Post Date December, 03 2023
What will you do when you see someone you hate suffering, especially physical pain? Bill Clinton, the former president of the United States, said that he would feel the pain of others. However, a new brain scan study shows that when men see a liar being electrocuted, they can't feel the pain of that person at all. In fact, they can also feel happy. On the contrary, women's brains show that they are very sympathetic to the pain of cheaters and are not willing to implement corporal punishment. However, when some upright people are also shocked, men and women will also show sympathy.
For the first time, researchers have provided scientific basis for the view that people sympathize with the suffering of the people they like and are happy with the suffering of the people they hate. In particular, men tend to experience corporal punishment, which researchers believe shows why men traditionally control the world's military and police forces.
"Prisoner's dilemma" game: people who compete fairly are more attractive
Researchers from the University of London called 16 male volunteers and 16 female volunteers to play the "Prisoner's Dilemma" game with a group of participants who claimed to be volunteers. Each player is given a certain number of points to decide whether to keep them or give them to other players. Other players and other participants will decide whether to return some or all of the points to the player. Each transaction will get three times the points. The fair way to play is that both sides exchange points back and forth, and it is unfair to leave all points to yourself.
The rules of the game are simple: if everyone cooperates closely without cheating, they can share a bonus equally, but if someone cheats, they can get more bonus. In the course of the game, some participants abide by the rules of the game and play with volunteers steadfastly, while others are required to deliberately cheat and play tricks. Of course, this was specially arranged by the researchers to let volunteers play a game with a fair participant, and let other volunteers play a game with unfair participants. As a result, both male and female players rated fair players as more suitable, more lovely and even more attractive than unfair players.
Electrode test: men only hate bad people
Next, in front of the 32 volunteers, the researchers gave light shocks to the participants who followed the rules of the game and the cheaters respectively, and conducted brain scans on these volunteers.
"When you see someone being shocked, the area of your brain related to pain will activate," Stephen said. "We set that if you like the person who is shocked, the reaction will be different. Your relationship with this person will affect the activity of the sympathetic area."
The scan results showed that when the participants who worked closely with themselves and obeyed the rules were shocked, both male and female volunteers reacted in the areas related to pain, which showed that they all sympathized with the good players who were shocked. However, when the cheater who deceived and deceived himself was shocked, the male volunteers had no sympathy response at all, while the female volunteers still had sympathy response, but the response was weaker than when the player who obeyed the rules was punished, which showed that the strength of people's sympathy depended on the nature of the social behavior of the sympathized object, and the men only hated the bad people and were more willing to see the bad people punished.
The harsher the punishment is, the happier the man is
It is very interesting that when the cheater was punished, the male volunteers' brain regions related to joy and satisfaction unexpectedly showed obvious reactions, while when they saw that they were punished for obeying the rules of the game, this reaction was much weaker, indicating that they were happy to see that the cheater who cheated themselves was punished. However, female volunteers, no matter who saw the punishment, did not respond to this brain region, which means that women did not feel happy when they saw others suffering.
Tanya Singh, the leader of the study, said: "This surprised me. I didn't expect that there would be such a big difference between male and female responses. During the break, we noticed from the body language of volunteers that those male and female volunteers obviously didn't like those who cheated them and kept away from them as far as possible."
Finally, these volunteers accepted a questionnaire. The results showed that male volunteers were more eager to punish cheaters than female volunteers, and showed that the greater the hope of revenge, the stronger the reaction of the happy area of the brain when the cheater was shocked. Female volunteers have no such correlation.
"We found in the questionnaire that men want revenge more than women. This is also reflected in the brain. The strength of their activity is closely related to the desire for revenge."
Why do people gloat?
Why do people experience some kind of happiness when they see others' troubles? In fact, the truth is very simple. In most cases, schadenfreude does not have a profound connotation, but is just a kind of emotional expression of people in nature. At most, it is stealing and laughing at oneself. For example, on the street, when you see a pedestrian in front of you accidentally stepped on a banana skin, and nearly fell but didn't fall, people around you will smile happily.
According to this principle, TV stations in the United States design agencies on the street to make an fool of unknown passers-by and secretly shoot programs, which have always been one of the entertainment programs with the highest ratings. From this point of view, schadenfreude is the simplest, easiest, most convenient and most ready-made entertainment in the world. Don't spend money. It's the best cost-effective. Why not?
Why do men and women treat other people's misfortunes differently?
Researchers said that the obvious gender difference might be caused by such punishment. Tanya Singh, the research leader, said that the differences caused by gender differences were surprising. This may be the important role of men in maintaining justice in human society, so it evolved, but we must be confirmed by large-scale research.
At the same time, he also warned that other reasons might have caused the difference. For example, in the "Prisoner's Dilemma" game, women may not react as much to economic cheating as men, so their revenge is a little weaker. Another possibility is that women do not like to use corporal punishment to solve problems. If the cheater is punished psychologically, socially or economically, women may have different reactions, and may also have the same reaction as men.
