The results support the idea that a tendency to avoid individuals who mistreat others is one of the things that make humans different from other species.
What's the evidence for that? Humans love people who mistreat others. We'll die for them and canonize them, for similar reasons as bonobos: they exude power, confidence, strength, certainty. A cursory overview of history and a lot of relationships will support that.
Happy to be wrong. What studies are they referring to?
Presumably the claim is that what makes humans different from other species is that some humans have a tendency to avoid individuals who mistreat others.
I could see that, but then the article reiterates:
The fact that bonobos prefer bullies and humans don’t suggests that an aversion to jerks is a fundamental aspect of human behavior that may be unique to our branch of the primate family tree.
In humans, the thinking goes, shunning wrongdoers not only helps people avoid bad partners, but also discourages wrongdoers from behaving badly in the first place. The threat of social rejection keeps them in check.
There are a lot of claims in a science article without much support. I don't imagine they are stating that without basis, but not familiar with the research.
I believe this bonobo study is considered salient precisely because it is trying to be an analogue to studies of humans that have found the opposite result.
This is a study of preverbal infants. Maybe infants do also discriminate between dominant and less dominant individuals, but at their age, being very care dependent, have a much stronger preference for kind individuals. Maybe infant bonobo's react in the same manner. I am also getting the impression that with adult humans dominance often plays a strong role over kindness.
Humans feel the need to justify their evil, though. When a populists rises to power and decides to target a minority, he does not openly say, "let us go bully those people". He justifies himself as the one standing on sound moral ground and he comes up with a reason for why that minority are evil people.
So for you, an outsider, you see a guy being a jerk and his followers loving him for it. But his followers are not seeing him as a jerk. They see him as their champion who is leading them in a war of good against evil.
As usual with science headlines, it's an oversimplification at best, and inaccurate at worst.
The results seemed to indicate that Bonobos preferred those who were at the top of the social hierarchy. The experiment would only be decisive if they could find a way to deconvolve jerkishness from dominance.
The researchers say there may be a good reason for these puzzling results. It could be that bonobos interpret rudeness as a sign of social status and are simply trying to keep dominant individuals on their side. In other words, it pays to have powerful allies.
To test the idea, the team showed 24 bonobos another set of animated videos in which one cartoon character repeatedly prevents another one from claiming a coveted spot. The apes generally preferred the character who hogged the spot over the one who yielded.
For bonobos, schmoozing with dominant individuals could mean better access to food, mates or other perks, or less chance of being bullied themselves, Krupenye said.
> To test the idea, the team showed 24 bonobos another set of animated videos in which one cartoon character repeatedly prevents another one from claiming a coveted spot. The apes generally preferred the character who hogged the spot over the one who yielded.
> they showed 24 bonobos animated videos of a Pac-Man-like shape as it struggles to climb a hill. Then another cartoon shape enters the scene.
Nevermind the 'jerk' part, I'm impressed that researchers are interpreting ape preferences via cartoons
Me too. If you showed one group of humans Bugs Bunny and another group of humans Care Bears, they would show a marked preference for Bugs Bunny (who usually abuses poor Elmer Fudd) because it's funnier. Does that mean humans prefer jerks, or just jerky cartoon characters?
Science confirms what we've known for a long time - humans are unique in their ability to act according to morality, instead of pure survival value. We have eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and have free will. Animals don't.
And yet most people still deny it (as evidenced by your being downvoted).
Our unique talents also include abstract reasoning and communication as well as advanced tool making, yet most human beings are still acting within the mammalian level of behavior which mostly comprises pack warfare and alpha-dominance seeking, and we are all witness to the disastrous effects those sub-human tendencies are having upon each other as well as the Earth itself (via our short-term profit-seeking over the long-term well-being of the Earth for our descendants benefit).
Love -- via selfless service to others' happiness -- is the most unique of human traits as it facilitates our rising above our mammalian tendencies (literally, from a brain structure standpoint) to segregate and wage war upon others of any perceived difference, be it physical (ethnic) or ideological (form of religion, neighborhood, country, sexual orientation or identity, etc.).
Only by accepting the primacy of our free wills upon this Earth and the necessity of our training our minds to differentiate good from evil and then choosing the former can we stop the devastation of the Earth and its less fortunate individuals.
Until then, the vast majority of human beings will remain, as Wisdom states, "like the animals, only worse".
I don't know that most people deny it, nor that down votes on this thread are evidence of anything...
It can't be modeled scientifically. People deny it because it's in effect a dogma. I don't say that as a slight, our society is built on the notion of free will.
It's simply that the notions exist in a level of abstraction, so the point is moot if you continue living your day to day life, except insofar as you let it affect your mental state.
"The results support the idea that a tendency to avoid individuals who mistreat others is one of the things that make humans different from other species."
The researchers desperately need to take a night out in town and observer other humans a bit. They've acquired a biased view from being cooped up with university people for far too long. I feel like I see directly contradictory behavior on a weekly basis.
100%. One of the disadvantages of living the privileged, protected life as an academic is the inability to accurately draw conclusions about the majority of humanity.
This seems like a jump. Two, actually. First, that academics, who work in a charged political environment and with college students, are sheltered. Second that the majority of humans prefer jerks. I don't know that we can substantiate either of those claims.
