El capitalismo del ego engendra monstruos

Nadie cree ya en nada, solo en lo que cada uno quiere: de ahí se deriva la desconfianza de todos frente a todos. La ceguera del Fausto digital ha dado origen a una crisis europea que cuestiona el núcleo del sistema

ULRICH BECK 25 FEB 2013 - 00:02 CET

 

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Sobre el homo oeconomicus,la ideología neoclásica o neoliberal está todo dicho, si bien no por parte de todos. Ya el poeta favorito de Alemania, Goethe, predijo en 1832 en su drama Fausto el dominio universal del dinero… ¡Y en verso! Sin embargo, a comienzos del siglo XXI tenemos que añadir algo esencial, nuevo y original: el Fausto digital, o más exactamente: el atrevimiento y ceguera fáusticos del capitalismo del ego.

Frank Schirrmacher, coeditor delFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,describe en su libro de reciente aparición, Ego, cómo la implantación de este “nuevo” egoísmo ha ido adquiriendo carácter normativo y, tras la guerra fría, ha sellado la victoria de la teoría de la elección racional hasta en los detalles más nimios del mundo de la vida; incluso en el alma digital del homo novus. Hasta el concepto sartriano de “mala fe” se queda demasiado corto, puesto que presupone la libertad de elección.

Los economistas afirman, naturalmente, lo de siempre: se trata solo de modelos. La del homo oeconomicus no es más que una hipótesis. Pero en el drama real, de desenlace abierto, en el que todos somos participantes y espectadores, víctimas y cómplices, lo que está en juego es cómo el homunculus oeconomicus —un ciborg, un androide, una figura artificial, a medio camino entre la máquina y el hombre— se ha escapado de los “laboratorios frankensteinianos de Wall Street”. Esa narración dramática también extrae su potencia de la brutal sencillez con la que se reacciona a la complejidad extrema del mundo: 1/0, sí/no, conectar/desconectar: es decir, los hombres actúan con códigos informáticos de acuerdo con las leyes de los economistas.

Nadie cree ya en nada, solo en lo que uno quiere. De ahí se deriva la desconfianza de todos frente a todos, de la que el mal se alimenta en todas partes. Aquí tenemos la paradoja: en un momento histórico en el que las instituciones del Estado de bienestar, los mercados financieros y la relación con el entorno natural sufren una crisis fundamental, surgen las “egomónadas”. Su funcionalidad no solo estriba en ocultar frente a otros las consecuencias de la propia acción. Más bien han de interpretarse como estrategias de evitación del riesgo en un mundo de riesgos globales: como una sociopatología del capitalismo del ego.

La política de ahorro con la que se responde a la crisis financiera es percibida como injusta

La crisis financiera y europea solo abre una primera perspectiva de esta ceguera del Fausto digital. Los mercados financieros no son más que los primeros mercados automatizados. Pero les seguirán otros. La comunicación social, los grandes datos, los servicios secretos, la manipulación de los consumidores, a quién se considera un terrorista, las universidades en la barahúnda reformista neoliberal, las relaciones amorosas digitalizadas, el choque de las religiones mundiales en el espacio digital, etcétera.

¿Qué tiene de novedoso el Fausto digital? En la Edad Media los alquimistas intentaban transformar en oro los metales innobles. Los actuales “alquimistas de los mercados” (Schirrmacher) transforman hipotecas tóxicas, de alto riesgo, en productos de primera clase, calificados con notas tan altas que incluso pueden ser adquiridos por los fondos de pensiones. ¿Puede uno comprar una casa sin dinero y gastar además un dinero inexistente? Sí, puede, replican los malabaristas financieros, esos neoalquimistas de bancos mundiales demasiado grandes para caer.

Ante nosotros se abre el nuevo mundo de la manipulación digital del alma. Innumerables agentes digitales, con frecuencia completamente estúpidos, están tan fascinados con sus ideas que no se dan cuenta en absoluto de cómo, a partir de los ingredientes de egoísmo, codicia y capacidad de engañar, surgen monstruos. Entre ellos, monstruos políticos. La política de ahorro con la que Europa responde en este momento a la crisis financiera desencadenada por los bancos es percibida por los ciudadanos como una monstruosa injusticia. Son ellos quienes tienen que pagar con la moneda contante de su existencia por la ligereza con la que los bancos han pulverizado sumas inimaginables. Sin embargo, quienes se dedican a entender al capital, los hermeneutas de los monstruos, han desarrollado un lenguaje curiosamente terapéutico. Los mercados son “tímidos” como cervatos, afirman. No se dejan “engañar”. Pero los verdugos económicos, denominados “agencias de calificación de riesgos”, que también rinden tributo a la religión terrenal de la maximización del beneficio, basándose en las leyes del capitalismo del ego emiten juicios que alcanzan a Estados enteros en el corazón de su ser económico: a Italia, España o Grecia.

“Cada hombre tiene que convertirse en el mánager de su propio yo”(Schirrmacher). Ya ha pasado el tiempo en el que los empresarios eran empresarios y los trabajadores, trabajadores. Ahora, en el nivel del capitalismo del ego, ha surgido la nueva figura social del “empresario de sí mismo”: es decir, el empresario descarga la coerción de autoexplotación y autoopresión sobre el individuo, que tiene que aceptar con entusiasmo esta situación, porque ese es el hombre enteramente nuevo que ha nacido en el nuevo mundo feliz del trabajo. El empresario de sí mismo acaba siendo el “cubo de la basura” de los problemas irresueltos de todas las instituciones.

Y, sin embargo, la “individualización”, entendida en un sentido sociológico, es mucho más que eso, es “individualismo institucionalizado”. El proceso de individualización en este último sentido no se refiere únicamente a una ideología social, o a una forma de percepción del individuo, sino que hace referencia a instituciones centrales de la sociedad moderna, como los derechos civiles, políticos y sociales fundamentales, dirigidos todos ellos al individuo. De ahí surge una generación global, interconectada de forma transnacional, que ha de ensayar cómo volver a armonizar individualismo y moral social y cómo conjugar la libertad de arbitrio y la individualidad con una existencia orientada a los otros.

Sindicatos, partidos políticos, iglesias, se están convirtiendo en jinetes sin caballos

Muchos jóvenes ya no están dispuestos a ser soldados en la ejecución de las instrucciones jerárquicas en las organizaciones sociales, ni a renunciar a tener voz propia siendo previsibles peones de un partido. Antes al contrario, las instituciones —sindicatos, partidos políticos, iglesias— se convierten en jinetes sin caballos. La agitación anticapitalista que existe en el mundo probablemente tenga que ver con ambas cosas: el choque de la individualización de los derechos fundamentales con la mercadotecnia del yo que sigue reglas económicas transparentes.

El riesgo de colapso, cada vez más palpable, también ha despertado el sueño de una nueva Europa.

Vivimos en una época en la que ha ocurrido algo que hasta no hace mucho parecía inimaginable, esto es: que los fundamentos del capitalismo global —antes considerado racional, pero que ha terminado siendo irracional— se han hecho completamente políticos, es decir, cuestionables, e incluso políticamente modificables. Existen versiones radicalmente distintas del futuro de Occidente, donde entretanto tiene lugar casi una guerra fría civil: ¿se quiere un capitalismo regulable, que busque un equilibrio con los movimientos sociales y esté abierto a las cuestiones del clima, o se apuesta por la autorregulación del capitalismo globalizado del ego y por más intervenciones militares, de modo que se intente mantener la cohesión nacional aplicando el esquema de amigo/enemigo? Ese es el núcleo del conflicto.

