快猫短视频

The autism researcher explains why labelling people 鈥渆vil鈥� is unhelpful 鈥� and argues for a more objective measure of people鈥檚 capacity for cruelty

What got you interested in the idea of understanding evil and cruelty?
As a child growing up in a Jewish family, my father told me that the Nazis had turned Jews into lampshades, and about what had happened to the mother of one of his former girlfriends. When my father met Mrs Goldblatt he was shocked to see that her hands were reversed. The Nazis had severed her hands and reattached them so that if she put her hands out palm down, her thumbs were on the outside and her little fingers on the inside. So for someone who is Jewish, there is a major puzzle as to how the Holocaust happened, and how in Nazi Germany it could ever have been acceptable to turn people into objects.

Do you think you have any new clues?
My latest theory is all to do with empathy 鈥� something I have effectively been studying for years through my research into psychiatric conditions such as autism and Asperger鈥檚 syndrome. In my new book, Zero Degrees of Empathy, I wanted to address the question, does low empathy necessarily lead to acts of cruelty? My main goal is to understand human cruelty, replacing the term 鈥渆vil鈥� with the more scientific one of 鈥渓ack of empathy鈥�.

What exactly do you mean by empathy?
I see empathy as an umbrella term. I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 a single process; it covers a multitude of components. At the very least, you can break it down into cognitive empathy and affective empathy: the cognitive bit deals with understanding other people鈥檚 states of mind, and the affective component is your emotional reaction to somebody else鈥檚 state of mind. I think that empathy covers a spectrum, like a bell curve of individual differences, and we can look at how it correlates with brain activity. There is a consensus in neuroscience that it is not the whole brain that is involved but at least 10 interconnected regions, forming what I call an 鈥渆mpathy circuit鈥�.

鈥淚 think empathy is on a spectrum, like a bell curve of individual differences鈥�

Why do you think we should talk of a total lack of empathy rather than evil?
I want people not to be satisfied with the term evil. When we look at examples of people doing horrible things to others, we need to go beyond accounts like 鈥渉e did it because he was evil鈥� and look instead at behaviour as an expression of individual differences in empathy. Empathy is more explanatory, not just because you can trace it to particular brain regions, but because you can look at what influences how much empathy a person has, so it鈥檚 measurable in a way that evil isn鈥檛.

You can also look at what modulates brain activity in the empathy circuit and identify the risk factors that influence whether someone might have more or less activity in those regions 鈥� either environmental risk factors or genetic ones. Using empathy takes things out of the religious framework and puts them squarely in a scientific one.

Yet the US edition of your book is called The Science of Evil?
That was the American publishers鈥� choice, and it will be interesting to see what the reaction is. On the one hand, Americans seem to be more wedded to the use of the word evil than people in the UK, but on the other hand, once they open the cover of the book, they will see that I鈥檓 arguing it鈥檚 time to drop that word. There might be some value in challenging them.

In the book, you relabel some old psychiatric conditions as 鈥渮ero positives鈥� and 鈥渮ero negatives鈥�. What do these labels mean?
People who are at zero degrees of empathy score very low on different tests of empathy, and without intervention, that tends to be where they stay. The psychiatric categories I call 鈥渮ero negatives鈥� have absolutely nothing to recommend them 鈥� hence the name. There are at least three well-defined routes to this end-point: the person with borderline personality disorder, the narcissist, and the psychopath. But the label is not necessarily fixed in the sense that these conditions are untreatable: people with borderline personality disorder, for example, can respond to psychological interventions.

What about those you label as zero positives?
I call people with autism zero positive. In their case, although they have very low empathy it is often accompanied by areas of strength or talent. And, crucially, there is a lack of intent to cause harm to another human or animal. So I wouldn鈥檛 want to say that, for example, a child with autism who punches another child to stop them from screaming was being cruel 鈥� the child was simply trying to bring about a different environmental outcome.

Is this new way of thinking about empathy challenging us intellectually and societally?
I think so. I鈥檓 expecting some reaction to a number of things. Take genes. In the book, I talk about how we have been testing genes associated with empathy, and I imagine some readers might misrepresent my position as saying that empathy is all down to genes, it鈥檚 all biology. I study genes and hormones, particularly testosterone in the womb, but I also emphasise that the environment is just as important as some of the biological factors. I spell out that I鈥檓 not advocating an extreme form of biological determinism, but it may not stop people from misreading the thesis. This may say more about how we like to read these things, to have it in rather stale black-and-white terms. And the science is saying that there are gene-environment interactions, and that鈥檚 a messier story.

How do we raise empathic children?
The aim is to produce children who trust that the world is a safe place, not children who grow up unable to trust adults because they have been beaten or because there is no predictability about when they are next going to see their parent. Those children who experience lack of safety and lack of routine in their early environment are the ones who may end up with life-long issues around trust in relationships, and an inability to get close to other people. Some of them will end up zero negative, damaged and potentially dangerous.

There has been much research into how easy it is to manipulate humans. Where does that leave empathy 鈥� does it make it a fragile thing?
I think it is very fragile. There are situational factors that can affect whether your empathy is reduced. For example, you can describe the other group as the enemy and that changes the way you treat them. One of the benefits of British people now thinking of themselves as Europeans is that rather than seeing group divisions we see commonalities. So changes in beliefs can affect empathy, and they are reversible. A genetic predisposition to low empathy, however, is much harder to reverse.

If you had a society where there were many highly empathic people, would it be tricky for the gear to be thrown in the other direction?
If an individual starts off low in empathy, it might not take much to push them even lower. But if you start off with high levels of empathy, even if your society is sanctioning certain kinds of behaviour, it might mean you are less prone to committing acts of cruelty.

Yet you cite horror stories of the Austrian paedophile Josef Fritzl, of a Kenyan woman mutilated for her wedding ring, of Armenians 鈥渆thnically cleansed鈥� in Turkey. Why?
These are global examples of what I call 鈥渆mpathy erosion鈥�. I include them in the book to help eliminate one absurd view, namely that the Nazis were uniquely cruel. They weren鈥檛. We need reminding of that.