honey hit to the brain when we shine. There is evidence that schizophrenia is associated with a dysfunctional dopamine system, which might help explain the overconfidence in their beliefs, especially beliefs in powerful religious icons. Winning boosts confidence, which increases the chances of winning again. This is a highly adaptive cycle that can lead to overconfidence.
Dominic Johnson took advantage of the research on human and animal competition to explore the link between overconfidence, testosterone, and war within the context of a simulated game. Each subject played the role of a leader in a country at war with another over diamond resources. The goal of the game was to accrue the highest level of resources or defeat the neighboring country. Though war games ona computer can not capture the full reality of war, the fact is that military specialists throughout the world use simulations to prepare combatants for some of the strategic and emotional problems they will confront.
Most subjects judged that they would outcompete their opponents, and this was exacerbated in males relative to females. Those who believed that they would whip their opponents actually had the worst records, suggesting that they were not only uncalibrated but that their distortion of reality led to costly outcomes. Those with the highest expectation of victory had the highest testosterone levels and were most likely to launch unprovoked attacks on their opponents.
Whether in real life or in the simulated world of computer games, brimming overconfidence can lead to a distorted sense of risk and the odds of victory in war — or any competitive arena. Though this is a costly strategy, there are clear evolutionary benefits under conditions explained by Trivers and Johnson. Self-deception is favored when opponents have imperfect information about their strengths and weaknesses, and where the payoffs are high relative to the costs. Self-deception leads individuals to go for it, convincing themselves and others that the risks are low, the gains are great, and the standard social norms are no longer applicable. This is a dangerous form of denial, recruiting moral disengagement to justify horrific means and ends. This is a piece of the psychology that can facilitate the process of runaway desire. This is a piece of the psychology that enables individuals to cause great harms.
My goal in this book has been to find the universal core of evil, the elements or ingredients that are shared across all cases of evil. My suggestion is that the mixture of desire and denial are both necessary and sufficient ingredients in the recipe for evil. All other ingredients are flourishes, creative additions that do not take away from the universal core. Within each of us is a recipe for causing excessive harm and for expressing exceptional compassion. We have choices. But as evidence accumulates from the sciences, it has become increasingly clear that some of us have fewer choices than others. Some of us are equipped to resist the temptations of a culture of evil, while others fall prey. This is
the story of our species. This is our story.
Hauser Chapter 3. Ravages of denial i14
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