Los riesgos globales son una especie de recordatorio colectivo forzoso de que el potencial de aniquilación al que nos hemos expuesto incluye nuestras decisiones y nuestros errores. Estas impregnan todos los ámbitos de la vida, pero al mismo tiempo abren nuevas oportunidades de transformación del mundo. Es la paradoja en virtud de la cual los riesgos globales dan aliento a la acción. En ello estriba la opción europea: plantear sistemáticamente la pregunta de qué alternativas hay al capitalismo digital del ego. La pregunta de cómo, mediante una Europa distinta, es posible más libertad, más seguridad social y más democracia.

Ulrich Beck es sociólogo y profesor de la London School of Economics y de la Universidad de Harvard. Su último libro publicado en España es Una Europa alemana, Paidós 2012.

Traducción de Jesús Alborés Rey.

Fuente...EL PAIS

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Más allá de la ira Posted: 18 Feb 2013 05:36 AM PST Referencia: NewScientist.com . por Emma Young, 14 febrero 2013  "Cualquiera puede enfadarse, eso es fácil; pero enfadarse con la persona adecuada, en la medida correcta, en el momento oportuno, con el conveniente propósito y de la forma apropiada, eso ya no es tan fácil". Así escribía Aristóteles, hace más de 2000 años, en su obra clásica "El arte de la Retórica". Sus palabras no cuadran muy bien con nuestro moderno concepto de la ira. Hoy día, tendemos a pensar que es una emoción destructiva que puede arruinar relaciones y derribar carreras profesionales. De hecho, el manejo de la ira es un campo lleno de teorías sobre la mejor manera de controlar o reprimir la ira excesiva. Pero la ira, parece ahora, que no es del todo mala. De hecho, haríamos bien en cultivar nuestra ira en algunas situaciones, en las relaciones personales, en la negociación de algunos negocios y dentro de los grupos de acción social, por ejemplo. "En la medida que la ira suele ser una experiencia desagradable, se ve como una emoción negativa", dice el psicólogo Brett Ford, de la Universidad de California, Berkeley. "Pero experimentar la ira puede ayudarnos a perseguir nuestras metas, y ser más feliz y saludables a largo plazo". Para cultivar estos beneficios, la destreza, tal como entendía Aristóteles, es saber cuándo, dónde, cómo y por qué te enojas. Tenemos que aprender a utilizar nuestra ira de manera estratégica, en lugar de dejar que nos controle. Los filósofos han reflexionado largo y tendido acerca de las causas de la ira, pero en general la reconocen como una respuesta emocional a ser provocado. Una llamada de atención de un empleado, un insulto dirigido a tu hijo, la decisión que sugiere tu jefe acerca de que tus sentimientos son irrelevantes, todas estas cosas tienden a desencadenar sentimientos de ira, y por lo general son vienen acompañadas por cambios físicos, como el aumento de la frecuencia cardíaca y los niveles de adrenalina. El cómo respondemos a estos desencadenantes, cuánta rabia sentimos y en qué medida lo expresamos, varía de una persona a otra (ver anexo 2 "La brigada de la ira"). No hay duda de que las personas que experimentan y expresan enojo con frecuencia, padecen de una rabia desinhibida. Aunque el impacto sobre su salud sea discutible, el efecto en sus relaciones está claro. "Sus hijos, esposas, jefes, familias les temen, y asustan a cualquiera", señala Mike Fisher, director de la Asociación Británica de manejo de la ira, con sede en East Grinstead. "No te creerías la cantidad de personas que hay así. No tienen amigos. Su familia les ha dejado. Todos ellos funcionan o actúan con toda una variedad de adicciones". Desde la rabia desencadenada en las revueltas, nadie está discutiendo que la ira no pueda ser enormemente destructiva, sin embargo, la idea de que a veces también puede ser beneficiosa está ganando terreno. Un estudio de especial influencia se produjo a raíz de los ataques terroristas del 11/9 en EE.UU. Jennifer Lerner, ahora en la Universidad de Harvard, recopiló información sobre las emociones y actitudes de los casi 1000 adultos y adolescentes estadounidenses, apenas a nueve días tras dichos ataques, con estudios de seguimiento en años posteriores. Ella encontró que las personas que se sentían molestos con el terrorismo se mostraron más optimistas sobre el futuro que los que tenían miedo al terrorismo. Los hombres del estudio estaban más enojados que las mujeres, y en general, eran más optimistas. También encontró que, el enfoque de las historias de los medios de comunicación para enojar a la gente, les hacía tener menos miedo a ser heridos en un atentado terrorista y más dispuestos a apoyar una respuesta pública agresiva en lugar de conciliadora (Psychological Science, vol 14, p 144). Una ira sana En un estudio de laboratorio, Lerner descubrió que la gente enojada, en vez de miedo por una situación de estrés, tienen una menor respuesta biológica, en términos de presión arterial y niveles de estrés hormonal (Biological Psychiatry, vol 61, p 253). Esto demuestra, señala ella, que cuando estás en una situación desesperante, y tu ira está justificada, la emoción no es necesariamente mala para usted. Investigaciones recientes de Ford dan un paso más allá. Trabajando con Tamir Maya, de la Universidad Hebrea de Jerusalén, Israel, descubrieron que las personas tienden a sentirse enojadas en vez de felices, cuando se confrontan otros casos de mayor bienestar general (Emotion, vol 12, p 685). La naturaleza irascible también puntuó más alto en inteligencia emocional, que puede parecer contrario a la intuición, sin embargo, es coherente con la idea de sentirse enojado, aunque desagradable, puede tener sus usos. La investigación de Lerner del 11/9, también pone de relieve la importancia de la ira que provocó la acción colectiva contra una amenaza común, una idea que está siendo explorada por Andrew Livingstone, de la Universidad de Stirling, Reino Unido. Su equipo estudió a grupos de personas con algo en común (p. ej., procedentes de Gales del Sur) y grupos al azar, y midió las reacciones emocionales de los participantes a factores desencadenantes, como la sugerencia de que iba a ser retirado el apoyo gubernamental a lugares de patrimonio en el sur de Gales. Ellos encontraron que la ira, más que cualquier otra emoción, ayudaba a unir a las personas con una convicción compartida, y les planteó que pasaran a la acción. "Por su naturaleza, la ira tiende a ser una emoción muy energizante", dice Ford. Su trabajo sugiere que el sentirse enojadas hace que las personas busquen recompensas (Psychological Science, vol 21, p 1098). Si el deseo de recompensa promueve la mejora las condiciones de trabajo, por ejemplo, o cambios sociales más amplios, la ira puede jugar un papel muy importante para ayudar a alcanzar estos objetivos. "Mahatma Gandhi y su resistencia pasiva, es un bello ejemplo de la ira controlada", afirma Fisher. "Se ha visto con Nelson Mandela, con Malcolm X, estas son enormes figuras de nuestra historia que se destacan como líderes increíbles, que han canalizado su ira y han transformado naciones. Sin embargo, esta canalización de su ira se ha dirigido a curar en lugar de hacer daño." La ira es de vital importancia para la movilización que apoya a un movimiento social, señala Nicole Tausch, de la Universidad de St. Andrews, Reino Unido. Cuando examinaron las protestas estudiantiles contra los costes de matrícula en Alemania, la respuesta de los musulmanes indios a la desigualdad en la India, o cómo los musulmanes británicos reaccionaron ante la "guerra contra el terrorismo" del gobierno británico, Tausch y sus colegas hallaron que la ira jugaba un papel positivo. En particular, la gente estaba motivada a realizar manifestaciones pacíficas esperando persuadir a su adversario para rectificar las injusticias sociales ((Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 101, p 129). En contextos políticos, la ira puede ser la señal de que las personas todavía se sienten conectadas y representadas por un sistema político, "las expresiones de enojo, como en las protestas, podrían no ser vistas como una amenaza para el sistema, sino como signos de una democracia saludable". Si la ira puede servir a una causa superior, también puede ser aprovechada para nuestros fines personales. Hay muchas pruebas de que la ira puede ser beneficiosa en un contexto profesional, siempre y cuando se tenga cuidado de cómo se expresa y ante quién. La explosión de ira puede pagar dividendos en el lugar de trabajo, si los gerentes posteriormente abordan los problemas de fondo, en lugar de simplemente castigar a las personas agraviadas (Human Relations, vol 64, p 201). Algunos gerentes con visión de futuro, incluso quieren fomentar la ira, al menos en determinados momentos, parece que las personas que se sienten enojadas producen una lluvia de ideas de forma más