Given the abundance of evidence on persistence ofpatrimonial rule despite rotation of parties in power, it is tempting to speak of aMosca-type of “political class”that in most countries of Latin America is squarelylocated within the patrimonial democratic quadrant.

The A/E framework has important advantages as a source for theory building. It ismore able than the QOD approach to articulate new hypotheses about the causes ofthe low quality of political institutions in Latin America, as well as to mobilize oldbut valuable insights that had been overlooked by the democratization-centeredvision of regional politics

Chile between1990 and 1998 had elements of the expanded definition of democracy but did notmeet the minimal one.

Correlation between access and exercise across three databases

Similarly, by defining democracy as a specific regime of access, the A/Eframework enhances the precision of the standard Shumpeterian definition andmakes unnecessary what has been the most common patch to it. Taking into accountthe existence of “tutelary powers”in Chile that over the 1990s constrained theinfluence of democratically elected presidents and representatives, scholars havefound it useful to add to the Shumpeterian attributes the condition that electionsgrant real power to those elected.11 When democracy is defined as a form of accessto state power, the patch becomes redundant. Power is already present in thedefinition of regime, and it logically carries over into the definition of the democratictype. According to the A/E framework, if elections do not grant access to statepower, they are not part of the political regime

The last set of decisions in the A/E framework includes the definition of “regime”in terms of access and “administration”in terms of exercise. Regime andadministration, in turn, provide the overarching concept for the polar types ofauthoritarianism versus democracy and patrimonialism versus bureaucracy, respec-tively. I

The central claim of this paper is that the A/E framework provides a usefulalternative to the QOD approach for the purposes of creating and testing causalhypotheses about systematic abuses of political power—in new democracies, olddemocracies, or authoritarian regimes

he access to political power and the exerciseof political power are simply two analytically distinct aspects of the institutionalstructure of the modern territorial state. In all societies where the means of coercionare concentrated in the state, positions in the state become a key source of power.Relations between state and society can then be naturally grouped into twocategories. One, running upwards from the society to the state, involves the efforts ofgroups in society to gain control over state positions—the access side of politics.The other, running downwards from the state to society, refers to the use of politicalpower to align the behavior of social groups with the order created by the state—theexercise side.

erspective, these cases do not count as high- or low-qualitydemocracies for the obvious reason that they are not democracies in the first place.Nevertheless, they are useful comparative references because they are a source ofdata about the forces behind changes in informal political institutions, including themotivations of rulers who reduced abuses of their own power. F

Scholarly definitions, like the expanded definition of democracy, are analytical toolscrafted to achieve research goals. Therefore, they can only be judged in terms oftheir effectiveness in achieving such goals.

To recapitulate, the premise that deficits of institutional quality are problems ofdemocratization has led the third generation of democratization studies to adopt anexpanded definition of democracy. The current scholarship on democratizationfocuses on the countries that have completed the transition (i.e., that meet theminimalist definition), and differentiates them in terms of levels of QOD based onthe degree to which the additional attributes of the expanded definition are present.The distinction between democratic regime and democratic state, an example of thegeneric distinction between the minimalist and the expanded definition ofdemocracy, is meant to provide two benchmarks—a lower one and a higher one—to assess achievements and failures in the process of democratization.

Robert Dahl’s definition of polyarchy as the firstbenchmark of democracy, which includes free elections, universal suffrage, and theset of civil and political liberties required to ensure a fair competition for positions ingovernment, e.g., free press and associational rights (Dahl 1971: 3 —6). Thisbenchmark has allowed the first generation of democratization studies to distinguishcountries that completed the transition from those that did not.

Although Latin American countries have completed the transitionto democracy, they are not fully democratized.

might be more productive to conceptualize them asseparate processes than to subsume them as components of the same macro-process, that is, as integral parts of democratization

Infact, in most Latin American countries, the main defenders and beneficiaries ofdemocratic transitions—mass parties and the “political class”—are in generalinimical to changes in the form of exercise

The very premise of the current diagnosis is thatproblems in the so-called quality of democracy (QOD) are deficiencies in thedemocratization process. In fact, both scholarly and policy analysts have embracedthe QOD as the central motivation and topic of a third generation of democratizationstudies, which is seen as succeeding the first generation centered on “transitions”(the collapse of dictatorships and the rise of democratic regimes) and the secondgeneration referred to issues of “consolidation”(variations in the probabilities that anewly democratic regime will survive into the foreseeable future).

Mostgovernments in Latin America are the genuine product of free and inclusiveelections, but few resist the temptation of abusing the political power that theelectoral process has granted them

Costa Rica, Chile, and Uruguay.

Most new democracies are “low quality”democracies. Such is the unanimousdiagnosis of the current generation of studies on comparative democratization.Corruption, government by executive decree, clientelism, and ineffective checks andbalances are listed as the most prominent individual symptoms of the alleged deficitin democratic quality.1 In Latin America, several new democracies seem to have thefull syndrome.

ereas regimetransitions are changes in the form of access to power, problems of institutionalquality involve the exercise of power.

Homo sapiens exhibit only moderate sexual dimorphism in stature, weight, and many skeletal features, including the dentition. But humans are strik-ingly dimorphic in certain epigamic features. Postpubertal males typically have more hirsute faces and bodies; their pates commonly bald progressively with age. Human females are more glabrous, usually keep their head hair, and have special fat depots in their breasts, hips, and thighs that make them more curvaceous than the common man (Figure 2.17).1

Chimpanzee skulls are much less sexually dimorphic than those of gorillas and orangutans, though the diff erence appears quite early in development.13

Like people, chimpanzees and bonobos are moderately sexually dimor-phic in body size

h ereafter, male secondary sexual charac-teristics, namely, their massive cranial superstructures, elongate palates and mandibles, large canine teeth, and a distinctive fi brofatty pad over the poste-rior part of the sagittal crest, develop rather rapidly (Figure 2.13).1

Ecologically, chimpanzees are the most versatile of the extant apes, which might have characterized them for many centuries or millennia.118 Th ey in-habit a remarkable variety of primary and secondary forests, deciduous wood-lands, riverine forests, and forest- savanna ecotonal regions, extending from the Gambia and Guinea- Bissau through West and northern Central Africa to western Uganda and northwestern Tanzania (Map 2.2).119 Most long- term studies of free chimpanzees are situated in more open canopy locations in-stead of closed- canopy rain forests.120 Two upper central incisors and an M1 from Middle Pleistocene deposits of the Kapthurin Formation, Tugen Hills, Central Kenya, indicate that >545 Ka, chimpanzees were penecontempora-neous with Homo sp.

Ungar observed that Suma-tran orangutans often employed their incisors to nip or crush hard, brittle fruits and to ingest arthropods, fl owers, stems, and leaves.

Orangutans are extremely sexually dimorphic in body mass but less so in canine height.

