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that the parasitic enemy shouldn't be exterminated. This is where scientific explanation gains 
considerable interest, helping us understand how we develop anticipatory pleasures and past-oriented 
regrets, struggle to change from habitual rewards, and acquire irrational desires for experiences we no 
longer enjoy — a problem that appears to maintain most forms of addiction. 
Humans go to restaurants and bees to flowers because both are associated with food. Within these 
broad categories, there are good restaurants and flowers, as well as bad ones, where good and bad are 
determined by experience. The experience can be direct, as when food is actually consumed, or indirect 
as when humans listen to an animated friend describe a restaurant's menu and bees watch a hive mate 
dance, providing a description of the flower's location and quality. Once the association between food 
and location is established, simply seeing the restaurant or flower triggers a cascade of neural and 
chemical activity in the brain linked to reward and the anticipation of pleasure. The restaurant and 
flower are cues that predict food. If you walked into your favorite restaurant and found that they sold 
fertilizer rather than food, you would be heartbroken. If you haven't been to the restaurant in a long time, 
but memorialized your previous experience as a gastronomic high, you will be deeply disappointed if 
your first bite doesn't live up to the standards you anticipated. This mismatch between anticipated and 
experienced reward will lead to a cascade of brain activity — indicative of an error. The primary engine 
driving the experience of reward, including predicting when it will occur and with what kind of intensity, 
is the dopaminergic system, a network of brain areas that releases dopamine in most invertebrates and 
vertebrates, including the human vertebrate. 
Many natural behaviors trigger dopamine, including male songbirds singing to attract females, 
rhesus monkeys seeing a red light that has been associated with a soon to be delivered shot of juice, and 
humans cooperating with each other. Many unnatural behaviors and objects can also trigger dopamine. 
Animals trained to press a switch for food, will often become obsessively attracted to the switch, 
caressing and biting it even in the absence of food; humans with addictions to cigarettes, food and 
gambling, will often obsessively fondle an empty cigarette carton, fork, and deck of cards, respectively. 
But these correlations leave open the question of whether dopamine causes the anticipation or experience 
of reward, or flows from these experiences. 
To tackle the causality problem requires experiments, either directly changing dopamine 
concentration or comparing individuals who, due to genetic differences, show differences in dopamine 
levels. We know from studies of rodents and monkeys that selectively increasing dopamine with drugs 
results in heightened wanting of food if there are cues to foraging, or sex if opportunity knocks. The 
Israelian cognitive neuroscientist Tali Sharot pursued a similar approach with healthy humans subjects. 
She first asked individuals to rate how happy they would be if they vacationed in 80 possible destinations. 
Then, some subjects took a placebo while others took L-dopa, a drug that selectively increases the release 
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of dopamine. Later, these same subjects imagined what it would be like to actually vacation in these 
places, and rated their imagined experience. Those on L-dopa felt they would be much happier, revealing 
the power of dopamine to cause changes in our experience of reward. Complimenting these experimental 
results are studies showing that genetic variation in the expression of dopamine in humans are closely tied 
to impulsive behaviors and behavioral disorders. Thus, individuals with genetic variants that result in 
higher levels of dopamine are more likely to engage in compulsive gambling and eating, leading to 
addictions. The anticipation of heightened pleasure leads these gamblers, eaters, and abusers to want 
more and more. 
This work shows that dopamine is necessary for monitoring and guiding our desire for reward, 
with evidence of individual differences that start with our biology. This is a highly adaptive system. But 
changes in dopamine can also cause our desire for reward to runaway, like a brakeless trolley. This is a 
highly maladaptive process. This flip between adaptive and maladaptive that we see within the 
dopaminergic system is, by now, a familiar brain routine. It provides, I believe, the means to explain all 
manners of excess, from the desire for food and money to drugs and violence. 
Obesity and drug addiction are disorders of excess. They are disorders of insatiable desire. There 
are many paths to obesity and addiction, but all ultimately point to changes in the reward system. In 
humans born with deficient levels of the hormone leptin, overeating and obesity are common outcomes. 
When these individuals view images of food during a brain scanning session, they show lower levels of 
activity in the striatum than non-leptin deficient individuals. The striatum is an area that is rich in 
dopamine and an essential part of the reward system. This may, at first, seem paradoxical: how could 
those who eat to excess not show an excess of activity in the striatum, and thus, an over-the-top 
experience of reward upon seeing food? The answer lies in studies of rodents and humans. Whether it is 
obese rats or obese people, both show compulsive eating, but lower levels of expression of dopamine in 
the striatum. If you silence a key dopamine gene in rats, you can quickly turn them into food junkies, 
driven by an unsatisfied wanting system. Overeating, like over-drugging, turns the reward dial down. 
This is an adaptive response, except when it operates in the mind of a food or drug junky. Though the 
reward hits are small and unnoticeable, the wanting system remains highly motivated, triggered by the 
same cues. What food and drug junkies want is more hits, but the reward system isn't delivering. This 
causes them to want even more. 
What the work on obesity and addiction tell us is that independently of how people get started on 
the path to fulfilling their desires, and whatever leads them to over-consume, consumption loses its luster. 
The brain is smart: excess is bad and thus the reward systems turns off. But because the wanting or desire 
system is independent from the reward system, and has evolved insurance against a complete shut down, 
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it continues to drive desire. Because the reward system isn't delivering the goods, excess unfolds driven 
by a wanting system that is looking for pleasure in all the wrong places. 
When we were hunters and gatherers, excess was an unborn concept. We lived on the edge then, 
enjoying scraps of whatever kill arrived on the fireplace, together with the tubers gathered up on the day. 
We, at least many of us in the West, live in a world that has a 24/7 cafeteria of food and drugs. It is a want 
it-have it culture. As work in molecular biology shows, and as I will pick up in chapter 4, some of us start 
off more vulnerable than others, susceptible to sampling from the cafeteria at all hours of the day and 
night. The combination of a heavily marketed environment and a biological susceptibility to excess, is a 
losing combination for the consumer. 
The work on addiction provides a template for thinking about how individuals and societies ignite 
a path to excessive harms. In the same way that excessive eating gets going and going out of control 
when the dopamine system drives an irrational desire to want more and more food that is liked less and 
less, so too is excessive harm often driven by a similar decoupling between wants and likes. Individuals 
start with a desire to acquire wealth, to physically harm those who are unlike them, or taste the sweetness 
of revenge against someone who acted unfairly. These desires are often linked to an experience of 
pleasure or the anticipation of pleasure. But as such actions and their consequences accumulate, the 
pleasure derived diminishes, as money is acquired just for the sake of having more, while individuals are 
injured, maimed, or killed because this is the policy that must be pursued. Liking is no longer part of the 
equation, leaving cold desire to do its work at the expense of innocent others who get in the way. 
