In 1562 an old woman from Cannstatt in the Duchy of Württemberg named Magdelena Horn confessed that she had ‘recently so ill-treated … a child that … it died from it’. 1 In 1611, a young woman named Agatha Sacher from Dornstetten appeared uninvited at the wedding of a man who had jilted her, which caused the bride such distress that she became ‘crazed’, threatened suicide, and had to be taken to a doctor. 2 Ten years later in the village of Metzingen, Katharina Masten, who was more than seventy years old, berated and hit a servant girl who refused to let her take food from her master’s larder in repayment of a loan so forcefully that the girl collapsed ‘and could only crawl away’. 3 A few years after that a swineherd’s wife in Sindelfingen named Catharina Ada barged in on an annual ritual during which the cow herders’ wives divided up a gift of bread from the farmers whose cattle their husbands tended. Anna Rueff, a cow herder’s wife whom Catharina took a place next to, developed a headache, ‘became lame on her right side’ the next day, and ‘her suffering increased day by day … so that the following Thursday evening she became crazed, would not eat, talk, or listen, but shouted and bellowed, until she died’. 4 To the end she ‘insisted that the swineherd’s wife had inflicted’ her ailments.

In all of these cases there was evidence that the women had committed the acts attributed to them. The mother of the boy whom Magdelena said she hit reported that he had complained of her abuse before he died. A witness testified that Agatha Sacher had said she wanted to ‘hurt Ziegler’s fiancé’ and had earlier claimed to be able to work magic. Similarly, Katharina Masten was reported to have said ‘she gave the girl what she deserved’, and there was no dispute that Catharina Ada had barged into the cow herders’ wives’ gathering and stood next to Anna Rueff, although no specific threat was attributed to her.

All of these cases formed part of a sample of small witch trials that I discussed in my book The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic. In it, I argued that in a small but significant fraction of witchcraft trials, the accusations were based, in two ways, on real maleficium, or occult injury. 5 First, as indicated above, the evidence in these cases suggests that the accused did do things related to the injuries attributed to them. Second, in some cases the things they did could have caused the misfortunes ascribed to them. Some involved surreptitious physical violence, while in others the magical influences attributed to the suspects really could, through a combination of overt or subliminal communication of hostility and psychophysical influences on disease, have caused or contributed to the victim’s malady.

Given that the source materials are four-hundred-year-old judicial records, the degree of certainty we can have about what people intended and did and what consequences their actions may have had varies widely and can never be absolute, but we can gauge the plausibility of the attributions and the probability that they were valid. Of the cases mentioned above, Magdelena Horn appears strongly to have deliberately caused injury to the boy surreptitiously through physical means. Agatha Sacher appears strongly to have wished her ex-boyfriend and his bride ill and may or may not have consciously employed magic against them; either way, aggressively intruding on their space and possibly showing her hostility in other ways almost certainly caused the bride’s distress. Katharina Masten clearly meant harm but seems to have acted spontaneously; and if her assault affected the girl more strongly than a septuagenarian woman’s blows could be expected to through physical force alone, whatever additional impact it had does not appear to have involved deliberate use of magic. Catharina Ada appears not to have set out to inflict harm, yet could well have through her aggressive behavior. Overall, I estimate in the book that about 15% of suspects consciously engaged in practices or unconsciously manifested behaviors associated with maleficium, and conclude that their behaviors could in some cases have posed a genuine threat to the health and well-being of their neighbors. 6

The Realities has provoked considerable debate about our ability to discern what really happened in witchcraft cases. 7 However, while using documents from witch trials clearly presents special challenges, these are problems of degree rather than kind; in the end all we can hope for from any historical source in particular cases is to judge the plausibility and probability that what is reported is true. More general conclusions then reflect the cumulative weight of evidence about what could plausibly have happened and what is probably true.

In order to reinforce the plausibility of my conclusions, this chapter will begin by exploring research relevant to the issue of actual behaviors that I became aware of too late to use in the book: modern adult bullying, which has significant parallels to early modern witchcraft. It also provides evidence of the power of interpersonal emotional aggression on a victim’s health, which the second part of the chapter will explore further by reviewing recent work in social neuroscience that makes it possible to trace in much more detail the connection between the emotions of one person and the physiological responses of another than was possible when I wrote The Realities. 8

Witchcraft and Bullying

Ever since the Enlightenment educated Westerners have been skeptical of allegations of witchcraft, rejecting not only the purported diabolic conspiracy, but also claims that harmful magic could have effects, or was even practiced to any significant extent. Research into modern adult bullying provides evidence, though, that interpersonal aggression can be a more common and more distressing feature of daily life than we may like to think. Its existence does not prove that malefic magic was practiced in early modern Europe, of course, but it can affect our estimation of its plausibility in general and its possibility in any particular case. Bullying is part ‘of a wide range of behaviors loosely labeled “human aggression”’. 9 Intra-group aggression is so basic that there are ‘obvious similarities between human and non-human’ forms and ‘when individuals fail to use culturally appropriate methods of anger management, cultures have specific labels to describe’ them. It therefore seems worth taking a closer look at the phenomenon of modern adult bullying and contrasting it with the maleficium ascribed to early modern witches.