Although males are commonly somewhat heavier than females, some adult females outweigh conspecifi c adult males. Th e lesser apes evidence minimal sexual dimorphism in body size, cranial features, and canine tooth dimensions, but they exhibit sexual dimorphism in some overall body dimensions, and several hylobatid species are dramatically dimorphic

Anthropologists and human biologists have failed dismally in their at-tempts to subdivide Homo sapiens into subspecies (called races) largely because of the prehistoric and historical global admixture among the great variety of people who grace the planet and the disagreements on which features should be used to classify them.56 Indeed, some argue that the exercise is not only futile but also unethical: past and current abuses of individuals and ethnic groups have been premised on narrowly conceived featural and folk racial classifi cations

n view of the many ambiguities and uncertainties about how to interpret the molecular ge ne tic data, for extant Hominoidea I employ a possibly gradis-tic four- family scheme, in which Hominidae is reserved for culturally depen-dent, ecologically specialized humans and their bipedal ancestors; Panidae comprises the African great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos); Pon-gidae includes the orangutans; and the gibbons aggregate in the Hylobatidae (Table 2.3).5

We do not know how many genes mark levels of separation among apes and people.• We cannot discretely recognize their phenotypic expressions.• Th ey probably are not of equal value to sort people from apes and apes from other apes.41

genome indicate 97 percent average and median identity be-tween orangutan and human versus 99 percent identity between chimpanzee and human. I

“lesser ape” refers only to the fact that they are much smaller than bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, not that they are of dimin-ished importance in the animal kingdom

Traditionally, the Pongidae or pongid apes included orangutans ( Pongo spp.), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), bonobos (Pan paniscus), and gorillas (Go-rilla spp.), known collectively as the great apes, and numerous fossil forms. Th ey have in common a diploid chromosome number (symbolized 2n) of 48 (versus 2n 46 in Homo sapiens), the habit of nest building, and many anatomi-cal, physiological, and biomolecular features.

Traditionally, the Primates were divided into two suborders: the Prosimii and the Anthropoidea. Th e extant prosimians include the bizarre aye- aye and the tooth- combed lemurs, lorises, and galagos. Th e Anthropoidea encompasses all extant monkeys, apes, and humans and their fossil collaterals and intermedi-ate forms

If one wishes to highlight people, the proper phrasings would be “human and nonhuman primate evolution” and “humans and other animals.”

This was again an example of the bottom-up creationof a new discourse by societal actors, demonstrating society’s contributionin changing ethnicity regimes

Yeltsin’s presidency brought to power a counterelite, which repudiatedSoviet policies and represented ethnic constituencies harmed by passport eth-nicity, including Russian Jews. Jews were disproportionately represented inYeltsin’s governments and among his advisors in larger numbers than has everbeen the case in Soviet governments in the postwar era, and Jews stronglysupported Yeltsin throughout his rule.108 Of the Jewish members of Yeltsin’sgovernments, Yevgeny Sapiro, as Minister of Nationalities, and Emil Pain, as anAdviser on Interethnic and Regional Problems, took on responsibilities directlylinked to the role of ethnicity in state-society relations

Therefore, not a razor-thin majority but a wide margin of power andpolitical hegemony is necessary for overcoming resistance and bringing aboutethnic regime change

Counterelites provide the actors with the motivation, interests, and preferencesnecessary to initiate a reform, in order to satisfy their constituencies who havegrievances against the status quo. The new discourse on ethnicity and nation-ality performs multiple indispensable functions: it provides the ideas and thecognitive frame necessary for action, and a new vision of the nation with whichto counter the defenders of the status quo in debates and propaganda.

Issues of membership, such as citizenship andimmigration, would occupy the center stage in monoethnic regimes, becausepeople who do not share the titular ethnic background are excluded frommembership. One would expect issues of expression to occupy the center stagein antiethnic regimes, where membership is ethnically diverse but institutionalexpression of ethnic diversity is not allowed. One would expect the ethnicallyspecific allocations to occupy the center stage in multiethnic regimes, whereethnic diversity is already given institutional expression.

Expression of ethnic differences was paramount. The USSR was structuredas a multiethnic federation. The Soviet constitution mentioned dozens of ethniccategories, together constituting the USSR. There were 191 ethnic categoriescodified in the census of 1926 and recorded in internal passports issued to indi-vidual citize

The Soviet Union was the leading example of a multiethnic regime in theworld. The extent of multiethnic recognition and institutionalization achievedin the USSR was unprecedented. Just as Germany stood for a particularlymonoethnic formula for modern nationhood, the USSR was the model for amultiethnic political community. Membership was not ethnically restricted andneither was there ethnic-priority immigration. There were no ethnic “minori-ties,” because all ethnicities together constituted the Soviet peopl

In the Soviet case, thereis only one source suggesting that Yuri Andropov, who led the USSR forfifteen months during 1982–1983, entertained the idea of abolishing ethnicfederalism by reorganizing the Soviet Union as a nonethnic federal state.28Even if one believes that Andropov entertained such an idea, which I do, it isclear that such a singular episode pales in comparison to the repeated effortsaround removing ethnicity from the internal passport.

These instances of change and continuity demonstrate theextreme difficulty to change state policies on ethnicity; even the alignment ofthe proverbial stars – counterelites, new discourses, and hegemonic power –only sufficed to change one significant state policy on ethnicity. Even the excep-tional coincidence of three conditions for change in state policies on ethnicitymight not be enough for a wholesale ethnic regime change that encompassesall or most state policies on ethnicity

Turkeyestablished new public television stations broadcasting exclusively in Kurdishand Arabic, which is a movement away from an antiethnic toward a multiethnicregime, but Turkey did not become an ethnofederal state, and other featuresof an antiethnic regime remained. What does the limited nature of the change,limited in each case to one policy area, suggest about regimes of ethnicity

Max Weber’s definition of ethnicity as “subjective belief in commondescent” is the best definition of ethnicity insofar as it distinguishesethnic from religious, linguistic, economic, ideological, and other socia

This new conceptualization connects the study of nation building to studies ofethnic diversity and citizenship, while providing a coherent typology of statepolicies on ethnicity that accommodates the full range of variation across cases

However, “passport ethnicity” also made possible the deportation ofall ethnic Germans, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, and other ethnic groups, result-ing in the decimation of their populations.12 Passport ethnicity was also usedto discriminate against Jews in politics and employment. Attempts to removeethnicity from the passport since the 1950s failed. Even after the dissolutionof the USSR, ethnicity was preserved in the internal passports of almost allthe post-Soviet states.13 Yet in 1997, ethnicity was removed from the Russianinternal passport. How did such a historic change occur?

