Saturday, January 21, 2012

Oxytocin and morality

A reader recommended this TED talk about the role of oxytocin and morality. The talk description:

What drives our desire to behave morally? Neuroeconomist Paul Zak shows why he believes oxytocin (he calls it “the moral molecule”) is responsible for trust, empathy, and other feelings that help build a stable society. 




 Here's what the reader said about it:


It seems relavant that he says about 5% of people do not release oxytocin upon the usual stimuli, and I usually see a predicted psychopathy incidence at around 4% of the population. Also, the background for individuals with this lack of release is similar to that often found of p/s types.


Could the distinction between empaths and sociopaths really as simple as that? Even if it is not, it's interesting to see how much of people's humanity is based on something as simple as a hormone.  

Friday, January 20, 2012

Blindsight

A lot of readers have been telling me that I should read the book Blindsight, by Peter Watts--that it is very topical.  I just started reading it.  It's available for free here.  Here is one reader's review:

Author and biologist Peter Watts contributed Blindsight to the body of hard sci-fi fiction in 2006, with the intention of simultaneously exploring and criticising themes of consciousness and the perception of the sociopath as monsterous inhuman. The reason why Watts and Blindsight are of interest here, are the most memorable creations in Blindsight, the flesh-and-blood hominid vampires Homo sapiens vampirensis. Drawing his inspiration from the modern Gothic image of the vampire as a pallid sociopathic human, Watts has created an alternative evolutionary timeline in which modern humans formerly co-existed and interbred with a previously extinct subspecies of ancient hominid predators possessing the biological traits that inspired the folktales about vampires around the world.

Within the Rifters universe, the existence of sociopathy among humans is explained as the re-emergence of this ancient phenotype in exceptional human individuals, and paleogeneticists working with the 'blood of sociopaths' have been able to recreate this ancient, super-powered species that takes on and exaggerates the characteristics of clinical psychopathy. 

Although the vampire Jukka Sarasti is on the one hand presented as a predatory beast, Watts also stresses not the human nature of the vampire, but the vampiric nature of the human crew that makes humns uneasy about vampire – in the Rifters universe, nobody travels past Jupiter without having vampire subroutines inserted into their human DNA in order to allow the 'undead' state. 

"Empathy for sociopaths isn't common," I remarked

"Maybe it should be. We, at least" he waved an arm; some remote-linked sensor cluster across the simulator whirred and torqued reflexively "chose the add-ons. Vampires had to be sociopaths. They're too much like their own prey  a lot of taxonomists don't even consider them a subspecies, you know that? Never diverged far enough for complete reproductive isolation. So maybe they're more syndrome than race. Just a bunch of obligate cannibals with a consistent set of deformities." 

"And how does that make" 

"If the only thing you can eat is your own kind, empathy is gonna be the first thing that goes. Psychopathy's no disorder in those shoes, eh? Just a survival strategy. But they still make our skin crawl, so wechain 'em up." 

Although Jukka Sarasti remains a brooding presence on board the Theseus, throughout Blindsight the author uses his human characters to describe Jukka's behaiour and thoughts in an atypically sympathetic way for fiction. 

"Anyway, I just think he'scut off." A nervous tic tugged at the corner of Szpindel's mouth. "Lone wolf, nothing but sheep for company. Wouldn't you feel lonely?" 

"They don't like company," I reminded him. You didn't put vampires of the same sex together, not unless you were taking bets on a bloodbath. They were solitary hunters and very territorial. With a minimum viable pred-prey ratio of one to ten  and human prey spread so sparsely across the Pleistocene landscape  the biggest threat to their survival had been competition from their own kind. Natural selection had never taught them to play nicely together. 

That didn't cut any ice with Szpindel, though. "Doesn't mean he can't be lonely," he insisted. "Just means he can't fix it."

[...] "You asked about Sarasti. Smart man. Strong Leader. Maybe could spend a little more time with the troops." 

  Vampire doesn't respect his command. Doesn't listen to advice. 

  Hides away half the time. 

  I remembered transient killer whales. "Maybe he's being considerate." He knows he makes us nervous. 

  "I'm sure that's it," Bates said. 

  "Vampire doesn't trust himself."

And finally, Watts dares to shatter what is a taboo nowadays – to question the value of empathy. For anyone interested in unusual fictional portrayals of psychopathic characters, or interesting psychological themes in general, I'm sure you'll find that Blindsight is well worth a look.