The word ‘bullying’ may bring to mind trivial school-yard harassment, but bullying in schools is actually ‘a significant public health concern world-wide’, while adult bullying such as workplace bullying, spousal abuse, and child abuse have severe consequences for their victims and society at large. 10 While rates of bullying vary, spousal and child abuse are common problems, and ‘the incidence of workplace bullying is far greater than was ever thought’. 11 In Norway and Finland about 10% of workers reported having experienced it within the past six months, while in the UK 50% said they had. Overall rates of bullying in different contexts vary from 1–5% to 90%. 12

Bullying takes many forms, from physical violence through verbal assaults, ‘glaring, ignoring’ and hostile gestures, to social undermining via gossip, betrayal, and ostracism. 13 Indeed, ‘one of the most startling impressions … is the ingenuity that perpetrators have shown in finding ways of inflicting misery on their victims’, and their ‘enthusiasm … for doing so’. 14 Not surprisingly, bullies are ‘high in anger’. 15 Some bullies are psychopaths, and ‘26 percent of [workplace] bullying is accounted for by one percent of the employee population’, but that leaves almost 75% of cases attributable to a wider range of people who are not clinically disturbed but who ‘just do not care’ about ‘the pain they cause’. 16 Bullies can actually be quite emotionally sensitive, but they use ‘their understanding … to better hone their weapons’. 17 In some cases, bullying can actually be ‘unintentional’, for ‘many of the behaviors of bullying are only a little removed from everyday living experience’. 18 In fact, ‘the nature of bullying is often ambiguous. The bully may deliberately (and effectively) confuse the victim by appearing nice one moment and nasty the next.’ 19 Bullies often display ‘Machiavellian talents … bringing pain to their victims without discredit to themselves’. 20 Whether intentional or unintentional, overt or covert, though, bullying flourishes because it works, bringing not just psychological satisfaction to the bully but also power in the social world. Bullying is ‘a tactic’ to ‘intimidate others … victims and competitors are rendered emotional and ineffective’ and potential rivals deterred. 21

There are clearly some parallels between modern adult bullying and the behaviors ascribed to early modern witches. Some of the interpersonal displays are similar, like verbal assaults, glaring, and hostile gestures. In both, the tactics employed tend to divide by gender: women usually bully using indirect social manipulations while men are more likely to use direct forms of physical and verbal violence; witchcraft was strongly identified with women, while early modern men were thought more prone to open physical violence. 22 Bullying, like witchcraft as anthropologically defined, can be unintentional as well as intentional, and can be perpetrated in ambiguous ways that mix positive and negative social signals. The emotions behind the two—anger, aggression, and a pleasure in, or at least lack of remorse for, causing suffering—are also similar. So too is the fact that while in theory witches were motivated by pure malice, in practice accusations often connected witchcraft to some concrete dispute; bullying, too, can be gratuitous but also serves practical ends.

There are some important differences as well. In modern society, bullying generally happens within workplaces, schools, and families, whereas witchcraft accusations were most often made by neighbors. Witchcraft involved women employing verbal violence, curses, and threats, more typically than modern female bullies. Bullying can involve a variety of behaviors not associated with witchcraft, like throwing tantrums and engineering ostracism. On the other hand, witchcraft, unlike bullying, was identified with the use of magic, and accusations frequently involved poison. More generally, witchcraft was thought to involve a mortal animus that bullying does not. On balance, while many aspects of witchcraft can be seen as forms of bullying, and witchcraft and bullying share similar motives and purposes, witchcraft was not just a form of bullying. Bullying can cause illness and even drive its victim to suicide, but normally it aims to merely humiliate and dominate the victim. In contrast, while witchcraft too was used to assert power over other people, its focus on the infliction of physical injury up to and including death set it apart.

Despite the differences between modern adult bullying and early modern maleficium, the unquestionable reality of the former makes allegations of the latter seem more plausible, particularly when combined with a recognition of the high levels of interpersonal conflict, bitter enmities, and violence that were endemic to many early modern communities. 23 Should we dismiss out of hand Magdelena Horn’s un-coerced and corroborated confession that she surreptitiously hit a child just because it occurred in the context of a witch trial? What if there had been no concern about whether Magdelena did this in the service of the Devil, and the trial had simply been for child abuse? Similarly, should we categorically reject the possibility that Agatha Sacher intended to cause distress when she went uninvited to the wedding of the young man who had jilted her? Is it implausible that Katharina Masten berated and hit the servant girl who refused to let her take food from her master’s larder in repayment of a loan? Diabolic witchcraft may have been an imaginary crime, but maleficium involved a variety of forms of interpersonal aggression that were possible, plausible, or even probable. In some cases, given what we know about some peoples’ readiness to inflict harm on others, they seem almost certain. While most witch accusations were certainly baseless, generated by neighborly scapegoating or judicial coercion, some were undoubtedly true, and the evidence in each case needs to be judged on its merits: its internal characteristics, its congruence with other evidence, and its general plausibility.