To develop this idea, and especially the link to excessive harm, I have to fill in a missing piece in 
our discussion of desire. Everything I have discussed in this section has focused on individuals and their 
core corporal needs for survival — or in the case of drugs, recreation. I haven't said a word about how 
desire works in the social arena, whether the same systems are in play when we compare our own desires 
and resources with others, or with other opportunities. When desire is motivated by what others have or 
have achieved, are the same processes in play as when we eat, drink, or gamble? These are important 
questions as the desire to accumulate great wealth or to harm others is often motivated by comparison 
shopping, assessing what others have relative to our own status. The most primal starting point for 
comparison shopping is the world of hierarchies, a world where the desire to dominate rules. 
Power hungry 
Whether you are observing a social insect, fish, lizard, bird, rat, whale, monkey, or human, males are 
bigger and bolder, more boisterous, brash and brazen, and more motivated to get into a brawl than 
females. Though biologists don't define the sexes based on these differences, they use them to understand 
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what drives competition for valuable resources and what determines the criteria for dominance status. 
Biologists define the sexes based on differences in the gonads, the reproductive organs that generate eggs 
and sperm, and the corresponding effects of sex-specific selection on the mind, body, and behavior. 
Females are those with larger, more costly gonads, where cost is defined on the basis of how much energy 
is invested in production. Think eggs versus sperm. This difference sets up an immediate competition, 
especially for species that have parental care. Once you invest in a big expensive egg, you don't want to 
lose your investment. You want to protect it, avoiding harm and minimizing risk. On the other hand, if 
your investment is small, you are not only freer to take risks, but favored to do so. 
These ideas started with Charles Darwin. One hundred years later, they were developed in 
exquisite detail by the American evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers. Combined, they provide an 
explanation for why, in most species including our own, males compete with each other for access to 
females—the most valuable and limited resource —and why females are picky, expressing an aesthetic 
preference for males of a particular quality. Selection favors parts of the body and brain associated with 
dominant males and picky females. Dominant males win fights against other males, and thus gain access 
to females. Dominant males take risks and are more aggressive. Picky females hold out for the best males, 
those who provide the most desirable resources. Picky females are patient, waiting for males with good 
genes, access to prime real estate, and the protective skills and motivation to defend them and their young. 
These are qualities linked to high status. These are qualities associated with the ability to obtain and 
control resources. These are the qualities that females desire. 
Male desire for dominance is therefore nurtured by female desire for dominant males. Like 
appetites, these desires seek satisfaction. Like appetitive addictions that create devastating consequences 
for individuals, groups and nations, so too can our appetite for domination. 
Recall from the last chapter that testosterone and cortisol play a teeter-toner role in aggressive 
competition. When testosterone is high and cortisol is low, the motivation to fight and defend one's 
resources is high. These two hormones, and the brain areas they impact, fuel the desire to maintain a 
competitive edge. Recall further that winners experience an increase in testosterone, and losers a 
decrease, and that testosterone is addictive. Testosterone is therefore part of the system that links the 
desire to outcompete and gain dominance status with the rewarding experience of winning and achieving 
high rank. 
To attain high rank, including a competitive advantage over others with respect to food and 
mating opportunities, requires social knowledge. How tough is the alpha baboon or boss in a company, 
and what kind of support do they have from other individuals in the group? How sexually receptive are 
females when their hormonal cycles tilt them into a period of potential conception? What other males are 
interested in these females? Attaining and maintaining high rank also requires attention to cues that are 
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continuously changing, including where someone is looking and parts of the body that signal power and 
sexual availability. The American neuroscientist Michael Platt carried out a clever series of experiments 
to understand how much male rhesus monkeys value different kinds of social information and how much 
they will pay to obtain it. As in our discussion of wanting and liking, Platt rightly assumed that rhesus 
monkeys would value most what they like most, and that they would pay the highest price for what they 
are most motivated to acquire. 
Each monkey watched a slide show with viewing options akin to pay-per-view television. On a 
given trial, they could watch one of two images for as long as they liked, each viewing option associated 
with a particular amount of juice. For each pair of images, one delivered more juice than the other. Given 
that these were thirsty monkeys , they should prefer more juice over less juice. If monkeys have no 
interest in the images per se —because they have no value —then their viewing preferences should be 
strictly determined by where they can get the most juice. If, on the other hand, the images have value, 
and some images are more valuable than others, then they may be willing to look at an image that delivers 
less juice over an image that delivers more. This is costly viewing. This is paying for watching. 
Evidence for such preferences would reveal that rhesus monkeys value the social information that comes 
from the image over the juice itself, a surprising result given that juice is a primary reward whereas the 
image is only a secondary reward, indicative of things to come. 
Consistently, these male monkeys had two favorite channels, preferring those showing pictures of 
high ranking individuals and close-ups of female hindquarters. They preferred these over images of low 
ranking individuals, despite the fact that this choice often cost them the opportunity to drink more juice. 
Platt's findings show that monkeys are motivated to acquire information about socially relevant 
situations, including information about dominance and sex. Their motivation or desire to obtain this 
information is high, as evidenced by the fact that they are willing to pay a cost. Keeping an eye on a 
dominant is of value as dominants pose a threat, especially one staring at you. Keeping an eye on a 
female's hindquarters is also of value as it can signal sexual receptivity: in rhesus monkeys, as in many 
other monkeys and apes, the area around the vagina either swells, turns red, or both when females are 
ovulating. This is important information for males in their attempts to court and mate females. I will 
quickly pass over the potential implication of these results for thinking about the origins of pornography. 
