Zero Degrees of Empathy

This is a review of a book titled'Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory ofhuman cruelty'.

It informs us on currentunderstanding on the subject of empathy which is naturally clouded with uncertainty.

I also think non empathic relationshipsevolve and progress to absurdity, when unchecked by natural social norms.  The individuals can become blinded to theirown behavior. 

I want you to think aboutsomething.  The entire culture ofprecontact Amazonia accepted cannibalism as anongoing way of life and this was readily supported because the fecundity of theland made eliminating individuals an option. This meant that if you were captured, you accepted you fate as dinner.  You also accepted that it was fine to executea victim who up to the moment of death had the free run of the village.  The only empathy shown in a report I readcame in not allowing the victim to see it coming.

Now apply the ideas in thisreview.

Why a lack of empathy is the root of all evil

From casual violence to genocide, acts of cruelty can be traced back tohow the perpetrator identifies with other people, argues psychologist SimonBaron-Cohen. Is he right?

By Clint Witchalls

AFP/GETTY

The Rwandagenocide: should evil on this scale be blamed on psycopaths or on theperpetrators' beliefs?

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/why-a-lack-of-empathy-is-the-root-of-all-evil-2262371.html

Lucy Adeniji – an evangelical Christian and author of two books onchildcare – trafficked two girls and a 21-year-old woman from Nigeria to work as slaves in her east London home. She made themtoil for 21 hours a day and tortured them if they displeased her. The youngestgirl was 11 years old.

Sentencing her to 11-and-a-half years in prison last month, Judge SimonOliver said: "You are an evil woman. I have no doubt you have ruined thesetwo girls' lives. They will suffer from the consequences of the behaviour youmeted out to them for the rest of their lives."

Most people would probably agree with Judge Oliver's description ofAdeniji as evil, but Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmentalpsychopathology at the University of Cambridge, would notbe one of them. In his latest book, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory ofhuman cruelty, Baron-Cohen, argues that the term evil is unscientific andunhelpful. "Sometimes the term evil is used as a way to stop aninquiry," Baron-Cohen tells me. "'This person did it because they'reevil' – as if that were an explanation."

Human cruelty has fascinated and puzzled Baron-Cohen since childhood.When he was seven years old, his father told him the Nazis had turned Jews intolampshades and soap. He also recounted the story of a woman he met who had herhands severed by Nazi doctors and sewn on opposite arms so the thumbs facedoutwards. These images stuck in Simon's mind. He couldn't understand how onehuman could treat another with such cruelty. The explanation that the Naziswere simply evil didn't satisfy him. For Baron-Cohen, science provides a moresatisfactory explanation for evil and that explanation is empathy – or rather,lack of empathy.

"Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinkingor feeling, and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriateemotion," writes Baron-Cohen. People who lack empathy see others as mereobjects.

Empathy, like height, is a continuous variable, but for convenience,Baron-Cohen splits the continuum into six degrees – seven if you count zeroempathy. Answering the empathy quotient (EQ) questionnaire, developed byBaron-Cohen and colleagues, will put you somewhere on the empathy bell curve.People with zero degrees of empathy will be at one end of the bell curve andthose with six degrees of empathy at the other end.

Baron-Cohen provides vignettes of what a typical person with x-degreesof empathy would be like. We're told, for example, that a person with level twoempathy (quite low) "blunders through life, saying all the wrong things(eg, 'You've put on weight!') or doing the wrong things (eg, invading anotherperson's 'personal space')."

Being at the far ends of the bell curve (extremely high or extremelylow empathy scores) is not necessarily pathological. It is possible to havezero degrees of empathy and not be a murderer, torturer or rapist, althoughyou're unlikely to be any of these things if you are at the other end of theempathy spectrum – level six empathy.

"You could imagine someone who has low empathy yet somehow carvesout a lifestyle for themselves where it doesn't impact on other people and itdoesn't interfere with their everyday life," says Baron-Cohen.

"Let's take someone who's very gifted at physics and they'refocused on doing physics. They might not be interacting very much with otherpeople but they are interacting with the world of objects. They might have lowempathy but it's not interfering. In that respect it's not pathological andthey don't need a diagnosis. They have found a perfect fit between their mindand the lifestyle that they have."

