
Human Brains Are Wired to Blame Rather Than Praise - prostoalex
http://fortune.com/2015/12/04/brain-wired-praise-blame/
======
tokenadult
This looks like a brain mechanism finding to back up the well known
psychological phenomenon called The Fundamental Attribution Error,[1] "the
tendency to overestimate the effect of disposition or personality and
underestimate the effect of the situation in explaining social behavior."
Simply put, we observe other people's noticeable behavior in social situations
(which is most likely to be their BAD behavior, which gains more notice) as
reflecting their (bad) character, while we figure that most of our own
behavior toward other people is the best we can do under the circumstances.
I've seen plenty of examples of this here on Hacker News, and if I acknowledge
the research findings, I have to acknowledge that I've provided more than a
few examples of that kind of behavior here on Hacker News over the years.

[1] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/real-men-dont-write-
blo...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/real-men-dont-write-
blogs/201406/why-we-dont-give-each-other-break)

~~~
glormph
Thanks for this, explains my own behaviour too. Only after I reached my
thirties I became more thoughtful and analytical before speaking and with that
came less blaming. It's still in my brain though but it doesn't come out much.

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ekianjo
> Aristotle dealt quite the challenge to humanity when he issued his moral
> philosophy about the ‘perfect man,’ saying he does not “concern himself that
> others should be blamed.” Aristotle must have missed the brain scans.

WHat a weak way to finish the article - take a quote from a Greek philosopher
you do not understand and look like a smart aleck while you are obviously
oblivious to its actual meaning.

~~~
Zelphyr
I blame society for such a weak finish.

~~~
devsquid
Blame Aristotle.

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mkagenius
Making a critical mistake can get you killed but doing anything awesome won't
make your lifespan infinite. So, the natural tendency of human brain is to
avoid mistakes for betterment of survival chances while not giving too much
importance to any positive stuff happening to them.

The downside is too much and the upside is not that much.

------
gerbilly

      Just as solid rock
      is not shaken by the storm,
      even so the wise are not affected
      by praise or blame.
    

_Dhammapada 81_

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danharaj
Human brains raised in a hierarchical society based on relations of
domination.

~~~
danharaj
To elaborate: Emotional responses are very plastic. One can deliberately
change the brain structures involved in those processes. It stands to reason
that the brain structures we have without deliberate practice are not some
neutral state of the human brain, but a reflection of our social context.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944261/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944261/)

Abstract: In a recent visit to the United States, the Dalai Lama gave a speech
at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Over the
past several years, he has helped recruit Tibetan Buddhist monks for, and
directly encouraged research on the brain and meditation in the Waisman
Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison. The findings from studies in this unusual sample as well as related
research efforts, suggest that, over the course of meditating for tens of
thousands of hours, the long-term practitioners had actually altered the
structure and function of their brains. In this article we discuss
neuroplasticity, which encompasses such alterations, and the findings from
these studies. Further, we comment on the associated signal processing (SP)
challenges, current status and how SP can contribute to advance these studies.

Choice quote: "Expert meditators also showed less activation than novices in
the amygdala during FA meditation in response to emotional sounds. Activation
in this affective region correlated negatively with hours of practice in life,
as shown in Figure 1(A). This finding may support the idea that, advanced
levels of concentration are associated with a significant decrease in
emotionally reactive behaviors that are incompatible with stability of
concentration."

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22661409](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22661409)

Abstract: The development of social emotions such as compassion is crucial for
successful social interactions as well as for the maintenance of mental and
physical health, especially when confronted with distressing life events. Yet,
the neural mechanisms supporting the training of these emotions are poorly
understood. To study affective plasticity in healthy adults, we measured
functional neural and subjective responses to witnessing the distress of
others in a newly developed task (Socio-affective Video Task). Participants'
initial empathic responses to the task were accompanied by negative affect and
activations in the anterior insula and anterior medial cingulate cortex--a
core neural network underlying empathy for pain. Whereas participants reacted
with negative affect before training, compassion training increased positive
affective experiences, even in response to witnessing others in distress. On
the neural level, we observed that, compared with a memory control group,
compassion training elicited activity in a neural network including the medial
orbitofrontal cortex, putamen, pallidum, and ventral tegmental area--brain
regions previously associated with positive affect and affiliation. Taken
together, these findings suggest that the deliberate cultivation of compassion
offers a new coping strategy that fosters positive affect even when confronted
with the distress of others.

~~~
MawNicker
Thank you so much for posting this. Are there any good sources for this type
of information? I'm specifically interested in psychological/neurological
differences between cultures. A similar example is Crazy Like Us [1]. It's
fascinating how culture seems to thwart a full comprehension of psychology.

1: [http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Like-Us-Globalization-
American/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Like-Us-Globalization-
American/dp/1416587098)

