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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."
How about we hold their eyes open and force them to watch horrific, violent videos, preferably multiple at a time.
Where have we seen this before...
...for politicians?
kind and good normal people have been known to turn it off under certain conditions, too fight or defend against that which they believe "evil"
maybe studying that reaction could help with the psychopath problem
Puts a new perspective on Dexter's character, I guess.
How would you know if they have been rehabilitated? If they can control it at will then they can just turn it on in the sessions. When they are out of prison they can go back to living how they want.
Why would anyone ever voluntarily suffer on behalf of another?
Stimulate the area artificially and see what happens.
...how soldiers can kill people without remorse and then still be good dads
Is being a "psychopath" really just an old term that means "sociopath" and is apparently 1 in 200 men? -often ruthless and in leadership positions?
Trailing thought, are internet trolls like this?
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
the average politician would show... would the group of people called "politicians" show up as psycopaths?
How about the personnel of the NSA?
Police SWAT members?
Police in general?
He even said so himself, he could be perfectly normal one moment, which is why he could be so charming and personable, but then he could go hard killer with ease, to the point where he believed his whole identity changed. Even smells were different to him. I wonder if it was engaging a brain switch on his part?
But why would they want to? It's far more advantageous for them to continue pretending they care about others.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It turns on the electric chair.
I first read this as "It turns on the electric car ." ... I thought "This must be the most bizarre thread derailing to environmental feel-goodism I've ever seen." Then I remembered this is Slashdot.
Dark Reflection
Perhaps offer affordable mental heathcare to people?
I've read before that people who seem without empathy, sometimes are actually naturally very highly empathetic - they have just learned to turn it off as a defence mechanism.
I've wondered that about myself sometimes. Sometimes I let myself get absurdly upset over things that hurt people (or animals) that I don't even know. Sometimes even just from pain that fictional characters are experiencing. But sometimes I ust get burned out and don't care any more.
which is totally what she said
There is no known treatment for Psychopathy. It may not even be a mental illness. It not something that can be fixed by throwing doctors at it.
It's actually very normal for humans to turn off empathy as needed and desired. Much of social conditioning is used to do this, either by design or due to environmental pressures.
"Othering", the enemy, homeless, other races, gangs, neighborhoods, city-states, etc. etc. etc. lepers, sick people in general (although there is also a built-in revulsion for physical deformity.)
The thing with psychopaths, born or bred, is that their empathy switch is very strongly set to "off", for the average person the switch is somewhere between on and in-between.
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.
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It's funny that the slant here is about rehabilitation. It seems to show how they can fool those doing the rehabilitation long enough to get back out in the world to screw it up some more.
Hmm, that's really interesting. So they're not without the ability to feel empathy, they just have to work at it...
I'm the converse (possibly because of surviving some pretty sick emotional abuse in childhood, I don't know, whatever, it is what is). Anyway my default is highly empathetic, but I can, if I try, turn that off. It's not just suppressing the experience of another's pain, it is literally a disconnect where I no longer feel it at all, and in my experience it does actually feel like flipping a switch. It comes in very handy in 3 situations: emergencies, where it allows me to focus on rational decision making; when I realize that someone is trying to take advantage of me, where putting aside their feelings helps me focus on "escape"; and, finally, comforting someone in distress.
Yeah, you might find that last one very counter-intuitive. But empathy is not perfect, it's a mix of literally feeling someone else's pain based on facial expressions and so on (how we develop "theory of mind" is fascinating stuff, BTW), and the overlay of our own reaction to our own experience of such pain. In other words, it is always and necessarily contaminated by how we would feel. The ability to feel that, then turn it off and use my mind to really listen to what the other person is saying without distraction from how I would feel about the situation, helps to respond to the other person's feelings rather than my own.
I know this was a bit of a ramble, but the ability to experience empathy is not simply on-or-off, where each person either can or cannot.
Well, like shocking a kid with a cattle prod, who keeps slapping himself, it works. It's just considered unethical. At least they poked fun at both sides in A Clockwork Orange, unlike Cukoo's Nest.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
They "cured" the murderous criminal guy with the defective empathy switch in his brain...
