Fuels for Change

I know so many people out there feel as I do. As they look around, all they see is injustice. Innocent families who came to the US looking for a better life ripped apart and thrown in prisons known as “detention centers”. People stuck in the cycles of poverty for generations working three minimum wage jobs yet still constantly fighting to make rent and put food on the table. Black Americans born into a society rooted in systematic racism, constantly fighting to get what is so freely given to white people. Dehumanization, ignorance, apathy. The rage courses through your veins as you contemplate such issues – astounded by the lack of understanding among your peers. How could it have come to this. As the ember within you grows into a roaring fire a voice yells into your ears “now is the time for action”.

This fire within is one of the most important things a person can have. It creates a drive which leads to outcomes that can forever change the course of humanity. However, this fire, this passion, this drive which I speak of is nothing to be taken lightly. It is a powerful tool which can either perpetuate the cycles of division and hate or bring us all closer than ever allowing us to grow as a species. It is crucial, especially in today’s heated political climate that our fires be fueled by love of the oppressed rather than hatred of the oppressor. At times such a hatred towards the oppressor may feel necessary for lasting change however I believe this to be an illusion which perpetuates the cycle of hate and dehumanization.

In Pagano and Hous article The Role of Moral Emotions in Predicting Support for Political Actions in Post-War Iraq they attempt to define these different motivations for action against perceived injustice and analyze the consequences of the various motivations. Three primary motivations they label are empathy, guilt, and moral outrage. They surveyed 393 U.S. University students to understand their primary motivations behind their drive towards action against the injustice Iraqi citizens were facing. Their findings show that the action which the students thought we should take to handle injustice differed drastically depending on one’s primary motivation. They categorized 4 primary courses of action: Humanitarian aid, Punishment of the oppressor, compensation, and preventative action. Those primarily driven by empathy pushed for the direct aid of the Iraqi citizens by bringing them food, water, supplies, etc. People motivated by moral outrage pushed strongly for the punishment of Hussains regime, and moderately for preventative actions. Finally, people motivated primarily by guilt of the US’s actions pushed for the compensation of damages (however I’ll be focusing primarily on empathy and moral outrage for the purposes of this essay).

A key takeaway from Pagano and Hous research is that those people driven primarily by moral outrage cared far less about the wellbeing and aid of the Iraqi people who were harmed by the situation, than they did about the punishing Hussain’s regime. On the other hand, people primarily driven by empathy showed a negative association with punishment of the regime and an extremely strong association with helping the people affected by the incident. This helps illustrate the point that these two fuels are powered by drastically different motivational systems relying on different emotions resulting in different courses of action. On the one hand we have love, empathy, and compassion leading to humanitarian aid and social reform and on the other we have righteous anger, resentment, and moral outrage leading to punishment and political reform. Both of these fuels can be extremely powerful and can create positive change however the latter has great potential for danger.

In-Group Out-Group Dynamics Among Humans

To fully understand these two fuels, I believe it is important to look at the evolutionary history of humans in regard to intraspecies interactions. In my previous article Cooperation and Competition – The Pillars of Human Psychology I discuss the formation of two distinct groups of evolutionary adaptations, the Collection of Competitive Adaptations (CCPA) and the Collection of Cooperative Adaptations (CCOA). These two distinct collections of adaptations evolved at different times as a result of different selection pressures. At the base of each collection of adaptations is a general motivational system – one based in competition and the other based in cooperation. After the formation of these general motivational systems (which formed long before modern humans existed) more functionally specific adaptations evolved as add-ons to either one motivational system or the other – or in some cases to both motivational systems (multi-purpose functionally specific adaptations) thus building two distinct groups of adaptations which often are evoked simultaneously by one situation. The principal idea is that both groups of adaptations now co-exist and intermingle in a way which causes humans to choose which motivations they act on. This helps us to better understand why humans think and behave the way they do in various social situations of the present day.