This book explains the dynamics of persistence and change in state policiestoward ethnicity. How do state policies that regulate the relationship betweenethnicity and nationality change

Unlike Gellner or Anderson, who emphasize the importance of industriali-zation and print capitalism for the spread of nationalism, or Kedourie andKohn, who highlight the causal priority of willful idealism in the process, Ihold that the emergence of nationalism is the result of an interaction betweenstrategic choices made under the structural conditions of international com-petition for territory and resources within the Westphalian system of states, onthe one hand, and the technological innovations

“Ethnicity”matters, butonly when it is activated in the international arena.

A non-core group supported by anenemy external power and residing in a revisionist host state is more likely to beexcluded than targeted with assimilation or accommodation; if a similar groupwere to reside in a status quo state, it would most likely be targeted withassimilationist policies; taking the form of colonization by core group membersand internal displacement of non-core group members. Finally, non-core groupssupported by allied states are more likely to be accommodated than be assimi-lated or exclu

I argued that ahost state’s foreign policy goals, as well as its interstate relations with externalpowers that may be supporting its non-core groups, drive nation-buildingchoices.

Why would an allied power support a non-core group? Often states cultivaterelations with non-core groups abroad for economic reasons. For example,following World War I, Romania kept ties with Vlachs living in Greece –anally at the time. In an article published in a Romanian newspaper, RenastereaRomana, by one of its chief editors we find out that Romania is cultivating theseties “not just because of feelings toward Romanians beyond the Danube Riverbut also because of economic considerations, since these Romanians are verybright, hard working, and phenomenal merchants.”105 Alliances do change andthe links that have developed between a non-core group and an external powerare sometimes hard to sever.

All non-core groups are potential targets for mobilization and support byexternal powers.

ally, a host state is likely to pursue assimilation through internalcolonization if the state favors the status quo and an enemy is supporting thenon-core group

Furthermore, if one considers the extent of external support for non-violentmovements across the world, it becomes clear that external involvement for non-core groups around the world is actually a much more prevalent and conse-quential practice than the above statistics indicate

interethnic cooperation, repression, concessions,and conflict. The important lesson to draw from Jenne’s work for our purposesis the central role that outside support plays in non-core groups’decisions toradicalize their demands

he host state is likely to accommodate the non-core group ifthe ally is strong and the alliance is asymmetrical or exclude and/or assimilate thenon-core group if the ally is weaker and the alliance is symmetrical

Non-core group demands can be either territorial or non-territorial. Nonterritorial demands range from legal recognition of the non-coregroup by the host state, to institutionalized political representation at thenational level. Territorial demands range from claims for local autonomy tocalls for independence

I refrain from using the term “minority”for a variety of reasons. First, the non-core group category is broader than that of a minority, since it includes aggre-gations of people who are conscious of their difference from the dominantnational type without necessarily being mobilized around this difference.Second, the term “minority”usually refers to “numerically inferior”groups,while the term non-core group does not imply anything about size.

I follow a statist perspective for the identification of non-core groups. By theterm “non-core group,”I mean any aggregation of individuals that is perceivedas an unassimilated ethnic group (the relevant marker can be linguistic, religious,physical, or cultural) by the ruling political elites of a country at the beginning ofa period analyzed.

Turning now to the cases where the power balance is clearly in favor of thehost state, enemy external powers will hesitate to support non-core groupswithin such a state for two reasons: the prospect of a destructive interstatewar will operate as a deterrent

Taking a closer look at state capacity in a relative sense, we find at the oneextreme a situation where the power balance is clearly in favor of the externalpower(s) supporting the non-core group. In this case, a successful secessionistmovement or the capture of the host state is likely.

The term “core group”refers to all the inhabitants of a country who share acommon national type in one or more of the ways just outlined. Often the coregroup forms a demographic majority.

Accommodation refers almost exclusivelyto non-violent policies.30 In order to best understand and distinguish betweenthese policies, however, we must consider the different governmental goals thatlie behind each in specific instances, and not merely whether they involve the useof violence or no

uilding on Weiner, Brubaker has argued that if a nationalminority does not have a national homeland it is more likely to be targeted forassimilation.22 To be sure, Brubaker suggests that he is not interested in pre-diction but from his work we can deduce that a nationalizing state is not likely totarget for assimilation a national minority with a homeland, because the costsare high and the likelihood of success low.

The logic is that they have tocrack down heavily in order to build reputation, discourage, and signal resolveto other potential challengers.17 Treisman’s findings from his study of post-Soviet Russia are in line with Walter’s logic; indeed Treisman suggests thatwhen non-core group elites observe benefits from separatist activities of othergroups, they are likely to follow their example.18 Thus, states with few large,mobilized, and territorially concentrated and potentially secessionist groups aremore likely to pursue exclusionary or assimilationist policies than states withone or none such groups

Research in social psychology provides a mechanism support-ing this hypothesis –namely, that individuals seek to maximize their self-esteem, and that creating a positive social identity (usually at the expense ofsome “other”) is one way of reaching the desired goal.13 In sum, according tothis type of explanation, in cases where the dominant group was previouslydominated by the non-core group, the relations will be conflict-ridden and weshould observe no assimilation or accommodation attempts; on the contrary,exclusion is more likely

wever, thesesame nationalist sentiments have also led to inter- and intrastate conflict, thedeaths of many civilians, population displacements, and even genocide.5Legitimate authority in modern national states is connected to popular rule,to majorities. Nation-building is the process through which these majorities areconstructed. In this context, foreign powers that want to destabilize a stateattempt to undermine its legitimacy by encouraging and nurturing linguistic,ethnic, or religious differences and regional identities within its borders.

It is worth noting a potential rival explanation for the durability of many revolutionary regimes: communism. A majority (eleven of twenty) of our cases may be described as communist,96 and it could be that communist (or totalitarian) institutions rather than revolutionary origins are the main source of regime durability.

The destruction of independent power centers and, in many cases, their replacement with state- or party-controlled mass organizations, contributes to authoritarian durability by weakening the structural bases of potential opposition.

Due to the cost of defection, elite schisms are less frequent in revo-lutionary autocracies than in other autocracies. Thus, in countries like Vietnam, Cuba, and Mozambique, where revolutionary governments faced enduring military conflict or threat, ruling parties suffered vir-tually no defections for decades.

But where nascent regimes survive these counterrevolutionary reac-tions, military conflict engenders processes of state building and societal transformation that lay the foundation for long-run authoritarian dura-bility. The violent conflict triggered by efforts to radically transform the domestic and geopolitical status quo generates an enduring perception of existential threat that enhances elite cohesion and contributes to the development of political-military fusion, powerful coercive institutions, and to the destruction of alternative centers of societal power.

Most revolutions thus set off armed counterrevolutionary movements that must be defeated if the new regime is to consolidate its hold.53 Such opposition movements are often backed by hostile foreign pow-ers. The Bolsheviks, for example, were plunged into a civil war against White armies backed by British, French, Japanese, and American forces.

