Showing posts with label empathy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label empathy. Show all posts

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Sociopathic morality?

This is an interesting summary of the dominant views in the scientific community regarding morality. Many have been discussed here before, including Jonathan Haidt's views on intra-culture morality and Paul Bloom's findings on the moral world of children. I liked this insight into the role that empathy/emotions play in morality vs. logic:

People who behave morally don’t generally do it because they have greater knowledge; they do it because they have a greater sensitivity to other people’s points of view. Hauser reported on research showing that bullies are surprisingly sophisticated at reading other people’s intentions, but they’re not good at anticipating and feeling other people’s pain.

The moral naturalists differ over what role reason plays in moral judgments. Some, like Haidt, believe that we make moral judgments intuitively and then construct justifications after the fact. Others, like Joshua Greene of Harvard, liken moral thinking to a camera. Most of the time we rely on the automatic point-and-shoot process, but occasionally we use deliberation to override the quick and easy method. We certainly tell stories and have conversations to spread and refine moral beliefs.
When you put it that way, it seems obvious why sociopaths would struggle with having an internal sense of morality.

My favorite part of the article, though, was this critique:
For people wary of abstract theorizing, it’s nice to see people investigating morality in ways that are concrete and empirical. But their approach does have certain implicit tendencies.

They emphasize group cohesion over individual dissent. They emphasize the cooperative virtues, like empathy, over the competitive virtues, like the thirst for recognition and superiority. At this conference, they barely mentioned the yearning for transcendence and the sacred, which plays such a major role in every human society.

Their implied description of the moral life is gentle, fair and grounded. But it is all lower case. So far, at least, it might not satisfy those who want their morality to be awesome, formidable, transcendent or great.
It's an interesting argument. I see this skewed focus frequently with religious people. They often tend to want to focus on the nice, nondescript aspects of their religion where God is behaving well, not killing children or drowning the world or enacting all sorts of vengeance. But most versions of God have some sort of edge to them. All versions of God are powerful beings, after all. They wouldn't remain powerful without doing certain things to cultivate that power, including being awesome, formidable, transcendent, and great. If we think that godliness is a virtue, then it would also be a virtue for us to cultivate power and try to become more awesome, formidable, transcendent, and great. And you don't necessarily get to be that powerful by rolling over and being "nice" in every situation.

I find it really disingenuous for people to focus on the "nice" side of morality without giving any consideration to the obvious ying to the yang (unless it really is true that all conservative people are godless and going to hell). As a religious person myself, I sometimes have people get on my case about some of the more aggressive, competitive, and antisocial things that I do, claiming that they are not consistent with my religion. I am not necessarily humble the way they expect the religious to be humble (but which is better, to lie to yourself in order to be humble, or to honestly acknowledge both your strengths and your weaknesses?). I can be ruthless and I don't often doubt myself. There are things about me that seem a little too dark and edgy to be the Mormon/Christian I profess to be. But the Christian God can be ruthless too. The Christian God can be all the things that I am, given the right context. I just feel like I am coming at godliness from the opposite end that most people do -- that the cultivating power side of things happens to be my area of expertise and that I need to practice and work at the love side of things. And for other people maybe it is vice versa, but that we'll all eventually meet at our goal in the middle.  

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Sociopaths as scapegoats

This was an interesting comment from a recent radio interview I did with CBC. In response to another user's (TorontoProud) comment, "I wonder if there is a connection between sociopaths and feminism because there seems to be", Doctor R replied:

@TorontoProud It's not that feminists are necessarily sociopathic. But like any mass movement, sociopaths can hijack it and turn it to their own ends. This is what happened under Hitler and Stalin. Any ideology can become a vehicle for hate-mongering and irrationaity- feminism is no different in that regard. At the same time, that doesn't mean that feminists don't have legitimate concerns. That's why a critique of feminist ideas is so necessary- to help separate the good ideas from the bad. Sadly, that kind of critique is not politically correct, which is why CBC censors so many comments that attempt to provide analysis of feminist ideas. And in the end, it's that kind of censorship that will bring feminism into disrepute, if it hasn't already.

What do you think? Is there a connection between sociopaths and feminism? Maybe I'm not as up on feminist theory, but in what ways does it seem like it has been hijacked by sociopaths? And who were the sociopaths that hijacked Hitler and Stalin's ideology and turned it to their own ends?

Another commenter, jmhaze, replied: "@TorontoProud if you equate the goal of 'equality' to being sociopathic then i guess all freedom fighters would fall under your blanket definition." Or maybe freedom fighters really are sociopaths. Che, anybody?

I ask these questions because maybe these commenters are just not doing a good job explaining themselves, or maybe theirs are just bald assertions, wholly unsupported, and a ridiculous attempt to slander an otherwise legitimate political movement? It's sometimes hard for me to tell because people associate sociopaths with a lot of the world's ills. So how am I supposed to know whether these assertions are serious and which are just politicking when they all seem misguided and ill-informed to me. So I, like economists, largely take people's preferences and beliefs seriously as they come.

I think sometimes people think it should be easy for anyone to tell the difference, that of course everyone would know that X is wrong and Y is right and anyone who says differently is just politicking or otherwise trying to gain some unfair advantage (or troll, on the internet). But it turns out that research shows most people aren't being disingenuous about their assertions of their beliefs, that they actually occupy different moral universes with different laws that they're abiding by (and judging others by). In a world in which we cannot act according to every virtue in every situation, compromises must be made and it turns out that everybody prioritizes certain values over others, e.g. whistleblowers value fairness over loyalty. One thing that has been interesting about the book is not just how polarizing it has been, but how often people remark that they can't understand why other people love/hate it as much as they do. I don't know why this is, but people seem to vastly overestimate the degree of heterogeneity in their community, much less the world. Makes me question how accurately people are actually and accurately able to feel empathy for total strangers, if they always seem to be surprised by others' legitimate beliefs.

Speaking of, my Mormon friend told me how she was hanging out with other Mormons and one of them said something about "the gay agenda." My friend shut her down quickly to which the girl replied "I thought I would at least be safe saying something like that among other members." But no, even Mormons are heterogeneous. Some say that some of them are even sociopaths? Don't get too excited or think this proves something about the Mormon church, there are sociopaths that belong to every group you belong to as well -- atheists, protestants, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindu, every political party, every profession, every gender and ethnicity, every political sphere. Can you empathize with sociopaths?

Monday, August 5, 2013

Can we eliminate evil?

A reader suggested this Morgan Freeman narrated special "Through the Wormhole: Can We Eliminate Evil?" Not surprisingly, it features sociopaths and studies on the brain that give interesting insight to how we decide what to do and what constitutes evil.

The first clip is about empathy, and illustrates well the recent study that found that sociopaths feel empathy when directed to put themselves in the shoes of others.




If you have the genetics of a killer and the brain anatomy of a killer, are you destined to become a killer? James Fallon.




And finally this was an illustration of this experiment regarding the moral lives of babies.