Research on modern adult bullying reinforces the plausibility of another aspect of early modern maleficium: the ability of interpersonal aggression to cause harm. Schoolyard bullying is ‘a significant public health concern world-wide’ because it causes physiological as well as psychological problems. 24 Bullying is responsible for one third to one half of stress-related absences from work. 25 The psychological consequences of workplace bullying include anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and suicidal impulses. 26 Furthermore, victims of bullying are at significantly higher risk for physical ailments. 27 Symptoms include psychophysical problems like headache, high blood pressure, nausea, chest pains, neck aches, muscular pain, gastric upsets, and impotence, and stress-related ‘biological alterations … to cortisol levels’ associated with ‘lowered immunity to infectious disease’ and other cortisol-related disorders. 28

In the decade since I wrote The Realities significant advances have been made in social neuroscience that make it possible to understand in much greater detail how such influences might be projected and received. The balance of this chapter will therefore turn to recent research on, first, anger and fear, the two emotions most centrally implicated in the process, and, thereafter, on intersubjectivity, the visceral connections between people that mediate the communication of emotion and precipitation of psychophysical distress.

The Neurobiology of Anger and Fear

Our understanding of the emotions has gone through a series of changes in the past few decades. Since time immemorial they were considered to be fixed aspects of the human condition, natural reactions of human beings to events and relationships varying mainly by individual temperament, with some channeling influences by cultural conventions. In the late twentieth century, however, social-constructionist understandings that emphasized the variety of emotional regimes across cultures and the power of enculturation over the psyche came to dominate the social sciences and history. 29 Yet in the same period, cognitive scientists discovered evidence that at least six emotions—anger, fear, disgust, sadness, surprise, and happiness—are ‘universal in their performance and in their perception’. 30 Meanwhile, neuroscientists were exploring the modularity of the mind, the fact that specific areas of the brain handle specific aspects of cognition, including complex and even conscious activities like recognizing faces, understanding physical processes, and feeling fear. 31 Neuroscientists have also been investigating the role of specific chemicals in experience and behavior, and this converging evidence that there are basic emotions hardwired into the human nervous system has challenged social-constructionism in turn. 32

Social constructionists have pointed out that the ability to recognize the basic facial expressions varies from culture to culture, and even basic emotionalists have to recognize that there are many other emotions which differ significantly across cultures and over time. 33 Human emotions clearly have both biological and social dimensions, and involve an interplay between different parts of the brain that conduct low-level processing and higher-order cognition. Among neuroscientists the social-constructionist v. basic emotionalist debate has evolved into a disagreement over whether the ‘basic emotions’ are standard packages or if they are combinations of more elemental cognitive processes like approach and avoidance or pleasant–unpleasant that are more subject to cultural influences than basic emotionalism suggests. 34

Both of the most prominent emotional elements of the witchcraft interaction, anger and fear, are among the ‘basic’ emotions. Fear is the simpler, for it is one of two basic emotions for which a specific neural substrate has been identified (the other is disgust). 35 While recent research has cast doubt on characterizations of the amygdala as the ‘fear center’ of the brain, it is connected by relatively direct, fast links to the perceptual system; triggers the ‘fight or flight’ response; directs attention of higher brain centers to the source of the fear-inducing stimulus; and has a ‘well-established’ role in learning and storing ‘the conditioned fear response’ to stimuli, including social stimuli. 36 Fear is related to another, but evolutionarily newer and ‘cortically controlled’, emotion, anxiety, which is characterized by intermittent arousal stimulated by cogitations about potential dangers, and is associated with activity in the left prefrontal cortex. 37 Fear and anxiety are closely associated with extreme and chronic stress, which can cause a wide variety of health problems that will be discussed below.

Interestingly, anxiety is complemented in the right prefrontal cortex by another evolutionarily more recent emotion, anger, which has a relationship to aggression similar in ways to anxiety’s relationship to fear, although aggression is not an emotion but a behavior. 38 Nevertheless, most forms of aggression involve a subjectively perceived impulse to eliminate the stimulus that triggers them. These forms, which are collectively characterized as reactive aggression, are quite distinct from the other form, predatory, which is planned, purposeful, and proactive. 39 In contrast, reactive aggression lacks planning, shifts readily from one target to another, and shows little ‘cortical involvement’. 40

The cortex’s main relationship with reactive aggression is actually inhibitory. About half of a propensity toward violence is attributed to the regulatory influence of cortical processes, in particular those anticipating reprisal (the other half is genetic). 41 Children’s beliefs about the acceptability of aggression are fluid up to six to eight years old, and they learn to moderate their aggression according to their individual experiences and their culture’s scripts. 42 Societies therefore range widely in the levels of aggression that characterize them.

Anticipated reprisal can also modify aggression’s expression, driving it from overt to covert forms. 43 More generally, aggression’s onset and expression are strongly shaped by culture through both punishment and scripts conveying when and how to manifest it. 44 However, regulation of aggression does not depend just on complex but short-term calculations of immediate interest plus cultural norms that have to be transmitted from generation to generation and are only imperfectly adopted during individual development. Instead, the human brain has a built-in propensity to modulate aggression thorough the emotion anger.

There is clearly a ‘unique relationship between anger and aggression’, but the two do not always occur together. 45 There is therefore some dispute whether anger causes aggression or just accompanies it. 46 In any case, though, there’s no question that ‘anger entails a disposition to aggressive action’, and this disposition is what gives it its moderating role. 47

Anger is a complex emotion involving multiple, and somewhat variable, parts of the brain, but it is ‘part of the basic biology of the human species, spontaneously appearing in infancy, effectively universal, and manifesting a “species-typical neural basis”’. 48 Anger activates a set of specific physiological processes which are ‘preparation for verbal and physical aggression’. 49 Many of these can be observed by others, and may therefore induce them to cease whatever activity has triggered the anger rather than engage in a physical fight.