estructurada, coherente además con una resolución creativa de problemas (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol 47, p 1107). La ira profesional También hay pruebas de que los líderes políticos y empresariales que se enojan más que sentir tristeza, en respuesta a un escándalo se les concede un estatus más alto (Revista de Personalidad y Psicología Social, vol 80, p 86), siempre y cuando sea hombre, es así. Tanto los hombres como las mujeres confieren un menor estatus a las mujeres profesionales montadas en cólera que a sus homólogos profesionales masculinos, ya sea la mujer un CEO o una aprendiz. Las reacciones emocionales de una mujer se atribuyen generalmente a su carácter ("ella es una persona enojada") mientras que en los hombres se percibe como una mera reacción a las circunstancias externas. La secretaria de Estado de EE.UU., Hillary Clinton, es una mujer política que ha sufrido críticas por ser "demasiado iracunda", reseña Victoria Brescoll, de la Universidad de Yale (Psychological Science, vol 19, p 268). Diversos estudios han descubierto que los negociadores enojados pueden obtener un mejor resultado en su haber. Pero en 2010, Hajo Adán, de INSEAD, una escuela de negocios en Francia, halló una importante excepción. Su investigación se inspiró, en parte, al observar cómo sus colegas en INSEAD (que cuenta con campus en todo el mundo) reaccionaban de manera distinta a los arrebatos de ira, y cómo los enviados comerciales de Japón respondió negativamente al ex presidente de EE.UU. Bill Clinton tomó una postura enojada en las negociaciones a principios de 1990. En los estudios en laboratorio con estudiantes voluntarios de la Universidad de California, Berkeley, el equipo de Adán descubrió que los estadounidenses de ascendencia europea hacían más concesiones a un rival enfadado que a uno no-emocional, en tanto que los asiáticos y asiático-americanos hacían menos concesiones (Psychological Science, vol 21, p 882). Adán piensa que esto refleja las normas culturales acerca de cuándo es o no apropiado enojarse. Advertencias aparte, la ira, usada juiciosamente, tiene todo tipo de beneficios tanto en el ámbito laboral como en la más amplia esfera social. Sin embargo, ¿qué ocurre con la vida familiar? Sin duda, cuando se trata de tus seres queridos, ¿es siempre mejor mantener la calma y evitar un altercado? No, dice Ernest Harburg, profesor emérito de la Universidad de Maryland, en la Escuela de Salud Pública en Washington DC. Él cree que una pelea con tu pareja en realidad podría ser saludable. Su equipo ha encontrado que, las personas que suelen reprimir su ira en disputas con su compañero/a mueren antes que aquellos que permiten su ira y resuelven conflictos. Y últimamente, en los resultados aún no publicados de un estudio que abarca más de tres décadas, las parejas donde ambos expresan su enojo tienen una vida significativamente más larga. Harburg cree que la represión de la ira aumenta la presión arterial y, a largo plazo, esto afecta la vida útil. "La idea de inhibir la ira todo el tiempo, lo cual es promovido por las religiones y los pacifistas, no da lugar a un pensamiento saludable." Fisher advierte que al enojarse en una relación, hay que ser respetuoso. "Es tan simple como decir: Me siento mal y enojado, necesito que me escuches y me tomes seriamente, que te ocupes de mi y me hagas caso". Eso, admite, no es lo que la gente suele decir. Como ya reconoció Aristóteles, el control de la ira no es nada fácil. Pero hasta eso no es suficiente. También tenemos que aprender a responder adecuadamente a la ira de los demás. Si se le impulsa a más ira, o incluso simplemente se le ignora, las consecuencias pueden ser graves. Todo el mundo tiene una experiencia personal de esto, y si esto se da en un contexto político, los resultados pueden ser desastrosos. Tausch y su equipo, han encontrado que si el objetivo de la ira expresada por un grupo político no responde a los cambios, el grupo puede llegar a ser desdeñar el objetivo (quizás al gobierno), y dedicarse a lo que se llama "fuera de sistema" de la acción política, es decir, la violencia o el apoyo al terrorismo. Razón de más, entonces, para "enfadarse con la persona adecuada, en la medida correcta, en el momento oportuno, con el conveniente propósito y de la forma apropiada". Y razón de más para prestar atención a la ira, en lugar de ignorarla. La ira no debe ser vista como una forma destructiva del comportamiento, subraya Tausch, sino más bien como una forma de fomentar los comportamientos para que sean positivos y constructivos para las relaciones sociales. Anexo 1. La fisiología de la furia El estallido de ira tiene efectos poderosos en el cuerpo humano     Los ojos se fijan     La cara enrojece     Se aprieta la mandíbula     La voz se vuelve estridente (mujeres)     La voz se profundiza (hombres)     El corazón late fuerte     Nerviosismo en el estómago o náuseas     Las extremidades tiemblan     La adrenalina se dispara     Incremento del flujo de sangre en las manos     Respiración más fuerte     Aumenta la sudoración     Elevación del torso     Se abren los orificios nasales Anexo 2. La brigada de la ira El mismo rol social puede hacer a una persona ansiosa, a otra irritada y a una tercera tan enojada que reaccione con los puños. Nadie está muy seguro de por qué algunas personas tienen miedo cuando se les provoca y otros se enojan, pero lo cierto es que hay gente que tiende a enojarse más que otros. Para empezar, los hombres se enojan más que las mujeres. Y dentro de cada sexo, los hombres físicamente fuertes son más iracundos que los débiles, y las mujeres hermosas suelen enojarse más que las mujeres menos atractivas, de hecho, la diferencia está en un 20 por ciento de variación en la ira masculina, según Aaron Sell, de la Griffith University, Queensland, Australia (Human Nature, vol 23, p 30). "La teoría es que la fuerza y ​​el atractivo conduce individualmente a hombres y mujeres a sentirse con más derecho". En nuestro pasado evolutivo, tales atributos les habría dado una ventaja en la competencia con los demás. "Si el mundo no les da estos beneficios, son más propensos a volverse furiosos como consecuencia de ello", señaló Sell. Siguiendo una lógica similar, algunos investigadores creen que una alta autoestima crea a gente más enojada. Sin embargo, Mike Fisher, director de la Asociación Británica de Control de la Ira, cree que lo contrario también es cierto. Su experiencia le ha convencido de que las personas con baja autoestima (que puede incluir a alumnos de alto rendimiento) sufren más de estrés, lo que alimenta su ira. La gente se enoja más en momentos de estrés como ahora, cuando gran parte del mundo desarrollado se preocupa por la economía, argumenta Fisher. La susceptibilidad al estrés también podría explicar el por qué de un alto nerviosismo, Las personas Tipo A, se cree que se enojan más que el más relajado Tipo B. La fisiología, a veces, podría ser responsable: hay un vínculo entre un pobre control de la glucemia y el estado de ánimo alterado, incluso enfadado (Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics, vol 14, p 303). La ira incluso se ha relacionado con un gen, el MAO-A, conocido como el gen "guerrero". Sin embargo, mientras que las personas con este gen tienden a ser más agresivos, esto no significa necesariamente que sea porque se sienten más enojados. Y nadie sabe realmente lo que hay detrás de un trastorno explosivo intermitente, dice Ronald Kessler, de la Harvard Medical School. Es una enfermedad psicológica caracterizada por erupciones de ira incontrolable, que generalmente se desarrolla en la infancia tardía. En 2012, el equipo de Kessler informó que alrededor de 1 de cada 12 adolescentes y adultos estadounidenses lo padecen, una tasa mucho más alta de lo que nadie habría sospechado (Archives of General Psychiatry, vol 69, p 1131). Cualesquiera que sean las causas, no existe una "cura" para la ira excesiva. Una persona que se siente con frecuencia inapropiadamente enojada, por lo general, debería siempre trabajar en su gestión, señala Fisher. Como él mismo lo sufre, sabe lo difícil que puede ser. Pero hay un rayo de esperanza. Como regla general, tendemos a estar menos enojados, o por lo menos menos agresivos, a medida que envejecemos. Anexo 3. Hacer unos tests ¿Controlas tu ira, o la ira te controla a ti? La Asociación Británica de Control de la ira tiene un test en línea que le dirá dónde se sitúa. Mike Fisher, director de la Asociación Británica de Control de la ira, es también el fundador de Stress Experts, un test de estrés de la compañía en línea puede dar una guía de lo bien que está hacer frente a las pruebas de la vida. Artículo original: "Do get mad: The upside of anger", apareció en prensa como "Do get mad". Imagen: La ira. Fuente..Pedro Donaire, BITNAVEGANTES

