Why Do We Want to Kill Those Who Challenge our Beliefs or Insult Our In-Group?

Well, most of us don’t, although we often have bad thoughts about such a person. There are, however, those who react to challenges with violence. What is it that gets in the way of just talking things over? Or make a bet and having a beer while we watch our favorite teams play each other? What is it that predisposes us to violence? Three years ago, I coauthored a paper that addressed this as part of a theory of human cooperation [1]. The answer is a classic of nature and nurture; or in this case, emotions (nature) and feelings (nurture). Emotion refers to the almost automatic physiological responses to a salient input. Feeling refers to the mental experience evoked by these responses, or to a mental experience that can evoke an emotion. Many people are aware of this distinction but label it in different ways. The emotion-feeling language is from Antonio Damasio [e.g., 2]. This distinction, however, is much older. I found it in a 1909 psychology textbook. <a href="https://medium.com/@burt_63231/why-do-we-want-to-kill-those-who-challenge-our-beliefs-or-insult-our-in-group-4a94e24d6b8b">Visit Now</a>