Emilie A. Caspar, Laurence Rees and Leor Zmigrod

Neuroscientist Dr Emilie Caspar, political neuroscientist Dr Leor Zmigrod and historian Laurence Rees discuss what makes us follow orders and go from peacefully living together to carrying out violent and brutal acts.

Caspar leads the Moral and Social Brain Lab at Ghent University and is one of a handful of neuroscientists exploring the brain science of obedience. For Just Following Orders: Atrocities and the Brain Science of Obedience, she travelled to Rwanda and Cambodia to interview genocide perpetrators to better understand how following orders can lead to such horrific acts of violence. Caspar says that by better understanding how direct orders can short-circuit our independent decision-making, we come closer to preventing it happening.

Zmigrod is a pioneer in the field of political neuroscience and is an advisor to the UN and UK and US governments. In The Ideological Brain: A Radical Science of Susceptible Minds, she looks at who is susceptible to radicalisation and why they become radicalised. Zmigrod says ideologies often provide easy answers and organising frameworks to the human brain. And she explains how ideologies actually change our neural architecture and our cells.

Rees is a former head of BBC history and author of acclaimed books about World War II. In The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings From History, he examines the motivation and mentality behind the Nazis and their supporters. Why did they commit such crimes, and why did the commandants of concentration camps oversee mass murder, often enthusiastically? Rees combines history and latest research in psychology to try to find some answers and highlights the signs to look out for in today’s leaders.