Mind Reading_ Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen on Empathy and the Science of Evil _ TIME Health Land

8/4/2019 Mind Reading_ Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen on Empathy and the Science of Evil _ TIME Health Land

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By MAIA SZALAVITZ Monday, May 30, 2011

Cambridge psychology professor and leading autism expert Simon Baron-Cohen is best known for studying the

theory that a key problem in autistic disorders is "mind blindness," difficulty understanding the thoughts, feelings

and intentions of others. He's also known for positing the "extreme male brain" concept of autism, which suggests

that exposure to high levels of testosterone in the womb can cause the brain to focus on systematic knowledge and

patterns more than on emotions and connection with others. (Oh, and yes, he's also the cousin of British comedian

Sacha "Borat" Baron Cohen.)

Baron-Cohen's new book, The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty , examines the role of

empathy, the ability to understand and care about the emotions of others, not only in autism but in conditions like

psychopathy in which lack of care for others leads to antisocial and destructive behavior.

What do you mean when you write about "zero negative" empathy?

Zero empathy refers to people at the extremely low end of the scale. They tend to be people with personality

disorders, particularly antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). I focus quite a lot on psychopathy [the extreme form of

ASPD] and also on two other personality disorders, borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality

disorder.

The 'negative' is meant to be shorthand for this being negative for the individual but also for the people around them.

It's meant to contrast with what I call 'zero positive' empathy, which effectively describes the autistic spectrum.

[Autistic people] struggle with empathy just like zero negatives but it seems to be for very different reasons. I'm

arguing that their low empathy is a result of a particular cognitive style, which is attentive to details and patterns orrules, which in shorthand, I call systemizing.

If we think about the autism spectrum as involving a very strong drive to systemize, that can have very positive

consequences for the individual and for society. The downside is that when you try to systemize certain parts of the

world like people and emotions, those sorts of phenomena are less lawful and harder to systemize. That can lead to

having low empathy, almost like a byproduct of strong systemizing.

How do you account for people who are both highly empathetic and highly systematic, such as

some of those with Asperger's who are actually oversensitive to the emotions of others?

I've certainly come across subgroups like that. There are people with Asperger's whom I've met who certainly would

be very upset to learn they'd hurt another person's feelings. They often have very strong moral consciences and moral

codes. They care about not hurting people. They may not always be aware [that they've said something rude or

hurtful], but if it's pointed out, they would want to do something about it.

The other side of their moral sense is that they often have a strong sense of justice or fairness. They may have arrived

at it through looking for logical patterns rather than necessarily because they can easily identify with someone,

however.

People often think that autistic people are dangerous, like psychopaths, when they hear this idea

that they have "no empathy."

In a way, that was one of my motivations for writing the book. Low empathy is a characteristic of many differentconditions or disorders. Often books are written where they either focus on psychopathy or autism but [not both].

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We have to look at them side by side, and when we do that, we see that they are very different and it's important to

bring that out.

Is it the case, then, that autistic people are not good at the "mind reading" part of empathy, in

terms of predicting people's behavior and feelings, while psychopaths are able to do that but are

not able to care?

I think the contrast between these two conditions provides some evidence for that dissociation within empathy.

People with psychopathy are very good at reading the minds of their victims. That's probably most clearly seen indeception. You have to be good at mind reading before it would even occur to you want [to deceive someone]. So you

can see the cognitive part of empathy as functioning very well, but the fact that they don't have the appropriate

emotional response to someone else's state of mind, the feeling of wanting to alleviate distress if someone's in pain,

[that suggests that] the affective part of empathy is not functioning normally.

What stunts the development of empathy in personality disorders?

In the book, I explore both early environmental factors and biological and genetic factors. I think it's particularly

clear in borderline personality disorder (BPD) that there's a strong association between early environmental

deprivation and neglect and abuse and later outcome of BPD. There's an association [with abuse and trauma early in

life] in psychopathy, but it's not strong as in BPD.

What defines borderline personality disorder?

There seems to be quite a lot of difficulty in self-regulation, in the regulation of their own emotional state. A lot of

people with BPD also have depression. Many are suicidal. Many have had a history of feeling attacked or uncared for'

they are almost hypersensitive to possible threats from others.

They react almost with a hair trigger if they perceive they are being attacked, they go on the attack. People with

BPD can be so preoccupied by their own sense of not being cared for and not being understood that they can become

blind to the impact of their own behavior on others.

