Saturday, August 11, 2012

Using babies to teach empathy

A friend sent me this older NY Times article about teaching at risk youth empathy by exposing them to and asking them to consider the well-being of babies.  Why this works, no one knows for sure, but it seems to trigger in them a natural inclination to help altruistically, also shared by primates:

We know that humans are hardwired to be aggressive and selfish. But a growing body of research is demonstrating that there is also a biological basis for human compassion. Brain scans reveal that when we contemplate violence done to others we activate the same regions in our brains that fire up when mothers gaze at their children, suggesting that caring for strangers may be instinctual. When we help others, areas of the brain associated with pleasure also light up. Research by Felix Warneken and Michael Tomasello indicates that toddlers as young as 18 months behave altruistically. (If you want to feel good, watch one of their 15-second video clips here.)

This was something that I didn't know, that we are programmed to help.  The clips are fascinating, for instance this first one, where the researcher drops a clothespin just out of his reach.  The 18 month old child crawls over to the clothespin, picks it up, works himself to a standing position so he'll be tall enough to give the researcher back his clothespin, which he does (to his own apparent delight).

I wouldn't necessarily call it altruism, though, at least not from my superficial understanding.  To me, the impulse seems rooted more in a drive for efficiency (am I projecting my own thoughts here?).  In each of these videos, the toddlers help out in a task that obviously requires cooperative effort for success -- a situation in which it is obvious that someone needs help with something, for instance opening a door when someone has their arms full.  Without the toddler's help, the door never gets opened and that person never gets to their location, or they do so with much greater cost in terms of time and effort.  By helping the researcher, even where there is no immediate promise of reward, the toddler is still engaging in value maximizing behavior that he can hope to benefit from in kind in the future.

This is clearly an evolutionarily advantageous trait, particularly to help out within a particular group or tribe of people.  It expands the our ability to consolidate resources in order to scale particular operations.  Just like the modern legal fiction of a corporation allows us to pool resources (via stock purchases) to create business entities that no one of us could finance independently, a natural inclination to participate in cooperative tasks promotes the overall well-being of society, which improves our own lives.

Maybe I'm reading too much into all of this, but I've always wondered where my compulsion for efficiency comes from, which will override almost any other impulse.  Could it be related to this?

It could also be that the toddler is just trying to pull his own weight, starting to realize that he is a suck on social resources, and wants to avoid getting left in the jungle to die.  Which is actually a risk for us all, in some ways.  So be good everyone!  Or else!

Friday, August 10, 2012

Dreams

People mistakenly assume that because sociopaths don't empathize, they don't have emotions. I've never heard of a sociopath not having emotions. I do think that sociopath emotions are frequently shallow and stunted, childlike even, but how many people do you know who are emotionally stunted and are not sociopaths?

And what are emotions anyway? They're at least partially contextual -- they at least partially originate from the stories we tell ourselves. If you have "butterflies in your stomach," you could be nervous or excited depending on your interpretation of your situation. And there are certain emotions that exist in some cultures that don't necessarily exist in others, e.g. saudades in Brazil or the intense aspects of shame in Japan. Are emotions just an interpretation of the body's evolutionary fight or flight reactions? Are emotions only releases of adrenaline that we interpret as anxiety? Or endorphins that we interpret as satisfaction?

One theory of why we dream suggests that dreams are the result of our brain trying to interpret external stimuli during sleep. For instance, if we are cold, we imagine that we are walking through snow. Our subconscious concocts a story to explain things we are sensing during our sleep -- trying desperately to make random and incomplete sensory inputs fit into whatever fictional scenario we have literally dreamed up. Are our emotions the same? Are we just interpreting sensory inputs? Making up explanations that support the stories we tell ourselves?

Do we ever wake up?

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Sociopaths on television: Pretty Little Liars

I started watching the television show Pretty Little Liars (don't judge me, I was sickly sick all weekend and didn't have the stomach for anything more substantial).  I haven't seen that many episodes, but from what I've seen, the pretty little murder victim Alison seems like a bit of a female teenage sociopath.  I'm too lazy to look up with a better example, but here is at least a typical example of an exchange between her and her friend:


Ali: I made you Spencer.  I made all of you.  Before me you were just some goody goody in plaid who did whatever mommy and daddy told her to.  

Spencer: You're so full of yourself.  You think that just because you brought us together you can treat us like puppets?

