Reviewed by Joyce Alexander, RNP (Retired)
Simon Baron-Cohen, author of The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty, is a professor of Developmental Psychology in the department of Experimental psychology and psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. He is director of the University’s Autism Research Center and has endless awards for his research and writing.
If you only read one book about empathy, this book should be it! Baron-Cohen explores the definition of empathy, or the lack of it, in humans, to answer his own questions about the Nazi atrocities in Germany before and during World War II. He also, as a scientist, wanted to explore why some people treat other as objects and answer his questions about how a human being can treat another person with utter cruelty and lack of compassion. His definition of empathy is:
Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion.
Empathy … requires not only that you can identify another person’s feelings and thoughts, but that you respond to those with an appropriate emotion.
He explains that lack of empathy can be a fleeting state, in which anger, drugs, alcohol, or distractions dampen our empathy temporarily, or it can be a life-long pattern from which there is no recovery. He goes on to show that there are medical conditions in which both parts of empathy are missing (recognition of another’s feelings as well as responding to those feelings.)
Like any good scientist who studies his subject in a scientific manner, Baron-Cohen actually measures empathy. He and his team devised a Empathy Quotient (EQ) in order to measure empathy on the standard bell curve, where the majority of humans are in the middle. Most people have a reasonable amount of empathy most of the time (both recognizing and responding to the feelings of others), with fewer people having a much greater amount of empathy, and others having a lesser amount of empathy.
When I meet someone with very little empathy, it is as if they lack the very apparatus to look inwards at themselves, as if they lack a reverse periscope that would enable them any vision of themselves.
He defines, for research purposes, empathy into six broad categories. He describes zero empathy as:
Individual has no empathy at all ”¦ at which level some people commit crimes and are violent, but ”¦ fortunately, not all people with zero empathy wish to harm others ”¦ they cannot experience remorse or guilt.
At level six are the hyper-empathetic people that he describes as:
Continually focused on other people’s feelings, and go out of their way to check on these and to be supportive. It is as if their empathy is in a constant state of hyper-arousal, such that other people are never off their radar.
Using both psychology and brain scans of the areas of the brain involved in empathy, Baron-Cohen explains how the various personality disorders, psychopathy he uses that word borderline and narcissism, overlap in empathy or lack of it. Other medical conditions, such as autism, also cause problems with empathy.
He shows that people with classic autism, while not having empathy, do not generally intend to cause harm to anyone. The book also explores the genetic links. as well as the environmental links. that can produce low or lacking empathy in a personality.
Appendix 1 is the Empathy Quotient self test. Appendix 2 is How to Spot Zero Degrees of Empathy (Negative). It discusses borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality, a young person with conduct disorder, and How to Recognize a Narcissist.
This is an excellent book for learning more about ourselves, as well as learning about people with low levels of empathy. I highly recommend this book for both scientific information and for common sense information that is useful day to day in dealing with others in our lives.
The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty, on Amazon.com.
Oxy – I posted an article about Simon Baron Cohen before. Is this the same book?
http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2011/04/13/debating-empathy-and-evil/
No, but it is the same guy….he is a very active researcher on empathy and the various individuals that have or don’t have empathy (Zero Degrees of Empathy) up to the very highly empathetic.
He divides “Zero empathy” into what he terms ZERO NEGATIVE (Psychopaths, Borderlines, and Narcisists) and ZERO POSITIVE to people with Autism, etc. but over all sees people’s empathy levels as on the standard “Bell Curve” with most people being in the middle.
One of the concepts he pointed out that I hadn’t ever thought about before though is that we are continually turning our empathy on or off. For example if you pass a homeless person on the street in a crowded city, you probably walk on by on your way to work….yet if you saw an old lady or a child fall down, you’d probably run to help her. Or you could be so distracted by thinking about the book you are writing, you might not even “see” the homeless person or the old lady fall down. None of those things mean that you have no empathy, just that if we were always focused on others emotions or needs, we wouldn’t leave much for ourselves. So empathy is a fluid thing rather than a solid, and it varies, rather than just being a HAS GOT IT or HASN’T GOT IT. There are degrees of empathy from Zero to VERY high.
Baron-Cohen has written other books and I am interested in reading them as well including that “Zero Degrees of Empathy” the ONE review of that book though doesn’t get the concept that Baron-Cohen makes though that thought socioipaths may not have the entire make up of empathy, it doesn’t mean they can’t figure out what YOU may be thinking in order to manipulate you.
Here is the REVIEW FROM AMAZON of tghe Zero Degrees of Empathy (which I have NOT read but would like to):
Zero Degrees of Empathy is 360 degrees of BS.
Simon-Cohen posits a very forced empathy-based construct, to explain Borderline and Antisocial Personality Disorders, for example.
Those of us who have decades of clinical experience working with these disorders can readily see Cohen’s forumlations as far too simplistic, at best, and, at worst, ignorant!
