Psychopathic Criminals Have "Empathy Switch"

dryriver writes "Psychopaths do not lack empathy, rather they can switch it on at will, according to new research. Placed in a brain scanner, psychopathic criminals watched videos of one person hurting another and were asked to empathise with the individual in pain. Only when asked to imagine how the pain receiver felt did the area of the brain related to pain light up. Scientists, reporting in Brain, say their research explains how psychopaths can be both callous and charming. The team proposes that with the right training, it could be possible to help psychopaths activate their 'empathy switch', which could bring them a step closer to rehabilitation. Criminals with psychopathy characteristically show a reduced ability to empathise with others, including their victims. Evidence suggests they are also more likely to reoffend upon release than criminals without the psychiatric condition."

Comments

Re:With the right training, huh?

[Immerman]

Isn't the whole point the fact that they can turn off empathy/have it off as a default state? Without empathy what would be the point of horrific imagery other than discouraging them from turning it on, and maybe give them a thrill if they get off on violence?

It seems to me the whole idea of "rehabilitation" here is shaky at best - as a general rule our society rewards psychopathy quite readily with power, wealth, and sex. So what's in it for the self-interested psychopath you want to rehabilitate? It may be that they can learn to "turn on" the switch for sustained periods to get themselves cleared as rehabilitated, but unless the switch were somehow magically locked in place why wouldn't they just "turn it off" again once they were free?

Interesting

[bigsexyjoe]

Robert Hare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Hare is an expert in psychopaths. He said that was asked to work on therapies for psychopaths to get them to rehabilitate. He said he wanted to develop a program that appeals to their self-interest to not engage in criminal or bad behavior. If they do have an "empathy switch" that would be a good thing. You would have to convince the psychopath that it is in their best interest to leave it on.

Re:Would this training work...

[Digital Vomit]

For example: Tax the rich 90%. That sounds good to me, it should solve a lot of problems... However... if these people are taxed too much they will move to more tax friendly areas, move jobs out of the area, and in general make things worse in the long run.

Funny...that's exactly what happened after we reduced the tax burden from the rich down from 90%.

I was going to say you sound like you've fallen for some propaganda, but then you said the following and now I don't think you know what you're talking about at all:

Trickle down doesn't work when you give the rich more money. But it does work if you take it away from them.

Trickle-down economic policies don't work, but they do work when you don't implement them???

Re:why?

[Digital Vomit]

Because that sort of behavior has evolutionary advantages for the species.

slashdot, fix yer damned scripts

[anyaristow]

Way OT but I'm really sick of this...

A script on the fsdn domain is causing command-click on links to load both the new tab and the original tab with the destination URL. Both firefox and safari.