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This Is Your Brain on the Internet (Maybe)

By Kyle Hill | September 11, 2012 |  6

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Headlines like “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” or “Is the Internet Making Us Dumber?” quite clearly show that people are concerned about what the Internet is doing to our cognition. Some have speculated that the Internet has become a kind of external hard drive for our brains, eliminating our need to really learn or process information. Others point to the obvious advantages of having more information available to more people than at any other time in history. As our lives become increasingly wired, we are now stepping back to see just how deep down the connections go.
In the late 1980s, communication researchers began shifting to a view of human communication that was more cognitively based. Out of this shift came a few now very successful theories that sought to describe how we seek and process information. One of the most widely applicable theories to come out of this “cognitive revolution,” developed by researchers Alice Eagly and Shelly Chaiken, was dubbed the “Heuristic Systematic Model” (or HSM). Like the highly popularized theory of “System 1” and “System 2” thinking advanced by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, the HSM separates our information processing strategies into two distinct modes. Our heuristic thinking is characterized as a rough and ready approximator relying on basic cues. Being that this style of thought is cognitively less costly, it is our default, applying stereotypes, models, and gut-reactions to the processing of information. Conversely, our systematic thinking is an in-depth look at the evidence where we internalize information and connect it to other ideas. The organizing concept of the HSM is that people are cognitive misers. It takes real mental effort to process information deeply, and as such we rarely do so, or only do so when properly motivated.
The trigger to transition between styles in this dual-process cognition is partially dependent on the sufficiency principle. Generally, when making a decision, we weigh how much we know against how much we need to know to make a confident judgment about a topic. If this gap between what we know and what we need to know is small, heuristic-style thinking is more likely. Conversely, if there is a large gap, we need to expend more mental resources to close it, thus encouraging systematic thinking. This Scrooge-like mental calculus determines how much we process the information we are inundated with everyday. And we readily recognize this game of cognitive economy, especially when browsing the web. For example, going through a stuffed RSS feed can be a fairly disengaged experience, with only the topics that are interesting, confusing, or contentious garnering real attention. This “surf or stay” mentality is easily grafted onto the HSM.
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Where I think many of the “the Internet is making us stupid” claims get it wrong is that these detractions also apply to other mediums. The Internet is young and revolutionary, to be sure, but the brains we explore it with are the same that peruse the sports section or catch up on the Colbert Report. It should stand to reason that our theories of information processing, like the HSM, should then apply to this new medium. Rather than call a change in processing strategies a “dumbing down” of the populous, we should be just as willing to first understand without judgment how we think on the Internet as we do with newspapers and television.
So what is the Internet doing to our thinking? It is hard to say. Current research has a hard time keeping up with the break-neck pace of online culture, and only the more conventional mediums like television and newspapers have been evaluated in any rigorous sense. Applying successful models of human information processing to the Internet could be a real boon for science. Are there certain aspects of websites that encourage critical thinking? How do people determine if something is credible on the Internet? Could we craft websites with an understanding of cognition to better promote in-depth thought? These are questions that are hard to answer in specific ways without a general foundation of research, which is lacking. Ever the intrepid graduate student, I believe this deficiency needs remedying.
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Faced with an open chasm separating ignorance from less ignorance, I have been trying to apply the HSM to the Internet. Of course I would like to pare down this vague goal, perhaps looking at how people evaluate scientific information on the web, but with a grand canyon of research before me, I had to start general. I reasoned that if people are to apply a certain style of thought to information, the information must first go through the requisite credibility checks. An accuracy motivation, one of three motivations outlined in the HSM (the others being defense and impression management), would then be a good place to begin. Everyone has had the experience of trying to find good information on the Internet, and examining the cognitive pursuit of this goal could inform how people glean information from it. If I could instill an accuracy motivation in participants and then ask them what factors of websites indicate credible information, I would be one step closer to learning how these factors modulate thinking styles.
I should state up front that the following discussion is the result of a small pilot study that I completed during my graduate work. What I have made of the results is largely speculative, but then again, given the state of the literature, I have to be.
After delving into the communication literature on what factors indicate credibility (there have been some studies looking at this in an online context), I crafted a questionnaire. It first asked participants to imagine that they needed to find information on the Internet about a scientific topic and then asked what website characteristics would steer them towards a credible site. Based on the results, I found a grouping of five factors that informed the credibility of a website:
1.       Heuristics: This factor is comprised of the appearance of a “like button,” attractive graphics, and professional design. Because these are superficial characteristics of a website and are linked to the presence of accurate information, it was decided that this factor measures a heuristic judgment.
2.       Need for Outside Verification: This factor is comprised of the appearance of scientific references and links to other websites. The items in this factor were interpreted to represent a value in outside verification for accurate information. For example, a website that has scientific references to back up the information on that website has externally validated information. Similarly, a website that has links to other websites that a person recognizes may indicate that the website is as credible as the other websites that the person knows or trusts.
3.       Authority: This factor is comprised of valuing an organization’s website over an individual’s (e.g. NASA versus a lone person) and valuing an authority-run website. This factor is similar to the Heuristic factor, as an appeal to authority is a cognitive heuristic, but is separate because authority is not a superficial characteristic like attractive graphics is, for example. This factor represents a value in the authority of the website for an indication of accurate information.
4.       Skeptics: This factor is comprised of the appearance of advertisements, impressive author credentials, and available author contact information. This factor is interpreted as a skeptical mindset because it represents respondents who think advertisements on a website make the website less credible, who do not trust high author credentials, and who value author contact information. This factor rejects some superficial characteristics of credibility and values the ability to contact the author of the information on a website directly.
5.       Domain: This factor is only comprised of a website’s domain (.gov or .edu versus .com). Interestingly, this item does not fit into any other superficial characteristics. This may indicate that an official domain is the bar to pass when searching for a credible website.
These factors capture much of what I think people look for in assessing the credibility of a website. But how does this inform how we think within digital confines? The next step would be to vary these factors experimentally. Perhaps the more authoritative the website, the more heuristically people will process the information found there. Maybe a website with a “.com” domain triggers more systematic processing to verify the information (given a strong motivation). But the work on this still needs to be done.
When the data is laid bare, finding the triggers of heuristic and systematic thinking could inform science communication and scientific literacy. If we know what cues give that superficial gleam of accuracy, we can better inform the public on how to sort the sites that only look good from the ones that actually are good and encourage more systematic processing. Science educators could craft websites that hit all the right switches, separating the science wheat from the pseudoscience chaff. Furthermore, it could be the case that the uniqueness of the Internet is actually affecting the way we think. Perhaps persistent “surfing” has fundamentally changed the size of our perceived information sufficiency gap; heuristics may rule the day. Of course, without the necessary cognitive resources or motivations, it is hard to get us to think critically about anything. In this way, promoting scientific literacy and effective science communication is still critically important.
Research into how we process information on the Internet is in its infancy, simultaneously announcing a grand ignorance and inspiring novel ideas. The meticulous plod of science in the Internet age is reminiscent of the tortoise and the hare, yet there seems to be no better way to win the race than to look at digital culture with our emerging tools which investigate cognition. I’d speculate more about how the Internet has changed our information processing strategies, but I have 500+ RSS items to get through…
Images:Schematic by author, Internet Map by Opte Project