For example, Cohen makes NO allowance for the fact that many (classical) sociopaths are exquisitely sensitive to every nuance of the feelings of others — which they then EXPLOIT with great skill.
Back to the drawing board, Dr. Cohen.
The “Zero Degrees of Empathy” book, though is $45 on Amazon so I will see if I can’t find a cheaper source.
As for the “Science of Evil” it is one of THE BEST BOOKS I’ve read and explains a lot about empathy and those who lack it as well as those who have a surplus of it, which I think is probably why some of us are victims in the first place.
HAHa – THE REVIEW WAS WRITTEN BY A SPATH OXY!
GRANDIOSITY: ‘Those of us who have decades of clinical experience working with these disorders’
‘sociopaths are exquisitely sensitive to every nuance of the feelings of others which they then EXPLOIT with great skill.’
BTW, he is Sasha Baron-Cohens brother, who deals with anti-semitism in his movie ‘Borat’, in a way that shocked and awed me.
Oh, I love “Borat!” My son D turned me on to Borat!
I think you are right, One, that might have been written by someone high in P-traits for sure, the person didn’t seem to “get” what I i”got” from Baron-Cohen’s writing which I thought was brilliant actually. Very science based but also COMMON SENSE based as well (and the two are not always found together).
Actually I agree with the person who did the review to the extent that sociopaths SOMETIMES do have an ability to “read” people, but that does NOT equal “empathy” according to Baron-Cohen’s definition or to my definition either. Cohen’s definition and his theory that we turn our normal level of empathy on and off or dampen it down depending on circumstances, is not the same as the sociopath’s very low level of empathy or even total lack of empathy.
It answered a question that has been in my mind for a couple of years about the day that I told the “homeless” psychopath I had taken in (fell for her pity play) that she had to leaver. When I told her this she went into psychopathic-OVER-DRIVE and started crying and telling me how pitiful she was and how I had ABUSED her, destroyed her trust in people, ya da ya da, but I stood there totally without empathy for her plight—-I gave her $150 for gas for her vehicle and told her she must leave but NOTHING SHE SAID pierced my heart, and at the time it FELT SO STRANGE—-and I wondered afterward if that is how the psychopaths feel when we cry and beg them to stop hurting us. When we beg them to have compassion on us. That was the first time in my life I can remember feeling NO EMPATHY for someone who was “obviously” suffering and crying. I do believe she was “suffering” I do believe that when they are found out some of them feel GREAT PAIN at losing. But I had no empathy for her that day. Now I understand why, and I understand that I can turn my empathy on and off with my LOGICAL MIND and not let my “emotional” Hook over come my GOOD SENSE.
Just like I had no empathy for the poison snake I killed this summer as it slithered across my driveway. It was just looking for a place to hide and something to eat…..but living in the woods I don’t want any more poison snakes around than are already here, so I killed it without a second thought. If it had been a lost kitten hungry and looking for something to eat, I would have had empathy for it and would have picked it up. Knowing now that I can pick and choose who to extend empathy toward and that it is OKAY to limit my empathy —in reality I had been doing this just not realizing what I was doing—but not limiting my empathy ENOUGH….so now I have BOUNDARIES and am exercising my good sense along with the empathy.
oh i agree about the studying us to exploit us, and that this isn’t based in their ability to relate to our experience. they are just reading our behaviours. like we have learned and are learning to read theirs. there is just a whole lot more of us than them, so they get better at it, especially as they don’t get emotionally involved with our traits and behaviours. oh so easy for them. that said; they must have absolute shit lives.
I was looking at the book you recommended (figuring out if i wanted to buy the book or the CD, and the first pages draw heavily on the experience of concentration camp survivors. Both Baron Cohen brothers deal with the horrors of anti-semitism and what they mean to humanity and our capacity and lack of capacity for empathy, but through vastly different professions and mediums.
One/Joy, I was SO IMPRESSED with this book, and the man’s research into autism and other conditions in which there is little or no empathy…also that he takes the “empathy” study to the point that he shows how it is on the BELL CURVE and not an IS OR AIN’T situation. We all have empathy to one degree or another, from very low to very high, but most people are in the “center” of the Bell Curve,, and I hadn’t thought about empathy that way before. It answered a LOT of my own questions about my own empathy, or lack of it at times.
Oxy – looking at our own ability to turn our empathy on or off (and resetting the point at which we do!) is really important. We are in trouble with ourselves if all there is is ‘them and us’. I truly used to have empathy for everyone, to some degree or another. Before the spath.
I think the least emapthy I have had (and where i probably discovered my ‘switch’) was with my n sire’s father. he grabbed my breast during a ‘hug’ at an airport when i was 21 and I was DONE with him. When i got settled on the plane I was in shock at first, then i had a 1 minute conversation with myself that went like this: that didn’t just happen!?….yes, it did! DONE. I just never talked to him again. Huge rifts and problems in the family when i went to my gm funeral 5 years later and EVERYONE wanted to know why i wasn’t talking to him. Well, I told some of them to mind their own business (the ones who were going to ‘protect’ the old man) and my parents and sib I told a couple of months later. Major denial came down the pipe. My father has NEVER forgiven me for that, and I feel a lot of his shit around MY money is directly linked to the n injury HE suffered because i called out his father. stupid fucking men in my family. All of my male blood relatives are disordered or severely dysfunctional.
