Is There A Neuroscience of Human Evil?

An article published by Martin Reimann and Philip Zimbardo in a recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics asks a very provocative question, what are the neurological mechanisms underlying human evil?   For several decades, researchers in personality and social psychology have focused on the role that deindividuation and dehumanization play in many of those acts which we consider to be evil.  Deindividuation in social psychology literature refers to the diminishing of one's sense of individuality that occurs with behavior disjointed from personal or social standards of conduct, i.e. how being part of a mob resuls in a greater tendency towards violent behaviour.    Dehumanization, on the other hand, deals with the tendency to blur our perception of others as having any resemblance to us, thus depriving them of those basic human rights to which we might otherwise feel they are entitled to possess.   Dehumanization is a common justification in genocidal or terror campaigns and often lies as the central facet of most war crimes.  In their current paper, Reimain and Zimbardo suggest that neuroscience research might contribute to our understanding of human evil.  Integrating theories of personality and social psychology as well as the notions of deindividuation and dehumanization with recent neuroscientific insight, the authors elaborate on the nature of human evil and its potential roots in brain systems associated with affective processing and cognitive control.    Drawing on examples from the neuroscience literature, including the case of Phineas Gage, the authors propose that a relationship can be made between frontal lobe pathology and aggressive behaviour and also implicate additional brain structures including the temporal lobe and various subcortical structures.    Although available research linking deindividuation and dehumanization is lacking, Reimann and Zimbardo suggest that disparate themes from social psychology and neuroanatomy can be linked to form a viable neuroscience of human evil and make recommendations for future research.

For the abstract.