So how would you address increasing empathy in these conditions?

There are interesting and imaginative new approaches to treatment for empathy. Some are medications like oxytocin.

Some are psychological treatments like Peter Fonagy's work on mentalization therapy. I haven't ever watched it done

but the idea is to encourage the patient to stop and think about others' thoughts and feelings. It's particularly useful

for BPD. When someone with that condition is mostly focusing on themselves, the therapist prompts them to take

other people's perspectives. And just through repetition and practice, people get better and better.

I don't see how that would work with psychopaths.

People are doing some clinical approaches with psychopaths too, like getting them to meet their victims. That's

obviously got lots of traumatic risk attached to it [for the victim], but again, it's an exercise in perspective-taking.

I think if we take seriously the idea that behavior is the result of the brain that having low empathy [is] the result

of the way the empathy circuit is functioning or has developed it does raise moral questions. When someone is

acting with low empathy, why do we judge them as bad and punish them? It does shift the locus of where [they

should be treated] philosophically, from the criminal justice system to health care.

Don't you think there are people who are actually evil, who know what they're doing is wrong and

harmful but choose to do it anyway?

I argue in the book that I don't find the term evilvery useful. Once you are down at zero degrees of empathy, all kinds

of behavior become possible. I don't find it scientifically useful to use that term. Empathy is a scientific term in a way

that evil isn't. You can try to localize it in the brain; you can look for which part of brain is activated. It's normative

behavior. Evil is kind of the opposite of good, I guess, but empathy, as we were talking earlier, is quantifiable and


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normal. You can measure it and look for it, whereas you don't see evil in the brain.

It's argued that humans were able to evolve cooperation and altruism only by having a way to

detect and punish those who didn't cooperate.

I could see an evolutionary benefit for both empathy and lack of empathy too. Low empathy allows you to act

selfishly, which could be in your interest, but high empathy fosters social cohesion and it's good for the individual to

end up as part of a social network.

I speculate that maybe most people end up in the middle, which may be the optimal position. It's good to have some

empathy, so at the very least you avoid offending or inadvertently hurting someone, but too much empathy might

mean never completing your own projects.

How does your cousin Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of Borat, rate on empathy? His work can really

make you cringe, but he must be excellent at mind reading to do it.

First of all, he and I have a family agreement that we don't talk about each other. I respect his work. I think that

sometimes that kind of comedy can create what you called a "cringe reaction," cringing with embarrassment, but that

has a purpose.

Why does empathy seem especially lacking in the teen years?

It's kind of interesting that parents comment on adolescence as being a low point in empathy. But there's still quite a

lot of maturation going on in the part of the brain that involves empathy during that period. There could also be

hormonal factors, particularly in males with the increase in testosterone. That could change empathy levels.

I'm struck that if you look at the "terrible two's," kids who have tantrums when they don't get their way, and teens, at

one level it looks like very little development has gone on. There's a transition at around age four to becoming able to

apprehend that others have different perspectives. You would imagine that empathy would almost reach a peak in

early childhood, but it seems to have a long protracted development.

It seems to me that the terrible twos and adolescence are both the most intense periods of brain

development. Could that be why empathy is impaired then?

That's really interesting. I think brain maturation is one thing and also just the experience of relationships. I think

that empathy has to have an environment in which to work, and that environment is relationships. Making mistakes

in relationships is all part of learning to empathize.

There was an interesting study I was part of. Women who took extra testosterone were given the 'reading the mind in

eyes test.' [The test measures how well people can read others' emotions by looking at their eyes.] A dose of

testosterone lowered scores on this test. It was one of the first demonstrations that changing testosterone levels

affects your empathy.

If you're taking an evolutionary approach, it might be very adaptive if you have to use aggression for self-defense.

You'd be more effective if you didn't have empathy getting in the way.

A U.S. doctor tried to treat autism by lowering testosterone levels, citing your work as justification,

although he actually didn't get the research right. He justlost his license because he was using a

"chemical castration" drug on kids to do this.

We haven't considering [lowering testosterone] as a treatment to study for autism. I'm not comfortable with it

ethically in terms of side effects. They misquoted [our research], and cited it as evidence that there was elevated

testosterone in autism when, in fact, we haven't shown that. They presented it as if we're endorsing it, which I'm

certainly not.

See more of Healthland's "Mind Reading" series.

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Mind Reading_ Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen on Empathy and the Science of Evil _ TIME Health Land