Humans also value social information, with many hours in a day devoted to obtaining such 
information through gossip. Many of us live in a world where dominance matters, whether it is climbing 
to the top of a corporate chain or attaining the title of heavyweight champion of the world. Individuals 
seek high status because of the physical and health benefits that accrue. In such societies, our sense of 
self is based on our comparison with others. It is also based on a strong sense of independence, 
autonomy, assertiveness, and uniqueness. In other societies, the self dissolves into the other, with an 
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emphasis on inter-dependence, commonness, and openness to change in response to authority. These 
differences in self-perception show up when we attend to faces of familiar individuals. Chinese subjects, 
representative of a collectivistic and inter-dependent society, responded more quickly to seeing their 
boss's face than seeing their own face. In contrast, American subjects responded more quickly to their 
own face than to any other person's face, including that of their boss. Like Plan's monkeys, therefore, we 
too place value on social information. Unlike Plan's monkeys, our sense of value in the social domain is 
modulated by our cultural upbringing. This modulation, and the brain states that accompany it, shows up 
in direct comparisons of individuals who are motivated to attain high dominance status with those who 
are motivated to create equality. 
The American social psychologist Joan Chiao used survey information to establish two groups of 
individuals based on those who preferred to live in an egalitarian society and those who preferred a 
hierarchical society. These individuals then entered a brain scanner and viewed pictures of people 
experiencing pain. Two areas, both associated with the personal experience of pain and the perception of 
pain in others, were highly active. But these areas were less active in those who preferred hierarchies 
than those who preferred egalitarianism. This finding, as Chiao notes, is consistent with the idea that in 
an egalitarian society, empathy for others well-being is essential. In egalitarian societies, seeing someone 
who has less or is being harmed by another, should motivate a desire to redress the imbalance and reduce 
the harm. In a dog-eat-dog hierarchical society, where dominants outcompete subordinates and inequities 
are part of life, concern for those at the bottom is a sign of weakness. These results show how cultural 
influences can shape brain activity, leading some to develop deep desires for dominance and inequities, 
whereas others develop deep desires for equality. These brain areas heighten our sensitivity to what others 
have, what we desire, and how our desires are modulated by what others have. These comparisons 
motivate us to improve our status either by working harder— a good thing—or taking down those 
above us — a bad thing. 
I'll have what she's having 
One of the most famous lines in movie history was delivered by Estelle Reiner in When Han), Met Sally, 
a comedy produced by her son Rob Reiner. While Estelle is seated at a table in a delicatessen, Sally —
played by Meg Ryan — fakes having an orgasm to show Harry— played by Billy Crystal — that he 
can't tell the difference between fakes and the real deal. Overhearing Ryan's performance, Estelle turns 
to the waiter and says "I'll have what she's having." This is comparative shopping, cashing in on 
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someone else's subjective experience to guide our chosen experiences. 
Orgasms and eating are two of the great pleasures in life, whether you live in Tokyo, Toronto, 
Toulouse, Tehran or Timbuktu? I doubt any healthy human adult would debate this. What can be debated 
is what counts as the ultimate orgasm or food experience. It can be debated both among friends and 
inside our own minds, influenced by personal experience and our knowledge of what else is available, or 
might be. 
Consider potato chips. As a snack, potato chips generate a revenue in the United States of about 
$6-7 billion dollars each year, relying on the slicing and frying of about 2 billion pounds of potatoes. 
These facts make clear that most Americans love potato chips, and are motivated to consume them. Like 
other salty snacks, it is hard to eat just one. The American psychologist Carey Morewedge and his 
collaborators ran an experiment to find out how much people love potato chips, and whether their 
anticipated fondness for this delicious crisp changes in the face of other options. Subjects sat at a table in 
front of a bowl of potato chips and an alternative food that was visible, but out of reach. The alternative 
was either a highly undesirable snack such as sardines, or a highly desirable one such as Godiva 
chocolate. After subjects contemplated what it would be like to eat each of these foods, they then rated 
how much they would enjoy them. This is like the study I described in the pleasure section where subjects 
rated how much they would enjoy different vacation destinations, but without the comparison between 
one clearly good and one clearly bad spot. Both focus on the anticipation of a pleasurable experience. 
Subjects' ratings of potato chip deliciousness soared when sardines were on offer, and plummeted 
in the presence of chocolate. Context matters. What is clearly delicious when there is nothing else on the 
table, loses or gains in deliciousness when the table fills up with other delectable or disgusting 
alternatives. 
What's happening to our pleasure detector, and especially our anticipated reward system, in the 
potato chip experiment? Are we incapable of understanding what makes us happy, unable to figure out 
what is or is not delicious, or are we fickle? What Morewedge's experiment reveals is that deliciousness, 
like ugliness, stubbornness, and obsequiousness, is a judgment, judgments are always relative or 
comparative, and as such, based on some standard that is either present in the moment, stored away in 
our memories, or anticipated in the future. When Estelle Reiner uttered her famous line, she was using 
Meg Ryan's orgasmic expression of delight as a comparative metric. When we compare food items or 
wine or pretty faces or sporty cars, we recruit our brain's resources, especially the circuitry involved in 
attention, emotion and memory. Whether we say that potato chips are the best snack, or better than 
sardines, we have made a comparison that requires our attention, our capacity to keep at least two items in 
memory, and a way of emotionally tagging each of the items. This comparison-shopping taxes our 
mental resources, recruiting them away from the job of evaluating one snack, and leading to a distorted 
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evaluation of desirability. 
Morewedge's experiments point to a mismatch between how delicious something is and how 
delicious we think it will be, or how delicious we thought it was. It reveals a distortion in our capacity to 
anticipate—or forecast in the words of the American social psychologist Daniel Gilbert —how we will 
feel, and in particular, how much we will like the experience. This is a problem for the elements of 
pleasure that I laid out earlier in this chapter, as we expect the system that links wanting and liking to be 
well honed, even optimized to make sure that we really want things we really like. Is this distortion 
something to expect across the board, independently of context, or is it specific to our food? Is the social 
domain similarly vulnerable to a distorted view of anticipated pleasure? 
Consider revenge. When someone transgresses over the borders of social norms, either harming 
us or those we care about, we often seek revenge, motivated to even things up. We often imagine that 
revenge will make us feel better, providing a honey hit to the brain that will satisfy our desire to redress 
an imbalance. But is this the outcome we consistently achieve when we follow through on a plot of 
revenge or, as Sir Frances Bacon noted over three hundred years ago, might "A man that studieth revenge, 
keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well." In more modern and plain 
English, might our desire for revenge inoculate us against healing, creating an illusion that we will feel 
better? If so, revenge looks like an addictive process, with wanting unhinged from liking. 
