Dr. David Eagleman

Computer goes around, picks a hand.

You see that hand gets stabbed.

And the question is, does your brain care as much if it's a member of one of your out-groups versus your in-group?

Turns out the answer, depressingly, is that your brain cares much less.

So the size of the empathic response, if it's your in-group, is enhanced from what it was.

And if it's any one of your out-groups, it's diminished.

By the way, this is not a criticism of religion because we find exactly the same thing with atheists.

People who profess themselves as atheists really care when they see the atheist hand get stabbed.

Yeah.

It's everything about in-groups and out-groups.

Okay.

So it turns out this is such a low-level response.

Now, happily, this doesn't necessarily map on to how you act as a person.

This is just your first response.

You care more about your in-groups.

Other labs, like Tanya Singer and others, have shown very similar versions of this with even things like sports teams.

In fact, one of the experiments we did was –

We brought fresh people in and we said, hey, I want you to toss a coin.

If it's heads, you're a Justinian.

If it's tails, you're an Augustinian.