Revolutionary governments do the opposite. Revolutionary elites launch radical policy initiatives aimed at transforming states, societies, economies, and even the regional or international order soon after com-ing to power.

Our argument is path dependent: a regime’s origins can set it on a trajectory that becomes difficult to reverse over time.

As we argue below, the powerful party-state complexes that serve as the institutional foundation of revolutionary re-gimes emerged out of counterrevolutionary or external military conflict triggered by the radicalism of new revolutionary governments.

All the regimes encompassed by our definition are authoritarian, which should not be surprising. Because efforts to carry out radical so-cial transformation attack the vital interests or way of life of powerful domestic actors and large societal groups, they require a level of violence and coercion that is incompatible with liberal democracy.3

Finland in 1918 and Hungary in 1919. In line with gwf and other data sets,27 these two cases, along with all other authoritarian governments that collapsed before the end of the calendar year, are ex-cluded from the sample used in the quantitative analysis.

It additionally excludes the Eastern European “refolutions” of 1989,19 because those transitions were peace-ful (with the exception of Romania) and left state structures largely intact.20

Drawing on the classic work of Theda Skocpol, we define a social revolution as the violent overthrow of an existing re-gime from below accompanied by mass mobilization and state collapse, which triggers a rapid transformation of the state and the existing social order.1

Third, our analysis highlights the centrality of state institutions rather than party or other pseudodemocratic institutions as a foundation for authoritarian durability.

ut where regimes survive, violent con-flict produces four important legacies: (1) a cohesive ruling elite, (2) a loyal military, (3) a powerful coercive apparatus, and (4) the destruction of rival organizations and alternative centers of power in society

But an examination of the origins and evolution of revolutionary regimes suggests that in many cases, strong party institutions are themselves the product of rev-olutionary origins.

volutionary regimes, such as those in Russia, China, Cuba, and Vietnam, endured for more than half a century in the face of strong external pressure, poor economic performance, and large-scale policy failures. The authors develop and test a theory that accounts for such durability using a novel data set of revolutionary regimes since 1900. The authors contend that autocracies that emerge out of violent social revo-lution tend to confront extraordinary military threats, which lead to the development of cohesive ruling parties and powerful and loyal security apparatuses, as well as to the destruction of alternative power centers.

While repression is reprehensible, the debate about authoritarianism and development distracts students of political economy from the real issue: authoritarianism refers to a particular pattern of relationship between rulers and the ruled, but more important is not this pattern but the level of institutionalization of the relationship. It is an institutional structure that gives any state a basis for playing developmental roles effectively, assuming that state leaders at some point are willing to undertake such roles.

Understanding the importance of state structure in successful developmental-ism is crucial to go beyond the inconclusive debate about the relationship between authoritarianism and development

n contrast with existing scholarship that stresses colonial lega-cies, I argue that intraelite and elite-mass interactions, especially but not necessarily during state formation, are the primary origin of developmental states in the two cases under examination

Elite unity implies unified authority and offers a favorable condition for the creation of a cohesive structure while elite fragmentation poses tremendous obstacles to achieving any stable structure.

The second dynamic of state formation involves elite-mass engagement patterns that vary from mass incorporation to mass suppression

Compromise means significant concessions in matters of ideology, organization, and material interests. Compromise may entail more than one step or decision. Initial compromises may be followed by more significant ones as certain elites collaborate on the common project of state formation while other groups are marginalized. Compromise is therefore a process of forming a central bloc and eliminating extremes. In the same vein, polarization involves more than one step and means not simply a rejection of compromise by elites, but the process of forming two or more (but not too many) opposing extremes and the elimination of moderate political options

State formation may protract over centuries as in Western Europe (Tilly, 1990). States may also emerge with a big bang as in many colonized peripheries in the twentieth century.

why did developmental states emerge where they did but not elsewhere? This is clearly a historical issue, but it has obvious implications for the contemporary debate about whether the model can be replicated and similar policies may be feasible in other lands with different historical legacies and social conditions.

rgue that intraelite and elite-mass interactions, especially, but not necessarily during state formation, are the primary origin of developmental states. The framework suggested here not only fills in a critical theoretical lacuna in the developmental state literature, but also contributes to the debate on the relationship between regime types and development

And the capacity of these in-dustries did as we have seen, increase. Therefore, despite evi-dence of growing external difficulties-which after all were ~t least partially the result of exogenous factors such as the ml crisis-it may well be argued that Brazil's "net" capacity to cope with such problems had increased.

olitical structures and policies do weigh heavily in economic outcomes. In Mexico and Brazil, which entered the 195o's with relatively high degrees of state control over populist pressures, GDP and manufacturing con-tinued to grow at very high rates throughout the 195o's.

In Brazil, perhaps the most industrially integrated of the South American countries, textiles alone accounted for over 20 percent of the value added in manufacturing during the 194o's, and remained until the end of that decade the largest single industrial branchY A similar pattern has been widely documented for each of the other countries.

and hard-line officers, interested in "development" and "national security" re-spectively. At a more fundamental level of analysis, one finds the evolution of a close working relationship between government officials, foreign managers and investors, and certain national firms benefiting from state subsidies and joint stock arrange-ments-in short, the ruling "trio" constituted by the state, foreign capitalists, and an "associated" domestic bourgeoisie

The ensuing wave of repres-sion-arrests, dismissals, police surveillance, and strict censor-ship-continued unabated during the first three years of the Medici administration (1g6g-1974),

Our data provide additional support for the ideathat the maladaptive behavior of psychopathic individuals may resultfrom attention dysfunctions that prioritize a goal-relevant perspec-tive.

Second, although we interpretthe reduced altercentric interference in psychopathic individualsas reflecting differences in their tendency to automatically rep-resent others’mental states, it is possible that psychopathic andnonpsychopathic individuals are just as likely to represent theavatar’s perspective, but that psychopathic individuals morequickly select between the two conflicting perspective represen-tations.

Replicating previous research, we found a significant maineffect of both perspective [F(1, 105) =5.467, P =0.021, 95% CI(0.001, 0.148)] and consistency [F(1, 105) =248.51, P <0.001, 95%CI (0.607, 0.765)]. Perspective affected response times such thatparticipants were faster to verify the content of their perspective[mean =898.27 ms, 95% CI (861.31, 935.24)] than they were to verifythe content of the avatar’s perspective

Specifically, participants were asked to verify the number of dotsthat either they (self) or the avatar could see. Sometimes the participant andthe avatar could see the same number of dots (consistent trials), and sometimesthey could see different numbers of dots (inconsistent trials).