The American psychologist Kevin Carlsmith set up an experimental game that allowed each 
subject within a group to contribute money to a public good. At the end of one round, the bank multiplied 
the total by a pre-determined amount, divided this total by the number of players, and then redistributed 
this amount to each player. In this game, the best for each player in the group is to contribute to the 
common pot because this maximized the returns. However, the best strategy for an individual is to defect, 
holding on to the initial endowment while reaping the rewards of everyone else's generous contributions. 
Those who opt out of cooperation in a public good situation stand to benefit, especially in a world with no 
punishment. 
Carlsmith created an experimental world of punishment for some players, but not all, and then 
explored how punishment contributed to a subject's feelings. Some could pay to punish, some witnessed 
the consequence of another's punitive act, and some had no exposure to a game involving punishment. 
When given the opportunity to punish the defector, most people punished. Everyone, both 
punishers and non-punishers alike, expected punishment to feel good. They were wrong. Both punishers 
and those who witnessed punishment felt worse, with the act of punishment compounding the bad 
feelings. The fact that the witnesses felt worse, as opposed to better, may seem at odds with our 
experience of schadenfreude, of enjoying another's misery. Shouldn't the witnesses have rejoiced upon 
discovering that the offenders were slapped with a punitive fine? In our own personal experience with 
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schadenfreude, as well as in studies that I will explore in a few sections, witnesses learn of a misfortune 
that happens to another but this news has no direct bearing on the witness. In Carlsmith's experiments, the 
witnesses learn of a misfortune, but the offender's defection has a direct bearing on the witness in terms 
of money lost. Thus, although punishment may feel good, the benefit may not make up for the lost 
income. 
Everyone in Carlsmith's experiments also believed that punishment would cause people to think 
less about the offender. They were wrong again. Punishers, but not those who simply witnessed 
punishment, ruminated more about the selfish offenders. Rumination led to more bad feelings. These bad 
feelings led to more rumination, giving birth to a vicious cycle of feeling bad and ruminating about those 
who cheated them of some money. Rumination heightened the comparative difference in resources. 
Carlsmith's findings are paradoxical and disturbing. Paradoxically, they suggest that in some 
situations, our expectations about the feeling of punishing an immoral act are inverted from the feelings 
we feel following punishment: rather than feeling a happy high, we feel a depressing low, often 
accompanied by increasing anger. In the context of punishing a free-rider who stiffed the group, everyone 
expects to feel a tingle of delicious delight, but many end up feeling angry instead. The entire polarity of 
the emotion has switched, with rumination and anger dominating our thoughts. This is a dangerous state 
to enter. Faced with the strong belief and desire that revenge should feel good, but lacking any 
confirmation, we are moved to find new evidence. With anger at the helm, there is only one solution: 
escalate the level of punishment, and continue to do so until it feels good. This is precisely the pattern I 
described above for obesity: the wanting system continues to search for liking and reward, but fails, and 
thus continues. Whether it is an unsatisfied desire for food or revenge, the unfortunate consequence is an 
escalation to excess. Evil isn't far behind, fueled by a variety of situations in which we fail to obtain what 
we want. 
The great leveler 
We are often envious of those who have what we desire, whether it is good looks, money, a warm 
supportive family, or a better tennis stroke. Envy can motivate us to change our looks, find careers that 
will improve our finances, seek relationships that will provide additional support, and pick up a few extra 
tennis lessons to win the next match. Unfortunately, envy can quickly turn, as desire and a deep sense of 
inferiority transform into insatiable cravings to acquire whatever is necessary to gain superiority. Envy 
thus wears two masks, one benign and inspirational, the other malignant and destructive. As the writer 
Dorothy Sayers noted, envy "is the great leveler; if it cannot level things up, it will level them down." 
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Envy emerges out of our sense of fairness, fueled by competition. It is part and parcel of a 
hierarchical society. When we envy someone, we have detected a difference or inequity between our own 
condition and that of another. We want what someone else has, presumably because we like what they 
have. Wanting and liking are in harmony. Recognition of the inequity fuels competition to redress the 
imbalance. This sense of fairness appears early in child development, changing in systematic ways as a 
function of a culture's norms. 
The Swiss economist Ernst Fehr, who led the brain imaging studies of punishment and reward 
discussed in Chapter 1, assembled a team of developmental psychologists to test for evidence of fairness 
in young children ages 3-8 years old. Fehr was especially interested in when children recognize a 
disparity or inequity in the distribution of resources, and what they are willing to do, if anything, to 
redress the imbalance. The experimenter paired up each child with a partner of the same age who was 
either from the same school or a different school; the school distinction was set up to look at in-group 
versus out-group differences which, as discussed in chapter 1, can lead parochial altruism —the 
paradoxical result of greater cooperation among group members and greater hatred and violence toward 
those outside. Though each child knew about their partner's age and school affiliation, they never saw 
their partner. Each child therefore knew only that they were playing with someone from their school or 
someone unfamiliar to them. 
Each child played three different games. In each game, the experimenter told one child to decide 
how to distribute a fixed amount of candy. In the prosoeial game, the decider either takes one candy and 
gives one to the partner or takes one candy and gives nothing to the partner. If children are sensitive to 
inequities and want to share in order to make things fair, they should pick the 1-1 option; picking the 1-0 
option doesn't affect the decider, but dings the partner. In the envy game, the decider has a choice 
between 1-I and 1-2. As in the prosocial game, the decider gets the same amount of candy with both 
options, but preserves equity with I-1. Picking 1-1 also reveals that the child has an aversion to others 
having more, even when there is no personal cost. In the third, sharing game, the decider has a choice 
between 1-I and 2-0. Here again, the decider gets candy in both cases, but the 2-0 option tempts the 
desire for more, both personally and relatively. On the one hand, a greedy child will want more candy, 
and so 2 wins over 1. But picking the 2-0 option also leads to a greater difference with the partner, while 
robbing them of an opportunity for any candy. If fairness prevails, deciders should pick 1-1. If 
selfishness prevails, motivated by competition, they should pick 2-0. 
Across all three games, there was an increasing tendency from age 3 to 8 years old for children to 
pick the fair distribution (I-I). Across all ages and games, children were most likely to pick the fair 
distribution when playing against familiar than unfamiliar schoolmates. What these results reveal, 
together with many other similar studies, is that children are sensitive to the distribution of goods at an 
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early age, but with important developmental changes in play. There is a tendency for children to both 
recognize inequities early in life, but to act selfishly when possible. The envy game shows this 
beautifully. When another child could receive more, children rejected this option even though it wouldn't 
cost them directly: the decider always gets just one candy. Though no one has yet worked out what 
causes a developmental shift from more to less selfishness, most agree that it is driven by maturation of 
brain regions guiding self-control, together with social factors that make young children increasingly 
aware of and sensitive to their own and others' reputations. Fehr's studies also show that playing fair is 
not just about the distribution of resources, but about who gets them. Early in life, children have already 
carved up the world into those they know and those they don't. This division drives their thinking and 
feeling, and in cases like this, their sense of fairness. Young children are well on their way to developing 
parochial altruism. 
