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.
Dupey! DON’T DO IT!!!! Sing, chant, count, scream, but DO NOT text it! You will ONLY FEED ITS EGO IF YOU DO. STARVE it to death! NO ATTENTION! (((HUGS)))
DUPED:
HUH????? No way!!!!!!!!!!! Don’t do it!!
Dupey ~ NOOOOOOOOOOOOO you don’t really want to feed “IT”, do you? You’ve been doing so well on your NC. Sit here and type a long post. Let it all out, but DO NOT send a text to it.
Or do as One/Joy suggested. Write a long letter of everything you want to say & then TEAR IT UP, you could even have a little bonfire of it outside. Please don’t, under any circumstances contact “IT”. Love and Hugs to you!! h2h
Dupey,
Hope to Heal is right. Any communication just feeds it. Don’t feed the spaths. He WANTS your emotions. Your anger is proof that he can control you. When you tell him how vile he is, he loves to hear it.
My spath actually asked me to tell it what he had done to me. As if he didn’t know. But he wanted to hear me vocalize it and he wanted to hear the tone of outrage in my voice. And the hurt. I did not comply.
Instead I said, “You have done NOTHING to me, compared to what you have done to yourself.” He has chosen to live in hell and he wanted me to live there with him. Ain’t gonna happen. My perspective is so different from his, I could never become what he is.
Oxy,
thanks for another wonderful review. I haven’t read any of his books but I went ahead and googled his name. Plenty of interesting hits came up. He appears to be the lead researcher of autism in the UK. So that is his field and the focus of his research.
Without having read the book, it’s hard to judge, but I don’t think he gets spaths. There is a huge, huge difference between an unempathetic Asperger’s person and an unempathetic spath. That difference is that the spath is ADDICTED to emotions. But since he doesn’t seem to have any, he needs ours to “feel alive”. Hence his need to create pain and suffering. The spath has no empathy but he is an expert at manipulating ours. Whereas the Aspie would just as soon avoid people all together because of the emotional drama. They are both “control” freaks, in a sense. The Aspie really likes order and organization of his environment, and the spath just wants to control people.
Sometimes, I think the spath doesn’t lack emotions at all, but is just reacting 180 degrees the opposite of normal, to our emotions. For example, when we tell it we love it, the spath begins to really hate us. If we tell it we hate it, the spath is happy to see us angry. Everything is backward in the spath and I believe the root cause is envy, not lack of empathy. The other amazing thing about the spaths is how contagious their evil is. They love to spread it. They want us to feel it. It’s their primary mission. Truly, the spath is a person in a hell of their own making because he would rather rule in his own hell than serve in God’s heaven.
Dupey,
My good lady – everyone who said “NOOOOOOOOOOOO”! is entirely right. What you have to remember is that these “flare ups” will come and go for a long time, but you must NEVER ACT ON THEM! And it doesn’t matter if you are calling him “vile” and “disgusting” and “hideous” – not in the least: they crave negative attention as much as positive attention! (Maybe even more because they see it as an amusing “challenge,” whereas positive attention deprives them of much of the “thrill of the chase” element.)
Again, once you acknowledge ITS existence, IT will start salivating and rubbing ITS hands together, all while thinking “HAHAHAHAHAHA! – I KNEW she would never be able to forget ME!!!!!”
You don’t want to give him that satisfaction, do you?
Skylar, without reading the book, it is difficult for me to explain in only a few paragraphs, that YES HE DOES GET IT! Empathy is not a Yes or No proposition, there are degrees (which his research shows) and people with autism and aspergers may not have empathy but they also do not generally deliberately enjoy hurting others as he shows in his research. Their lack of empathy is not the same as a psychopaths, and he calls it Zero-Positive, where the psychopaths are Zero-negative to distinguish the two different ways of acting without empathy.
He doesn’t use the term but the “duping delight” is the psychopath’s version of zero empathy, and HE GETS THAT….I do think this book is AWESOME and his research is not just limited to autism spectrum, but into the origins of EVIL….the cruelty that is evident in the psychopaths because of their lack of empathy allows them to be cruel, whereas the person with normal empathy is unlikely to be cruel on a regular basis, or even to ignore suffering in others on a regular basis.
To whom it may concern: I somehow wounded up back at my abusive fathers home. I stayed with a woman over the summer who’s a close family friend and my dad persuaded her to drop me at his place. She said she was doing the “right” thing cause her childrens father is the same way and they all stay with their dad. She believes that I’m still a child even though I’m well over the legal adult age. My dad has been staging arguments in front of people to try and “expose” me as a disrespectful daughter. He thinks it’s my duty to pick up after him and clean up after him like a baby. I had planned to stay with the family friend but she feels she isn’t doing the right thing. I called my counselor and he spoke to housing on campus and I’m now allowed to get on campus early. The woman originally agreed to take me to school but she feels that she would be doing wrong if she proceeds to help me. So I looked on the website to see if anybody was going to school early as well. My dad acts and pretends that something is wrong in front of people. Then people try to give us advice. It’s so annoying. He yelled at me this morning because I hadnt clean his room or help put on his socks. I just wanna know what strategies to help ease this sociopath of a father.
Dear Hurtnomore,
I am glad to see that you are going back to college this summer/fall.
In order to be INDEPENDENT and not to have to depend on others (your family “friend”) or your father, you must be financially independent, and get away from him and STAY AWAY from him. That may also mean that you do not associate with others (the “friend”) who in their misguided idea of “helping” the situation actually aid and abet him.
I suggest that you start now to find another place for next summer to stay that is maybe an internship or some way that you do not have to go to your father or anyone else for a roof over your head.
I know your culture is a hinderence to your independence, but only YOU can decide for yourself what you will allow your father to do or not to do. You are an “adult” legally and you must take responsibility for protecting yourself from ANYONE who abuses you verbally or physically, but in order to do this, you must become financially independent. It was a good move to call your school and get them to allow you to return early to get away from him. You may have to hire a taxi or bus to get back to school if no one can or will drive you, but that is part of being independent and making your own decisions and arrangements.
Good luck, sweetie and congratulations on finishing your first year at college. (((hugs)))
OxDrover- the funny thing is I had plans this summer to work at a girl scout camp but I had to get an immediate eye surgery. I was so upset cause I had to be stationery most of the summer. I had it all planned out and everything. It just ruined my summer and I had to stay with the woman’s family until my dad manipulated her into letting me come back here. All my things are still where she lives and i want to get up there soon. I’m sitting here getting a lecture on “obedience”. Its not registering. But I’m happy to hear your encouragement. I really need it.