Saturday, July 27, 2013

Psychopath treatment: a success story

This was an interesting email sent to Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, from a diagnosed psychopath who sought treatment (relatively successfully). Here are selections, links are mine and my comments in brackets:

Four years later, with sessions no less frequent than once or twice a week, I came out of therapy unrecognizable from when I went into it. 

Yes thearapy was transformative, though it is possible to overstate its impacts. I will always see the world through different lenses to much of the rest of the world. My emotional reactions are different, my endowments are impressive in some respects, not so in others, much like other people. 

It is also the case that, being ‘normal’ takes a degree of energy and conscious thought that is instinctive for most, but to me is a significant expenditure of energy. I think it analogous to speaking a second language. That is not to say I am being false or obfuscating, merely that I will always expose some eccentric traits. [I also find it to be taxing to interact with people legitimately because it's a very deliberate choice, a performance of sorts rather than a way of interacting that comes naturally to me.] 

So why am I writing all this to you?

Well, from someone who is both psychopathic and treated, there are many fallacies about psychopaths with which I am deeply cynical. Unfortunately psychopaths themselves do themselves no favors, as the label given to them plays into their ego over generously - ‘If we are born that way’ psychopaths reason, ‘then it is not wrong for us to be as we are, indeed we are the pinnacle of the human condition, something other people demonize merely to explain their fitful fears’. [It's so easy to think this way. It's so hard to acknowledge that the world might be a lot more complicated than you think it is, and people (everybody, really) a lot less stupid and a lot more valuable than you think they are. I had to be trained to see the world differently (by Ann, for those that have read the book).]

We are neither the cartoon evil serial killers, nor the ‘its your boss’ CEO’s always chasing profit at the expense of everyone else. While we are both of those things, it is a sad caricature of itself. 

We continue be to characterized that way, by media, by literature, and by ourselves, yet the whole thing is a sham. 

The truth is much, much more complex, and in my view, interesting.

Psychopaths are just people. You are right to say that psychopaths hate weakness, they will attempt to conceal anything that might present as a vulnerability. The test of their self-superiority is their ability to rapidly find weaknesses in others, and to exploit it to its fullest potential.  

But that is not to say that this aspect of a psychopaths world view cannot be modified. These days I see weaknesses and vulnerabilities as simple facts - a facet of the human condition and the frailties and imperfections inheritent in being human. [I've talked about this here.]

At the same time it is true that my feelings and reactions to those around me are different - not necessarily retarded - just different. It is the image of psychopaths as something not quite human, along with espersions as to their natures, that prevent this from being identified. 

So how to explain these ‘different’ feelings?

Well, lets look at what (bright) psychopaths are naturally quite exceptional at… We are good at identifying, very rapidly, extreme traits of those around us which allows us to discern vulnerabilities, frailties, and mental conditions. It also makes psychopaths supreme manipulators, for they can mimick human emotions they do not feel, play on these emotions and extract concessions. 

But what are these traits really? - Stripped of its pejorative adjectives and mean application, it is a highly trained perception, ability to adapt, and a lack of judgment borne of pragmatic and flexible moral reasoning

What I’m saying here is that although those traits can very easily (even instinctively) lead to dangerous levels of manipulation, they do not have to. 

These days I enjoy a reputation of being someone of intense understanding and observation with a keen strategic instinct. I know where those traits come from, yet I have made the conscious choice to use them for the betterment of friends, aquaintences, and society. People confide in me extraordinary things because they know, no matter what, I will not be judging them. [I particularly relate with this paragraph.]

I do so because I know I have that choice. After years of therapy I am well equipped to act on it, and my keen perception is now directed equally towards myself

Its true that I do not ‘feel’ guilt or remorse, except to the extent that it affects me directly, but I do feel other emotions, which do not have adequate words of description, but nevertheless cause me to derive satisfacton in developing interpersonal relationships, contributing to society, and being gentle as well as assertive. 

Such as statement might tempt you to say ‘well obviously you’re not a real psychopath then’. As if the definition of a psychopath is someone who exploits others for their personal power, satisfaction or gain
***
In the end, psychopaths need to be given that very thing everyone believes they lack for others, empathy; a willingness to understand the person, their drives, hopes, strengths and fears, along with knowledge of their own personal sadnesses and sense of inferiority…As it is, such cartoon, unchangeable, inhuman characterizations offers nothing but perpetuation of those stereotypes. 

Serial Killers & Ruthless CEOs exist - Voldemort does not. 

Overall I found his experience to be very similar to my own. He sought help at the beginning of his adulthood because he felt like he didn't have control over some of the things he thought and did. He was led through a paradigm shift by a trusted and wise individual (his therapist, my close friend) who first saw and understood him, then met him halfway and spoke his language rather than preaching at him in the foreign language of emotional morality. I don't think this is an easy process. His process took four years. Mine took about two, but of intense focus. I also know of a handful of people who have even gotten there on their own, though, so it definitely is possible. I actually hope that the book is really helpful that way, in terms of helping undiagnosed sociopaths to recognize themselves and also give them a message of hope. It's possible for sociopaths to train themselves to think and act in different ways. We will never be completely fluent or automatic in our empathy or moral reasoning, but with some accommodation we can be not only fully functioning in society, but successful and contributing members of society. 

Friday, July 26, 2013

Sociopaths feel empathy (sort of)

Recent research suggests that sociopaths can feel empathy (or at least their mirror neurons light up as if they are feeling empathy) when directed to put themselves in the shoes of someone else. From the BBC News:

Psychopaths do not lack empathy, rather they can switch it on at will, according to new research. Placed in a brain scanner, psychopathic criminals watched videos of one person hurting another and were asked to empathise with the individual in pain. Only when asked to imagine how the pain receiver felt did the area of the brain related to pain light up. Scientists, reporting in Brain, say their research explains how psychopaths can be both callous and charming. The team proposes that with the right training, it could be possible to help psychopaths activate their 'empathy switch', which could bring them a step closer to rehabilitation. Criminals with psychopathy characteristically show a reduced ability to empathise with others, including their victims. Evidence suggests they are also more likely to reoffend upon release than criminals without the psychiatric condition.

I always wonder at this logical jump -- that a lack of empathy is the primary reason why sociopaths reoffend as opposed to, say, fearlessness, overoptimism, etc.? Maybe, but I haven't seen actual research on the issue, only idle speculation. The LA Times reporter, Geoffrey Mohan, takes this flawed line of reasoning one step further and suggests that only automatic empathy will do the trick:

But there is a substantial gulf between automatic empathic responses and those that result from cognitive control. Because a psychopath likely cannot be "trained" to summon up empathy to counterbalance manipulative and violent behavior, therapies would have to focus on embedding the process where it belongs: in the largely unconscious emotional regulating centers of the brain.

I disagree. I think sociopaths can be trained. I think that is the biggest implication of this recent research. And I think other research has shown that conscientiousness is the trait most strongly correlated with successful sociopaths vs. unsuccessful sociopaths. And what is conscientiousness but the acquisition of good habits, i.e. training. Plus, my own experience suggests that sociopaths can be trained. Readers of the book will recognize Ann as my trainer. So, it's an odd assertion to make, that sociopaths can't be trained. But luckily the researchers seem to share my view:

"From a therapeutical point of view, the big implication of our study is it does not seem to be the case that they have broken empathy per se,” Keysers said. “That would suggest that what therapies need to do is not so much try to create empathy in them, but try to make empathy more automatic and potentially do so by making the social cues of others more salient, so they will always be drawn into this empathy mode that they can activate when they want to.”