Fehr's research, and the majority of studies on the child's developing sense of fairness, focus on 
children living in large-scale Western societies. Most of the work on fairness in adults is similarly 
focused on large scale societies. The precise structure of these societies may directly impact how 
individuals decide when to share, what commodities enter into the distribution, and whether sharing 
depends on effort invested, needs, and power. As noted in the last section, those who support an 
egalitarian society are more likely to feel empathy toward those in pain than those who support a 
hierarchical society. Individuals who are more empathic are also more altruistic. Hunter-gatherer 
societies tend to be more egalitarian, and highly cooperative. These differences predict further 
differences in how those living in small-scale societies, including the hunter-gatherers and subsistence 
farmers of Africa, Asia, and South America, should respond to unfair exchanges. 
The American anthropologist Joseph Henrich and his colleagues presented a set of bargaining 
games to adults living in different small-scale societies across the globe. Though the subjects in this study 
played a number of different games, the basic goal was similar to those deployed by Fehr in his studies of 
children and adults: under what conditions will individuals choose to share an equal as opposed to an 
unequal distribution of resources? 
Consider the ultimatum game. One individual decides how to distribute a fixed amount of money 
to an anonymous partner; in the Henrich games, he always used the local currency and an amount that 
was appropriate for the society. The partner had two options: keep what is on offer or reject it. Rejection 
is costly to both players as they leave empty handed. Rejection is both an expression of sour grapes for 
what could have been —a fair offer— and punishment for selfish behavior. In large scale societies, 
offers typically range from 40-50% of the initial pot, and rejections are common for offers less than about 
20%. 
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Across the globe, most people in these small scale societies offered some amount of the initial 
pot. Across the globe, most people rejected really low offers. This shows the universal signature of 
fairness: an expectation of sharing resources and a no-tolerance view of greed. Cultures differed with 
respect to how much they shared and whether they rejected. Some societies offered, on average, close to 
40%, while others offered as little as 15%. Some societies accepted virtually all offers, whereas others 
rejected both low and even high offers. Even in more egalitarian societies, therefore, there is sensitivity to 
unequal distributions. Even in egalitarian societies, there is a willingness to punish those who act 
unfairly, greedily taking more than their fair share. 
The work I have discussed on fairness is only a fraction of the growing body of scientific 
evidence. What this research reveals is that a sense of fairness is part of human nature, appearing early in 
development, but guided by experience toward a particular cultural form. When our desire for fairness or 
equity combines with our competitive drive, envy often follows. Studies of the brain show how envy is 
generated from this combination. 
When healthy subjects sit in a brain scanner and learn about other individuals who have what they 
desire, there is considerable activity in the anterior cingulate, and more activity in those who feel more 
envious. This is not the envy center of the brain. There is no such area. But the recruitment of the anterior 
cingulate in other social situations helps us understand what is going on more generally in the case of 
envy. The anterior cingulate activates when we experience pain from social exclusion, but not when we 
witness such pain in others. It is one of the areas that was activated in Chiao's work on the differences in 
pain empathy for those supporting either an egalitarian or hierarchical society. The anterior cingulate is 
also involved when our minds are pulled in two different directions, a situation that arises when we are 
forced to choose between two conflicting moral options— for example, a duty to save the lives of many 
versus the prohibition of killing one person to save the lives of many. There is a common thread here that 
unites these different experiences. Like our experience of social exclusion, envy is also a form of social 
pain and to some, deeply painful, as it reveals a sense of deficiency in acquiring resources. Envy also 
represents a situation in which our positive sense of self conflicts with the negative sense of self 
engendered by social comparison. Our brain — and the anterior cingulate in particular— informs us that 
we are less accomplished when compared with others. Envy is socially imposed pain generated by 
comparison shopping. 
Envy highlights what we don't have, which fuels the system of desire, which seeks satisfaction. 
Unsatisfied, envy runs wild. Unsatisfied, wanting keeps hunting for pleasure. Schadenfreude delivers 
some prey. 
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O Schadenfreude 
On February 15, 1978, a relatively unknown boxer with few professional fights, stepped into the Las 
Vegas boxing ring and snatched the world heavyweight champion title from Muhammad Ali. Ali, along 
with his entourage of managers, coaches and fans were shocked, though no one denied that he lost. The 
unknown boxer was Leon Spinks. His only prior claim to fame, and ticket to a shot at Ali, was an 
Olympic gold medal two years earlier. With this win, not only did Spinks enjoy the heavyweight belt of 
champions, but a cash prize of $350,000 and a promise of $3.8 million for the rematch with Ali. But this 
meteoric rise to the top fizzled into a meteoric crash, driven by women, alcohol, sports cars, and a lack of 
training. Leon Spinks, aka "Neon Leon," was living the fast life, and rapidly losing his status as a 
respected sports hero. 
Moments before his rematch with Ali, he cruised the streets of New Orleans on top of a limousine 
while smoking a joint. He was flaunting his nonchalance, making fun of Ali's age, and carrying on about 
his ability to take the old champ without a single work out. When he entered the ring, Ali was ready. 
Though the match went the full fifteen rounds, it was no contest. Ali won. 
Newspaper writers and boxing fans celebrated the return of their champion, and mocked the 
downfall of an ephemeral, arrogant, and out of control hero. After losing to Ali in the rematch, Neon 
Leon crashed further, losing all of his earnings, taking on odd jobs for minimum wage, losing a son in a 
gang fight, and suffering defeat after defeat in the boxing arena. From envied millionaire sports star to 
bankrupt fool and the laughingstock of the boxing world. 