Anger is thus a social emotion in which aggression is threatened as a warning, a way of acting out interpersonal conflicts that is less damaging than physical combat. 50 It is most frequently directed toward other people, and its triggers are often conceptualized as retribution for violations of social bonds. In general, it is induced by the appraisal that someone voluntarily acted in a way that is either intentionally harmful or whose negative outcome was predictable. 51 However, blameworthiness is not always necessary to trigger anger, and the extent to which anger focuses on acquaintances or strangers varies considerably across cultures. 52 More generally, what constitutes a negative event; whether it can be presumed to be under another person’s control; and whether that person is causing it maliciously or with culpable negligence are typically defined by social structures and symbolic meanings. In the end, however, the important thing is that another person’s negative behavior be deterred.

Threat displays are just one of a variety of emotional presentations that communicate peoples’ beliefs and intentions and thereby play a ‘critical’ role in ‘the formation and maintenance of social relationships’. 53 Emotional displays involve a range of bodily systems including facial expression, prosody, and body movements. 54 Bodily movements manifesting anger include commanding or combative postures, fist-clenching, arm-waving, intrusion into personal space and similar preparations for or simulations of aggressive acts. Prosody includes the sonic qualities of speech, which convey the ‘underlying emotion’ of the speaker and can reinforce or contradict the words’ semantic meaning. 55 Similarly, anger produces a characteristic facial expression that communicates rapidly and effectively. 56 Facial expression, like other anger displays, is influenced by culture, in particular often inhibited, but the characteristic features of an angry face are innate, made and recognized across cultures. 57

On the receiving side, people are ‘biologically prepared’ to process angry faces ‘as threatening stimuli’. Facial expression recognition is handled by a separate neural system from identity recognition to speed up ‘activation of the arousal system’. 58 Facial expression recognition is not done holistically, but ‘by analyzing component information (eyes, nose, mouth, etc.)’. 59 The eyes are a particularly ‘salient feature’ emotionally, and have been termed ‘the diagnostic region for recognizing anger expressions’. 60 This is particularly interesting in relation to evil-eye beliefs, given their connection to witchcraft beliefs. Gaze detection is a primal ability, used by predators and prey alike; primates engage in ‘gaze following’ in order to detect ‘intentions and goals’, and they ‘are clearly sensitive to … eye contact’. 61 This threat signal is processed along with others by the amygdala, which exhibits a particular sensitivity to social emotional stimuli. 62 While higher cortical centers are involved in the processing of anger recognition, including activation of the areas that ‘suppress current behavior’ (the objective of the anger display), there is evidence that the amygdala ‘plays a key role’ in the process of comprehending anger by translating perceptions into visceral experience. 63 In other words, ‘facial expressions … can induce congruent emotional responses’ as people unconsciously ‘mimic [the] subliminal facial expression’ of a person they are observing. 64

Intersubjectivity and Psychosocial Factors in Disease

The idea that people understand anger displays at least in part by unconsciously mimicking them and thereby triggering their own aggressive impulses and experiencing their own anger is an application of a recent key discovery of social neuroscience, mirror neurons. Mirror neurons were discovered when researchers noticed that when one monkey observes another act, some of the motor neurons involved in that act in their own brains fire. 65 Imaging studies have established a similar effect in humans, and mirroring has been found to involve not just visual impressions of motor actions, but other experiences like hearing an action, being touched, feeling pain, and feeling disgust, so that now mirror neurons ‘are thought to encompass a broad set of complex behaviors and cognitive capacities’. 66 Called ‘shared-substrate’ processes because the same neural circuitry that controls actions and generates emotions is used to understand them, the importance of mirror neurons ‘as a mechanism for understanding others’ by conducting ‘embodied simulations’ has ‘been established’ as an ‘intuitive and powerful form of communication’, which ‘transmits the experience of doing and feeling from one brain to another’. 67 Mirror neurons appear to be the basis for the ‘low-level mechanism … for copying’ that is present at birth, and play a vital role in peoples’ ability to understand the actions and feelings of others. 68

Mirror neurons have even been found to play a role in linguistic communication. 69 However, some critics argue that too many issues in social cognition have been ascribed to them, even questioning their role in monkeys’ cognition and their very existence in humans. 70 Nevertheless, while some of the more extreme claims for mirror neurons will likely be discredited, their existence and a significant role for ‘shared substrate’ processes will almost certainly be upheld. A more consequential criticism therefore concerns their limits. In particular, recent research into empathy indicates that ‘empathizing’ is not ‘purely an index of mirroring’, but instead involves both mirroring and perspective-taking. 71 The chief alternative or, more likely, complement to the mirror neuron system is Theory of Mind, our ability not only to understand that other sentient beings have minds that think to further their own goals, but also to integrate context and history with visceral input from the mirror neuron system to infer their inner thoughts and feelings. 72

Interestingly from the point of view of animism and magic, ‘the shared circuit for actions responds to complex, meaningful actions regardless of whether they are performed by humans’, animals, or robots, an ‘overgeneralization’ that can be explained by game theory: ‘in a dangerous world it is safer to treat something as smart that is not than vice versa’. 73 Also, mirror neurons may have helped convey the optimism of cunning folk to their patients during magical healing rituals, thus contributing to their ability to offer efficacious help with medical problems in a way that was not dependent on (although undoubtedly reinforced by) the patient’s beliefs. 74