One crucial aspect of human intraspecies interaction that this framework allows us to comprehend more fully is the formation of ingroups and outgroups – and the dehumanization of outgroups. Cosmides and Toobies – some of the most influential researches in evolutionary psychology describe the conditions which lead to the evolution of ingroup and outgroup adaptations in humans. They describe how ancestral hominins lived in small groups within resource scarce environments. It was adaptive to form small groups which could help one another collect resources and survive. At the same time other small groups (outgroups) were threats to the survival of the ingroup because both groups were competing for the same resources. One major result of this was the formation of what’s known as parochial altruism – a package of adaptations which arose during this timeframe, building onto both competitive and cooperative motivations. Parochial altruism promotes cooperation and cohesion among ingroup members while at the same time promoting hostility towards members of outgroups. (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992; Tooby, Cosmides, & Barrett, 2005).

In present day conditions social environments are drastically different than those of our hominin ancestors. We now live in large, complex nations each containing millions of people and the acquisition of resources works in completely different ways than it did for our ancestors. Outgroups are no longer a threat to the ingroups ability to survive, in fact one of the main threats to the survival of all groups in the present day seems to be the existence of the groups themselves (Pinker, 2011, Ch. 8). These once beneficial adaptations have become maladaptive in our current environment and have led to some of the greatest travesties in human history. War, Racism, Genocide, Slavery, persecution all being the result of an ingroup dehumanizing an outgroup and labeling them as a threat.

Moral Outrage as Fuel Reinforces the Divide Perpetuating the True Issue

This concept of humans forming ingroups and outgroups directly relates to the topic at hand. I say this for two reasons. The first and more obvious is that ingroup/outgroup formation and the dehumanization of the outgroup is a central factor behind most major injustices and cruelties which occur. This idea is backed by many major works such as Nick Haslam’s “Dehumanization: An Integrative Review” and Herbert C. Kelman’s “Violence Without Moral Restraint: Reflections on the Dehumanization of Victims and Victimizers”. However, an idea which is less well known and talked about is the idea that action against perceived injustice motivated by moral outrage or hatred of the oppressor often leads to the same ingroup/outgroup mentalities and dehumanization that the individuals are fighting against in the first place.

To illustrate how action against perceived injustice primarily motivated by moral outrage can lead to dehumanization I will analyze 9/11 and the events which followed the incident. On 9/11 the twin towers were attacked by the extremist terrorist group al-Qaeda leading to the death of 2,977 people and over 6,000 injured (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 2004; CDC, 2021). Most people perceived this as a great injustice which occurred, and many were fueled by moral outrage to take action. This moral outrage led to the identification of a new outgroup which posed a threat to the ingroup. Unfortunately, the outgroup was largely overgeneralized onto all people who lived in the middle eastern region and/or were Muslim rather than just the extremist terrorist group al-Qaeda. This led to the justification of the invasion of Afghanistan or the “War on Terror” ultimately leading to the mass murder of at least 46,000 Afghan civilians. The vast majority of these people who died had absolutely nothing to do with al-Qaeda and did not identify with their beliefs. This highlights the true danger of moral outrage as fuel. As Pagano and Hous studies show – the main action it leads to is punishment of the oppressor, and because of how humans are evolutionarily predisposed to identify and fear outgroups, the oppressor is most often misattributed and generalized onto an entire outgroup which is then dehumanized leading to the perpetuation of injustice, violence and war.

Love as Fuel – Getting the the Root of the Issue

As I said before, the fire inside is one of the most important things a person can have. However, we must analyze what fuel is propelling it for the sake of progress. Competition is deeply rooted within us, and it is easy, especially when motivated by moral outrage to evoke the CCPA. Emphasizing such motivations – even when acting against truly unjust events only adds another brick to the walls we have built between ourselves. But this is not the only path available to us. The thing that makes humans so unique from other species on this planet is their mass CCOA. It is these adaptations which produced the ratcheting effect between cumulative culture and the selection pressures they created that lead us to behavioral and cognitive modernity in the first place (Henrich, 2015). It is crucial that we act primarily on these motivations and not competitive ones so that our species can continue to grow and progress in a way which increases the wellbeing of all humans present.

Let us use the very relevant example of food insecurity in the US to demonstrate the importance of empathy over outrage. If the government takes away SNAP benefits – resulting in thousands of people becoming more food insecure then they already are this could reasonably evoke either (and in most cases both) of the fuels I speak of. However, what’s important is which fuel is used to propel action. If we assume Pagano and Hous results apply to this situation then on the one hand those primarily motivated by moral outrage would band together and fight against the current government to stop and punish them for the injustice they caused. On the other hand, you would have people whose primary motivation is empathy, banding together to help provide food to those facing food insecurity (humanitarian aid). Let us also assume that those taking action are part of a third party (say college students from middle to upper income families) who for the most part are not facing food insecurity themselves.