Especially given what we know of cognitive empathy being something we can practice.

So do I think that this is major news and will change the way we view sociopaths? Maybe it will change the common (mis)conceptions regarding sociopathy, but it is completely in line with recent trends in sociopathy research. For instance, Joseph Newman has a similar theory that sociopathy is largely an attentional issue, and that when you direct their attention to emotions (apparently even to the emotions of others), they experience them in relatively "normal" ways. The researchers of this current study agree:

Theories of psychopathy’s origins center around deficits in instrumental learning and attention. Keyser’s conclusions merge with those hypotheses. Of particular note were scans that showed abnormal activation in the amygdala, an area of the paralimbic system associated with emotional learning. Psychopaths may lack clues to the salience of social stimuli, an attribute shared to a certain degree with autism spectrum disorder. 

[I have often wondered if sociopathy is an autism spectrum disorder]

Psychopaths therefore may not be able to develop more complex structures of rules and morals, said Keysers.

“They don’t have this tendency that we normally have to be drawn into what the other person is feeling, and you can rephrase that as an attentional deficit,” Keysers said. “They simply don’t attend to what is going on with other people, automatically.”

So no, I don't think this is so different from what has been the recent trend in how researchers have viewed sociopathic empathy, particularly when you consider that sociopaths have always been acknowledged to have cognitive empathy, just not emotive empathy. Research suggests that cognitive empathy can be enhanced by attention directing exercises such as perspective taking. I have consistently said that sociopaths are able to put themselves into the shoes of another and imagine what it might be like to be that person, which possibly explains why we're so good at manipulation. Also, I have even experienced this type of focused empathy accidentally.

Things I would like to see explored further:

  • Is this sort of empathy different from mentalizing?
  • Can anyone empathize with things they haven't yet experienced or the experiences of others that are dissimilar to them (e.g. white people don't empathize with Trayvon Martin as much as African Americans do)?
  • What is the relationship between this attentional empathy and being moved (manipulated into feeling your own feelings in response to stimulus?)

So this is good news for sociopaths and our fight against the stigma, but knowing how much some people blindly hate sociopaths, my guess is that this is eventually going to be used to argue that sociopaths are just being lazy or opportunistic when they choose not to empathize.

As a side note,  apparently in the Netherlands psychopaths have access to the insanity defense? "Keysers and his team were given access to offenders who committed violent crimes, such as rape and murder, but who were found not responsible due to a psychopathy diagnosis." Sort of not surprising for the Dutch

Monday, July 22, 2013

Practical empathy

This was an interesting video about the relevance (possibly revolutionizing effect?) of empathy in our society. The video discusses the difference between affective empathy where you feel what another person is feeling, and cognitive empathy, which is about perspective taking or "stepping into somebody else's world."

An interesting assertion was "We make assumptions about people. We have prejudices about people which block us from seeing their uniqueness, their individuality. We make we use labels and highly empathic people get beyond those labels by nurturing their curiosity about others." Do people make assumptions about sociopaths? Do empathic people choose to go beyond those labels by nurturing their curiosity about sociopaths? And if so, is this a net good or net bad?



The video tells the story of how George Orwell tried to nurture his curiosity about the under privileged classes by going on an "empathy adventure", "tramping" about London in disguise, to understand what it felt like to be in the lower classes -- literally putting himself in the shoes of another.

The narrator also discusses the possibility of having empathy not just on a personal level, but on a grander scale -- political, national, religious, etc. As an example, he tells the story of the English abolitionists who got former slaves to share their experiences as slaves, which movement eventually led to the illegalization of slavery.

The narrator talks about how traditionally people try to empathize with the downtrodden, but argues that we should be more adventurous in who we try to empathize with and to focus on more practical and strategic purposes of empathy, e.g. empathizing those in power because "only then are we going to be able to adopt effective strategies" for social transformation. Similarly, he thinks the gap between what we know about climate change and what we do about climate change is also due to a lack of empathy, particularly individuals failing to empathize with people on the other side of the world and people who have yet to be born.

The thing I found interesting about this video was that (1) it was very practically and not morally based analysis of empathy and (2) although the narrator only made the distinction once, he basically was only talking about the practical usefulness of cognitive empathy. I don't think that means that affective empathy is never useful, but it has its limitations in time and space. For instance, it's difficult to say that you are feeling the emotions of people you have never met and know nothing about. Similarly, it should be impossible to say that you are feeling the emotions of people who have yet to be even born. And yet we can feel cognitive empathy for these people by trying to imagine what it might be like to be them. If we exercise our cognitive empathy by putting ourselves in their shoes like George Orwell did, our perspective will broaden and we will get greater insight into not only the institutions of the world that we live in, but also perhaps some insight into our own selves. The good news is that anyone with theory of mind can practice cognitive empathy, including sociopaths, who actually do it perhaps better than most.

More on trying to gain more awareness of our own minds:

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

External vs. internal limitations

I try not to let my diagnosis of being a sociopath define me or change me. One of my friends told me, I think wisely, "I wish that you had never heard of the word sociopath, that you just lived your life without knowing that there was a label for what you are." Labels can be very limiting and I wouldn't want to ever be frozen, without making any effort to grow and develop as a person.

One of my favorite stories of not falling prey to percevied limitations involves the filming of the opening shot of Sunset Boulevard:

For the opening shot of William Holden floating face down in the swimming pool, Wilder wanted a shot from below that would show both the body and the police and photographers standing at the pool's edge.

They tried putting the camera in a waterproof case and putting it on the bottom of the pool, but the quality of the shot was not good. Then art director John Meehan had the idea of putting a mirror on the bottom of the pool. That didn't work either because the water created too much distortion. But Meehan reasoned that because cold water distorts less than warm water, if he could chill the water enough, they could manage. Although extremely uncomfortable for actor William Holden, they got the shot.

The thing is that if the artistic choice was up to Meehan, he probably would have never thought to do that shot because it wouldn't have been within the realm of possibilities for him. That's the problem with growing up -- the more we learn about the way the world works, the less original our thoughts. It was only Billy Wilder insisting that the shot be that way that made Meehan even bother to go through all possible solutions -- if only to prove to Wilder that it could not be done. But it could. And it is one of the most iconic images in all of film.