~~~
gerbilly
Check these out:

[http://people.duke.edu/~ojf/DestructiveEmotions.pdf](http://people.duke.edu/~ojf/DestructiveEmotions.pdf)

[http://www.amazon.ca/Destructive-Emotions-Scientific-
Dialogu...](http://www.amazon.ca/Destructive-Emotions-Scientific-Dialogue-
Dalai/dp/0553381059)

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Dowwie
Is it correct to draw a comparison between these findings and those revealed
by behavior economists such as Daniel Kahneman: blaming as part of system 1
thinking and praising drawn from system 2? It seems to fit nicely (and I like
that). If it is acceptable, then perhaps it isn't correct to say that our
brains are wired to blame rather than praise but instead that we blame quickly
and praise slowly.

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kelukelugames
Whenever my code doesn't work, my first thought is: "The compiler made a
mistake." :)

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mattbgates
My job? lol.. do a hundred great things.. no one remembers. make one
mistake... no one ever forgets.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
This is every aspect of life though.

See: Bill Nguyen

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nguyen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nguyen)

~~~
ChristianBundy
I don't get it, what am I missing?

~~~
cheetos
Bill Nguyen is best known as the founder of Color, a much hyped then
subsequently much lampooned photo app that failed rather conspicuously under
the weight of its own PR, a la Cuil.

Based on the Wikipedia article, he apparently had a long track record of
multiple impressive successes prior to Color, although none are nearly as well
known.

Hence the parent's argument that Bill Ngyuen's life is an illustration of the
true nature of the world: you can be successful 100 times, but if you fail
once, it is only the failure that is remembered.

------
nabla9
Normally people do more good things to others than bad things. It's hard to
estimate what the ratio is but I would say it's closer to 1000:1 than 10:1. If
being at good is the baseline, it would make sense to ignore those events most
of the time.

------
Puts
This wouldn't be to bad if people just put the same critical filters to their
own ideas and actions as they put on others.

~~~
vlehto
According to Kelly McGonical they put stricter filter on themselves. They
appear more critical on your project because they we're so immensely critical
of their own project, that it never got started.

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ljw1001
that explains the internet

~~~
Bluestrike2
It also explains politics. I'm pretty sure that, if we were facing an
extinction event courtesy a rather large and immovable asteroid, they'd spend
the time we had left trying to see who they could blame other than themselves
for curtailing efforts to expand beyond LEO.

~~~
devsquid
That would make a great Sci-fi humorous short story.

------
ocfx
I think 'wired' is the wrong word to use as it implies we're all kind of like
that which isn't true. People who judge other people more harshly for their
actions generally judge themselves pretty harshly too. The faults we see most
in others are the faults we see in ourselves the most. If we were really wired
this way than cognitive behavioral therapy wouldn't work, but I guess that
depends on your definition of 'wired'. This is more a product of low self
esteem than how we are 'wired'. I think the social conditions which are
creating a society of low self esteem should be under a microscope instead.

~~~
vlehto
>People who judge other people more harshly for their actions generally judge
themselves pretty harshly too.

That sounds like the Jungian or MBTI J/P divide. When such person has good
self esteem, that same trait makes him/her decisive "natural" leader.

But that theory is not in fashion right now. So take everything I said as
speculation.

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ClayFerguson
This makes perfect sense. There's a huge evolutionary advantage in calling
attention to a bad actor (someone behaving in a way not advantageous to the
tribe), because that person will either change, or be expelled from the group,
or killed, which helps the group. However praising someone just makes them
feel good, and is not a real motivator. Humans evolved to be violent and
critical, because the tribes that didn't have that attribute got killed off,
conquered, or died of starvation during hard times.

~~~
danharaj
Every time someone armchairs evolutionary psychology on the Internet my
brainstem tries to curl in on itself.

~~~
mei0Iesh
This makes perfect sense. There's a huge evolutionary advantage in calling
attention to a bad actor (someone behaving in a way not advantageous to the
tribe), because that person will either change, or be expelled from the group,
or downvoted until their comment disappears, which helps the group.

~~~
danharaj
Making sense is not enough to be scientific. You can make up a plausible
evolutionary cause for virtually any behavior. It's almost impossible to test
those hypotheses. It's exasperating to even try to hold a conversation when
the opening is something as reductionist and anti-scientific as the
grandparent post.

~~~
mei0Iesh
... I don't think you caught what I did there.

