Bullies may enjoy seeing others in pain
November 7, 2008Unusually aggressive youth may actually enjoy inflicting pain on others, research using brain scans at the University of Chicago shows.
Scans of the aggressive youth's brains showed that an area that is associated with rewards was highlighted when the youth watched a video clip of someone inflicting pain on another person. Youth without the unusually aggressive behavior did not have that response, the study showed.
"This is the first time that fMRI scans have been used to study situations that could otherwise provoke empathy," said Jean Decety, Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago. "This work will help us better understand ways to work with juveniles inclined to aggression and violence."
Decety is an internationally recognized expert on empathy and social neuroscience. The new research shows that some aggressive youths' natural empathetic impulse may be disrupted in ways that increase aggression.
The results are reported in the paper "Atypical Empathetic Responses in Adolescents with Aggressive Conduct Disorder: A functional MRI Investigation" in the current issue of the journal Biological Psychology. Benjamin Lahey, Professor of Epidemiology and Psychiatry at the University, co-authored the paper, along with University students Kalina Michaslska and Yuko Akitsuki. The National Science Foundation supported the work.
In the study, researchers compared eight 16- to 18-year-old boys with aggressive conduct disorder to a control group of adolescent boys with no unusual signs of aggression. The boys with the conduct disorder had exhibited disruptive behavior such as starting a fight, using a weapon and stealing after confronting a victim.
The youth were tested with fMRI while looking at video clips in which people endured pain accidentally, such as when a heavy bowl was dropped on their hands, and intentionally, such as when a person stepped on another's foot.
"The aggressive youth activated the neural circuits underpinning pain processing to the same extent, and in some cases, even more so than the control participants without conduct disorder," Decety said.
"Aggressive adolescents showed a specific and very strong activation of the amygdala and ventral striatum (an area that responds to feeling rewarded) when watching pain inflicted on others, which suggested that they enjoyed watching pain," he said.
Unlike the control group, the youth with conduct disorder did not activate the area of the brain involved in self-regulation (the medial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction).
The control group acted similarly to youth in a study released earlier this year, in which Decety and his colleagues used fMRI scans to show 7- to 12-year-olds are naturally empathetic toward people in pain.
Source: University of Chicago
Nov 18, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
Everybody already knows that.
The real application of this, however, is if they can show that repeated stimulation of this abnormal pathway increases pleasure-seeking behaviour using that pathway - i.e., watching a lot of violence on TV => violent behaviour.
Um, no. Until very recently, everyone "knew" that bullies behaved that way because of a lack of self-esteem. It took a study published in SciAm which showed that bullies actually suffer from an *excess* of self-esteem to get people to start rethinking things (frankly, this has always been obvious to me, but hey ,what do I know).
Even then, knowing in general how bullies behave and knowing specifically how the brain reacts are two different things. As Keter points out, turning this into a simple stimulus/reward situation narrows the range of possible treatments. For instance, "see how YOU like it" probably wouldn't work.
Yes the feared and hated TERRORISM!
Why we try to eradicate terrorism over far away borders, while our schools are plagued with it?
Do me a favor and START eradicating terrorism in our own schools!
It is also well know that if you cut the weed above the root, it will come back stronger then before.
...but to me this seems like the most fundamental, clear-cut example of a harmful brain defect in the context of our present society. Sadism is not a useful trait even in soldiers. I'd be in favour of engineering it out of the gene pool - it's kinder than euthanasia, and would be far cheaper than incarceration of all affected.
Labeling everything you don't like as terrorism only manages to rid the term of the little meaning still left after terrorists attacked terrorists in the name of war on terror.
Self-esteem, i.e. "pride" is the key motivator in the majority of crime, most especially assault and arguments and fights in schools.
You are correct when you say they have too much self esteem, everyone does.
Philippians 2:3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.
===
"Self Esteem" is just a PC word for "pride", "Arrogance", and "self centeredness".
Did you know that the conversation between Jesus and his disciples in the garden is almost a total plagiarism of the book of Daniel? Many of the "quotes" are word for word. The theory is that whoever wrote that section of the gospels figured that gentiles wouldn't know any better. (By this time, around 80-100 CE, the xian followers had pretty much accepted that there was no traction to be had in Israel)