I often wonder what my personal limits are, if any. Mormons have a teaching that the purpose of life is that all things might fulfill the measure of their creation, people, animals, plants, planets, everything. Mormons also believe that God "created every man different from his brother" and that institutions thrive when "when we take advantage of this diversity and encourage each other to develop and use our talents to lift and strengthen." The basic idea is that we are to be our best selves, whatever that self happens to be. But could most people say with absolute certainty that they even know who their best self is? Where is the proper line drawn between realistic and loving self acceptance and a desire to be "good" in one's own opinion versus the opinions of those who love you? Sometimes I think to myself, God must have created me differently to fulfill a different purpose than other people. But could I really be more normal than I think? Could I grow a conscience? Or practice empathy enough to the point where I too can feel what others are feeling? If I self-identify as a sociopath who will always be flawed in certain ways with limited opportunity for change, would that be a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Thursday, June 27, 2013

More on empathy

From "The Partial Psychopath" by Elliott Barker, M.D. and B. Shipton, Ph.D.:
In our experience, the dimension that correlates most closely with psychopathy and which has been identified or is implicit in all definitions of the illness is the concept of empathy, but empathy defined in a specific two-part way.

Empathy is loosely thought to be the capacity to put yourself in another person's shoes. But this seems to be only one part of what constitutes empathy in relation to the psychopath. What is different about the psychopath is that he is unaffected or detached emotionally from the knowledge that he gains by putting himself in your shoes. Thus, although he is able to very quickly glean during the briefest encounter with another person a lot of very useful information about what makes that person tick, this knowledge is simply knowledge to be used or not as the psychopath chooses. What is missing in psychopaths is the compelling nature of the appropriate affective response to the knowledge gained from putting himself in another persons shoes, in the way that this happens in the normal person. This essential missing aspect of empathy, even in the severe psychopath, is not in my experience easily seen and one does not often get a second glimpse of it if one has been treated to a first one by mistake.

A rather crude example might suffice. A young psychopath who had inflicted multiple stab wounds on an elderly woman, and was charged with attempted murder, appeared subdued and appropriately sad about the offence during the early stages of a first interview. His eyes were moist as he accurately described how the woman must have felt during and after the attack. But later in the same interview, after good rapport had been established, this boy blurted out, "I don't know what all the fuss is about. The old bag only had a dozen scratches." To my knowledge, in all his subsequent years in the psychiatric hospital, he stuck to all the right lines of remorse which he quickly learned were more appropriate and useful. The bright psychopath, the experienced psychopath, doesn't stumble like that very often.

With luck and the right question about how the other person's feelings affected him there will be a barely perceptible pause, or a puzzled look, or even – rarely - the question, "How am I supposed to feel?"

The second part of this two-part empathy for the normal person is the automatic, compelling, intuitive, appropriate response to what the other feels - not the acting out of a chosen script. The psychopath can follow the same script as a normal person, usually with all the subtle nuances of a skilled actor - if he chooses to do so. An untrained observer is very unlikely to note any difference from the real thing.

Thus the second part of this two-part empathy in a psychopath is the choosing and acting of a script. Unlike the normal person, he can choose what script to follow. He is not compelled intuitively or automatically to react to the way he knows you feel. And unlike the normal person, he has been told, or learned by observing others, what he is supposed to feel.

As he rapes you or strangles you he is not compelled to feel your pain, your terror, your helplessness. There is no automatic, compelling, intuitive connection between what he knows you feel and what he feels. There is no way he must feel. Thus there is none of this kind of restraining force on his behavior. Therein lies the danger of psychopathy.
Almost more interesting than the answers they try to provide are the questions they ask:
To take the issue further, if a relative incapacity for this two-part type of empathy is a key ingredient in the makeup of psychopaths, what are the consequences for society if large numbers of individuals are functioning without it? Isn't a capacity to be affected by what is happening to others a necessary component in the makeup of a majority of persons in order for a group to function as a group? From a sociological perspective, isn't this one of the functional prerequisites of any social system? Is there a critical mass for this type of empathy for a society to survive?

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Pro-social sociopath? (part 2)

So here's what people had to say regarding the legitimate foundations for the negative stigma against sociopaths (hit me up again if you feel like I've missed yours):

  • The issue is that you willingly and knowingly manipulate people to meet your own selfish desires and needs, with little regard for the well-being of your targets. 

Ok yes, this is admittedly ugly behavior and I try to not do this extensively/non-consensually/harmfully anymore for various reasons, not least of which is that it is toxic to relationships and I've started to acknowledge that in dehumanizing others, I devalue my own self  However, I'm not sure the "knowing" manipulation of the sociopath (how conscious and intentional does it have to be?) is much worse than the unknowing selfish manipulation that is commonplace in all humanity. No one behaves selflessly all of the time. Every empath chooses to intentionally hurt or manipulate another at some point in their lives (and sometimes regularly). They suffer the consequences (eventually) and so do sociopaths (even though, admittedly, sociopaths probably won't be as broken up about rocky relationship troubles as an empath would).

  • You may make people feel better about themselves, and they may love to have your attention and interest, but you are deceiving them, planting the seeds of false hope that the average person would accept them for who they are. Social dictums are as good as law, and you encourage people to break them by accepting what should be unacceptable. You're not doing them any favors. Failure to adhere to social norms has very real consequences, and it is in every individual's best interests to conform in order to be happy and comfortable in life.

This is crazy. So the husband who tells his wife, "you're the most beautiful woman in the world" when really most people would consider her to have average looks is setting her up for a lifetime of false hope and accompanying failure?

  • But to lie at the person encouraging her handicap it is not pro-social; you are not doing that person a favor at all.

Hilarious, I'd love to see someone tell an overweight person that they have a handicap ("fatness") to their face. There is nothing inherently (and particularly not morally or even socially) wrong with carrying a little extra weight and wearing clothing that most would consider unflattering. Despite that being true, many normal people would make the girl's appearance their own business somehow, whereas the sociopath would think (rightly) that it is no concern of his. So the sociopath is not being a fraud or perpetuating a scam by pretending to not care when really he is bothered by the girl's weight -- he sincerely does not care. And is it devious to be nice to someone because you know they'll be nice in return? No, at least according to the Sesame Street-esque lessons on good manners I remember from my childhood.

  • The fact that the pure selfishness of the sociopath might have sometimes accidentally benefits for others, don’t make them any kinder, because their intentions are not kind.

Pro-social does not necessarily mean kind and vice versa. Is it kind to share child sex slaves with your friends? Maybe. Is it pro-social? Probably not. Is it kind to open a sandwich shop across the street from an existing restaurant? Probably not. Is it pro-social? Yes, society benefits from the competition and increased variety of eating options.

  • Sociopaths behave as the worse type of xenophobes. They do a selection according on how exploitable somebody can be for them, and in this selection there are parameters like class, income, origins, etc.

No, this makes sociopaths the ultimate meritocrats, where people are judged on actual value (to the sociopath, of course, but of course there is no objective value for anything in this world, least of all for people).

  • Where things become ethically problematic in my mind is if that positive interaction opens a door to exploitation of the tube top girl.

What would exploitation look like in this scenario? If there is something to exploit in propping up the girl's self-esteem, it's because normal people have chosen (irrationally) to tear it down in the first place. It's like saying that someone who gives a member of a disenfranchised class of persons a job is exploiting them by benefiting from their work when that disenfranchised person could probably have gotten a better job somewhere else (or even a better career) if they were not disenfranchised. The problem here is not the sociopath being normal to the fat girl, but everyone else treating her as less than her true value. (This is similar to the way that value stock traders "exploit" the systematic underpricing of certain stocks by buying low and selling high, which is also pro-social because it helps the market reflect the true value of stocks.)