About the Author: Kyle Hill is currently working as a research assistant at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in Environmental Engineering and is now pursuing a master's degree in Communication with a focus on science, health, environment, and sustainability. His research is focused on how personal motivations and website characteristics affect the depth of information processing. Hill is also a research fellow with the James Randi Educational Foundation and a blogger for Nature Education Student Voices. He writes daily at the Science-Based Life blog and you can follow him on Twitter under the name @Sci_Phile. Follow on Twitter @Sci_Phile.

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The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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IMAGING CONFLICT RESOLUTION

A Conversation With

Rebecca Saxe [8.9.12]

The advantage of neuroscience is being able to look under the hood and see the mechanisms that actually create the thoughts and the behaviors that create and perpetuate conflict. Seems like it ought to be useful. That's the question that I'm asking myself right now, can science in general, or neuroscience in particular, be used to understand what drives conflict, what prevents reconciliation, why some interventions work for some people some of the time, and how to make and evaluate better ones.
REBECCA SAXE is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. She is also an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She is known for her research on the neural basis of social cognition.
Rebecca Saxe's Edge Bio Page

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IMAGING CONFLICT RESOLUTION
[REBECCA SAXE:] One of the questions I'm asking myself from my work is the question I've always been asking myself: how is it going to be useful? I have an idea for how the kind of work I do could be useful, but I'm not at all sure this is possible, or possible in my lifetime. The idea has a big version and a little version. The big version has to do with self-knowledge and understanding ourselves. The big idea is that neuroscience is a kind of self-knowledge. It's a way of understanding our minds and our behaviors. If we get it right, if we really come to understand our brains, we will understand ourselves, we will be better at predicting our behaviors in contexts and in ways that really matter. In trying to run a society, you need to know how the elements of it would work, just as much as to run a machine you need to know how the physical elements work.
Our society is built of a bunch of minds trying to work together. It seems like having better, more scientific understanding of the mind is the only possible way to have a better functioning society. That's the big idea, which seems quite ludicrous. Then the question is to try to work it out in an example. The example is almost as ludicrous. The example I'm working on right now is conflict and conflict resolution: how to make groups of people that are suspicious of one another and on the brink of war with one another more tolerant, more accepting, more forgiving, and more capable of working together. There are a bunch of ways that the kind of neuroscience I've done could help in that context.

