Summary: Powerful
hierarchical situations make it easier for individuals to commit
harmful actions. The reason for this, researchers say, is because
empathy and agency become split across multiple individuals.
Source: KNAW
Researchers
from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience show that powerful
hierarchical situations make it easier to commit harmful actions, as agency and empathy are split across multiple individuals.
There
are numerous historical examples where horrific acts and mass
destruction have occurred as a result of a hierarchical structure. A
superior communicates a plan and a subordinate carries it out. The
superior then bears responsibility for the decision but is distanced
from the results, while the subordinate experiences authorship over the
action but may experience reduced responsibility for its outcomes. And
in our daily lives too, hierarchy is acquired throughout our society.
In
many organizations, orders are embedded in an even longer chain of
commands in which a given commander often merely relays on the orders
received from a superior. But what effect does this have on our actions?
A
new study from the social brain lab looked at how your position within a
hierarchical structure (commander or intermediary) influences the sense
of agency and empathy for pain. The aim was to understand how these two
different neurocognitive processes differ in commanders and
intermediaries.
And
guess what? Commanders and intermediaries show reduced activation in
empathic brain regions when pain is inflicted on the victim compared to
people who can decide and act for themselves.
The results were published in the journal eNeuro.
The
team used functional MRI (fMRI) and electroencephalogram (EEG)
techniques in order to perform their experiments. fMRI measures brain
activity by tracking changes in blood flow over time. The changes
visible on the scan are related to change in oxygen levels: when areas
of the brain are active, they will need more oxygen, causing them to
‘light up’.
Using
EEG, brain activity is measured electrically. During this test, small
sensors are attached to the scalp to pick up the electrical signals
produced by the brain.
Reduced empathy
The
fMRI study shows that activity in empathy-related brain regions was low
in both the commander and the intermediary, compared to someone who
delivered the shock directly of their own free will.
During the both studies, pain was administered by a human or robot.
The
EEG results show that the sense of agency did not differ between
commanders and intermediaries, regardless of whether the execution was
performed by a robot or a human. However, it turned out that the neural
response to the pain of the victim were higher when participants
commanded a robot compared to a human.
This
suggests that when there is a second human involved, the responsibility
tends to be diffused and commanders’ pain processing of the victim’s
pain is reduced. Diffusing such responsibility onto a robot is perhaps
more difficult.
Emilie
Caspar (first co-author of the paper): “The law generally punished
those who gave out orders more severely than those who carried out the
orders. But what do people feel exactly in a hierarchical chain?
“Recently,
Khieu Samphan, one of the main Khmer Rouge leaders, was sentenced to
life imprisonment for crimes against humanity and genocide. Yet, he
claimed that he did not know what was happening during the Khmer Rouge
Era, where millions of Cambodians died of execution, starvation, and
diseases.
“It
seems that people commanding may not always experience the
responsibility they should, an aspect which would nonetheless be crucial
to avoid mass atrocities.
“This
is why it is important to understand better their subjective experience
and how their brain processes the consequences of their orders, to
perhaps in the future offer interventions that would prevent a
diminution of responsibility in hierarchical chain”
Kalliopi
Ioumpa (first co-author of the paper): “These results complement
previous research showing that hierarchy has a measurable effect on
people’s behaviour and brain activation, making them less engaged in the
harm they cause.
“This
study can raise questions on how we can ensure that people feel
responsibility despite being in a hierarchical chain. Is it easier for
executors to take responsibility over their actions since they are the
ones acting – or for commanders because they bear the responsibility of
the order?
“We
show how powerful hierarchical situations can facilitate committing
actions that harm others, as agency and empathy are distributed across
multiple individuals.”
Prof
Dr Christian Keysers (One of the senior author of the study heading the
lab in which it was performed): “Times are changing. The solder at the
forefront, whose empathy sometimes prevented the worst atrocities, is
increasingly replaced by drones that feel no empathy. Has this removed
any empathy from the chain of command? Indeed, we find that merely
commanding someone to deliver pain reduces how much your brain processes
the pain you command compared to directly triggering the pain.
“What
was really exciting to see, however, is that knowing that you command a
machine, that you cannot defer the responsibility to, restores some of
the reactions to the pain in commanders.
“Perhaps
there is hope, after all, that the empathy we reduce at the forefront
might be replaced – at least in part – by an increase is the sense of
responsibility at higher levels in the hierarchy…
Information about the authors:
The
study was performed by Dr Emilie Caspar and PhD student Kalliopi Ioumpa
under the supervision of Dr Christian Keysers and Dr Valeria Gazzola,
who lead together the Social Brain Lab at the Netherlands Institute for
Neuroscience, a research institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of
Arts and Sciences. Dr Emilie Caspar has since become an associate
professor at Ghent University.
About this morality and psychology research news
Author: Eline Feenstra
Source: KNAW
Contact: Eline Feenstra – KNAW
Image: The image is credited to Kalliopi Ioumpa – Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience
Original Research: Closed access.
“Commanding or being a simple intermediary: how does it affect moral behavior and related brain mechanisms?” by Kalliopi Ioumpa et al. eNeuro