  • Empathy is the essential ingredient needed for the healthy emotional growth of a child.

Maybe, but this is far from certain and not at all proved. I think there's a big difference from a wire monkey and an actual human being who just happens to not feel empathy.

That's all I saw for reasons how or why the stigma/stereotype for sociopaths is founded. If you missed this opportunity or I missed yours, just email. Otherwise, it seems like the there are not as many legitimate reasons to hate sociopaths as previously thought?

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Mind-blindness and empathy

Sociopaths can be very mind-blind about certain things, especially the inner emotional worlds of others.  Sociopaths are not the only ones who can be mind-blind, though. Despite normal people's professed empathy, I have noticed before and particularly since the publication of the book that many empaths can't seem to get into the mindset of a sociopath. I think a lot of it also has to do to a tendency that we all have to project our own feelings and thoughts about a situation onto another person.

I talk about this a little bit in the book, about how I used to think that people were just like me until basically my late teens and early 20's. And now that I am a little more aware, I realize that I make frequently incorrect assumptions about the inner worlds of others, but I'm happy to be corrected when appropriate. I notice it in others as well but some people aren't open to correcting their misperceptions. This particular brand of mind-blindness is often mixed with a touch of xenophobia, and a dash of hypocrisy, seeing the apparent flaws in someone else's worldview without acknowledging the limitations of one's own perception. The evolutionary plus of this blend of mind-blindness+xenophobia+hypocrisy is that it promotes social conformity. It makes people feel so sure of themselves that they don't think twice about forcing others to conform, even if it means something so drastic as killing them (witch hunts, Inquisition, modern religious states where we stone people, etc.) And conformity leads to a greater sense of cohesion amongst the rest of the group, which can be socially beneficial, particularly in times of war.

Although I acknowledge that humans being able to unscrupulously enforce their will on other people can sometimes benefit society, I don't really like being the target of this sort of social influence and scrutiny. It's why I sometimes don't like being around other white women -- they feel like we're similar enough that they know all about me, even sometimes believing they know me better than I know myself. They also feel invested enough in me and how I reflect on them and greater womanhood that if I step out of line, I could face severe consequences (Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons?).

I've been thinking a lot about mind-blindness with the publication of the book and subsequent promotional activities. I've been thinking about my own mind-blindness, including the ways that I have not been able to predict the spectrum/proportion of people's different reactions (In the past few weeks I've learned more about why exactly people hate sociopaths than I did in the past few years of the blog). I've also been a little amazed at other people's mind-blindness, as evidenced by the all-over-the-map reactions to the book and promotional activities -- seemingly contradictory things like thinking that I am both the epitome of evil (a clear and an imminent threat to society) and that I'm also a fraud.

I wonder about the nature of the fraud accusations. When people say "fraud," does it only mean that they believe the word "sociopath" does not accurately apply to me? Because I'm pretty upfront that maybe it doesn't and maybe I've been misdiagnosed and who knows what that word means anyway and the diagnostic criterion are notoriously subjective, but isn't that itself an interesting thing to note about sociopathy? That if someone like me can be diagnosed a sociopath, then maybe it doesn't mean much when other people are involuntarily diagnosed sociopaths and kept in prisons because of it? If they think I am a fraud because I am lying about what's happened to me in my life, I am surprised because I don't find my experiences to be particularly outrageous or extraordinary. But I guess when you say "diagnosed sociopath" people expect to see a particular thing and when they don't see that thing, instead of thinking to themselves -- maybe my idea of a sociopath is not accurate, maybe I am not an expert at identifying sociopaths -- they instead conclude, this woman is a fraud. Maybe because they would rather live in a world in which they can rely on their own gut assessments about people, and me not being what they expected me to look/act/sound like is a direct challenge to that worldview? Interestingly, I've gotten a lot less pushback about who I say I am from non-Americans and from men, presumably because they're projecting less of their own characteristics and worldview on me?

Maybe people are unimpressed or disgusted by sociopath behavior, but I'm recently not that impressed by empath behavior. If empathy only applies to people who look and act just like you (and even then, is largely based on inaccurate projections of one's own worldview on another), then what is so special about empathy?

Monday, June 3, 2013

Where on the dark triad are you?

From a reader:

I'm writing to you about the topic of Machiavellianism. I've noticed that you have not wrote an article concerning it at all yet, and I thought that considering it is a dark triad personality that that was surprising... in fact I suspect it is not an anomaly that it has been left out.

Machiavellianism according to the Oxford Dictionary has been defined as "the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct." And more relevantly - psychologically speaking - it describes the tendency to be emotionally cool and detached from others, resulting in the Machiavellian personality being more able or fully capable of disregarding conventional morality. In other words, the Machiavellian personality experiences low levels of emotion, intellectual empathy making the Machiavellian exceedingly crafty in their manipulation and all the more cunning, possessing a minute or no conscience at all.

The reason I took an interest to SociopathWorld (is it separated or joined words for SW?) was to explore my own personality, for sociopathy at the time of my limited knowledge in psychology seemed to fit adequately. As I delved deeper into the nature of sociopathy, I noticed it did not quite fit. Nevertheless, the topic fascinated me and I discovered psychology did too.

As to why I decided the Machiavellian personality fitted me more than the sociopathic one is because - on some level - I care about two people, however they are only somewhat important in comparsion to the pursuit of power and my own self-interest. Any means necessary will be used to this end - providing I will get off scot free: I will feign emotion, charm, manipulate, subliminally or openly blackmail, coerce, et cetera you aren't new these lists, haha.

At a younger age, when I began noticing my pathological emotional detachment from people, I knew I could use it to my advantage. I examined other people's weaknesses in an attempt to exploit them, but due to my own weaknesses (arrogance) I sometimes failed, facing frustration, I decided to research. I suspected I was the problem, and I eventually discovered that one must realize his own weaknesses in order to eradicate them. Other perceived weaknesses can be turned into a strength - my basic personality is more lenient towards being introverted - so I'm particularly hard to read, always think before I speak and make it count. Gradually, my ability to be extravert improved vastly too.

Would you say that I have sociopathic tendencies that do not overlap with the Machiavellian personality?

P.S: I saw an article regarding some INTJ personality types being sociopathic. If it helps, my personality type is XNTJ.

M.E.: Actually, if anything, have you considered whether you might be narcissistic? You mention arrogance, and your email comes across as being arrogant, but maybe it's just the subject matter you're talking about. Should we publish what you wrote and see how other people feel on the subject?

Reader:

Regarding my younger self, I'd say I was more cocky than actually arrogant. I enjoyed a bit of admiration, and I seemed a notch above everyone else I knew, as I have quite an insightful thought process which used to make me think, "this would all be better if people rolled over and let me take care of it, fucking idiots." I have confidence in my abilities, I simply asserted that confidence arrogantly, hence being cocky.

If I liked admiration, I could be flattered - flattery is like a weapon, and I had to make it ineffective. Made me feel powerful, rather than the satisfaction narcissists seem to withdraw from admiration.