The science that I do is on how our brains let us think about other minds. There's at least three ways that that kind of science could help us think about conflict. One is the idea that conflict is actually conflict about other people's minds. What conflict is, in part, is the suspicion of other people's motives, the inability to trust and forgive, and the way that our expectations of group boundaries make us less empathetic and more damning of other people's actions.
People who have studied conflict, especially intergroup conflict before, have focused on fear of the unknown. But I think that there are these very strong expectations of malice and lack of expectations about reasonable other perspectives that are real drivers of conflict. There's empirical evidence that I can talk about that's part of the cycle of what keeps a conflict going. Understanding the perception that other people are irrational, and only understanding the language of violence is part of what keeps the conflict going. So that's one way.
The second way is that there are all these people around the world trying to do conflict intervention programs. This is actually both the second and the third way. The problem with conflict intervention programs is they are designed by intuition. People who want to make the world a better place have an intuition about how to make it a better place, and build a program based on their intuition of what is driving the conflict and how to fix it. The empirical evidence suggests that those only work some of the time, for some people, and we don't know in advance. It's the same problem that we have in clinical context with current medical treatment. The best current treatment works for some of the people some of the time, and we don't know how to predict who it's going to be, when and why.
If we knew how to target our interventions at the people for whom it would work, and how to pick out the people for whom the best current treatment doesn't work and design new interventions, we would have so much more power to make the change in the world that we want to make. Some of my work right now is trying to figure out can we use a scientific approach even just to figure out that, to figure out which interventions work for whom, and under what circumstances? Then the craziest idea is that we could use neuroscience to help because conflict resolution efforts are a context in which introspection seems like the worst possible way to go. Where we know that we don't have access to all the thoughts we have about other people, where we can't predict our own thoughts and behaviors towards out-groups. Even if we could, we wouldn't be willing to admit it. Even if we had introspective access to the hostility and suspicion we feel towards other groups, if a scientist came and asked us about it, we probably wouldn't admit to it.
The advantage of neuroscience is being able to look under the hood and see the mechanisms that actually create the thoughts and the behaviors that create and perpetuate conflict. Seems like it ought to be useful. That's the question that I'm asking myself right now, can science in general, or neuroscience in particular, be used to understand what drives conflict, what prevents reconciliation, why some interventions work for some people some of the time, and how to make and evaluate better ones.
I'm a Cognitive Neuroscientist. One piece of the work that I've been doing is on how people think about other people's thoughts. The key piece of that so far has been the discovery that there is a specific brain region that people use that helps them think about other people's thoughts. Not just one brain region in isolation, but there a group of them. One that's particularly interesting to me is called the right temporal parietal junction, which is above and behind your right ear. The question we've been asking recently is how much can we get out of the neuroscience of this system? By being able to take apart this incredibly central human cognitive function, the ability to think about other people's minds, by being able to take that function apart neuroscientifically, what can we learn about it? What can we learn about when we use that function, how we come to have it as children, how it's different in humans from what it is in other animals, how it could be affected by diseases? In this new line of work, do the same systems that we've studied in thinking about neutral other people's minds shows signatures, show anything useful at all, about how we think about other people in group conflict.
The research that we were doing for a long while, initially, was just on what we call typical human adults, many but not all of whom were MIT undergraduates. The question there was, all human adults are capable of taking into consideration other people's thoughts and beliefs (what other people know, what they don't know, what they desire, what their motivations are), but how do people do it?
This was the remarkable discovery of about ten years ago: the existence of a group of brain regions in the human brain that we didn't know about before we could do human functional neuro-imaging, whose function seems to be something specific to do with human social cognition, the way that one person thinks about another person. For almost 15 years now, scientists have been pulling apart these brain regions, trying to figure out what they are, where they are, and what they do because in a broad perspective, there's a huge amount of the human brain that is devoted to one or another social function: to seeing another person's faces, to recognizing their actions, to seeing their bodies, to responding to their emotions. There's a huge amount of the brain devoted to social function and the part that's thinking about other people's thoughts.
There's a group of brain regions that are involved in different parts of that problem. We don't understand all of them yet. This is still an open question, what are the different pieces there? There's five or six different brain regions that you get if you just say what brain regions, in general, show more metabolic activity when you're thinking about other people's thoughts. Figuring out why is there so many, what does each one contribute to the problem, that's been a project I've been working on, and other people have been working on, for a while.               
Did I discover it? When I first started working on this as a brand-new graduate student, this as a problem was preexisting. People had hypothesized based on data from autism that such a brain system would exist because people with autism could be disproportionately impaired in their ability to think about other people's thoughts, compared to the rest of their cognitive capacities. That might be a signature as a disproportionate effect of the disease on some particular brain system, which could have been a region, it could have been a connection, it could have been a chemical. The hypothesis was out there from the early '80s, that there must be something, some specific brain system that typical people use for thinking about other people's thoughts that could be the etiology of autism.
When I started working on this, there were two previous neuro-imaging papers. This is what's totally amazing about this field. I'm not that old, and when I started working in this field, there were two papers about this topic, and there are now hundreds of thousands of them, just ten or 12 years later. The basic answer is so robust that everybody agrees on what it is, which is astonishing in science. Everybody almost immediately agreed on what the answer to a crazy question like that is, about which brain regions are the basic brain regions you need for thinking about other people's thoughts, and also the fact that such brain regions exist; that there are brain regions that have specifically social functions. 
Since then, the devil has been in the details of figuring out exactly what does it do, when does it do it, how does it develop, how does it function? Is it, in fact, the etiology of autism? That's one of the big open questions. In spite of the fact that that's where the hypothesis came from, we still don't know if that's true. I'm working on that and how it matters for real social problems, for society, for self-knowledge, for the big picture questions.
I work on other minds, and philosophers work on the problem of other minds. And they're not to be confused. The problem of other minds is the question of whether other minds exist. Frankly, with regard to my research, it doesn't matter whether that's true, because I study the part of our brain that believes that other minds exist. If it's wrong, it doesn't matter because as a function of our brains, there it is, right? Every one of us, in the end, thinks about other minds as if they exist. That's one of the most striking creations of the brains that we're given, and I study that. In fact, I sometimes say I study the invention of other minds by every human brain because other minds are not directly perceivable. In fact, the ways in which we understand other minds to exist could be completely false. There may not be such a thing as a belief, in fact. Surely the theories we have of other minds are biased and oversimplified, just as every theory we have, like our naïve theory of physics is biased and oversimplified. Surely naive theory of other minds is just as biased and oversimplified. The thing that I study is the cognitive and neural mechanism inside each human brain that invents the kinds of minds that we see in all the people around us, whether they have them or not.
The other thing is how do we know whether the people we study are lying to us? It's exactly when people can't introspect about their own mind that cognitive science and neuroscience is necessary. If it were possible to figure out how human minds work by introspection, then you wouldn't need a science of it. You wouldn't need external observation and replicable controlled conditions, and you wouldn't, in particular, need neuroscience. The promise of neuroscience for figuring out the structure of the mind and for diagnosing what's wrong with it, and for understanding how to fix it, the reason neuroscience might be useful is because introspection isn't reliable, it doesn't have access to most of the important things about other minds. If we want to know what does predict human behavior, or when will people break into a fight or have a disease, you can't just ask them to think about it and tell you. Even if they wanted to be honest, it's not possible to be honest.
We need a science of it, just like we need a science of physics to get beyond naïve physics; we needed a science of the mind to get beyond naïve psychology.
Our lab studies many questions and uses many tools, and we do many experiments. There's no single day at the lab. But the most basic run-of-the-mill experiments that we're doing, we do with fMRI. FMRI is the same machine as an MRI. Anybody who's ever needed an MRI (most people by now have had a clinical MRI for one thing or another) remembers lying on their back in a dark tube and with loud banging noises in the background. Our experiments start very similarly. We put you inside an MRI machine.
We then take two kinds of images. The first is like a photograph that I would take of your face. It shows me what your brain looks like, just as a photograph shows me what your face looks like. Just like a face, all brains have basically the same parts. Everybody has two eyes, a nose and a mouth; everybody has the same lobes and the same basic landmarks. But just as every face is unique, every brain is unique. The first picture we take just tells us, okay, where are the parts of your brain, what does it exactly look like. Then we take what is effectively a movie. We take a picture of change over time in your brain, over the course of the next two hours, while we're doing different things. This movie is showing us blood oxygen changing. Based on the same principle that if you run really hard, you'll use the oxygen in your leg muscles and your body will send oxygen there to replenish it, the same thing is going on in your brain. As you're thinking with one bit of your brain, it's using its local supply of oxygen, and your body is compensating, sending oxygen there. With an MRI machine, we're watching that happen. We're watching the blood oxygen levels change in one place, or another, as we ask you to do one thing or another. That gives us this movie of the change in oxygen over time.
In some of our experiments, you're reading stories. Sometimes you're in face-to-face dialogue with a person. Sometimes you're listening to somebody read you a story or watching a movie or looking at a photograph. But the key thing is, we've always designed it so that we know what you're doing when, and then we can compress these movies of your brain activity saying, well, at all the times when you were looking at a picture of a face or reading a story about a thought, compared to all the times when you were doing whatever the control condition is, looking at a picture that's not of a face, or reading a story about somebody's physical appearance rather than their internal states, how was the blood going at one kind of time as opposed to the other? That's the central experiment.
If you were in an experiment that we're doing right now, you might also get assigned to one of two groups in a competition. In order to study group dynamics, we're studying people who are in real conflict groups, so people who come from ethnic or political groups that are in conflict. Sometimes we're scanning them and having them think about each other, getting democrats and republicans, or scanning Israelis and Palestinians while they're thinking about each other and about members of their own group. Sometimes we take people into the lab who aren't yet a member of a group in any kind of conflict, and we create a conflict. We say you're a member of this team called the Eagles, and your team is in a battle with the Rattlers, and there's only one prize, and whichever team wins, gets the prize. And so now you're on the team, and now we have you thinking about how do you feel about Eagles and how do you feel about Rattlers? To try to create a kind of microcosm of conflict that we can study in the lab.
