The PFC and Enculturation: Reducing violence Flashcards
Brain development, mirrors brain evolution
Cortical expansion during evolution matches it during development (Hill et al, 2010).
Newer PFC regions (lateral and polar) are better learning devices (Passingham & Wise, 2012).
- more open to cultural influences than species whose brains stop developing much earlier and therefore more influenced by their genes.
Human groups first showed extensive signs of becoming sedentary in the middle stone age (Ingman et al, 2000; Lewin & Foley, 2004).
Leads to more systematic child-rearing.
The consequences of a longer developmental period
Greater stimulation during a child’s development.
- ethical, moral, cognitive and behavioural codes (Csibra & Gergely, 1998; Moreno, 2002).
Humans characterised by an especially prolonged period of postnatal brain development.
- during which cultural traditions and practices are acquired - eg. language (Biachi et al, 2013).
What are memes?
= an idea that spreads from person to person in a culture - eg. fashion, melodies, catch-phrases, religions etc.
- imitated thing (Dawkins, 1976).
Can replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.
Cultural evolution.
Behaviour also determined by memetic, socio-cultural influences.
Violence
Why are we so violent?
Where did people derive their moral approach to human on human violence?
Inferno
1st part of the divine comedy.
- hell depicted as 9 circles of suffering.
- punishment for sins represents poetic justice.
- medieval world view as developed by the western church.
- limbo
- lust
- gluttony
- greed
- anger
- heresy
- violent
- fraud
- treachery
Violence, morality and religion
Abraham undergoes test or moral values when God orders him to kill his son, Isaac - spared by an angel.
Isaac’s son’s daughter raped and offered to by as a wife but moral principle in the way - uncircumcised.
Angels vs daughters:
- Lot was spared with his family for being uniquely righteous.
- Lot’s halo was tarnished by refusing to leave the city by two angels…
- Dawkins (2006): if this dysfunctional family was the best offered in the way of morals, some might feel sympathetic toward God.
Catherine wheel: used for capital punishment in the middle ages.
Hanged, drawn and quartered: for reasons of public decency.
- women burned at the state.
Crime and punishment (and entertainment)
Practical function of cruel punishments was just a part of their appeal.
Spectators enjoyed even with no judicial purpose.
Systemic cruelty not exclusive to Europe.
Hundreds of methods of torture, applied to millions of victims.
What happened to violence?
We now have a brain that learns well and is ready for enculturation (meme).
= gradual acquisition of characteristics and norms of a culture or group by a person, other culture etc.
How did this contribute to the reduction in violence?
OFC: increased empathy?
LPFC: increased self control?
LPFC: increased rationality?
Pinker argues there is a significant change in the cortex that has led to the reduction in violence.
Empathy and the OPFC
Ability to understand and share another’s feelings.
An expansion for empathy may be able to explain why people renounce cruel punishments today and think more about the human costs of war (Pinker, 2011).
The expanding circle
Singer (2011) has argued that the circle of people we feel empathy for has expanded.
- due to fiction etc.
- exposure to feelings of others contributes.
Orbital frontal cortex
Inputs to the OC (gut feelings) allow it to serve as the regulator of emotional life.
- can be described in terms of reward and punishment - seek out rewarding feelings.
Visceral feelings of anger, warmth, fear and disgust are combines with person’s goals.
- modulating signals are computed and sent back down to emotional structures from which they originated = control of emotions.
Life and death with smaller OFC
Violence-prone people with ASPD have smaller and less metabolically active OFCs.
- as were other parts of emotional brain - eg. amygdala.
Other areas linked with anti-social behaviour:
- angular gyrus.
- superior TG.
- ventral prefrontal.
- fronto-polar/medial prefrontal.
Psychopaths
Regions of the brain that handle social emotions (Eg. amygdala and OC) are relatively shrunken or unresponsive - Schelling, 1984.
In some, signs develop after damage - also partly heritable.
Monkeys
With lesions in OFC have trouble fitting in to dominance hierarchies and get into more fights.
Don’t understand social roles.
Emphasises the OFCs relation to social behaviour.
Involved in understanding social hierarchies.
Reduced OFC - may have trouble processing own feelings as well as others.
OFC and morality
Runaway trolley dilemma (Greene et al, 2004):
5 vs. 1.
Visceral gut feeling reaction against changing track comes from amygdala and OFC.
Those with PFC and OFC lesions more likely to send loner to death - no emotional engagement.