Interesting. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I think a distinction might be missing. Many activists are operating in their own best interest. This is human nature, and as Dr. Wade puts forth, based in logic rather than emotion. They are advocating for "equality" when it will improve their life, even if it comes at the expense of others. The exceptions are the occasional celebrity or wealthy philanthropist who seemingly does it out of guilt (which would put it in the emotion category). Very rarely do you find someone operating contrary to their own best interests.
In any case, most activists APPEAR angry.

http://postmediaedmonton.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/monty-python-and-the-holy-grail.jpg
What about the following groups (and feel free to add)? Logic or Emotion (and why)
Animal Rights Activists?
Anti-Abortion Activists?

Logic and emotion are not dichotomous. Check out "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Damasio" for example.

Also, linking regions of the brain to brain functions can be very tricky.

This argument makes a big, apparently unsubstantiated leap from "people with high justice sensitivity" to "activists." Where is the evidence that activists are intrinsically more sensitive to justice?

When activist groups oppose each other from both sides of a divisive issue, would you say that they are both responding equally to cognitively reasoned objections?

And since when are reason and anger mutually exclusive?

I have to agree with Andrew. You assume that the psychological construct the authors use of "justice sensitivity" maps onto your leftist political beliefs. But the authors make no such leap. You are living in an echo chamber and rarely engaging with the wider world of opinion and thought is you honestly believe that there are not people with different political views with "justice sensitivity." I think this marks you out as an ideologue and not a scholar . . . you view a result like this with such extreme confirmation bias that you cannot even udnerstand what the study is saying.

. . . and now that I think about it, you are misunderstanding the article. The authors are discussing the 'mentalizing' or theory of mind system in the brain. This is logic of a sort . . . it is used to interpret other people's emotions and infer their states of mind / probable actions. This is not logic in the sense that you are taking it (i.e. formal reasoning and mathematics). In fact, this is REASONING ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE'S EMOTIONS. In other words, this study confirms the intuition that social justice warriors like yourself are emotional and not logical agents.

Let me guess . . . you just read the press release? And you don't read enough cognitive neuroscience to understand what is going on?

Neuroscience nerd here; I like this study, and also don’t like it. I am just as, if not more, suspicious of emotion-logic dichotomies in science studies as I am of said dichotomies in general. I am a fan of Decety, who is the PI on this study. But I think your analysis of this article is a pretty classic example of bad science reporting by a humanities scholar. What Decety and his lab were actually studying was a distinction between rule-based cognitive judgements, and empathy/sympathy based cognitive judgements, not “logic and emotion.”

So basically this is a study showing that individuals who have strong reactions to stereotypically morally “good” or “bad” actions process those actions using moralized rule-based processsing, rather than direct physical resonance or empathy. You would probably get similar findings if you tested any situation where people judged others based on typical moral rules—including situations less in tune with politically liberal values than this one. Rule-based processing isn’t necessarily a good thing, especially since this study used a paradigm where the actions participants viewed involved harmful actions performed against a social “out-group” (in this case, homeless people).

It seems like the findings in this study show that people who had greater negative reactions to people harming homeless people did so not because they sympathized with homeless people, but because they considered hurting homeless people a morally “bad” thing. Most neuroscience studies that I have read on empathy and social relations (which, as an autistic person, is a lot) actually show that the ability to understand the perspectives of marginalized groups relates directly to a persons ability to display direct "walk a mile in their shoes" empathy for others despite differences in appearance, behavior, etc. I take this study as further proof that the majority of social moderates/liberals base their ideas of “social justice” on dichotomized “good” versus “bad” stereotypes, rather than actual empathy and engagement with marginalized people’s experiences.

One of the best things about Decety’s work on empathy in general is that he has done a great job of showing how often there is a direct disconnect between identification/empathy with marginalized people and normative social expectations and rules about what is “right” and “wrong.” Interpreting this study as being about how “social justice people” (which is a ridiculous generalization; these were just study participants who reacted strongly to a very stereotypically “bad” action) are “logical” not “emotional” is a total misinterpretation of this research, and has really not-okay implications.

Sorry.
Emma Whetsell, neuroscience geek, social justice freak, and general data-hoarder.

(Apologies for the delayed reaction--I posted this commentary when I first reblogged the tumblr post linking to this page, but it's easy to get lost in the reblog-shuffle).

perfect. there's the problem, & it's the same problem that affects every nanospeck of the current culture. it's in this sentence:

Activists aren’t angry, they reasonably object to unjust circumstances that they understand all too well.

these are middle class, middle minded members of the bourgeoisie. they dont understand homelessness AT ALL. they've never been homeless, most of them have never even known a homeless person, none of them have known a homeless person well enough to think of that person as anything other than a mass media stereotype.

so, of course, what theyre reacting so very very poignantly to is something they've seen—an idea theyve been sold—on television. nothing more profound than that, nothing more real either. & theyre getting points for it, Big Points. which is a great deal of the deal, right? in our world that's run by upclick, clickthru, & all the advertising dollars & academic opportunism those things do bring?

I'm not very logical. I can't even cope with school logic assignments. How can I develop it in myself?

I never liked logic classes when I was a student. I always had bad grades and even my athletic achievements did not help me to improve my grades. But when I started using logic homework help from https://assignmaths.com/logic-homework-help.html , everything changed dramatically. If you are also struggling with this subject, then don't waste your energy, but spend some money to get help with homework.

I have long been looking for a service that helps solve logic problems. But the link you shared does not open. Can someone suggest other similar platforms?