The question is how valuable is fMRI actually? It has so many different kinds of promise as a tool. But actually, mostly all of those remain promissory notes. To be fair, we've only had 15 years of fMRI. It's a brand-new tool. But the basic ways that people thought and hoped that fMRI would be practically useful are close but still just on the horizon. People thought fMRI would be useful clinically for figuring out what the cause of a disease was. It might be but it's not clear how useful that is. Knowing that something's wrong in dyslexia, in a particular pattern of connectivity doesn't actually tell you what to do about it. Then people thought, well maybe fMRI will be useful for figuring out which interventions have been successful. But so far, nobody's shown any case where fMRI has been useful on an individual basis, so fMRI hasn't, as far as I know, yet been used to diagnose a disease better than a clinical impression.
One of the most exciting current thoughts about how fMRI could be useful, which is being promoted by my colleague, John Gabrieli, is that fMRI could be used to identify which kids will benefit from which interventions. He has the first kind of example of this from dyslexia, showing that a scan of kids when they're younger can tell you which kids will benefit from the current intervention for dyslexia; the current kinds of training programs. The idea is that if that's true, then we could figure out, first of all, in advance who are the kids for whom the current program is working so that we know to make sure to send those kids to the current program. The kids for whom the current program is not likely to work, those are the targets for whom new interventions should be invented. They're the ones we don't yet know how to help. That's the current promise. But there's actually one paper like that, that just came out from John Gabrieli's lab. But other than that, as far as I know, there are very few cases where you can show that fMRI is already useful, clinically. Again, I think there is lots of promise.
FMRI is functional MRI. That's asking which bit of your brain you're using during a given cognitive task. MRI is the anatomical picture. There's no question MRI has been useful. The question is, and again, I don't mean this to sound pessimistic; on the contrary, I think it's optimistic. But we don't know yet exactly when and how fMRI, knowing where the brain activity is during a particular kind of task, how that will be practically useful. It's already been extremely revealing for helping to pick apart the components of the mind. That, in and of itself is deeply satisfying, as an intellectual endeavor. But if you want to know how will it make people healthier, wealthier, or better people? I think that's where we're getting to, with wanting the promise of fMRI to come to fruition, sooner rather than later.
The big picture image that we have, of how fMRI could be used in this context, although it has not happened this way yet, is that some interventions seem to be successful for some people (some dialogue programs, sometimes watching a movie, reading a novel). Sometimes there are experiences that you have, deliberately or through a government program, that make a difference to how you think about people on the other side. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't work. If we knew what were the drivers of conflict in the first place, what made you want to perpetuate conflict with another group, and how the interventions that do work have their effects, maybe we could design better ones. Or at least maybe we could figure out who are the people most likely to be helped by the kinds of interventions that exist so far.
The idea with neuro-imaging is: first of all, can we diagnose the problem? Can we see under what circumstances, when you're thinking about somebody on the other side, is your brain doing something that might be diagnostic of what the psychological driver of conflict is? There's lots of possible things you could imagine here, like what's the source of a loss of empathy, or the source of suspicion of the other's motives, or the perception that the out-group is always irrational. Those are coming from our brain. It's the structure of the human brain that makes us feel that way about the out-group.
Maybe we could figure out where and how that's coming from. This is my big picture, far future thought. It hasn't happened yet. But if it could, then maybe we could take the programs that work and say do they work because they have their influence on one or another of these brain systems. And if so, could we do the same thing that John Gabrieli's trying to do? Could we take a group of people and tell you these ones, even though they feel really hostile to the other side right now, if you put them through a dialogue intervention program, it will help, it will make them less hostile; but these people need something else.
The work that we're doing right now isn't in any way using technology to intervene on people's brains. It's trying to use the technology as a window onto how the mind works. Potentially as the most detailed, most accurate, most truthful window we could have, although again, that's a promise, not a reality. A theory of that direct window into the thing that makes our mind what it is, is the only way, in the end, to truly understand it. That's the theory behind this work. But it's not, at the moment, an intervention. It's still deeply exploratory. It's something we understand almost not at all.
In terms of mirror neurons, people mean different things by mirror neurons. The original discovery of mirror neurons was a class of neurons in the brains of monkeys with a beautiful, abstract property, which is that they would respond during a given action, like a grasping action, regardless of whether the action was executed by the monkey or by somebody the monkey was looking at. It's a common code for a certain kind of action, whether you execute it, or somebody else executes it. It's incredibly specific. In monkeys, mirror neurons that respond to a grasp when it's done by me or by you, don't respond to the same grasp if it's done with a different effector; so if it uses it's whole hand versus a pincer, that's different mirror neurons. They also don't respond if you merely mime the grasp. There needs to actually be something you're grasping. It's a very specific response to a small, particular set of body movements that you could make on objects in the world.        
It's an incredibly interesting class of neurons. But people have taken them as a panacea, as an explanation of everything interesting and abstract in the human brain, and that cannot possibly be true. Mirror neurons are a little bit more abstract than most of the kinds of neurons studied by monkey physiology, and incredibly interesting for that reason. But they don't explain the vast array of either human social cognition, or any of the other cognitive capacities that have been attributed to them, like human language and morality and theory of mind. Mirror neurons are just this one particular class of neurons that, in most ways, have nothing to do with human morality.
Its controversial whether human fMRI reveals mirror systems. Probably you can see mirror systems in humans with fMRI. I think that because the data are consistent with it, and because it's very unlikely that a brain system that you find in macaques doesn't exist in humans. It's always possible, but it's very unlikely, and so the combination of the prior probability of continuity across species and the data as they exist so far suggest that we really do have something like a human mirror system. It seems to serve different, maybe complementary functions, to the theory of mind brain systems I was telling you about before. Those brain systems are not overlapping. That says that when we're watching other people's actions, we've got at least two maybe quite independent things going. One of which is knowledge of how their bodies are moving through the world, and the other one of which is an invention of the stuff inside their minds.
For the research I've been telling you about, which is only one of the things we're doing in the lab, the end vision is a vision of being useful. In particular, what we imagine is being useful to the people who are already working to intervene on conflict, and to reduce it. We're thinking right now about conflict between groups, but actually it could be conflict at any level between people. If conflict sometimes is driven by biases and expectations that our minds make because of the nature of the human mind that we don't necessarily intuit or endorse, then it's possible self-knowledge on its own, and it's possible that the knowledge guided programs that we could construct will be better ways for us to choose to intervene on our own minds. If we wanted to stop feeling suspicious and hostile towards members of other groups, the interventions we designed, knowing where those biases come from, would be better more effective tools. That's the grand plan.
An aspect of conflict that has often got left out of the science of conflict is dynamics of power. In any conflict, one of the key factors is who has been in power and who has been out of power, in terms of how the conflict has gone up until now, and what it takes to make the conflict better in the future. In the little bit of work that we've done so far on conflict and how conflict plays out, thats the one discovery we have up until this moment, which we just published minutes ago, is that having a dialogue with a person from the other side is one of the standard things that people do when they're trying to make a conflict better. They bring groups from each side together and they have them talk to each other. The new discovery that we have is that dialogue works differently for different reasons, depending on which side of the power dynamic you're on.
If you're in a conflict situation and you're the one who's been in power, making you do a good job of listening to what the other side is saying, making you take their perspective and really hear what they're saying, makes you a little more open to them. It makes you perceive them with more empathy and as less irrational then you did a minute ago, or half an hour ago.
If you're on the disempowered side of a conflict, if you're coming from the less-empowered position, being told to take the perspective of the more-empowered side helps not at all; it might even hurts. Instead, what helps is feeling like the other side is hearing you. Getting the chance to talk and be heard makes you a little bit more open, a little more empathetic and a little less likely to see them as irrational. This is obviously not a solution to all possible problems, but this is a little bit of empirical data from a randomized controlled trial showing that one of the reasons dialogue works differently for the different sides is that, when you come from two sides of a power dynamic, you have different needs.
Of all the empirical things I've ever published, I think this one might be the most practical: the idea that if you're on opposite sides of a power dynamic, that the person more empowered needs to take a moment to listen, and the person who's less empowered needs the experience of being heard. Just as the first move to open both sides up a little. That could be really useful to know.
Right now, the approach that I'm taking is trying to figure out how far empirical data can take us. How far can we go. We got a new tool, just as I became a scientist, fMRI became available. The question at the time was, what could we learn with this new tool? The big fundamental question about how the mind relates to the brain and the nature of the human self was open in a new way with the existence of this new tool. Many people thought, I certainly thought, well, let's just see how far we can ride this. Let's see what kind of new insight is made possible. Every five or so years, I and probably everybody else, gets worried that we've exhausted it. That we've done the things that you can do with this tool and we're going to need another new technological opening.
But that hasn't been true yet. At each turn in the field when it feels like it might be the end of the line, something new opens up, whether it's a new analysis and a new way of looking at it, or a new kind of question that seems approachable that wasn't approachable before. Or a new population that we thought we couldn't study that now we can study. At least for the first 15 years, every time I thought I was going to give up, it turned out there was so much more still to learn with this one tool. The kind of problems that will be the limit of our capacity to understand, are the modern mind/body problems. How the mind links to the brain. What it is about the pattern of firing across a set of neurons that makes a thought or a concept? That is the fundamental big picture challenge for all neuroscientists.
I don't know if it's going to be possible to get there. Pushing towards that limit is one of the big challenges for all of cognitive neuroscience. That's the question, how far can fMRI take us? At first it seems like maybe all fMRI could tell us was where something happened. But that hasn't been true, actually. It turns out one can get beyond where, but maybe in limited ways, and maybe in unlimited ways. I think we're still finding out.
We understand ourselves through metaphors. Many of the metaphors have been metaphors of artifacts of things that humans have constructed. We understand the function of the heart through the metaphor of the function of tools that we can create. We have understood the function of the brain through the metaphor of the information processing systems that we can build. In some sense, that is right and inevitably right. What it will mean to understand the brain will always be to have a better and better metaphor, by way of a better and better comparison system, a thing we can build that's closer and closer in its capacities to the human mind.
Current cognitive neuroscience is struggling to understand something that is beyond any of our current metaphors, and certainly beyond our current understanding. It feels like we are before the right concept. It feels like the physicists, before they distinguished heat and temperature. It feels like the things that we're saying to ourselves right now don't work because they confuse central distinctions. I don't think I am currently inventing a better way, although I would love to be. I'm certainly trying to push the empirical approaches, the data that we can collect to make it force us to something more correct.
The feeling of working with the wrong concept, which I think many of us have, knowing that our best theories are still deeply confused, if not merely superficially wrong, can be disheartening. But it is also the promise of huge future discoveries. It's only if you're before a huge future discovery that you have a chance of living through one.

