EVILICIOUS: Cruelty = Desire + Denial (22 page)

What I have said thus far is only a partial accounting of the biological ingredients that figure into our capacity for self-control. What we learn is that regardless of the situation, some individuals are better inoculated against the pull of authority and group ideology and others are more susceptible. If you missed the inoculation clinic in utero, you are more susceptible to temptations and excesses, including excessive violence. This is important for our interpretation of the real world and of the famous psychological experiments by Milgram, Zimbardo, and others in which seemingly good people carried out unambiguously horrid things. Some individuals carry a genetic skeleton that resists the push and pull of charismatic leaders and powerful isms. These people will not be pushed into doing bad things. Others, faced with the exact same situation, will find their skeleton buckling, tempted to take risks and lash out when the going gets tough.

Invisible risks

In real life, there are risks associated with every decision, some clear from the start and others only clear in hindsight. As with self-control, a growing body of evidence suggests that there are individual differences in risk-taking: some are risk-averse, some risk-prone, and some seemingly risk-blind, unaware that they are taking risks at all
⁶²
. Some of these differences are evident early in life. Some of these differences are strongly associated with crime later in life. Some of these differences provide insights into the invisible risks that individuals confront, risks that can cause great harms.

Research on clinical populations with antisocial disorders, most notably those with a clinical diagnosis of psychopathy, reveals a major cause of their high risk, costly, and violent behavior: a failure to experience fear, anxiety, or stress in response to highly evocative images and sounds. In contrast with healthy populations, psychopaths are emotionally blasé about the things in the world that can cause harm or result in punishment. The problem lies in the fact that psychopaths, both adults and those identified as candidates early in childhood (recall Esse Viding’s work mentioned in the last section), fail to learn about the dangers in life. Their failure to learn is caused by a reduction in size and activity of two critical and connected brain areas: a region of the frontal cortex and the amygdala. When this system works efficiently, it allows individuals to learn about the sounds, smells, and sights that are associated with bad things in the world. When this system works well, individuals learn to avoid antisocial, immoral, and illegal acts by developing anxiety and fear over the possibility of punishment and personal injury. When this system works poorly, as is the case in psychopaths, individuals act as if there are no dangers or risks of punishment — a disposition that enables inappropriate actions. But, as noted earlier, psychopathy covers a broad spectrum, with problems that all of us confront at some point in our lives, some of us even repeatedly. This is important as it forces us to look at non-clinical populations for the causes of individual differences in risk-taking, especially our reactivity to dangerous events.

Studies carried out over several decades, led by the developmental psychologist Jerome Kagan, reveal that children in a variety of cultures begin life with distinctive temperaments. Some are mellow, blasé about events that are startling to many. Others are high strung and reactive, responding with heightened fear to the same startling events. Others fall somewhere in between these two poles. What is surprising is the fact that those with the flattest response to evocative images and sounds are the most likely to become violent delinquents in young adulthood.

In a remarkable study, the neuroscientist Adrian Raine and his colleagues presented 1,795 three year-olds with two different sounds while recording the sweatiness of their palms; the sweatier the palms, the greater the stress and fear. One sound was always associated with a second and highly aversive noise, while the second sound was always played alone. When you pair a neutral sound, such as a pure tone, with a nasty sound such as fingernails on a blackboard, simply hearing the pure tone will make your skin crawl; the pure tone predicts what is coming, and what is coming is not pleasant. When Raine revisited these same individuals twenty years later, those with serious criminal records (drug abuse, dangerous driving violations, or violence) had the driest palms at the age of three years. No stress. In another study, focusing specifically on violence, Raine measured the same stress response in a different group of three year-olds and then looked at their level of violence five years later. Once again, those with the driest palms at three years were the most violent at eight years. In the absence of a system that enables individuals to learn about danger, the brain and body act as if they were shrouded in an invisibility cloak, blind to the risks of crossing either moral or legal lines.

Raine’s findings fit well with the marshmallow study. In the same way that those who were most impatient in the pre-school years were also most likely to exhibit signs of delinquency in early adulthood, so too were those who were most blasé about fearful stimuli as children most likely to exhibit delinquency in adulthood. Both studies reveal the stability of personality traits created early in development. Both studies suggest that at the level of groups of individuals, as opposed to specific individuals, the blasé-impatient types represent a greater threat to our welfare. The point here about groups is important. These studies do not allow us to look at an individual’s record and conclude that because he could only wait for 3 seconds before eating the lone marshmallow, and almost fell asleep when presented with loud banging noises, that he is without doubt headed for a life of crime. We also can’t conclude that because patience and reactivity to fearful stimuli can be measured as early as three years old, that these personality traits are entirely genetic and fixed. In fact, other studies carried out by Raine show that if you ramp up the nutrition, exercise, and mental stimulation of children between the ages of 3-5 years, you can reduce adult criminal offenses by 35%. This reveals the importance of experience and the plasticity of this system over development.

What we can conclude from these findings is that there are significant individual differences that affect who is willing to take risks and who isn’t. We can conclude that there is a strong biological component that constrains the individual’s options. We can conclude that those who start early in life without an understanding of the dangers in the world, act as if they live in a risk-free world. Molecular biologists provide an increasingly precise understanding of how these individual differences start, pointing to genes that bias some individuals to take extreme risks, including the risk of violating social norms and laws by violently attacking another human being.