What role mirror neurons might have played in malefic witchcraft is less clear. If the amygdala does mediate understanding of anger by mirroring it, then mirroring plays a key role in the process by which one person’s anger can cause another’s malady. However, it is not necessary for this specific mechanism to work for the effects of anger to be felt viscerally. Threats ‘need to be registered and handled swiftly’, but ‘consciousness is limited and slow’, so, whatever the precise mechanism, the brain ‘can process incoming stimuli before they reach conscious awareness’, creating non-conscious influences on cognition and behavior. 75 The nervous system is quite sensitive ‘to emotion-specific cues’, so even ‘without strong emotional feelings’, such cues ‘have the capacity to activate both cognitive responses’ and autonomic reactions. 76

Emotionally significant stimuli come from both the natural and the social environments, but when considering the internal processing triggered by them the distinction loses importance, for at this level the social is part of the natural. ‘Humans are … social animals adapted to living in groups, descended from a long line of species that were also adapted to groups’; the ‘phylogenetic development of the human brain is integrally tied to the social environment, such that the brain is inextricably social’. 77 Recent work in social neuroscience has revealed ‘the social nature of the self, its inherent intersubjectivity’, on a neurological level. 78 The mind is social and embodied not metaphorically or incidentally, but fundamentally. 79 Its capacity to understand and many of its forms of understanding are direct manifestations of the complex, evolutionarily kludgy way the nervous system works. Human understanding involves not just symbolic references to reality, but direct expressions of reality. Furthermore, it is informed not only by the immediate sensations of mirror neurons and other shared neural substructures, but also by genetically programmed neurocognitive modules that react to and process stimuli in evolutionarily shaped, pre-programmed ways. This means that while ‘social relations are so fundamental for humans that nonsocial stimuli or events are often anthropomorphized, or infused with social meaning’, 80 the reverse is also true: social meaning and relations are infused with the direct influence of physical and biological structures and processes. And those physical and biological processes can have somatic effects regardless of their current social meaning, by channels that immediately connect low-level systems in one nervous system with those of another.

In the case of witchcraft, the innate sociability of the nervous system makes people vulnerable to other peoples’ hostility. We have focused on anger displays here because witchcraft suspicions are commonly connected to interpersonal conflicts among people who have routine face-to-face contact, but displays of other hostile emotions like envy or disdain can also have a physiological impact when they threaten harm. The medical understanding of psychological influences on health has evolved from the psychodynamic rechanneling of repressed feelings posited by Freudian psychology to a much broader range of psychophysical interactions largely connected to the impact of the stress response. 81 The stress response mobilizes the body to fight or flee, but this can cause problems if it is particularly intense or protracted. 82 Relatively superficial complaints like muscle-, stomach-, and headaches can result from exaggerated bodily manifestations of these processes, but these can cause considerable discomfort and even become debilitating. In addition, stress can have deeper and more severe somatic effects as well: ‘suppression of cellular immune function … chronic increases in blood pressure … abnormal heart rhythms … increased susceptibility to infectious disorders … [and] the development of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and … diabetes’. 83 The wide range of maladies that can be caused or contributed to by these effects seems significant in light of the common perception that witches could cause a wide, relatively open range of disorders. 84

Stress becomes chronic when the stressor recurs frequently, particularly if it is unpredictable or uncontrollable, and ‘social stress is one of the most taxing threats that humans experience’. 85 Social stress can take many forms, and among the most powerful are aggressive treatment and displays of anger. ‘The negative effects of poor interpersonal relations are widespread and include a host of mental and physical health problems.’ 86 The ‘relation of aggressive treatment and stress’ has been ‘well demonstrated’, and ‘alterations in biological and neurological functioning’ have been shown to result … from ‘the stress of victimization’. 87

Conclusion

Just as the reality of modern adult bullying enhances the plausibility of allegations of witch-like behaviors, an understanding of the intersubjective connections between peoples’ nervous systems enhances the plausibility of attributions of harm. Given the inherent difficulty of diagnosing psychosocial influences on health and the limitations of historical records, it is impossible to say whether a specific attribution was valid with certainty, but an appreciation of the intersubjective connections between human nervous systems should inform our understanding of early modern witchcraft in two ways. First, in any particular case, while an attribution may have been made maliciously or mistakenly, it was not necessarily invalid; as with allegations of interpersonal aggression, each case must be evaluated on its own merits rather than categorically dismissed. Second, in general, historians should proceed from the assumption that such influences are not only possible, but, beyond playing a role in some individual cases, they could also make important contributions to the larger belief system.

To begin with, it seems probable that the idea of witchcraft, that people could project their hostility to cause others harm, reflected the fact that people can project their hostility to cause others harm. Belief in this possibility may intensify its effects, but it is not necessary for them to occur, so it seems reasonable to give the physiological process priority over the cultural construct in this case. Moreover, linked to other physiological processes by which bodily actions, facial expressions, rumination, and deliberate channeling of thoughts can induce emotions and cause them to be displayed, it helps understand sorcery as anthropologically defined—the use of rituals to achieve harmful magical effects—as a way of artificially generating the emotional displays responsible for witchcraft. 88 On the beneficent side of magic, the effects of mirror neurons and shared substrates in communicating optimism would seem likely to have contributed to the efficacy of magical healing, and research into the physiology of social support suggests that it, and particularly the effects of the hormone oxytocin that is connected to social bonding and counteracts the effects of cortisol, a primary stress hormone, plays an important role in healing as well. 89 More broadly, our growing understanding of the neurophysiology of intersubjectivity should heighten our appreciation of how much magic involves the manipulation of the nervous system in both its practitioners and its targets.