When the envied fall down, we perversely enjoy the knock out. This is schadenfreude, a German 
word that describes the joy we feel in witnessing another's misfortune. Though the emotion is universally 
understood, recognized in our written records at least as far back as Aristotle, the German language is one 
of the few to capture the feeling by tapping the brain's promiscuity, combining the word for harm 
(sehaden)with the word for joy (freude). Like envy, schadenfreude is a social, comparative emotion. It 
erupts when those we envy fall down, when someone we dislike meets his comeuppance, and when a 
misfortune is deserved. But like envy, schadenfreude presents two faces, one elevating and virtuous, the 
other deflating and divisive. We should feel good when a person is caught crossing a moral line, 
committing an injustice. Such feelings not only reinforce our own adherence to moral norms, but 
encourage us to punish those who transgress. Such feelings instill courage in the service of expressing 
moral outrage. As Robert F. Kennedy stated "Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle 
or intelligence." Schadenfreude in this positive sense is the inner voice of moral courage. At the same 
time, it can also be the inner voice of moral disengagement, providing justification for an observed harm. 
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When this happens, our promiscuous brain has worked its combinatorial magic, causing us to feel good 
when we witness someone else's misfortune. 
Schadenfreude, like envy, causes us to self-evaluate, looking inside of ourselves to assess our net 
worth relative to others. We know from a large body of studies, several carried out by the American 
social psychologist Roy Baumeister, that when an individual's sense of self-worth is threatened, 
especially those individuals with more narcissistic and overly confident personalities, aggression often 
follows. The more personally threatened we feel, the more pleasure we should feel when someone else 
suffers. The Dutch psychologist Wilco van Dijk tested this idea with two simple experiments. In both 
experiments, subjects filled out a questionnaire that they believed evaluated their intellectual strengths. 
Upon completion and scoring of the questionnaire, some were told that they had utterly flopped, scoring 
in the lowest 10% of all subjects, while others were told that they performed brilliantly, scoring in the 
upper 10%. Next, all subjects read a scenario in which someone suffers a misfortune. For example, in one 
scenario, a student rents an expensive car to show off at a party, but then drives the car into a river, not 
only damaging the car but requiring the fire department to tow it out. Those whose sense of self-worth 
was threatened by the abominable test score were more likely to say that they felt good about the 
misfortune, including smirks and laughter in response to the show off who submerged his rented car. 
These results powerfully show that schadenfreude serves the beneficial function of hoisting our own self-
worth. When our self-worth has been challenged, for whatever reason, we feel better knowing that 
someone else is worse off, regardless of context or direct relevance. 
Our desire to see others suffer so that we may feel better can escalate to absurd levels, especially 
when it is fueled by ideology. Beliefs can blind us to the cost-benefit analysis, motivating us to see harm 
done to those outside of our inner sanctum even if it hurts us as well. Religious and political ideologies 
are two of the hotspots that can drive entirely irrational desires and absurd attributions. 
The American psychologist Richard Smith explored whether an individual's political convictions 
influenced the intensity of schadenfreude when witnessing a member of another party suffer, including 
cases where society at large also suffers. Smith initiated the study prior to the US Presidential elections in 
2004 involving Republican George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry; during this period, the 
Republicans controlled both executive branches of the government. Each subject — all college 
undergraduates—provided information about party affiliation and strength of support for the policies 
and beliefs of their party. Next, every subject read and provided reactions to short newspaper articles 
describing tragicomic moments for the two candidates, one in which Bush fell off his bicycle while 
riding, and the other involving Kerry wearing a bizarre space outfit during a visit to NASA. Last, 
subjects read and reacted to an article describing job losses and the economic downturn facing the nation 
— an article meant to capture an objective cost to all members of society, irrespective of party affiliation. 
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Unsurprisingly, Democrats expressed more pleasure from reading about Bush's bicycle accident, 
whereas Republicans were more joyful over Kerry's bizarre space suit. Surprisingly, Democrats also 
expressed pleasure from reading about the economic downturn, and more pleasure than the Republicans 
who were more likely to express negative feelings about this situation. Thus, despite the fact that the 
economic downturn hurt everyone, the Democrats expressed pleasure over the added damage this 
inflicted on the Republicans — who they held responsible —and conversely, the added benefit it 
brought to the Democrats who could wag their fingers. 
In a second study, Smith found that Democrats experienced more schadenfreude than 
Republicans over the number of casualties reported out of the Iraq war, even though Iraqis were certainly 
not preferentially targeting Republicans. The pleasure they experienced was entirely driven by the fact 
that this was a war sponsored by a Republican government, and thus, the fatalities could be blamed on the 
Republicans. From a Democrat's perspective, even though everyone loses when soldiers die in war, it is a 
bigger loss for Republicans, and thus, a bigger gain for Democrats. With schadenfreude, it is all about 
comparative shopping. It is all about satisfying our desires relative to others. 
As noted above, schadenfreude appears to emerge strongly when an individual's misfortune is 
deserved. To explore what is happening in the brain when such pleasure is experienced, and the 
situations that might trigger it, the German cognitive neuroscientist Tania Singer set up a study involving 
healthy men and women. In the first phase, subjects played a bargaining game for money against an 
unfamiliar partner; prior to the game, and unbeknownst to the subject, Singer set things up so that the 
partner played either fairly or unfairly. After the game, each subject entered a scanner, and watched their 
partner receive a painful shock to the hand. 
Predictably, Singer discovered that both men and women liked the fair players better than the 
unfair players, and showed more empathy to fair players when they were shocked. Proof of empathy was 
read off the images of brain activation, especially the brain circuitry known to be involved in pain 
empathy, and mentioned earlier in my discussion of Joan Chiao's work on social hierarchies: the insula 
and anterior cingulate. Unpredictably, Singer discovered that the level of activity in this pain empathy 
circuitry was reduced when men —but not women —saw unfair players receive pain. She also observed 
that in men —but not women —there was increased activity in the nucleus accumbens—an area 
mentioned earlier on that, in rats, monkeys and humans is consistently associated with the experience of 
reward and liking. The more individual men desired revenge for an unfair offer, the more activity they 
showed in this reward area. 
Singer's findings are joined by many others showing that the nucleus accumbens, together with 
other reward areas, are activated in a wide variety of situations in which we gain from others' pain. But 
because these same areas also respond to non-social, non-comparative experiences, such as eating, we 
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come back to a critical point in this chapter: areas that evolved for one function are readily recruited for 
others, especially in a promiscuous brain like ours. As long as something makes us feel good, whether it 
is winning, eating, social comparison, or harming another, the reward areas of the brain turn on. 
Schadenfreude is one of the mind's ambassadors, enabling us to journey from a state of inferiority 
to superiority. It enables "imaginary revenge" in the words of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. 