Baron-Cohen doesn't see very high empathy as potentially debilitating.He sees someone with level six empathy as possessing a "natural intuitionin tuning into how other are feeling".

I was intrigued to read a different account of empathy overdrive. In arecent newspaper article, Fiona Torrance described the hell of hyper- empathy.She has a rare condition known as mirror-touch synaesthesia. She first becameaware of it aged six when she saw butcher birds hanging mice on a wire fence."I felt the tug on my neck and spine; it was as if I was beinghanged," Torrancerecalled.

Empathy excess, however, is much rarer than empathy deficit. And whilepeople with empathy excess suffer alone, those with empathy deficits causeothers to suffer. Or at least some of them do.

At zero degrees of empathy are two distinct groups. Baron-Cohen callsthem zero-negative and zero-positive. Zero-positives include people with autismor Asperger's syndrome.They have zero empathy but their "systemising" nature means they aredrawn to patterns, regularity and consistency. As a result, they are likely tofollow rules and regulations – the patterns of civic life.

Zero-negatives are the pathological group. These are people withborderline personalitydisorder, antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personalitydisorder. They are capable of inflicting physical and psychological harm onothers and are unmoved by the plight of those they hurt. Baron-Cohen sayspeople with these conditions all have one thing in common: zero empathy.

The question is: did people with these personality disorders lose theirempathy or were they born that way?

One of Baron-Cohen's longitudinal studies – which began 10 years a –found that the more testosterone a foetus generates in the womb, the lessempathy the child will have post- natally. In other words, there is a negativecorrelation between testosterone and empathy. It would appear the sex hormoneis somehow involved in shaping the "empathy circuits" of thedeveloping brain.

Given that testosterone is found in higher quantities in men thanwomen, it may come as no surprise that men score lower on empathy than women.So there is a clear hormonal link to empathy. Another biological factor isgenetics. Recent research by Baron-Cohen and colleagues found four genesassociated with empathy – one sex steroid gene, one gene related tosocial-emotional behaviour and two associated with neural growth.

Does that mean, in the future, we will have gene-therapy to correct forlow empathy?

"I'd be very concerned about those sorts of directions,"Baron-Cohen says. "I mean, they are at least plausible from a sciencepoint of view, but whether they're desirable from a societal point of view isanother matter. I would probably put more emphasis on early interventions –environmental interventions. I think empathy could be taught in schools forexample."

The other side of the empathy coin is environment. John Bowlby, theBritish psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who developed "attachmenttheory", was the first to point out the lifelong impact of early neglectand abuse. "We think children are very robust, they'll somehow adapt,"says Baron-Cohen, "but Bowlby showed that children who had what he calledinsecure attachment – a lack of opportunity to form a strong bond with acaregiver – are more at risk of delinquency and they're more at risk from arange of personality disorders, which I translate into a lack of empathybecause many of the personality disorders, like the psychopath, or people with borderline personality disorder arejust operating on a totally self- centred mode. Early attachment is one bigrisk factor for low empathy."\

With functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)scanners, it is possible to look at the effect hormones, genes and theenvironment have on the brain. In his book, Baron-Cohen identifies teninterconnected brain regions that are part of what he calls the "empathycircuit". People who score low on the empathy questionnaire show lessneural activity in these brain regions.

Science is beginning to unravel the mystery of why some people haveless empathy than others and the implications are potentially far reaching, notleast for the criminal justice system. "The hallmark of a compassionateand civilised society is that we try to understand other people's actions, wedon't try to simply condemn them," says Baron-Cohen.

"There is even a question about whether a person that commits anawful crime should be in a prison as opposed to a hospital."

But if someone endures a neglectful upbringing and they subsequentlygrow up to be a violent criminal, should they be absolved of any wrong doingbecause an fMRI scanner reveals low neural activity in their inferior frontalgyrus? "When people do commit crimes there may be determinants to theirbehaviour which are outside their control," says Baron-Cohen. "No oneis responsible for their own genes."