Ali: But you are.  Don't you see that?  You don't exist without me.


She trades in secrets like they were the most valuable things on the planet, and in her hands they really are decent weapons, keeping everyone else around her on their toes and doing her bidding.  Her friends frequently remark on how ruthless she was.  She's also cunning.  After police arrive at a fraternity party that she and her friends crashed, instead of trying to sneak away in an attempt to avoid getting caught for underage drinking, she walks right up to a policeman and asks him to take them home.  She explains her chutzpah thusly: "The bolder the move the less anybody questions it."

She's manipulative, but everyone still loves her, which is a dynamic that is actually explored in an interesting way on the show.  Even after all that her associates learn all sorts of bad facts about her after her disappearance (death?), they still self-confessedly love her and admit that their lives will always bear her imprint.

In rehearsing a school play, "The Bad Seed," her friends are discussing some of the moral issues in the play, including the question of whether people are born bad or made bad.  One of the characters remarks, exasperatedly, "I'm having a hard time figuring out who's evil and who's just naughty."  The same goes for the show.  It's not clear who anybody really is and the characters that are the most well-meaning are often the characters who do the most dastardly deeds -- much worse than the actual sociopath herself.  So in that way it is true to life.  But it also makes us question, should people get a pass because they're being naughty rather than evil?

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Wisdom of Psychopathy

Another book recommendation, this time with audio clip:


I was reading an article on Scientific American’s website today, when I noticed an advert for an upcoming book entitled The Wisdom of Psychopathy, Kevin Dutton author. This one isn't coming out till October.

I looked the book up on Amazon just because and I also came across another upcoming book called Almost a Psychopath. This one is being released at the end of the month. As always, I thought you might be interested. 

I Googled the title of the book and came across this audio program ("The Psychopath in Us All"). I believe it's about 25 or 30 minutes. The first part is standard fare, all the stuff you’ve read about before. The second part, which starts at about 10:20, features Dutton. I was gratified to hear him voice something I’ve said on your blog numerous times over the last few years: it makes sense to think of all personality traits as existing along a spectrum, from extreme to moderate to barely there. Psychopathic personality traits are no exception. Then there’s the little chestnut I used in the subject line. Very self-helpy. Unleashing the inner psychopath is a universal dream of mankind.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Almost a psychopath

From illustrious reader Daniel Birdick, regarding the book Almost a Psychopath: Do I (or does someone you know) have a problem with manipulation or lack of empathy?, in which people are apparently psychopathic without necessarily rising to the level of diagnosis:

I skimmed through the the Almost a Psychopath book. They adhere to the Hare definition of psychopathy and then label the "almost psychopath" as someone who behaves like a diagnosed psychopath, only less so. Very scientifically precise, no?~
This spectrum issue reminds me of the 2nd James Fallon video from one of your recent posts. Here this guy is, with the DNA and the brain of a serial killer, yet instead of becoming a murderer he instead becomes a neuroscientist. He is clueless about the impact of his own behavior on others up until the point when he sees the results of the brain scans, although his family is completely unsurprised by his discoveries. So, by virtue of his utter lack of caring and his genetic and neurological makeup, can we call him an almost psychopath? Or does the absence of antisocial or criminal behavior (relative to diagnosed psychopaths) indicate that he is not at psychopath at all, in any way that matters? Some, like good old Dr. Robert, base their notions of psychopathy entirely on what does or does not happen on the inside. The Hare checklist on the other hand is behaviorally based, with a few exceptions. I think the checklist assumes, to paraphrase the ultimate paragon of passivity, that you shall know a tree by its fruits. What you experience on the inside only matters when it expresses itself on the outside. I am inclined to agree. What you do matters more than what you don't feel. So what if you feel callous and unemotional on the inside. What matters is how you actually treat people. Right? Why then all the blather about empathy and emotional responses to social faux pas, like guilt and shame? Is it the whole authenticity thing? I find that to be another red herring. What self are we being authentic about? Where is this ghost in the machine and why won't it show up on a PET scan? Is it really "virtuous", whatever the hell that means, to be honest and admit that you don't give a flying fuck about whatever sob story some clueless twat wants to lay on you, or is it in fact more moral to pretend to care by aping the right facial expressions and body language?
Went on a bit of a rant there. Anyway...

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