"That, too, had slipped out before I could stop itand after that came the flood: "You put so much fucking stock in that. You and your empathy. And maybe I am just some kind of imposter but most people would swear I'd worn their very souls. I don't need that shit, you don't have to feel motives to deduce them, it's better if you can't, it keeps you" 

  "Dispassionate?" Cunningham smiled faintly. "Maybe your empathy's just a comforting lie, you ever think of that? 

Maybe you think you know how the other person feels but you're only feeling yourself, maybe you're even worse than me. Or maybe we're all just guessing. Maybe the only difference is that I don't lie to myself about it."

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Sociopaths on facebook

These are pretty funny, courtesy of a reader, "The 50 most brilliant, obnoxious, or delightfully sociopathic Facebook posts of 2011."  Obviously only some of them are "sociopathic."  For those of you too lazy or unable to click on the link, highlights include crass reactions to announcements of imminent suicide, careless death announcements, revenge, betrayal, emotional outbursts, and pedophilia.  I think the Germans have a word for  the sort of enjoyment of others' pain that Facebook has wrought.  Facebook: by sociopaths for sociopaths?

In other random news, I completely forgot that I recently spent a month being stalked until I was reminded of it today by the person cutting my hair (sideways glance, "you're always so nonchalant about things...").  This hair person is one of those oddly insightful savants of human nature that makes me squirm in my chair.  The only solution is to get her to relate to me the entire plot behind a recent television show.  Today it was "Homeland"--plot points interspersed with the ubiquitous, "I don't want to give it away, but...."  Is it time for a new hairstyle?


Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Elderly sociopath

A reader relates a funny story about a family member that she suspects is a sociopath -- her elderly grandmother:

I showed your site to my sister (who also has tendencies more than your average person as well), and we both agree that our grandmother was/is definitely a sociopath. It's interesting to see her now, since just recently she was put into an assisted living home. She's in the early stages of dementia, but sometimes when something isn't going her way, I see her mask drop from her face and it takes her just a tad bit longer than usual to recover it. I was tempted over the holidays to whisper something to her about it when her mask fell away, but decided against it. 

I'm sure she has no idea we know her true nature. I'm not even sure she's self-aware enough that she would even know the label (which I think labels are stupid anyway). 

She was definitely high-functioning because as far as I know she was never a criminal. Though I do think there are family secrets about tax evasion. 

A side note though, I recently discovered through a scrapbook of newspaper clippings that she had had a hit out on her in the 80s. Apparently, that was an open family secret and I asked her about it (this was before the dementia) and she didn't have much to say about it. I'd even say she was very nonchalant about it. I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't keep a scrapbook about someone trying to have them killed and when asked about be so blase about it. I have so many stories from my childhood that point to her sociopathy it's not even funny. So yeah, the genetic component is there. 

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Contextualizing emotions

I was trying to describe to someone the other day what emotions feel like for me. It's not like I don't feel them.  I feel a lot of different emotions, but some of them I don't recognize or understand. By that I mean that sometimes (actually a lot of the time) it feels like my emotions lack context. They're not completely without context. It is sort of like I am watching a movie, but backwards. Not completely backwards--like I am watching 30-60 second increments, and then skipping back in time to the next increment. Or when you read an email chain, but start at the most recent email and read back in time. You can get an idea of what is happening, but because the conversation is not really linear -- does not progress organically (at least to your eyes) -- there will always be holes to your understanding. It's sort of like the character in the movie Memento trying to make sense of his surroundings when every seven minutes or so, he forgets what came before.

When I was younger I frequently gave into emotional impulses. I felt like if I was mad there must be a reason that I was mad so I was justified in lashing out in whatever manner I felt proper. In order to rid myself of that behavior I learned to second guess any emotions. I would ask myself: could I identify the type of emotion I was feeling? What was the source? What had prompted the emotion? If I didn't have the answer to these basic questions I would ignore the emotion, writing it off as being (at least probably) an emotional hallucination.

I'm sure that many emotions are "hallucinations" and I'm sure that everyone must experience this to a certain extent. But by ignoring any emotion that I could not explain to myself, I am sure I was also being over-inclusive, thereby excluding legitimate emotions from which I simply lack the ability to contextualize and extract any real meaning. I am unable to separate the wheat from the chaff. Consequently, I am forced to throw the baby out with the bathwater (pardon the mixed metaphor).

Sometimes I wonder if this is the core of what I generally perceive as being self-aware or not amongst the sociopathic population, i.e. the self-aware ones in my eyes are the ones who have realized that their emotions deceive them and vice versa.  It's also why I generally consider narcissists to be unaware, because in my eyes they are constantly acting on bastard emotions that they believe justify reprehensible behavior.
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