Like envy, it is highly adaptive, focusing our attention on inequities. Like envy, it is also maladaptive, 
rewarding us when the inequity is not only addressed, but results in another's failure and misery. If failure 
is associated with violence, including death, so be it. The brain is poised to inspire our desire to harm or 
witness harm in order to feel good. 
An appetite for violence 
Billions of people, perhaps all humans, have had vivid fantasies about sex, violence, or sexual violence. 
Are these fantasies like food fantasies, cravings that need to be satisfied? Or, as some theories would have 
it, are sexual and violent fantasies satisfying on their own, playing a cathartic role, releasing energy and 
thus, reducing the need to act out? 
Seung-Hui Cho was born in South Korea and then moved to the United States with his parents. 
During his first three years in college, both students and professors in his literature and theatre courses 
described his writings as disturbing and disgusting, and his actions toward other students as ominous and 
frightening. One professor noted that his creative pieces "seemed very angry," while another demanded 
that he be removed from the class. A classmate noted that his plays were "really morbid and grotesque...I 
remember one of them very well. It was about a son who hated his stepfather. In the play, the boy threw a 
chainsaw around and hammers at him. But the play ended with the boy violently suffocating the father 
with a Rice Krispy treat." Cho was advised to seek counseling. He didn't. No one followed up. A 
professor aware of his often inappropriate comments and behavior contacted members of the 
administration. No response. Several women alerted the campus police after Cho stalked them. No 
disciplinary action was taken despite his repeated offenses. As in the SEC's tin ear to the alarms 
surrounding Madoff's dubious securities, so too was everyone at Cho's university deaf to his alarming 
behavior in class and out. 
During his senior year, Cho wrote an essay describing his anger toward rich kids, the unfairness 
of life, and his own misery. He also described a revenge fantasy, packed with images of retaliation 
toward those who had what he lacked. He sent his reflections along with excessively violent photographs 
and videotapes to the New York headquarters of NBC news. Under a photograph of bullets he provided 
the caption "All the [shit] you've given me, right back at you with hollow points." 
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On April 16, 2007, Cho dressed up in army fatigues. He left his dormitory and killed 32 people 
and wounded 25 others with a semi-automatic Glock 19 pistol filled with hollow-point bullets, designed 
to cause more tissue damage than traditional bullets. Cho then shot himself in the temple, ending his life 
and the Virginia Tech massacre. 
Cho's case provides a horrifying example of how fantasies of violence can lead to real life 
enactments and a trail of blood. It also provides a counter-example of the catharsis view: Cho's fantasies 
about violent revenge did not make him feel better. It made him feel worse and more violent — a pattern 
supported by dozens of studies. 
Normally raised children as young as seven years old are more likely to act aggressively toward 
their peers if they are self-absorbed in a world of aggressive fantasy, and this is especially the case for 
children who witnessed violence or were subjected to it. Adult men and women are more likely to crave 
violence after reading an argument in favor of the cathartic magic of violent fantasies than after reading a 
manifesto against catharsis. Men who engage in aggressive sexual fantasies are more likely to engage in 
aggression, but only if they are narcissists. Men who engage in deviant sexual fantasies are more likely to 
enact these fantasies, but only if they exhibit signs of psychopathy. Psychopathy and narcissism are like 
Siamese twins, inseparable. What these studies show is that those who are self-absorbed and play with 
violent or sexual fantasies, are most likely to take these imaginary worlds onto the real world stage. 
Further evidence of the connection between violent fantasies and violent actions comes from 
studies by the German psychologist Thomas Elbert who studied child soldiers brainwashed into joining 
the ranks of the Lord's Resistance Army, Northern Uganda's rebel group. Since its inception in 1987, the 
LRA has recruited 25-65,000 children, starting with boys and girls as young as 10-12 years old. In 
detailed interviews and analyses of now retired child soldiers, Elbert discovered that those who had more 
experience with killing developed stronger, appetite-driven fantasies of killing, a hunger that had to be 
fulfilled by real killing. As one ex-child soldier noted "The more we killed, the more we acquired a taste 
for it. If you are allowed to act out this lust it will never let you go again. You could see the lust in our 
greed popping eyes. [...] It was an unprecedented pleasure for everyone." Not only was fantasy converted 
into killing, but the more they killed, the less they experienced any trauma in later life. Unlike the droves 
of veterans who have been returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and suffer from post-traumatic stress 
disorder or PTSD, these child soldiers developed an immunity. Many of the veterans from Iraq and 
Afghanistan had no interest in killing, and deemed the war unnecessary. In contrast, these child soldiers 
were brain washed into believing that killing was necessary, and a sign of importance. Killing that is 
justified is rewarding, whether the justification is real or the product of self-deception. When self-
deception joins the fray— as I further develop in chapter 3 — killing is not only rewarding but virtuous. 
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Cho's case is not the exception, but the rule: persistent fantasies, whether sexual, violent, or 
sexually violent, are often played out in real life. When people voice their fantasies, we should open our 
ears. When therapists, especially those influenced by the catharsis view of the mind, encourage their 
patients to engage in aggressive fantasies to release their pent up energy, we should bring forward 
malpractice suits as they are accomplices to crime. 
What kind of mind is most likely to rev up the fantasy world to supersonic levels and then 
unleash it in the service of excessive harm? Lust murderers — individuals with a craving for the bizarre and 
degenerate —provide one answer to this question. Lust murderers are typically repeat offenders or serial 
killers. The serial nature of their crimes comes from the fact that they are motivated by recurrent 
fantasies that create recurrent cravings. They are, effectively, addicted to violence. Their fantasies often 
entail some kind of paraphilia — an extreme and abnormal sexual arousal to objects, people or situations 
— played out through some form of sadism— a persistent pattern of sexual or non-sexual pleasure from 
humiliating, punishing and harming others. Here again we see the promiscuous human mind at work, 
seamlessly blending pleasure and violence, animate and inanimate attractions, sometimes with benign 
origins, but often with malignant outcomes. Thus, the pleasure derived from humiliation may develop out 
of the more common, normal and less harmful pleasure we experience from mockery and humor. 
Humiliation is just a small step away in a mind that derives joy from others' demise. 