Indeed, but we are all capable of making moral choices. Making theright choice may be more difficult for people with compromised empathycircuits, but the choice still exists.

Baron-Cohen wants to move the debate on the causes of evil "out ofthe realm of religion and into the realm of science", but I wonder if heis going beyond science and into other domains such as moral philosophy andjurisprudence.

"I don't see that we have to keep them apart," he says."What I'm hoping is that the book will be seen as: how can science informmoral debates. It might even have relevance for politics and politicians, thatwhen we try and resolve conflict, whether it's domestic conflict orinternational conflict, issues about empathy might actually be useful. Thealternative is that science just does science and doesn't engage with moralissues or the real world. I think that would be a backward step."

If you consider the big atrocities in history – the ones we think of asevil – the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, the slave trade, communistpurges, Rwandan genocide, apartheid, etc, it took the support of the masses tomake them happen. Can we blame evil on this scale on psychopaths (who compriseless than one per cent of the population) and narcissists (also less than oneper cent of the population)?

Surely beliefs are a much bigger cause of evil than biology orupbringing? Negative memes are spread by the church or state about the outgroupuntil they become thoroughly dehumanised. And the thing to restore humanity tothe outgroup is not drugs and therapy but re-humanising narratives.

"Whatever your causes of loss of empathy, it's the very sameempathy circuit that would be involved when you show empathy or fail to showempathy," says Baron-Cohen.

He argues that our beliefs can have an impact on the empathy circuit.Our level of empathy isn't necessarily fixed for all situations and rightacross our lives. It can fluctuate, depending on the situation. When people aretired or stressed they may show less empathy than when they're calm and rested.Baron-Cohen wants to differentiate transient changes to empathy, where empathycan be restored, versus more permanent changes.

"If for genetic reasons, for example, you have low empathy, itmight be much harder to restore it but I remain optimistic even in thosesituations that there are therapeutic or educational methods that could betried to improve anybody's empathy," he says.

So far, science has made little progress in treating empathy deficits.Psychopaths, for example, are notoriously untreatable as are children whopresent with callousness/unemotional (CU) trait. And trying to improve theempathy of sex offenders is one of the least effective interventions, accordingto Tom Fahy, professor of forensic mentalhealth atthe Institute of Psychiatry.

As someone who works with violent criminals, I wanted to know if Fahythinks zero empathy is a good explanation for cruelty. "It may be one ofthe ingredients," he says, "but it's not usually an entirelysatisfactory explanation for cruelty or acts of serious violence."

Narrowing the focus down to empathy when trying to prevent repeatbehaviour is not a very effective approach, in Fahy's view. "It'sdifficult enough, anyway, to reduce offending behaviour through complexpsychological interventions," says Fahy, "but to put all your eggs inone basket is undoubtedly a mistake."

Although zero degrees of empathy is necessary for someone to do evil,it is not sufficient to explain it. As Fahy says, there is usually a"complex tree of experiences" that leads to a violent or cruel act.Also, not everyone who has zero empathy will commit evil acts – Baron-Cohendevotes an entire chapter to extricate himself from this dilemma. Zero degreesof empathy requires too many qualifications to make it a satisfactoryexplanation for evil. And trying to boost empathy using therapy and othernon-drug interventions doesn't appear to have much effect.

I wholly agree with Judge Oliver's description of Lucy Adeniji as evil.That doesn't mean I want to shut the conversation down. I think it's importantto know – from a biological, psychological and societal point of view – howsomeone like Adeniji came to be cruel and uncaring, but I also think it'simportant to condemn her actions. I don't see the two things as being mutuallyexclusive.

I agree with Baron-Cohen that we shouldn't use evil as an explanation forwhy people do bad things, and finding ways to improve empathy, can't be a badthing. But, for me, replacing the idea of evil with the idea ofempathy-starvation is a simplification too far.

'Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty' is publishedby Allen Laneon 7 April (£20). To order a copy for the special price of £18 (free P&P)call Independent Books Direct on 08430 600 030, or visit www.independentbooksdirect.co.uk