It's true that jerks can be in positions of power, but it's hard to say that people prefer them. Indeed, it appears that many people strongly dislike them, but that they are protected by their power and other people with power (a distinct minority).
Another confounding factor with humans is stated vs. revealed preferences. Anecdotally, most people I know would say they prefer nice people, but also many of them are observably drawn in by the magnetism and promises of charismatic jerks.
I agree, but it's not a very scientific claim. There are many confounding factors here: power dynamics, social status, educational background, and cultural norms. When we are attempting to discuss personal preference you need to control for those factors, if you can even control for the amount some of those things are internalized. That's why they have done studies like this with babies, who are not yes affected by those factors. Even with bonobos, it's hard to say what these animals "liked" and what they did simply because allying yourself with someone powerful allowed some benefits.
> First, that academics, who work in a charged political environment and with college students, are sheltered.
It's exactly because they find themselves in such an environment that they're sheltered. You think the majority of humanity has access to safe-spaces, policed speech and diversity initiatives? US college campuses do not reflect reality.
The "real" world also has fewer fraternities, entitled college athletes and less binge drinking. Academic departments are also highly charged political atmospheres, more than any place I've ever worked since I left college. Perhaps I have just been lucky, but I wouldn't go into academia for much less than a boatload of money.
You might have a biased view of academics. Students might be especially naive but my professors have never been anything but normal people who have more exposure to the varieties of human experience than most, because it's their job.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 51.0 ms ] threadWhat's the evidence for that? Humans love people who mistreat others. We'll die for them and canonize them, for similar reasons as bonobos: they exude power, confidence, strength, certainty. A cursory overview of history and a lot of relationships will support that.
Happy to be wrong. What studies are they referring to?
The fact that bonobos prefer bullies and humans don’t suggests that an aversion to jerks is a fundamental aspect of human behavior that may be unique to our branch of the primate family tree.
In humans, the thinking goes, shunning wrongdoers not only helps people avoid bad partners, but also discourages wrongdoers from behaving badly in the first place. The threat of social rejection keeps them in check.
There are a lot of claims in a science article without much support. I don't imagine they are stating that without basis, but not familiar with the research.
I believe this bonobo study is considered salient precisely because it is trying to be an analogue to studies of humans that have found the opposite result.
So for you, an outsider, you see a guy being a jerk and his followers loving him for it. But his followers are not seeing him as a jerk. They see him as their champion who is leading them in a war of good against evil.
It is all relative.
The results seemed to indicate that Bonobos preferred those who were at the top of the social hierarchy. The experiment would only be decisive if they could find a way to deconvolve jerkishness from dominance.
The researchers say there may be a good reason for these puzzling results. It could be that bonobos interpret rudeness as a sign of social status and are simply trying to keep dominant individuals on their side. In other words, it pays to have powerful allies.
To test the idea, the team showed 24 bonobos another set of animated videos in which one cartoon character repeatedly prevents another one from claiming a coveted spot. The apes generally preferred the character who hogged the spot over the one who yielded.
For bonobos, schmoozing with dominant individuals could mean better access to food, mates or other perks, or less chance of being bullied themselves, Krupenye said.
> they showed 24 bonobos animated videos of a Pac-Man-like shape as it struggles to climb a hill. Then another cartoon shape enters the scene.
Nevermind the 'jerk' part, I'm impressed that researchers are interpreting ape preferences via cartoons
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/animals-chickens...
Rough out there.
Our unique talents also include abstract reasoning and communication as well as advanced tool making, yet most human beings are still acting within the mammalian level of behavior which mostly comprises pack warfare and alpha-dominance seeking, and we are all witness to the disastrous effects those sub-human tendencies are having upon each other as well as the Earth itself (via our short-term profit-seeking over the long-term well-being of the Earth for our descendants benefit).
Love -- via selfless service to others' happiness -- is the most unique of human traits as it facilitates our rising above our mammalian tendencies (literally, from a brain structure standpoint) to segregate and wage war upon others of any perceived difference, be it physical (ethnic) or ideological (form of religion, neighborhood, country, sexual orientation or identity, etc.).
Only by accepting the primacy of our free wills upon this Earth and the necessity of our training our minds to differentiate good from evil and then choosing the former can we stop the devastation of the Earth and its less fortunate individuals.
Until then, the vast majority of human beings will remain, as Wisdom states, "like the animals, only worse".
It can't be modeled scientifically. People deny it because it's in effect a dogma. I don't say that as a slight, our society is built on the notion of free will.
It's simply that the notions exist in a level of abstraction, so the point is moot if you continue living your day to day life, except insofar as you let it affect your mental state.
The researchers desperately need to take a night out in town and observer other humans a bit. They've acquired a biased view from being cooped up with university people for far too long. I feel like I see directly contradictory behavior on a weekly basis.
When you have low power and mistreat others, others will retaliate.
It's true that jerks can be in positions of power, but it's hard to say that people prefer them. Indeed, it appears that many people strongly dislike them, but that they are protected by their power and other people with power (a distinct minority).
It's exactly because they find themselves in such an environment that they're sheltered. You think the majority of humanity has access to safe-spaces, policed speech and diversity initiatives? US college campuses do not reflect reality.