Arrogance, to any degree is unattractive and therefore uncharming, didn't help my image, it had to go.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Book appendix (part 3)

From an interview with a friend:


I like talking to you because you are like a stockpile of knowledge with the capability to process important components of that knowledge and to assimilate them into an intelligent decision—the best decision.  Whereas I feel like I might fall on to decision that is fourth best, even though I have been exposed to the same data.  But I have forgotten that information in the meantime, and am unable to pull it forward when the time to make the decision arises.  And you even take into account my personal preferences.  I don’t know how, I guess because you know me now.  But something I find very humorous is that when I start explaining emotionally frustrating things to you, maybe about my marriage, and you’ll say “That’s because he __________” and I am always wondering why you have so much insight into my emotional life.  Insight that I didn’t have—like I am still hashing through the ideas emotionally and haven’t been able to reach any conclusion, but you have been able to reach a conclusion by just listening to me for a minute.  Sometimes I discount your conclusions, I will be honest.  At those times I generally conclude that you didn’t input the right information.  Other times I will be surprised at how spot on you are.  It seems like you know my husband better than I know him. I’m always surprised with your assessments of people, because you can kind of sum them up, taking this vast amount of data—a person—and you break it down into the important bits for that output.  You tell me, “well of course that is what happened because of these few things.”  

Also, you’re blatantly honest.  At first I was scared and there were moments in this house in which I was afraid that you would provoke fights in social situations. Then I started finding the humor in it.  Now sometimes I will use it to find out things I really want to know by just asking you, although I can still get angry at some of the things you say.  Overall, though, it is refreshing, and I have a much harder time getting offended at anything you say than I used to.  Even now telling you these things, it’s odd because I think now you will understand me so much better and when I come to you with another emotional problem you will say, “Oh, it’s because of this,” or “something something something” and I will feel ok.  

When I come to you with an emotional problem though, I don’t feel like you give empathy or emotional support.  Sometimes you will say, “that’s just because your husband's a retard, sorry.”  So maybe that is empathy.  Maybe it is refreshing to hear that it comes down to something that isn’t emotional—that my problems aren’t fundamentally an emotional issue, but something separate that can be intellectualized.  It takes out the sting in the hurt.  

I remember one time you were talking to me in the car and you said something like, “I don’t think I want to marry a guy who is as intelligent as me.”  And I asked you, “someone more like me.”  You said “no, not really.”  And I thought, oh ok, smarter than me then.  

I think you’re a better computer than I am.  If you had learned all of the stuff that I learned in college, I think you could do so much better with it than I can.  But that’s alright, I supposed I have other skills.  You’re like a data processor, but better because you can also process emotional inputs.  You can’t ask Google why my husband did something.  It’s like the best thing—kind of like a fun toy.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Double standard for empathy

Some of my readers have wondered how it can be possible to hurt a sociopath's feelings. In other worlds, given that sociopaths seem so calloused and unemotional, how can their sudden bouts of moodiness and hurt feelings be reconciled with their general icy, insensitive demeanor?

Sociopaths tend to have a double standard for lack of empathy, manipulation, bluntness, lack of manners, and generally people's inability to conform to social norms to avoid becoming a boorish leech. I am known for being very frank and upfront with people, calling things as I see them with little to no attempt to use tact, but I can get very offended when normal people do the same thing back to me. They don't do it right (without the same charm, insight, timing, or finesse), and to me it means something different than when I do it -- typically I don't do it with an intention to hurt. Maybe a good analogy is when a small child hits you or lashes out at you emotionally and you retaliate in kind. The child cannot really control himself -- you can. The child does not really know better -- you do.

If you're in a seemingly loving relationship with a sociopath and he reacts with a lack of empathy at something you have said, it is probably because he is unaware of the need for empathy, or he is trying his hardest but is still coming up short, or he would try but he is too tired, or at the worst, he simply cannot be bothered to summon up the emotional reaction you seek. He is like the child, unable to raise his behavior to that particular standard. When people react that way to him, he correctly recognizes that there is latent hostility in the behavior -- an intentional attempt to slight. He knows how normal people treat each other. If you don't treat him that way, he will wonder why (and probably assume the worst).

I don't cry myself to sleep about people hurting my feelings or otherwise being insensitive to me. I'm sure I deserve it most of the time. But if people are wondering how or why sociopaths could be offended by behavior that the sociopaths themselves seem to engage in almost daily, I think it is a little more complicated than a case of being able to dish it out, but not take it.

Monday, March 25, 2013

The Unburdened Mind

This is one of the most balanced, accurate depictions of sociopathy/psychopathy I have seen written by a non sociopath, and the comments are hilarious. Highlights from the article:
Many potential psychopaths might not even realize they have the condition, nor has there traditionally been any easy way for others to recognize them.
* * *
The psychopath does not merely repress feelings of anxiety and guilt or fail to experience them appropriately; instead, he or she lacks a fundamental understanding of what these things are.
* * *
Arriving at a disaster scene, a psychopath would most likely gather to watch with the rest of the crowd. He might even lend assistance if he perceived no threat to his own safety. But he would feel none of the panic, shock, or horror of the other onlookers—his interest would fall more on the reactions of the victims and of the crowd.
* * *
Despite this emotional deficiency, most psychopaths learn to mimic the appearance of normal emotion well enough to fit into ordinary society, not unlike the way that the hearing impaired or illiterate learn to use other cues to compensate for their disabilities. As Hare describes it, psychopaths “know the words but not the music.” One might imagine that such a false and superficial front would be easily penetrated, but such is rarely the case, probably because of the assumption we all tend to make that others think and feel essentially the same way as ourselves. Differences in culture, gender, personality, and social status all create empathy gaps that can seem almost unfathomable, but none of these is as fundamental a divide as the one that exists between an individual with a conscience and one without. The psychopath’s psychology is so profoundly alien to most people that we are unable to comprehend their motives, or recognize one when we see one. Naturally, the industrious psychopath will find this to his advantage.

Some psychologists go so far as to label the psychopath “a different kind of human” altogether. Psychopathy has an environmental component like nearly all aspects of personal psychology, but its source is rooted firmly in biology. This has caused some researchers to suspect that the condition isn’t a “disorder” at all, but an adaptive trait. In a civilization made up primarily of law-abiding citizenry, the theory goes, an evolutionary niche opens up for a minority who would exploit the trusting masses.

This hypothesis is supported by the apparent success many psychopaths find within society. The majority of these individuals are not violent criminals; indeed, those that turn to crime are generally considered “unsuccessful psychopaths” due to their failure to blend into society. Those who do succeed can do so spectacularly. For instance, while it may sound like a cynical joke, it’s a fact that psychopaths have a clear advantage in fields such as law, business, and politics. They have higher IQs on average than the general population. They take risks and aren’t fazed by failures. They know how to charm and manipulate. They’re ruthless. It could even be argued that the criteria used by corporations to find effective managers actually select specifically for psychopathic traits: characteristics such as charisma, self-centeredness, confidence, and dominance are highly correlated with the psychopathic personality, yet also highly sought after in potential leaders.
* * *
A lack of empathy does not necessarily imply a desire to do harm—that comes from sadism and tendencies toward violence, traits which have only a small correlation with psychopathy. When all three come together in one individual, of course, the result is catastrophic. Ted Bundy and Paul Bernardo are extreme examples of such a combination.
* * *
The reasons we look up to these conscience impaired people are unclear. Most likely it has something to do with the confidence they exude, the ease they seem to feel in any situation—a trait that comes easily in someone essentially incapable of fear or anxiety. Maybe we’re easily suckered in by their natural glibness and charm. Or maybe on some level we envy the freedom they have, with no burden of conscience or emotion.