Peter Stearns has written that ‘the analytical goals’ of the history of the emotions ‘center on change, either in emotions themselves or in the environments in which they operate’, but that ‘examining change involves establishing baselines, so that new trends can be carefully evaluated against real, rather than assumed or imagined, past standards’. 90 Understanding the neuropsychological bases of witchcraft, sorcery, and beneficent magic is critical to establishing the real baseline for these phenomena, and provides the foundation for a realistic appreciation of both the changes and the continuities in the transition to modernity.

Notes

  1. 1.

    Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A209/719(1565), fol. 3-5-1565; see also Edward Bever, Realities of Witchcraft, 9–10, 38, 40, 73–5, 76, 411.

  2. 2.

    Bever, Realities of Witchcraft, 12, 14, 23, 28, 49, 56, 222.

  3. 3.

    Ibid., 10, 14, 22, 61, 307.

  4. 4.

    Ibid., 13, 17–18.

  5. 5.

    Ibid., xiv–xvi, 3–39, 433.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., 56–7.

  7. 7.

    For the debate, see the contributions to ‘Forum: Contending Realities’, 81–121.

  8. 8.

    Harmon-Jones and Winkielman, ‘Brief Overview of Social Neuroscience’, 3–4; Iacoboni, ‘Quiet Revolution’, 439; Bert Uchino et al., ‘Social Neuroscience of Relationships’, 475.

  9. 9.

    Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 32–3, 8, 14; Tanaka-Matsumi, ‘Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Anger’, 81.

  10. 10.

    Rossi, ‘Effects of Bullying Victimization’, 129; Coyne and Monk, ‘Overview of Bullying and Abuse’, 231.

  11. 11.

    Rossi, ‘Effects of Bullying Victimization’, 130; Coyne and Monk, ‘Overview of Bullying and Abuse’, 238; Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 17.

  12. 12.

    Coyne and Monk, ‘Overview of Bullying and Abuse’, 238.

  13. 13.

    Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 12.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., 7.

  15. 15.

    Coyne and Monk, ‘Overview of Bullying and Abuse’, 247.

  16. 16.

    Boddy, Corporate Psychopaths, 44; Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 7.

  17. 17.

    Ibid.

  18. 18.

    Coyne and Monk, ‘Overview of Bullying and Abuse’, 235; Randal, Bullying in Adulthood, 16.

  19. 19.

    Rigby, New Perspectives on Bullying, 123.

  20. 20.

    Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 7.

  21. 21.

    Boddy, Corporate Psychopaths, 45–6; Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 34; Rigby, New Perspectives on Bullying, 124.

  22. 22.

    Robbins, Anger, Aggression, and Violence, 32–3, 35; Coyne and Monk, ‘Overview of Bullying and Abuse’, 239; Chakrabarti and Baron-Cohen, ‘Empathizing’, 408–9.

  23. 23.

    Bever, Realities of Witchcraft, 43–5.

  24. 24.

    Rossi, ‘Effects of Bullying Victimization’, 129, 141.

  25. 25.

    Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 20.

  26. 26.

    Rigby, New Perspectives on Bullying, 120, 116; Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 13, 19; Rossi, ‘Effects of Bullying Victimization’, 129, 141; Boddy, Corporate Psychopaths, 45.

  27. 27.

    Rossi, ‘Effects of Bullying Victimization’, 141.

  28. 28.

    Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 19–20, 147; Knack and Vaillancourt, ‘Evidence of Altered Cortisol Levels’, 205; Rigby, New Perspectives on Bullying, 124.

  29. 29.

    Kassinove and Sukhodolsky, ‘Anger Disorders’, 22–3; Stearns, ‘History of Emotions’, 18–19, 21–2, 26–7, 28; Hayward, ‘Enduring Emotions’, 830.

  30. 30.

    Hennenlotter and Schroeder, ‘Partially Dissociable Neural Substrates’, 443; Ward, Student’s Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience, 377–8.

  31. 31.

    Bever, ‘Current Trends’ 5–6; Schwaninger et al., ‘Processing of Facial Identity and Expression’, 321; Ward, Student’s Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience, 396, 405.

  32. 32.

    Van Honk and Schutter, ‘Vigilant and Avoidant Responses’, 216–17; Taylor and Gonzaga, ‘Affiliative Response to Stress’, 469.

  33. 33.

    Social constructionists: Tanaka-Matsumi, ‘Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Anger’, 85–6; basic emotionalists: Ward, Student’s Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience, 380.

  34. 34.

    Harmon-Jones, ‘Asymmetrical Frontal Cortical Activity’, 137, 151; Ward, Student’s Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience, 177–80.

  35. 35.

    Hennenlotter and Schroeder, ‘Partially Dissociable Neural Substrates’, 443; Heberlein and Adolphs, ‘Neurobiology of Emotion Recognition’, 32.

  36. 36.

    Ward, Student’s Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience, 382–6; Adolphs and Spezio, ‘Role of the Amygdala’, 374.

  37. 37.

    Van Honk and Schutter, ‘Vigilant and Avoidant Responses’, 197–8.

  38. 38.

