The Neuroscience of Hate
What were the insurrectionists thinking?
This is a modified excerpt from Inside Your Head 🧠, a weekly newsletter exploring why your brain makes you think, feel, and act the way you do, written by me, Elemental’s senior writer and a former brain scientist. Subscribe here so you won’t miss the next one.
Last Wednesday was a dark day for the United States. I’m obviously not a political reporter, so I’m not going to talk about security breaches or the future of our democracy or just how terrifying and disgraceful what happened at the Capitol was (you should check out our sister publication GEN for those types of stories). But I am going to discuss what might have been going on in the brains of those who attempted the insurrection.
Your brain, feeling hateful
Hatred and violence toward another group of people is an extension — and perversion — of our natural human tendency to classify “us” from “them.” Evolutionarily, group membership and the cooperation it facilitates was essential for human survival. Our species forms alliances easily, sometimes based on genetic or familial ties but sometimes more arbitrarily. Take affinity for a certain sports team; it says nothing about a person’s qualities and offers no real benefits, and yet people have literally killed opposing team’s fans.