The paraphilias, like many of the other disorders that appear within the Diagnostic and Statistical 
Manual of Mental Health, fall along a continuum from rather benign forms of voyeurism to 
erotophonophilia, the vicious and sadistic killing of an innocent victim in order to achieve ultimate sexual 
satisfaction. Regardless of the particular object or situation driving the paraphilia, individuals become 
addicted. Like other addictions, including those associated with food, drugs, and alcohol, paraphilic 
addicts experience withdrawal. Dangerously for the world around them, the erotophonophilic or lust killer 
harbors sadistic paraphilias, including flagellation — the need to club, whip or beat someone — 
anthropophagy — the desire to eat human body parts— picquerism— a craving to stab someone or cut 
off their flesh, focusing especially on genitals and breasts— and necrosadism— a yearning to have 
sexual contact with the dead. Although these desires may seem unimaginable, they reveal one facet of the 
human mind's potential— a potential that was fully realized in the mind of Jeffrey Dahmer who 
flagellated, cannibalized, dismembered, and engaged in necrophilia with his 17 victims. Such disordered 
minds are part of the human condition, one that stretches from individuals who never cache in on their 
fantasies to those who not only deliver, but develop — as in addictions to food and drugs — deeper and 
deeper desires for harming others without the rewards that come from such harm. When wanting and 
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liking part company, with liking falling dormant due to sensitization, wanting grows in intensity, seeking 
but failing to find satisfaction. So begins an appetite for violence, one that can turn into a craving. 
A craving to impress 
Gazelles on the Serengeti plains of Tanzania sometimes move in an exceptionally bizarre way. With legs 
rigidly extended, they bounce up and down like kangaroos. There is no obvious function associated with 
this movement. If anything, it appears energetically wasteful. If these gazelles lived in tall grass, one 
might think that the bouncing was designed to better see or be seen. But the Serengeti plains are flat and 
the grass is short. Gazelles can see for miles in this habitat and so can everything else that shares this 
gorgeous part of the planet with them. This includes the lions, leopards and cheetah that think of gazelles 
as breakfast, lunch and dinner. Why would a gazelle advertise like this? Why alert predators to your 
location and availability? Why not use the coloration of your fur to blend into the color scheme of the 
savannah, moving swiftly but imperceptibly? 
We can explain the gazelle's bizarre movements—called slotting—by thinking economically, 
using Zahavi's honest signaling theory that I described in Chapter 1. Whenever evolutionary biologists 
see a behavior that is costly, they immediately search for a potential benefit. The reason is simple: 
behaviors that tax an individual's chances of survival and reproduction are ultimately weeded out by the 
force of natural selection. There must be some benefit to the individual or to others in order to neutralize 
the costs. Given the ostentatious nature of the gazelle's stoning, who benefits and how? Since the 
behavior is eye-poppingly interesting to human observers, one assumes that it is eye-popping to other 
animals on the Serengeti plains as well. Gazelles typically stot when they detect danger which, in the 
Serengeti, means leopards, lions and cheetah. If gazelles stot to alert other gazelles, then most gazelles 
should stot, at least some of the time. This is because all gazelles are vigilant, should have multiple 
opportunities to see these predatory cats, and should benefit from an alarm signal. But this is not what we 
observe. Instead, stotting seems to be reserved for those in good shape. When gazelles stot, they appear to 
be sending a cease and desist signal to any observant cat. If this is the gazelles' message, then cats should 
selectively chase non-stoners over stoners. And when cats turn a blind eye to stoning gazelles and chase 
them, they should have less success than when they chase non-stoners. Stoners are turbo-charged. 
Stoning is simply their way of showing off. 
These expectations are supported by the British biologists Claire Fitzgibbon and Tim Caro who 
spent hundreds of hours watching gazelles and predatory cats. What they reveal is that stoning is an 
honest signal of condition or quality. Only gazelles in good condition can tolerate the costs of stoning. 
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Stoning handicaps the individual, imposing a significant cost on the ability to move. But the cost paid is 
relative to the individual's condition. Without the cost and the ability to manage it, everyone could stot. 
And if everyone could stot, the cats would quickly figure out how meaningless it is and look for other 
cues to vulnerability. 
Stoning appears excessive, but in fact is an honest signal of power. It is, to borrow a phrase from 
the economist Thorstein Veblen, "conspicuous consumption." By flaunting their superior condition, 
throwing away resources just because they can, these stotting gazelles benefit in the long run, living 
longer and leaving more offspring who will inherit their qualities. These ideas carry over into human 
behavior, from big spenders to, I suggest, big harmers. 
The American anthropologist James Boone has suggested that human magnanimity evolved as 
did stoning, as an honest signal of wealth and power. It represents a desire to impress through wastage. 
Handicap yourself in the short run to benefit your wealth and status in the long run. Big tippers don't tip 
in private, but in the presence of those who can admire their lavish tips. Hunter-gatherers who bring home 
large prey from a day of hunting don't make cryptic deposits for others, but make sure that their offerings 
are public. The Mayan pyramids were not built for personal enjoyment behind walled enclosures, but in 
the open, visible to potential enemies as displays of excessive power to create something really big and 
costly. Rappers such as layZ, Puff Daddy, and 50 cent don't have absurdly lavish cribs with a six pack of 
sports cars because this is what they like, but because this is what they can show off on MTV. Flaunting, 
even at a substantial cost, provides a path to power. This is a club whose mono reads "Impress with 
excess." 
My suggestion is that excessive harms work as honest signals of wealth and power. Here we 
combine the HOW of evil—discussed in this chapter—with the WHY of evil—discussed in chapter I. 
When millions are raped, slashed, burned, chopped up, gored, and dropped out of planes before dying, 
there are only two possible explanations: the evildoer is clinically mad with no sense of moderation or a 
healthy schemer who has allowed desire to run wild. The schemers are like stotting gazelles, wanting to 
impress others of their awesome powers by performing high risk displays. The schemers deploy 
proactive, premeditated, and cold violence— like predators. As the sociologist Wolfgang Sofsky noted in 
his commentary on the Nazi concentration camps "Individuals demonstrated commitment by acting, on 
their own initiative, with greater brutality than their orders called for. Thus excess did not spring from 
mechanical obedience. On the contrary; its matrix was a group structure where it was expected that 
members exceed the limits of normal violence." Unfortunately for society — past, present and future—
the Nazis are not an isolated case. When Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadic, and Ratko Mladic 
launched their ethnic cleansing initiative, they didn't just displace or kill Albanians and Croatians, they 
raped their women, old and young, in front of husbands, fathers, and grandfathers— and then killed man 
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