Now of course, i am on a journey to see what setting my toogle off switch is set to. I have to tell everyone – my Executive Director, who told me he is a ‘reformed N’ resigned this past week. My VP told me and my response was HALLELUJAH! She said she expected me to be a bit more demure in my response. Hell no! 🙂
I am going out to see my mom today – so will no doubt come back traumatized from n sire interaction and being in deep contact with the loss of what i know and cherish (my history and the property – i lived in this house for a few years when they were out of the country, so it was my ‘winter house’, and i deeply miss it. It’s not the farm i grew up on, but i have roots there, too. It has a great woods along a beautiful creek. I am still gimpy, so can’t go for a walk out there. i wish i could be out there to help mom with her beds – they are a mess, as the n is too fucking cheap to get her some help…..but anyway…) I am REALLY looking forward to seeing her. I bought her some little things – just some nice soap and a lovely ‘donnut peach and a tiny milk organic chocolate bar (she’s diabetic – so only 4 pieces of choco and one peach!), and a nice small mixed bouquet with asiatic lilies – oh shit they are white. I forgot that white lilies remind her of her dad’s funeral…hopefully there are enough other flowers (it’s just a bit bigger than a posie) for it to be okay.
I think I will buy the book on CD – then I can share it with other people more easily. I found his writing style to be quite conversational, which i like on tape, and not so much in writing.
best,
one joy
Okay: I am having a bad ‘moment’. I want to send it a text and tell it exactly what I think and that it should go straight to the very hell it came from…somebody going to talk to me?? Constantine? I am right on the verge of an outburst and just telling it everything all over again. What an ugly, vile, disgusting person I think it is. How it deserves to burn in hell for all of it’s ugliness and the rotten things it does to people without any consideration nor forethought. If I break NC it will be the first time in over 3 months. JUST SO I CAN SCREAM AND HOLLAR AT IT.
Anyone???
Any suggestions???
Quick???
Dupey
Duped – I have only a few minutes – but can you get someplace and YELL? also write at the stuff down you want to say to him and BURN IT or rip it up. It’s not about him, k? It’s about you – and what is filling you up to the point of boiling over.
Dear One/Joy,
I know it is hard but I hope you can center yourself on the visit with your mom and not let the N-sperm donor get inside your head. I know it is difficult, believe me I do….I made the mistake of inviting my son C to dinner when my husband’s grandkids came here for a visit. They are here so rarely and I really didn’t want to go into the entire “thing” with them….I gave in and invited him here and “pretended everything is lovely”—but it WAS NOT lovely.
Afterward, though when son C seemed to think “all is well” because I invited him to dinner with them, I sat him down and told him, VERY UP FRONT but not nasty, “I can NEVER trust you again” and proceeded to let him know that the BETRAYALS he had done in the past had precluded me having a relationship with him that was more than the two of us having to cooperate in order to fight our COMMON ENEMY. I’m sorry for that, I wish it was different, but it is what it IS.
Cousin was over today (the one who is egg donor’s POA) he was working at the rent house that used to be my son C’s that egg donor had rented to TRASH who had TRASHED the house. Son D took our tractor over with the front end loader to haul off heavy trash they had left. She has hired cousin to fix holes in the wall, and clean up the place…..I took photos of the place it looked like a garbage dump and the lawn hadn’t been mowed in two years or more and they had a yard broom/rake on top of the house for the red-neck version of a TV antenna. I sent her the photos to make sure she had seen the condition it was in and offered (since I am a trustee) to get the place cleaned up. That was a few months ago so she is doing it now, hiring cousin to do it. LOL I hope she is paying him well, it is a MESS with holes in the wall and doors.
I can’t let it upset me though, as I can only do what I can do….I keep the rest of the farm looking well and keep my renters on their toes, they got a bit slack about fixing fences etc and so I told them that they had six months to “make me happy” with how they took care of the place or move their stock….they have made me happy. If I get “unhappy” again about how they take care of the place I will just tell them to move their stock. They keep their place neat as a pin and I expect them to keep mine that way too. If I have to keep the fences up then I might as well not have them here. I sold my own rental houses a few years ago (thankfully before the RE market tanked!) because I got tired of renters messing up the place and continual work because people were lazy or dirty.
I do not doubt that you are right about your N sperm donor punishing you for the N-injury you did to his sire…but his apple didn’t fall far from that N-tree did it? I know it must hurt to have to have contact with him in order to see your mom, but as your mom’s mind goes further and further away she will become less and less aware of the physical distance between you. That is the GOOD part of dementia is that people forget the future or even the present and live in the past. I wish blessings of forgetfulness on your mother, and peace for you! (((hugs)))