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Fernando Mires – SOBRE LA DESOBEDIENCIA CIVIL

Desde cualquiera perspectiva que no sea política, Rusia y Venezuela no tienen nada en común. Pero desde la política tienen algo que las une: las dos naciones son gobernadas por autocracias electoralistas; un nuevo tipo de dominación que ha hecho escuela en el primer decenio del siglo XXl. De ahí que no deba extrañar que en ambas ocurran acontecimientos similares, y en el caso del cual nos ocupamos, paralelos. En efecto, los dos autócratas, Putin y Chávez, se encuentran enfrentando movimientos sociales caracterizados por un mismo signo: El de la desobediencia civil.

Cabe precisar: Desobediencia civil significa, aunque parezca redundancia, la realización de actos que no contravienen a la ley, sino que simplemente surgen frente a una mala o injusta aplicación de la ley. Eso es lo que ocurrió en Rusia con la protesta del grupo “punk”, Pussy Riot.

Como es ampliamente conocido, las integrantes del grupo Pussy Riot, María Aliójina, María Yaketerina Samukevich y Nadia Tolokónnikova, han sido condenadas a dos años de prisión por el “delito” de haber cantado en contra de Putin en la Catedral del Cristo Redentor de Moscú. Frente a tan arbitraria medida se ha pronunciado la gran mayoría de los intelectuales, artistas, políticos y gobiernos civilizados del mundo.

Efectivamente, ninguna de las tres niñas cometió, desde el punto de vista religioso, legal y político, nada que contravenga a la ley, a la moral, a las creencias y a las costumbres de su nación

Desde el punto de vista legal ellas hicieron uso del derecho a la libertad de expresión garantizada por la Carta de las Naciones Unidas y subscrita por el propio gobierno de Rusia. Desde el político, realizaron una manifestación pública en un lugar público (una iglesia). Y desde el religioso, han pedido a Dios, en su post-moderno estilo (Dios no sólo es barroco) que las libere de lo que ellas consideran –y con buenas razones- de un “mal”: Putin

Putin, sin vacilar, las envió a prisión. Los objetivos del autócrata son, en este punto, muy claros. Se trata de aplastar, en estilo zarista y estalinista, cualquiera oposición. Pero hay algo más. A través de la injusta condena, Putin, a diferencia de Stalin quien persiguió a la Iglesia, intenta aparecer como protector de la religión ortodoxa. Con ello está diciendo a los fieles: “ustedes a rezar, yo a gobernar”. Gran parte de la ortodoxia, acobardada después de tantas persecuciones, acata el dictado de Putin. No así el mundo político civilizado en el cual el mismo Putin quisiera ser aceptado. De ahí se explica que las chicas de Pussy Riot reciban más apoyo en el exterior que en el interior de Rusia.

En Venezuela, aliado “estratégico” de Rusia, se ha producido algo similar, pero en sentido inverso. El CNE, organismo destinado a velar por la ecuanimidad de la contienda electoral, intentó prohibir al candidato Henrique Capriles el uso de una gorra con los colores patrios; hecho que habría sido lógico en cualquier país del mundo, menos en la Venezuela de Hugo Chávez.

Porque si hay alguien que ha abusado de los símbolos nacionales ese es Chávez. No sólo porque se embute en la bandera venezolana. No sólo porque ha cambiado el escudo nacional, torciendo el pescuezo al caballo de la nación. No sólo porque ha manoseado el cadáver del Gran Libertador. No sólo porque considera a Bolívar un profeta de Chávez. No sólo porque ha mutilado el rostro del héroe a “su imagen y semejanza”. No sólo porque ha regalado la espada de Bolívar a cuanto criminal anda suelto por el mundo. No sólo porque no considera ciudadanos a quienes no lo siguen (“Quien no es chavista no es venezolano”)

Fueron esas y otras más las razones por las cuales la mayoría del pueblo democrático sintió la prohibición de usar la gorra tricolor como una radical injusticia. De ahí que en lugar de acatar la orden del oficialismo, los seguidores de Capriles han hecho uso del derecho a la desobediencia. La gorra ha llegado a ser así, símbolo de las marchas y concentraciones de Capriles.

La desobediencia civil venezolana se dirige, para ser más preciso, en contra de tres grandes injusticias. La primera, en contra del grosero ventajismo electoral de un presidente que cuenta con todo el aparato comunicacional del Estado. La segunda, en contra de la abierta parcialidad del organismo electoral. La tercera –la más importante- en contra de la apropiación indebida de los símbolos patrios que ha hecho suya el chavismo.

La política, lo sabemos todos, supone la lucha por la apropiación de símbolos. De ahí que Chávez, a través de una orden injusta, convirtiera los colores de la bandera en un símbolo de la desobediencia civil. En cambio, el color de Chávez seguirá siendo el rojo: el mismo de tantas revoluciones traicionadas.

La canción de Pussy Riot y los colores de la gorra de Capriles son símbolos de la desobediencia civil de nuestro tiempo. Así sucedió una vez con la melena de Ángela Davis, con el signo inconfundible del nombre Solidarnosc en Polonia, con los pañuelos de las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, con los vestidos blancos de las damas que hoy protestan en las calles de La Habana. Y con tantos, con tantos otros más. 

Fuente: POLIS- Politica y Cultura

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