    Robbins, Anger, Aggression, and Violence, 19.

  39. 39.

    Siegel and Victoroff, ‘Understanding Human Aggression’, 210–14.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., 213; Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 38; Carré, Murphy, and Hariri, ‘What Lies Beneath the Face of Aggression?’ 224.

  41. 41.

    Robbins, Anger, Aggression, and Violence, 30–1; Siegel and Victoroff, ‘Understanding Human Aggression’, 214; Siever, ‘Neurobiology of Aggression and Violence’, 429–30; Alia-Klein et al., ‘Neural Mechanisms of Anger Regulation’, 385; Reiman and Zimbardo, ‘Dark Side of Social Encounters’, 176; Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 37, 41.

  42. 42.

    Siegel and Victoroff, ‘Understanding Human Aggression’, 214; Robbins, Anger, Aggression, and Violence, 65.

  43. 43.

    Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 41; Siegel and Victoroff, ‘Understanding Human Aggression’, 109; Siever, ‘Neurobiology of Aggression and Violence’, 430.

  44. 44.

    Kassinove and Sukhodolsky, ‘Anger Disorders’, 7, 11, 18–20; Tanaka-Matsumi, ‘Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Anger’, 81; Park et al., ‘Social Status and Anger Expression’, 1122.

  45. 45.

    Holbrook et al., ‘If Looks Could Kill’, 455; Berkowitz, ‘A Different View of Anger’, 322; Robbins, Anger, Aggression, and Violence, 19.

  46. 46.

    Cause: Siever, ‘Neurobiology of Aggression and Violence’, 437; Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 38; Holbrook et al., ‘If Looks Could Kill’, 455. Accompany: Kassinove and Sukhodolsky, ‘Anger Disorders’, 12.

  47. 47.

    Van Honk and Schutter, ‘Vigilant and Avoidant Responses’, 201.

  48. 48.

    Caveats: Reiman and Zimbardo, ‘Dark Side of Social Encounters’, 174; Kassinove and Sukhodolsky, ‘Anger Disorders’, 3; Hennenlotter and Schroeder, ‘Partially Dissociable Neural Substrates’, 446. Basic biology: Sell et al., ‘Formidability and the Logic of Human Anger’, 15073; Kassinove and Sukhodolsky, ‘Anger Disorders’, 17; Robbins, Anger, Aggression, and Violence, 12.

  49. 49.

    Reiman and Zimbardo, ‘Dark Side of Social Encounters’, 175; Kassinove and Sukhodolsky, ‘Anger Disorders’, 11.

  50. 50.

    Sell et al., ‘Formidability and the Logic of Human Anger’, 15073; van Honk and Schutter, ‘Vigilant and Avoidant Responses’, 201; Holbrook et al., ‘If Looks Could Kill’, 455; Sincaceur et al. ‘Hot or Cold’, 1019.

  51. 51.

    Tanaka-Matsumi, ‘Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Anger’, 87, 84; Kassinove and Sukhodolsky, ‘Anger Disorders’, 24; Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 35; Royzman et al., ‘CAD or MAD?’ 892–4; Berkowitz, ‘A Different View of Anger’, 322.

  52. 52.

    Berkowitz, ‘A Different View of Anger’, 323; Robbins, Anger, Aggression, and Violence, 9.

  53. 53.

    Van Dijk et al., ‘A Social Functional Approach to Emotions in Bargaining’, 600; van Honk and Schutter, ‘Vigilant and Avoidant Responses’, 216; Norris, ‘I Know How You Feel’, 85.

  54. 54.

    Heberlein and Adolphs, ‘Neurobiology of Emotion Recognition’, 38.

  55. 55.

    Grandjean, Bänziger, and Scherer, ‘Intonation as an Interface between Language and Affect’, 235, 237–8; Wildgruber et al., ‘Cerebral Processing of Linguistic and Emotional Prosody’, 249; Kotz et al., ‘Lateralization of Emotional Prosody’, 285–6.

  56. 56.

    Yang and Tong, ‘Effects of Subliminal Anger’, 916; Schwaninger et al., ‘Processing of Facial Identity and Expression’, 321; Hennenlotter and Schroeder, ‘Partially Dissociable Neural Substrates’, 443.

  57. 57.

    Culture: Norris, ‘I Know How You Feel’, 98; Tanaka-Matsumi, ‘Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Anger’, 87. Biology: Robbins, Anger, Aggression, and Violence, 6; van Honk and Schutter, ‘Vigilant and Avoidant Responses’, 200.

  58. 58.

    Van Honk and Schutter, ‘Vigilant and Avoidant Responses’, 200; Schwaninger et al., ‘Processing of Facial Identity and Expression’, 321; Hennenlotter and Schroeder, ‘Partially Dissociable Neural Substrates’, 447; Gallese, ‘Before and Below “Theory of Mind”’, 659; Kassinove and Sukhodolsky, ‘Anger Disorders’, 16.

  59. 59.

    Schwaninger et al., ‘Processing of Facial Identity and Expression’, 321.

  60. 60.

    Adolphs, ‘Neurobiology of Emotion Recognition’, 374; Hennenlotter and Schroeder, ‘Partially Dissociable Neural Substrates’, 447.

  61. 61.

    Stone, ‘Evolutionary Perspective on Domain Specificity’, 323, 341, 325.

  62. 62.

    Norris, ‘I Know How You Feel’, 91.