There are many situations where taking a risk pays off, whether we think of stealth military operations, chancy shots in the final seconds of a basketball game, or significant investments in an up and coming stock option. Though it often pays off to play it safe, those who stick their necks out and take a chance, may bring home significant gains. It is because of these competing strategies and potential payoffs that evolutionary biologists have imagined that selection could maintain both personality types within a population — a point noted earlier for the MAOA and glucose-related genes. If selection has worked in this way, then there must be genetic variation that allows for both strategies. To date, the strongest evidence comes from a family of genes associated with the regulation of dopamine, with the memorable acronyms of DAT1, DRD2 and DRD4; each of these genes is associated with different forms, each form associated with the expression of different levels of dopamine. Recall from earlier chapters that dopamine plays an essential role in our experience of reward, including how motivated we are to get it and what we anticipate based on our understanding of the situation — have we been rewarded in the past, how often, and how much? The idea here is that those who carry genes that output a higher level of dopamine may weight rewards more heavily and thus, show risk-blindness; for these individuals, the eye is on the prize, not the path or obstacles to this prize.

Across a number of studies, results show that variation in the expression of these genes is associated with high-risk and low self-control, including pathological gambling, substance abuse, sensation seeking, and financial investments. For example, in two separate studies, individuals with different variants of the DRD4 gene played a financial investment game involving real money. In one, designed by the psychologist Joan Chiao, subjects decided to invest in either a risky asset with variable returns or a riskless asset with consistent returns. In the second study, the economist Ana Dreber and the evolutionary psychologist Corin Apicella allowed subjects to either walk away with an initial starting pot of money, or to invest some of it in a risky asset. Both studies revealed that those with the DRD4 variant that expresses higher levels of dopamine were more likely to pursue the risky investment.

This work suggests that part of the variation we observe among people who make risky investments, drink too much alcohol, or gamble with their income, is influenced by variation in the dopamine family of genes. These are hidden risks that come to life thanks to the molecular biologist’s microscope. What also comes to life is the fact that these same genes are relevant to violence, tilting some further in the direction of striking out even though there are significant risks and horrific consequences.

In several studies, using an American health data base of several thousand adolescents, results consistently show a relationship between particular variants of the dopamine genes and violence. For example, the sociologist Guang Guo examined the relationship between violent delinquency — involving use of guns and knives — and variation in DRD2 and DAT1 among 2,5000 individuals ages 12-23 years. DRD2 was of particular interest because medical records and clinical trials reveal that administering haloperidol — a DRD2 dopamine antagonist — helps control aggression in psychotic patients. Guo found that levels of violence were about twice as high for one variant of the DRD2 gene than others, and about 20% higher for a particular variant of the DAT1 gene. These genetic variants lead to relatively higher levels of dopamine, which leads to differences in expected and experienced reward, which leads to differences in perceived risk, which leads to differences in the odds of getting in a fight and harming others. These are not genes for aggression, violence or evil. There are no such genes. Rather, they are genes that change our perception of risk. Because risk is related to all sorts of decisions, these genes can affect the odds that we directly harm others. They are part of the story of individual differences, and part of the story of why some are more likely to engage in harming others.

I don’t feel your pain

Soon after I entered junior high school, some time around my fourteenth birthday, I had a few near-death experiences, coming very close to drowning in our community pool. This was not because I was a poor swimmer. A boy named Lionel James, who was the same age but twice my size, was shoving my head under water, roaring with laughter as I struggled to gasp some air.

I usually managed to avoid Lionel in the pool, but sometimes he got the best of me while I was playing with friends. Lionel wasn’t the only one who bullied me in junior high school. He was part of an evil three pack, including Ronnie Paxton and Chris Joffe, each much stronger than I. Almost daily they bruised my arms by giving me knuckle-punches, black-and-blued my chest by twisting my nipples, and locked me inside one of the school’s lockers. This was no fun for me. For James, Joffe and Paxton it was delicious enjoyment.

One day my mother noticed the bruises. Horrified, she asked what happened. I reluctantly told her the story. She said we were going to see the school’s principal. I told her I would prefer water drip torture. She understood and we never went to see him.

The person who rescued me from my misery was my father, a man who lived through the war as a child, running from village to village to escape the Nazis, and in so doing, confronted thuggish farm boys whose weight far exceeded their IQ. My father, upon hearing that I didn’t want to go to school, offered a compromise: he would pick me up for lunch every day if I kept going to classes. I agreed, relishing the idea of escaping the lunch-time scene at school where James, Joffe, and Paxton pummeled me at will.

A month passed. I felt better. My father told me that it was time to go back to lunch at school, but with a plan, one centered around the notion of respect. The only way to command it from my tormenters was to fight back. It seemed like a remarkably stupid idea. But my father was wise. I decided to give it a shot.

Days after returning to school, I found myself standing behind Paxton who displayed biceps bigger than my head. I figured I had only one shot. I tapped him on the shoulder and swung as hard as I could, hitting him square in the chest. What aim. What perfection. What wasted energy. With no more than a flinch, Paxton looked down at me, fury in his face, and grunted “What’s up with you?” With tears running and lips trembling, I sputtered “I can’t take it anymore. You, Joffe, and James are constantly pummeling me. I can’t take it!” And then, as if his entire brain had been rewired, serotonin surging to provide self-control, dopamine flowing to shift his sense of reward, the hulk spoke: “Really? Okay, we’ll stop.” And just like that, James, Joffe and Paxton stopped. No more bruises, no more locker games. From victim to victory.

I was fortunate. Many are not. In the United States alone, an estimated 2 million children bully some 3 million victims per year, and of these victims, close to 200,000 will avoid school to avoid bullying, and 1 out of every 10 children will drop out of school completely. Worldwide statistics suggest that up to 20-30% of all children are bullied, and as a result suffer extreme physical and psychological trauma, including bullycide — the termination of a life that is treated by others as though it is no longer worth living. These are horrific numbers, a wake-up call that has finally caused bullying to enter the international arena of discussion on education reform and cyberspace policing.