We hypothesize that psychopathic individuals may lack thenormal human tendency to automatically take the perspective ofothers.

mportantly, participantsalso perform worse at reporting their own perspective on thenumber of dots when the avatar’s perspective is different fromtheir own. In this case, participants unintentionally experiencealtercentric interference: they are automatically affected by theavatar’s perspective even when this other perspective hurts theirown performance.

uccessful social interaction requires the ability to understandwhat other people are thinking. This ability, often referred to as a “theory of mind”(ToM), helps individuals predict and interpretothers’behaviors, develop meaningful social relationships, com-municate effectively, and engage in appropriate moral reasoning(1–5).

Controlled ToM processes are engaged when an individualintentionally considers the perspective of another person, whereasautomatic ToM processes are engaged when an individual uninten-tionally represents the perspective of another person. In a sample ofincarcerated offenders, we find that psychopathic individuals areequally likely to show response interference under conditions ofcontrolled ToM, but lack a common signature of automatic ToMknown as altercentric interference.

We conclude that psychopaths make the same kind ofmoral distinctions as healthy individuals when it comes toevaluating the permissibility of an action embedded ina moral dilemma. Consequently, these results support thehypothesis that normal social emotional processing doesnot appear necessary for making these kinds of moraljudgments.

Given these uncertainties,it is perhaps less surprising, and at odds with the existingdata, psychopaths show normal patterns of moral judgmentsfor moral dilemmas. More specifically, though psychopathsshow some of the same emotional deficits as patients withdamage to VMPC, other aspects of their emotions may berelatively preserved, and these may be the most importantwith respect to moral understanding. At present, however,this literature is unclear, with some studies reporting normalrecognition and judgments by psychopaths of basic emotionssuch as anger, fear, sadness and disgust, whereas otherstudies show differences, including evidence of abnormalitiesin brain activation during imaging studies of emotionalprocessing

1) since both adults and juveniles received scenar-ios that were designed for children, it is unclear how adultpsychopaths would fare on adult versions

Second, though psychopaths showeddiminished emotional processing relative to both controlgroups, and even though both delinquent groups differedfrom healthy subjects in their morally inappropriate behav-iors

First, like healthy subjects and non-psychopath delinquents, psychopaths judged impersonalmoral actions as more permissible than personal moralactions.

Thus,psychopaths were not more likely to endorse the utilitarianoutcome for other-serving, personal dilemmas

Evaluation of educational level demonstrated a significantdifference between the groups, with offenders having lowerlevels of education than non-offenders, but no differencebetween the two groups of offenders (2[2] ¼12.90;P < 0.05). More importantly, an ANCOVA demonstratedthat there was no significant effect of education onjudgments of either personal or impersonal dilemmas (allP’s > 0.05)

Results showed that psychopathicoffenders, unlike the two comparison groups, showed nosignificant increase in cortisol in response to the stressor.Within both the non-psychopathic group and healthycontrols, cortisol levels significantly increased at T1 (beforeadministering the stressor) to T3 (after administering thestressor) as demonstrated by pairwise comparison (allt’s > 2.81; all P’s < 0.01 and all t’s > 3.07; all P’s < 0.01, respec-tively). In contrast, within the psychopathic group therewas no significant increase of cortisol levels between T1and T3 (all t’s < 1.00; all P’s > 0.34); see Cima, Popma,and Nicolson (in preparation) for a more detailed overviewof these data. Thus, based on both their PCL-R scoresand stress reactivity profiles, this psychopathic populationshowed relatively flat emotional responses, consistent withmany other studies

he following study targets three issues at the core ofcurrent work in moral psychology: (i) To what extent isnormal emotional regulation necessary for making normalmoral judgments, especially in the context of moral dilem-mas where there are no clear, societally-mandated or typicalresponses? (ii) To what extent are the systems that guidemoral judgments dissociable from those that guide moralbehavior? More specifically, do psychopaths show deficitsin both moral knowledge and behavior, in knowledge, orin the link between knowledge and behavior?

suggesting instead that psychopaths understand thedistinction between right and wrong, but do not care about such knowledge, or the consequences that ensue from their morallyinappropriate behavior

We test an alternative explanation: psychopaths have normal understanding ofright and wrong, but abnormal regulation of morally appropriate behavior.

This could suggest that psychopaths not only experi-ence blunted vicariously arousal to others’ pain and reducedfeelings of concern when adopting their perspective, but theymay in fact find the distress of others pleasurable or posi-tively arousing

oth studiesreported a reduced response in the aINS and ACC when the chil-dren viewed pictures of others in pain. Furthermore, a negativeassociation between callous traits and the aINS/ACC was found.The fact that individuals with high scores on the PCL-R showed a reduced response when imagining the pain of another suggests aspecific deficit in affective processing in a region considered as acritical hub to integrate salient stimuli and events with visceraland autonomic information (Menon and Uddin, 2010)

Psychopaths are characterized by a lack of affective empathy,but there is little evidence that they show a deficit in sensori-motor resonance

This findingdoes not support the view that psychopaths do not resonatewhen exposed aversive stimuli such as pain

Interestingly and quite surprisingly, the hemodynamicresponse in aINS and aMCC, regions considered as pivotal in theaffective component of empathy, was highest in high psychopathsduring imagine-self perspective

n healthy participants, activity in this network, whichincludes the aINS, thalamus, aMCC, IFG, and somatosensory cor-tex, has been interpreted as a form of somatosensory resonance,or shared neural representations with the pain of others, provid-ing an implicit intersubjective affective knowledge

Functional connectivity analyses seeded in the anterior insularevealed distinct patterns in functional coupling between thelow- and high-psychopathy groups.

during imagine-self perspective, and the reverse was found forimagine-other perspective

Additional participants who volunteered for the study but metexclusion criteria were not included. Exclusion criteria were ageyounger than 18 years or older than 55, non-fluency in English,reading level lower than 4th grade, IQ score lower than 80, historyof seizures, prior head injury with loss of consciousness >30 min,current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders(4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) Axis I diagno-sis, lifetime history of a psychotic disorder or psychotic disorderin a first degree relative, or current alcohol or drug use.

ding on past research on perspective taking and empa-thy with healthy participants (Jackson et al., 2006; Lamm et al.,2007; Decety and Porges, 2011) as well as a recent study of pain empathy in criminal psychopaths (Decety et al., 2013), incarcer-ated offenders with different levels of psychopathy on Factors 1and 2 underwent fMRI scanning while watching visual stimulidepicting physical pain. To elicit first- or third-person perspectivetaking (or imagine-self and imagine-other perspectives respec-tively) we explicitly manipulated the task instructions given to theparticipants in the scanner before each block, by asking them tothink of the situations as either occurring to them or to someoneelse.