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Alexithymia

Here's another word I hadn't heard before until recently: alexithymia. According to wikipedia, it is a decreased ability to identify, understand, and describe one's own emotions. It is supposed to be common (10%) with a high comorbidity.

Does this sound like anyone you know?


Nick Frye-Cox, a doctoral student in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, says people with alexithymia can describe their physiological responses to events, such as sweaty palms or faster heartbeats, but are unable to identify their emotions as sad, happy or angry. In addition, those with alexithymia have difficulty discerning the causes of their feelings or explaining variations in their emotions, he said.
***
“People with alexithymia are always weighing the costs and benefits, so they can easily enter and exit relationships. They don’t think others can meet their needs, nor do they try to meet the needs of others.”

This is going to blow your minds, but alexithymia has been linked to lack of empathy:

Because awareness of emotional states in the self is a prerequisite to recognizing such states in others, alexithymia (ALEX), difficulty in identifying and expressing one's own emotional states, should involve impairment in empathy. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we compared an ALEX group (n = 16) and a non-alexithymia (non-ALEX) group (n = 14) for their regional hemodynamic responses to the visual perception of pictures depicting human hands and feet in painful situations. Subjective pain ratings of the pictures and empathy-related psychological scores were also compared between the 2 groups. The ALEX group showed less cerebral activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), the dorsal pons, the cerebellum, and the left caudal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) within the pain matrix. The ALEX group showed greater activation in the right insula and inferior frontal gyrus. Furthermore, alexithymic participants scored lower on the pain ratings and on the scores related to mature empathy. In conclusion, the hypofunction in the DLPFC, brain stem, cerebellum, and ACC and the lower pain-rating and empathy-related scores in ALEX are related to cognitive impairments, particularly executive and regulatory aspects, of emotional processing and support the importance of self-awareness in empathy.

This is all sort of interesting and new to me. It's only been relatively recently that I've identified my emotions as being present, but difficult to identify, whether nervousness, love, or even just a general inability to give feelings that context that they need to become emotions. Consequently they aren't meaningful to me in the way that I imagine they are for others -- I don't feel the same way about them.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Rethinking empathy

Journalist Maria Konnikova uses the example of Sherlock Holmes' "perspective taking" ability to put himself in the mind of others to rethinking what we might mean by (or what is truly value about) empathy. The entire article is worth reading, here is just the first few paragraphs to give you an idea of what she is talking about:

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the name Sherlock Holmes? It might be a deerstalker, a pipe or a violin, or shady crimes in the foggy streets of London. Chances are, it’s not his big, warm heart and his generous nature. In fact, you might think of him as a cold fish — the type of man who tells his best friend, who is busy falling in love, that it ‘is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things’. Perhaps you might be influenced by recent adaptations that have gone so far as to call Holmes a 'sociopath'.

Not the empathetic sort, surely? Or is he?

Let’s dwell for a moment on ‘Silver Blaze’ (1892), Arthur Conan Doyle’s story of the gallant racehorse who disappeared, and his trainer who was found dead, just days before a big race. The hapless police are stumped, and Sherlock Holmes is called in to save the day. And save the day he does — by putting himself in the position of both the dead trainer and the missing horse. Holmes speculates that the horse is ‘a very gregarious creature’. Surmising that, in the absence of its trainer, it would have been drawn to the nearest town, he finds horse tracks, and tells Watson which mental faculty led him there. ‘See the value of imagination… We imagined what might have happened, acted upon that supposition, and find ourselves justified.’

Holmes takes an imaginative leap, not only into another human mind, but into the mind of an animal. This perspective-taking, being able to see the world from the point of view of another, is one of the central elements of empathy, and Holmes raises it to the status of an art.

Usually, when we think of empathy, it evokes feelings of warmth and comfort, of being intrinsically an emotional phenomenon. But perhaps our very idea of empathy is flawed. The worth of empathy might lie as much in the ‘value of imagination’ that Holmes employs as it does in the mere feeling of vicarious emotion. Perhaps that cold rationalist Sherlock Holmes can help us reconsider our preconceptions about what empathy is and what it does.


This is something that I have discussed before -- the difference between empathy and imagining what it might be like to be someone else.

The perspective taking is also an interesting phenomenon, particularly because it appears that it can be taught, as evidenced by the success of an intervention program for at risk youths, which teaches the youngsters perspective taking through the use of regular interactions with an infant volunteer (see this fascinating description).

Even though she insists that Sherlock is not a sociopath, I couldn't help but notice some similarities between the way he thinks and the way I think. For instance, a tendency to not think linearly:

But he is also a man of inordinate creativity of thought. He refuses to stop at facts as they appear to be. He plays out many possibilities, maps out various routes, lays out myriad alternative realities in order to light upon the correct one. His is the opposite of hard, linear, A-to-B reasoning.
 
This default of abstract thinking has helped me immensely in my own career, and the article mentions that this sort of mental flexibility also enabled "an Einstein to imagine a reality unlike any that we’ve experienced before (in keeping with laws unlike any we’ve come up with before), and a Picasso to make art that differs from any prior conception of what art can be." although also means I often have to have my thoughts translated to others or reverse engineer explanations that are more universally palatable than my own scattered thought processes. And when used in the context of imagining other people's minds, better than typical empathy?

Here are some other advantages according to the article:
  • In sterilising his empathy, Holmes actually makes it more powerful: a reasoned end, rather than a flighty impulse.
  • No doubt Holmes would argue that his lack of emotion gives him a certain freedom from prejudice, as much as a lack of warmth. And recent research bears this out. Most of us start from a place of deep-rooted egocentricity: we take things as we see them, and then try to expand our perspectives to encompass those of others. But we are not very good at it.
  • Because he actively avoids distorting his view of others with his own feelings, "he ends up as a less egocentric and more accurate reflection of what someone else is thinking or experiencing at any given point."
  • Just think how precise are Holmes’s insights into people’s characters, their whims, their motivations and inner states. . . . In our own attempts to understand others, we might think such minutiae below us — why bother with such petty concerns when there are emotions, feelings, lives at stake? — but in ignoring those petty details, we lose crucial evidence. We miss the signs of difference that enable us to walk in those shoes we don’t deign to look at closely. 
  • Empathy it seems, is not simply a rush of fellow-feeling, for this might be an entirely unreliable gauge of the inner world of others.
  • The psychologists Ezra Stotland and Robert Dunn distinguished the ‘logical’ and the ‘emotional’ part of empathising with similar and dissimilar others. They understood the first as an exercise in cognitive perspective-taking, and the latter as an instance of non-rational emotional contagion. More recently, Baron-Cohen has described how individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder might not be able to understand or mentalise, yet some are fully capable of empathising (in the emotional sense) once someone’s affective state is made apparent to them — a sign, it seems, that the two elements are somewhat independent.
  • Feelings are not entirely absent from Holmes’s empathic calculus, but they are not allowed to drive his actions. Instead, he acts only if his cognition should support the emotional outlay. And if it doesn’t? The emotion is dismissed.
 She makes a lot of other great points, like how empathy, although evolutionary useful, is unreliable, biased, and often flawed. It's a good overall argument for how one can have low emotional empathy and not necessarily be malicious. She ends with:

Sherlock Holmes might be described as cold, it’s true. But who would you like on your side when it comes to being given a fair say, to being helped when that help is truly needed, to knowing that someone will go above and beyond the call of duty for your sake, no matter who you are or what you might have done? I, for one, would choose the cool-headed Holmes, who understands the limits of human emotions, and who seeks to ‘represent justice,’ so far as his ‘feeble powers allow’.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Promoting prosocial behavior

This was an interesting recent article in the NY Times, "Understanding How Children Develop Empathy," but I thought some of the parts about the source and development of prosocial behavior were just as interesting--particularly that it is not just about (or even primarily) about empathy:


By itself, intense empathy — really feeling someone else’s pain — can backfire, causing so much personal distress that the end result is a desire to avoid the source of the pain, researchers have found. The ingredients of prosocial behavior, from kindness to philanthropy, are more complex and varied.

They include the ability to perceive others’ distress, the sense of self that helps sort out your own identity and feelings, the regulatory skills that prevent distress so severe it turns to aversion, and the cognitive and emotional understanding of the value of helping.

And this part about how people can be taught to feel the rewards of prosocial acts:


Experimental studies have shown that the same brain region that is activated when people win money for themselves is active when they give to charity — that is, that there is a kind of neurologic “reward” built into the motivational system of the brain.

“Charitable giving can activate the same pleasure-reward centers, the dopaminergic centers, in the brain that are very closely tied to habit formation,” said Bill Harbaugh, an economist at the University of Oregon who studies altruism. “This suggests it might be possible to foster the same sorts of habits for charitable giving you see with other sorts of habits.”



The other theory of prosocial behavior, Dr. Huettel said, is based on social cognition — the recognition that other people have needs and goals. The two theories aren’t mutually exclusive: Cognitive understanding accompanied by a motivational reward reinforces prosocial behavior.

But shaping prosocial behavior is a tricky business. For instance, certain financial incentives seem to deter prosocial impulses, a phenomenon called reward undermining, Dr. Huettel said.



I thought that made a lot of sense, that a lot of prosocial acts stem from a greater cognitive understanding that other people have needs and goals. I feel like the more aware I have been taught to be about the inner worlds of others, the more I am naturally inclined to defer to those needs and goals, especially when it is hardly any trouble to me and means so much to them.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Empathy/analytical thinking

Someone posted this link in the comments that I thought was interesting. It essentially argues that you people either use empathetic or analytical thinking, and never both at the same time:

  • When the brain fires up the network of neurons that allows us to empathize, it suppresses the network used for analysis, a pivotal study led by a Case Western Reserve University researcher shows.
  • At rest, our brains cycle between the social and analytical networks. But when presented with a task, healthy adults engage the appropriate neural pathway, the researchers found.
  • The new study shows that adults presented with social or analytical problems -- all external stimuli -- consistently engaged the appropriate neural pathway to solve the problem, while repressing the other pathway. The see-sawing brain activity was recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging.
  • "This is the cognitive structure we've evolved," said Anthony Jack, an assistant professor of cognitive science at Case Western Reserve and lead author of the new study. "Empathetic and analytic thinking are, at least to some extent, mutually exclusive in the brain."
  • These findings suggest the same neural phenomenon drives the explanatory gap as occurs when we look at a visual illusion such as the duck-rabbit, he continued. The drawing of the head of the animal can be seen as a duck facing one direction or a rabbit facing the other, but you can't see both at once.
  • "You want the CEO of a company to be highly analytical in order to run a company efficiently, otherwise it will go out of business," he said. "But, you can lose your moral compass if you get stuck in an analytic way of thinking." "You'll never get by without both networks," Jack continued. "You don't want to favor one, but cycle efficiently between them, and employ the right network at the right time."

It also mentioned briefly what sort of implications this would have for autism, whose sufferers often are advanced analytically and deficient socially, and for Williams syndrome, whose sufferers are socially adept but not analytically. That was interesting in a everything-has-its-opposite sort of way.

In terms of thinking about my own brain I thought about my own attention issues. To use the analogy from the article, maybe my seesaw is overly weighted on one side? Or it's rusty and hard to flip to the other side? I actually think that the issue is less in my ability to do or feel something, once I've set my mind to doing so, but that perhaps my brain does not naturally respond to the same sorts of external stimuli cuing the switch as well as other people's do.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Famous sociopaths: Mitt Romney?

I was reading a profile about Mitt Romney in the New Yorker. One of the themes was how he doesn't seem to have principles or emotions but how he defines himself as being just an efficiency machine? Or that's sort of what I got from it:

  • Private equity is business on steroids: seek efficiency and economic return, not large social goals (unless you think those are large social goals). 
  • “Most religions come to believe in the Zeus model of God. He was outside the universe and created everything. Latter-Day Saints believe that God is in the universe and his power comes from understanding the rules of the universe perfectly. Everything we learn makes us more like God. The impetus to learn is so strong because it helps us to become more like God.”
  • Kim Clark says that Romney was “very smart, but also great with senior executives, really capable of developing relationships with them. You have to be really good on your feet, good at understanding what people’s concerns are and how they think.”
  • "Mitt is so persuasive. He could get rich selling used bubble gum.
  • Romney has done a lot of meeting and a lot of selling during his rise in business and politics, but mainly indoors, in small groups of peers. He’s as adept in that setting as he is unnatural talking to a big crowd. Unlike most candidates, he did not communicate a sense either of being too restless to give you his full attention or of having to establish that he is the alpha and you the beta. He was direct and pleasant and engaged. His voice sounded husky, rather than flat. His gestures seemed spontaneous, not staged.
  • “Value, in the way I’ve defined it, is the score that shows up on the scoreboard,” he said. “It’s not the objective. It’s not the strategy. 

If that doesn't convince you, this New Yorker article titled "Romney Sets New Personal Best for Faking Empathy"?


“Mitt Romney has the facial expressions of someone who cares about me.”

Moments after the debate, Mr. Romney pronounced himself “thoroughly drained” by the forced display of humanity.

“This empathy stuff is exhausting,” he told reporters. “On Day One, it’s going to stop.”


I actually don't think that Romney is a sociopath, although it's possible. I do think it's funny that people seem to value people who have empathy -- would rather have those people in stressful situations making emotional decisions rather than a sociopath? Or maybe people are actually aware and ok with the fact that politicians tend to be more sociopathic than non?
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