  63. 63.

    Hennenlotter and Schroeder, ‘Partially Dissociable Neural Substrates’, 447–8; Chakrabarti and Baron-Cohen, ‘Empathizing’, 412–13; Carré, Murphy, and Hariri, ‘What Lies Beneath the Face of Aggression?’ 224.

  64. 64.

    Yang and Tong, ‘Effects of Subliminal Anger’, 916; Carré, Murphy, and Hariri, ‘What Lies Beneath the Face of Aggression?’ 224.

  65. 65.

    Cowdell, ‘Hard Evidence for Gerardian Mimetic Theory?’ 221.

  66. 66.

    Keysers and Gazzola, ‘Toward a Unifying Neural Theory’, 383, 379, 384, 386; Firat and Hitlin, ‘Neuroscience and the Difficult Art’, 781.

  67. 67.

    Heberlein and Adolphs, ‘Neurobiology of Emotion Recognition’, 31; Keysers and Gazzola, ‘Toward a Unifying Neural Theory’, 379, 391, 394; Eshuis, Coventry, and Vulchanova, ‘Predictive Eye Movements’, 438; Gallese, ‘Before and Below “Theory of Mind”’, 662; Iacoboni, ‘Quiet Revolution’, 446.

  68. 68.

    Neiworth, ‘Thinking about Me’ 144; Keysers and Gazzola, ‘Toward a Unifying Neural Theory’, 379; Decety, ‘A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Model’, 263; Gallese, ‘Before and Below “Theory of Mind”’, 661, 666.

  69. 69.

    Jackson and Crosson, ‘Emotional Connotation of Words’, 213–14; Keysers and Gazzola, ‘Toward a Unifying Neural Theory’, 396.

  70. 70.

    Hickok, Myth of Mirror Neurons.

  71. 71.

    Keysers and Gazzola, ‘Toward a Unifying Neural Theory’, 395; Chakrabarti and Baron-Cohen, ‘Empathizing’, 412; Norris, ‘I Know How You Feel’, 96; Leiberg and Andes, ‘Multiple Facets of Empathy’, 434–5.

  72. 72.

    Bever, ‘Current Trends’, 8–9; Norris, ‘I Know How You Feel’, 95–8; Keysers and Gazzola, ‘Toward a Unifying Neural Theory’, 396.

  73. 73.

    Keysers and Gazzola, ‘Toward a Unifying Neural Theory’, 394–5; Bever, ‘Magic and Religion’, 697.

  74. 74.

    Bever, Realities of Witchcraft, 293–4.

  75. 75.

    Wiens, ‘Subliminal Emotion Perception’, 105; Jensen et al., ‘Nonconscious Activation of Placebo’, 15959; Yang and Tong, ‘Effects of Subliminal Anger’, 920.

  76. 76.

    Yang and Tong, ‘Effects of Subliminal Anger’, 915, 920.

  77. 77.

    Stone, ‘Evolutionary Perspective on Domain Specificity’, 316; Firat and Hitlin, ‘Neuroscience and the Difficult Art’, 781

  78. 78.

    Decety, ‘A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Model’, 346.

  79. 79.

    Harmon-Jones and Winkielman, ‘Brief Overview of Social Neuroscience’, 9.

  80. 80.

    Norris, ‘I Know How You Feel’, 87–8.

  81. 81.

    Bever, ‘Witchcraft Fears’, 576–81; Robbins, Anger, Aggression, and Violence, 86.

  82. 82.

    Decety, ‘A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Model’, 455; Kudielka, Hellhammer, and Kirschbaum, ‘Ten Years of Research’, 56–7; Knack and Vaillancourt, ‘Evidence of Altered Cortisol Levels’, 205; Carter, ‘Neuropeptides’, 431; Hayward, ‘Enduring Emotions’, 833.

  83. 83.

    Decety, ‘A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Model’, 456; also Uchino et al., ‘Social Neuroscience of Relationships’, 478.

  84. 84.

    Bever, ‘Disease’, 283.

  85. 85.

    Bartolomucci, ‘Chronic Psychosocial Stress’, 57; Rigby, New Perspectives on Bullying, 123; Kudielka, Hellhammer, and Kirschbaum, ‘Ten Years of Research’, 57; Knack and Vaillancourt, ‘Evidence of Altered Cortisol Levels’, 206; Decety, ‘A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Model’, 467; van Honk and Schutter, ‘Vigilant and Avoidant Responses’, 208, 216; also Uchino et al., ‘Social Neuroscience of Relationships’, 474.

  86. 86.

    Knack and Vaillancourt, ‘Evidence of Altered Cortisol Levels’, 205.

  87. 87.

    Randall, Bullying in Adulthood, 148; van Honk and Schutter, ‘Vigilant and Avoidant Responses’, 197; Knack and Vaillancourt, ‘Evidence of Altered Cortisol Levels’, 205.

  88. 88.

    Berkowitz, ‘A Different View of Anger’, 325; Kassinove and Sukhodolsky, ‘Anger Disorders’, 15; Ray, ‘All in the Mind’s Eye?’ 133; Ochsner, ‘How Thinking Controls Feeling’, 107.

  89. 89.

    Decety, ‘A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Model’, 456–7, 463, 467–9; Carter, ‘Neuropeptides’, 427, 429.

  90. 90.

    Stearns, ‘History of Emotions’, 18.