The empathic arousal component, or emotion contagion, devel-ops earlier than the cognitive component, and seems to be hard-wired in the brain with deep evolutionary roots ( Decety andSvetlova, 2012). In addition developmental research has foundthat concern for others emerges prior to the second year of life. Inthese studies, young children are not only moved by others’ emo-tional states, but they make distress and pain attribution in con-junction with their comforting behavior and recognize what thetarget is distressed about (Roth-Hanania et al., 2011). Empathicarousal plays a fundamental role in generating the motivationto care and help another person in distress and depends onlyminimally on mindreading and perspective-taking capacities

Whether individuals with psychopathy understand moral wrongfulness could bear on theinsanity defense in many jurisdictions. The present study cautions that there is insufficientevidence to support insanity defenses based simply on the inability of these individuals tounderstand moral wrongfulness

However, the present results suggest that an inability to distinguish moral fromconventional wrongs—a lack of distinctively moral knowledge—is not an adequateexplanation for their lack of concern for other

IQ inparticular—a measure of cognitive ability—explained approximately 54% of the variance intask performance. This effect of IQ might also help to explain the result showing thatinmates as a whole performed less accurately than the university sample. Indeed, inmate IQin this sample (93.3) was lower than that of typical university students. The effect of IQ onmoral categorization accuracy is consistent with previous work conducted on civillycommitted patients with criminal tendencies (O’Kane et al., 1996).

hese results are consistent with earlier work showing that psychopathic participantsperformed no worse than controls in moral reasoning tasks (Link et al., 1977; Simon et al.,1951).

In subsequent analyses, IQ strongly correlated with moralaccuracy, r = .52, p < .0001. In order to observe how much variance in performance wasindependently explained by IQ or its possible interaction with psychopathy, we conducted ahierarchical linear regression with (1) IQ, (2) PCL-R, and (3) their product as independentpredictors, and moral accuracy as the dependent measure (see Table 4B). The modelexplained a significant proportion of the variance in moral accuracy (Step 2: R2 = .29, p < .001). All of this variance was attributable to IQ, which, according to a semipartialcorrelation, uniquely explained 53.6% of this variance

As a whole, incarcerated participants correctlyclassified 82.6% of the “moral” transgressions as morally wron

Undergraduate participants correctly classified 92.5% of the “moral” transgressions asmorally wrong, M = 7.40 (.97). (Moral and conventional accuracy were identical, given thedesign of the task.) In order to determine whether these scores exceeded that of chanceperformance, we first compared moral accuracy to a chance score of 4, using a one-sample t-test. This test confirmed that participants’ moral accuracy was in fact significantly greaterthan chance performance, t(29) =19.23, p < .0001. To examine just how accurate their moraltransgression ratings were, increasingly strict criteria were selected in a series of t-test

The study was composed of a forced-choice categorization task with transgression type(moral vs. conventional) as a within-subjects sorting variable and psychopathy as a between-subjects quasi-independent variable. The primary hypothesis was evaluated by comparingscores within the incarcerated sample. Transgression type was determined by the pilotsample ratings. Moral wrongfulness was defined by acts that society would consider wrongeven if there were no rules, customs, or laws against them (dimension 1 above). For eachtransgression, the presence or absence of harm (dimension 2 above) was also rated in orderto assess the extent to which harm judgments explain variance in moral categorizationaccuracy.

Taken together, if psychopathic individuals can correctly classify moral transgressions, thenthe causes of their antisocial behavior may not be well-explained by failures in moralknowledge or reasoning. Such a result could re-focus attention to other possible sources ofpsychopathic behavior, such as emotional or motivational processes (e.g., Fowles, 1993;Hare, 1978; Latane, 1964; Lykken, 1957). Such a result could also potentially informconceptions of psychopathic legal responsibility by ruling out one common basis forclaiming that psychopaths should be eligible for an insanity defense. Thus, there remains ademand to re-evaluate psychopathic moral knowledge absent of impression management.

The authors concluded that females with psychopathy can accurately identifymoral norms but they nonetheless fail to utilize this knowledge when doing so wouldcompete with immediate, personal goals. Studies among males have yielded even morestartling results, for example, that psychopathic participants performed better than controlson Kohlberg’s Moral Judgment scale, which challenges respondents to freely justify theirjudgments in various moral dilemmas (Link et al., 1977). These studies lent support to theview that psychopathy is characterized, not by moral knowledge deficits, but perhaps onlyby emotional or motivational abnormalities

Currently, the most common legal definition of insanity includes a clause that was intendedto exclude psychopathy (MPC § 4.01(2)); and courts almost never find psychopaths notguilty by reason of insanity, but these facts could change as scientific arguments mount.

Yet when itcomes to questions of criminal responsibility, it is the nature of their moral reasoning thatmay matter most. This is because, if such capacities are compromised, this fact couldpotentially be used to excuse these defendants’ antisocial behavior on the basis of insanity

the present study found that total psychopathy score didnot predict performance on the task. Task performance was explained by some individual sub-facets of psychopathy and by other variables unrelated to psychopathy, such as IQ. The authorsconclude that, contrary to earlier claims, insufficient data exist to infer that psychopathicindividuals cannot know what is morally wrong

Then, in the autumn of ig80, the secularist-Islamic regime of Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq attacked revolutionary Iran; since the Iraqis perceived Khomeini's regime as weak and internally disorganized, they expected it to fall. What happened with the Jacobins in i 8th-century rev- olutionary France then repeated itself in revolutionary Iran. At first, the foreign invaders made headway, for the remnants of the Shah's military, particularly the army, were indeed disorganized at the command level. But revolutionary Islamic guards poured out to the fronts, and the Iraqi offensives began to come up against fanatically dogged resistance. Islamic fundamentalists and Iranian secular nationalists pulled together, how- ever grudgingly, to resist the common enem

The militant Shi'a clerics of Iran, who seem to be so different from the Vietnamese communists, are another mass-mobilizing and state-building revolutionary elite that has been helped immensely by a facilitating geo- political context and protracted international warfare.33

Vietnamese communists still find it possible to legitimate their leadership through never-ending mobilization of their people for national military efforts.

. In short, U.S. policies since i980, declaredly aimed at "democratiz- ing" Nicaragua, have had the opposite effect; they have undermined ele- ments of pluralism in a postrevolutionary regime and enhanced the na- tionalist credentials of the more authoritarian Nicaraguan Leninists. Still, as of this writing in 1987, it remains possible that shifts in American pol- icy may stop this process of militarization short of full-scale war in Cen- tral America

Due to the basic geopolitical context, there was never any question of a new regime devoted to mass mobilization for military purposes at any point during the Mexican Revolution. Full-scale war with the United States would obviously have been fatal to any revolutionary leadership, and attempts to export revolution to the south would probably have pro- voked the ire of the northern colossus.

