about something they claim to enjoy in front of a camera

16.   Self-serving double-standards / moral hypocrites

17.   Ordinary users will troll when mood and discussion context prompt such behavior”.

18.   Aggression / To be number one

19.   We are not inclined to choose leaders with rare virtuousness and skill

20.   The dark traits successfully communicate “mate quality” in terms of confidence and the willingness to take risks.