Now, say the actions these college students took in both scenarios are successful. In scenario one a new outgroup was formed, labeled a threat, and potentially dehumanized (trumps administration and their followers). On top of the formation of a new outgroup – the ingroup/ outgroup dynamic between middle/upper income college aged students and lower income people in the surrounding towns is not at all bridged because the students are focused on punishment of the oppressor rather than connecting with and helping the oppressed. The ingroup/outgroup is not bridged because the students in scenario one likely never even met the group of oppressed people they were fighting for. Now, in scenario two there is almost no focus on punishment of the oppressor – and therefore no new outgroup, and all of the focus is on coming together with and helping those facing food insecurity. This directly bridges the ingroup/outgroup dynamic between people of the different classes and allows both sides to understand each other in a new way. So even if both courses of action are successful in alleviating the food insecurities, moral outrage has contributed to the ingroup/outgroup dynamic, while empathy has helped bridge such groups.

A common argument against this perspective is that humanitarian aid doesn’t get to the root of the problem like moral outrage does. In the example used above – those driven by moral outrage dismantled the oppressive government, eliminating the issue while those driven by empathy helped relieve the food insecurity, but the oppressive government still remains. This response however seems to misinterpret the root cause of the issue. The oppressor is only a symptom of the illness – and the true illness arises from human’s predispositions toward ingroup/outgroup dynamics. As long as such dynamics exist, we will always have one group oppressing others. When we act on moral outrage, we’re only strengthening those dynamics – even if it feels like we’re doing the right thing at that moment we’re actually perpetuating the cycle. To really get to the root of the issue we must act on empathy because not only does this help those facing injustice, but it breaks down the walls between us all allowing the CCOA to strengthen and CCPA to slowly fade as it is selected against over evolutionary time.

We live in a time right now in which the people seem to be more divided than ever. The fire seems to be growing within everyone, the voice getting louder and louder. There is no doubt in my mind, now is the time for action! Let us act in a way that leads us to somewhere we have never been before. Let us grow and break the vicious cycles of hate and dehumanization. Let us begin to analyze our inner motives so we may consciously work to choose cooperation over competition.  No one is at fault for such tendencies – it is simply how our evolutionary timeline has played out. However, we are not bound by them. We may not have the ability to choose what motivations are present within us, but we do have the ability to choose which motivations we act on. Let us choose to stop fighting and instead help another. This choice will not only positively impact the individual, it will positively impact the entire human race.

Works Cited

 

Cosmides, Leda, and John Tooby. “Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange.” The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, edited by Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby, Oxford University Press, 1992. PDF file.

Haslam, Nick. “Dehumanization: An Integrative Review.” Personality and Social Psychology Review, vol. 10, no. 3, 2006. PDF file. doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr1003_4.

Henrich, Joseph. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Princeton University Press, 2015. PDF file. doi:10.1515/9781400873296.

Kelman, Herbert C. “Violence Without Moral Restraint: Reflections on the Dehumanization of Victims and Victimizers.” Journal of Social Issues, vol. 29, no. 4, 1973. PDF file. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.1973.tb00102.x.

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. W. W. Norton & Company, 2004. PDF file.

Pagano, Steven J., and Yuen J. Huo. “The Role of Moral Emotions in Predicting Support for Political Actions in Post-War Iraq.” Political Psychology, vol. 28, no. 2, 2007. PDF file. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9221.2007.00563.x.

Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Viking, 2011. PDF file.

Tooby, John, Leda Cosmides, and H. Clark Barrett. “The Evolutionary Psychology of the Emotions and Their Relationship to Internal Regulatory Variables.” Handbook of Emotions, edited by Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, 3rd ed., Guilford Press, 2005. PDF file.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Injuries from the September 11, 2001 Attacks (United States).” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, vol. 70, no. 12, 2021. PDF file. doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm7012a1.

Nicol, Alex. “Cooperation and Competition – The Pillars of Human Psychology.” Love Light Recovery, 17 May 2025, https://lovelightrecovery.com/1277-2/.