Still, we should note that unlike most other social-revolutionary regimes in the modern world, that of Mexico has never been able to engage in mass mobilization for international war- fare. Nationalist self-assertion has been restricted to state-led economic development, particularly in periods such as the 1930S and 1940s, when the United States was distracted by larger domestic or world crises. Pop- ular political participation has been managed by a corporatist, patronage- oriented party-state that preserves order in economically inefficient way

The regional context of each revolution also matters: What have been the possibilities for military conflicts with im- mediate neighbors? Have revolutionized third-world nations faced in- vasions by third-world neighbors, or have they been able to invade their neighbors without automatically involving great powers in the conflict?

With the exception of the Iranian Revolution of 1977-1979, which was primarily carried out through urban demonstrations and strikes, all third-world social revolutions have depended on at least a modicum of peasant support for their succe

From a European continental perspective, the most striking and con- sequential accomplishment of the French Revolution was its ability to launch highly mobile armies of motivated citizen-soldiers, coordinated with enhanced deployment of artillery forces.

Instead, the differences in the essentially mass- mobilizing and authoritarian outcomes and accomplishments of the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions are in large part attributable to the international geopolitical contexts in which the conflicts of these rev- olutions played themselves out. They are also attributable to the political relationships established, during and immediately after the revolutionary interregnums, between state-building leaderships and rebellious lower classe

(a) the centralized, semi-bureaucratic administrative and military organizations of the old regimes disintegrated due to combinations of in- ternational pressures and disputes between monarchs and landed com- mercial upper classes, and (b) widespread peasant revolts took place against landlord

se. Rather, the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions, despite important variations, displayed striking sim- ilarities of context, cause, process, and outcomes. All three classic social revolutions occurred in large, previously inde- pendent, predominantly agrarian monarchical states that found them- selves pressured militarily by economically more developed competitors on the international scene

Whether "communist" or not, I argue, revolutionary elites have been able to build the strongest states in those countries whose geopolitical circumstances allowed or required the emerging new re- gimes to become engaged in protracted and labor-intensive international warfare

Whether we in the liberal-democratic West like to acknowledge it or not, the authoritarian regimes brought to power through revolutionary transformations from the French Revolution of the late i 8th century to the Iranian Revolution of the present- have been democratizing in the mass-mobilizing sense.

There is a straightforward reason why this should be true: the types of organizations formed and the political ties forged between revolutionary vanguards and supporters (in the course of defeating other elites and con- solidating the new regime's state controls) can readily be converted to the tasks of mobilizing resources, including dedicated officers and soldiers, for international warfare.

Yet I would argue that the task which revolutionized regimes in the modern world have per- formed best is the mobilization of citizen support across class lines for protracted international warfar

Briefly put, this happens because during revolutionary interregnums competition among elites for coercive and authoritative control spurs cer- tain leadership groups to mobilize previously politically excluded popular forces by means of both material and ideological incentives

odernization theorists and Marxians both analyze revolution- ary transformations primarily in relation to long-term socioeconomic change. These scholars also highlight the contributions of certain revo- lutions to liberalism or to democratic socialism that is, to "democracy" understood in opposition to authoritarian state powe

Second, we show that theopportunity for free choice is associated withincreased activity in regions implicated in process-ing rewards, as well as with higher reportedsatisfaction.

In summary, we find that three very differentthings—monetary payoffs to oneself, observing acharity get money, and a warm-glow effect relatedto free choice—all activate similar neural sub-strates. This result supports arguments for acommon “neural currency”of reward (25–29)and shows that this model can be applied not justto choice over money, risk, and private con-sumption goods, but also to more abstract policychoices involving taxation and charitable giving(12).

lso,reported satisfaction was higher for voluntary thanfor mandatory transfers after controlling for payoffs(P < 0.065 for the complete design; P < 0.001 using the cells involving tradeoffs, purple in Fig.1B). The pure altruism motive for giving, alongwith the story about adding choices describedabove, would imply that there should be nomandatory-voluntary differences after controllingfor the payoff effects. Thus, our results suggest thatboth the increased payoffs and the ability to chooselead to increased neural activity and satisfaction

An important question, then, is to what degreethe observed higher activation comes from theability to make a choice and to what extent it resultsfrom the differences in payoffs from that choice

10% higher for voluntary than for themandatory transfers (P < 0.01, see Fig. 2B and table S2) (16).

Altruists gave money nearly twice asoften as egoists (58% versus 31%, P = 0.015).This supports the existence of a purely altruisticmotive: The larger a person's neural response toincreases in the public good, no matter thesource, the more likely they will give voluntarily.

This isthe first evidence we know of demonstrating thatmandatory taxation for a good cause can produceactivation in specific brain areas that have been tiedto concrete, individualistic rewards

To test for the pure altruism and warm-glowmotives, we used functional magnetic resonanceimaging while subjects played a dictator game.Subjects received $100 and then made decisionsabout whether or not to give money to a localfood bank. They also observed mandatory, tax-like transfers of their money to the food bank(Fig. 1, A and B) (16). The behavioral results inthis experiment are consistent with economictheory and are similar to those reported in earliereconomic experiments (17–19). As shown in Fig.2A, increases in the amounts going to the charityand decreases in the cost to the giver both in-creased the likelihood that a voluntary transferwas accepted. Self-reported satisfaction with thetransaction followed the same pattern in both the voluntary and the mandatory conditions (Fig. 2B).

This reward from giving has been termed “warmglow”(3, 4). If givers were driven exclusively bythe warm-glow motive, they should derive satisfac-tion from making a voluntary gift, rather than fromthe increase in the level of the public good itself

some satisfaction even when public goods aresupplied through mandatory taxation, because, bythis account, people care only about how much ofthe public good is provided and not about theprocess by which the transfer occurs

Individuals with such amotive receive satisfaction from increases in apublic good, such as the provision of basic servicesto the needy. This altruistic concern provides amotive to give, but there is also an incentive to keepmoney for oneself, because the cost of such charityis entirely paid by the giver, whereas the benefits arespread out over all those people who care about theneedy.

Consistent with pure altruism,we find that even mandatory, tax-like transfers to a charity elicit neural activity in areas linked toreward processing. Moreover, neural responses to the charity's financial gains predict voluntarygiving. However, consistent with warm glow, neural activity further increases when people maketransfers voluntarily. Both pure altruism and warm-glow motives appear to determine the hedonicconsequences of financial transfers to the public good.

Collectively, evidence of activation within this suite of brain regionssupports the proposal that these neural pathways provide an interfacebetween motivational states and behavioral action (Packard andKnowlton, 2002). In other words, the caudate, VTA and sgACC appearto be regulating empathically biased goal-directed behavior (Luo et al.,2011), serving to motivate the subject to respond to the distress ofanother (Preston, 2013), even if it is at a cost to the self.

In line with the caregiving model, our findingsprovide evidence that individuals' readiness to help others is drivenmore by their trait levels of other-oriented empathic concern than bytheir trait levels of personal distress

On the other hand, observing theconsequences of progressively prosocial decisions (larger amounts ofMoney Given-Up) was associated with greater activity in OFC and theposterior portion of the dlPFC (on the border between BA 9 and 44)(Fig. 2A, Table 11) —regions known to support reward valuation(O'Doherty et al., 2001), and which are necessary for top-down process-ing (Ochsner and Gross, 2005; Preston, 2013)

Al-though we found no behavioral evidence that trait Personal Distresscorrelated with costly altruism, the equivalent analysis with PersonalDistress scores entered as a second level covariate revealed increasingactivity in the ACC (

In line with the empathy–altruismhypothesis, subjects' trait Personal Distress scores were not signifi-cantly correlated with Money Given-Up and the effect size estimatewas small (r = .16, p = .53), while trait Empathic Concern didpositively correlate with Money Given-Up with a large effect size(r = 0.53, p = .02; [Fig. 2B])

revealed that sub-jects reported being distressed at watching another in pain (mean 8.2SD ± 1.3). We shouldalso notethat only onesubjectselected theoption‘no shock’more than once; but even this subject choose to forgo themoney and administer ‘no shock’on only six of the 20 trials.

Altogether, we tested nine different regions of interestthat are outlined in the caregiving model to either inhibit or facilitatehelping behavior.

After makinga selection,subjects saw a 3 s display of their choice be-fore experiencing an 8 s anticipation phase —during which subjectswere told their choice was being transmitted over the internal networkto theother testing lab where the Receiver was connected to the electricstimulation generator. Following this anticipation period, subjectsviewed a 4 s video of the stimulation being administered (Videoevent) to the Receiver, or no stimulation if they had opted to spendthe full £1 permitted on a given trial. The Decider was able to see theentire face and body of the Receiver responding to the shock. TheVideo event was in fact pre-recorded footage of real shocks beingadministered to the Receiver, pre-rated by an independent group so asto be matched for shock level and corresponding pain intensity

we hypothesized that if we found evidence that em-pathic sub-processes rely on separate neural circuitry, it would supportthe notion that these two psychological states differentially motivatealtruistic action. If this were indeed the case, the care-giving model(Preston, 2013) proposes that a pattern of avoidant (i.e. selfish or nohelping) behavior would likely engage the dACC, amygdala, andperiaqueductal gray (PAG) —regions key for processing conflict andwhich have been shown to correspond with negative emotions andavoidant maternal expressions (Numan, 2006). In contrast, a candidatenetwork for processing behavioral approach patterns, are the dopaminerich mesolimbic regions (Preston, 2013), which include the ventral teg-mental area (VTA), caudate, and Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc) —areasthat are tied to altruistic giving

Evidence of such vicariously experienced distress has also beendemonstrated at the neural level. A decade of brain imaging studieshas led to a replicable neural circuitry that is activated in a variety ofempathic situations (Singer et al., 2004; Lamm et al., 2011), andincludes the bilateral anterior insular (AI) and dorsal anterior cingulatecortices (dACC) —key regions in the brain's response to physical pain(Singer et al., 2004; Lamm et al., 2007; Akitsuki and Decety, 2009).This reliable ‘empathy for pain’network illustrates that the experiencesof self and other pain are intimately associated —if you suffer, I too suf-fer(Decetyet al., 2008).

are we primarily driven to help at a cost to ourselves becausewe experience other oriented feelings of concern, or mainly to alleviateour own discomfort when seeing another in pain

his is supported by a theory suggesting that altruistic be-havior –helping others at a cost to the self (de Waal, 2008) –is a func-tion of the desire to minimize one's own discomfort when observingothers in pain (Cialdini et al., 1987). Alternatively, the empathy–altru-ism hypothesis proposes that ‘other-oriented’empathic emotions,such as sympathy, are better predictors of altruistic behavior

Here we explore the relationshipbetween costly altruism and these two sub-processes of empathy, specifically drawing on the caregivingmodel to test the theory that trait empathic concern (e.g. general tendency to have sympathy for another) andtrait personal distress (e.g. predisposition to experiencing aversive arousal states) may differentially drive altru-istic behavior. We find that trait empathic concern –and not trait personal distress –motivates costly altruism,

A limitation of the present study is that it included only asmall number of participants. Replication with a greater num-ber of subjects will increase our confidence in the generaliz-ability of these findings

emotion acts as a gain anteced-ent to moral judgment by alerting the individual to the moralsalience of a situation and provides evidence for the pervasiverole of affect in moral cognition

we demonstrate for the first time howintention understanding in the right pSTS (62 ms after stimulusonset) and then affective processing occurs in very early stages ofmoral cognition processing

The early engagement of the right amygdala/temporal poleand vmPFC evoked by the perception of intentional harmfulactions suggests that affective processes precede cognitiveevaluative processes

The perception of intentional harmwas associated with better (90% vs. 71%) and faster reactiontimes for intentional harm compared with accidental harm(P 0.05),

o determine the timing and order of component processesimplicated in moral cognition and whether affective processingoccurs during moral evaluations or antecedent to them, weused high-density ERPs to examine the spatiotemporal dynam-ics of the neural processing evoked by the perception of visualmorally laden scenarios.

During the IIT, participants watched a series of three-frame videoclips that were presented centrally on a monitor screen, as in aprevious fMRI study (Decety et al. 2012). The first frame (T1) fromthe video clip was 500 ms long and displayed an establishing scene;the second frame (T2) was a 700-ms frame displaying either anintentional harm or an accidental harm, followed by a third 1,000-msframe (T3) confirming the intentional or accidental harm.

The results of that study showed that the perception ofintentional harm vs. accidental harm was associated withincreased signal in the amygdala, periaqueductal gray, insula,vmPFC, and right pSTS/TPJ. High-density ERPs can identifypatterns of communication between regions that contrast anal-yses may not detect, and such methods are necessary toadvance of knowledge of the neuroscience of morality

One serious limitation of a majority of previous neuroimag-ing studies is that the results rely only on subtraction logic intheir designs, which is based on the a priori assumption thatone computational process can be added to a preexisting set ofprocesses without affecting them, assuming that there are nointeractions among the different components of a given task.

Our data strongly support the notion that intentionality isthe first input to moral computations. They also demonstrate thatemotion acts as a gain antecedent to moral judgment by alerting theindividual to the moral salience of a situation and provide evidence forthe pervasive role of affect in moral sensitivity and reasoning

Neuroscience research indicates that moral reasoning is underpinnedby distinct neural networks including the posterior superior temporalsulcus (pSTS), amygdala, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, whichsupport communication between computational systems underlyingaffective states, cognitions, and motivational processes

Another limitation is that none of our scenarios involved friends, who may or may not be perceived like kin. Therefore, whether there are similar, quantitatively different, or qualitatively different obligations to socially close but unrelated other people remains unknown (but see