This is really going to put a damper on all that 'science' going on in Dexter.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Data: Captain, I believe I am feeling... anxiety. It is an intriguing sensation. A most distracting...
Picard: Data, I'm sure it's a fascinating experience, but perhaps you should deactivate your emotion chip for now.
Data: Good idea, sir.
[beep]
Data: Done.
Picard: Data, there are times that I envy you.
Ezekiel 23:20
We are the causes of our own suffering
THINK ABOUT
YOUR LIFE
A lot of occupations require a suspension of empathy. I would be interested to see if "non-psychopaths" have a similar "empathy switch" ability regarding tasks associated with their daily occupation.
Is there a reasonably reliable medical test that can determine whether or not someone is a psychopath? Maybe a fMRI or something like that? While it would be nice if we could somehow cure sociopaths, I think just identifying them would be a good start. Maybe we could even prohibit them from running for public office or holding executive positions in publicly traded corporations...
20 year old woman gets knifed on the street - we all feel bad for her.
20 year old woman convicted of torturing her kids gets knifed a few weeks into her lifetime prison sentence - many of us think "good, she got what she deserved."
The take-away is that some, perhaps most, psychopaths can be rehabilitated AND some, perhaps most, non-psychopaths can, through brainwashing, Stockholm syndrome, or just being in the wrong environment (e.g. being a prison guard or soldier in a despotic regime) see their empathy for others in certain situations erode to the point that they will do unspeakable things without feeling guilty about it.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I looked over the article and abstract, and note that they compared criminal psychopaths with non-criminal non-psychopaths.
The study seems to equate psychopathy with criminality; ie - they didn't compare non-criminal psychopaths with non-criminal normals, nor did they compare criminal-psychopaths with criminal-normal.
I strongly believe that psychopathy by itself is not a problem; only the immorality, and then only when the immorality leads to actions that hurt others. Psychopaths could learn and practice ethics through upbringing and/or training and would have few issues with society. Studies show that many corporate leaders score high on "psychopathic" behaviour.
There's a little-known aspect of people called mob mentality which causes people en-masse to act completely differently from their typically rational, self-interested way. People in mobs have been known to charge cannons and guns with no concern for their own well-being. This could be the empathy/mirror neurons acting to bring crowds of people together as a single organism.
A psychopath would be immune from this effect - they would be able to step back, assess the situation, and question the actions of the crowd. Possibly even stop the crowd or redirect it. A psychopath would be the one, lone voice in the lynch mob who shouts "why are we doing this? This is not who we are!" and possibly redirect the actions of the crowd.
Psychopaths may be important in society simply to keep our mirror neurons in check and make sure that society acts rationally (note: rational != ethical).
For reference, consider this guy. Admittedly brave as hell, but I wonder where he would score on the "psychopathic tendencies" spectrum.
People with Aspergers (ASD) display limited empathy with others. Not the psychopaths' ability to switch it on and off. It is just lacking.
Fake empathy is often used by con artists and sociopaths to manipulate people. And in some cases, people with Aspergers are more able to see through such social engineering than other people. There is an interesting story in The Big Short about an investor/fund manager who saw through the Wall Street bullshit surrounding mortgage backed securities and shorted them, making millions of dollars for himself and his clients.
Have gnu, will travel.
this totally makes sense in an evolutionary way...its easy to imagine how important an adaptation like this would be in a species that for 10's of thousands of years lived in a permanent state of war where you had to be bathed in blood and kill everything on week and then chill at court and amuse the kings and females.
how else could people reconcile this?
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
How about we make people pass this test to screen for psycopaths? You're flagged positive, you can't hold any job that will give you power over anyone. No politics, no police, no health care, no teaching, etc.
BAD IDEA - DO NOT WANT.
If there is a test for psychopathy with an acceptably low false-positive rate and it's used for such high-stakes as you propose, sooner or later someone will figure out a way to train people to test "negative."
It's already possible for many if not most people to learn to "defeat" a polygraph. It's just not worth most people's effort because outside of careers needing security clearances and some other highly-sensitive jobs, most people don't find themselves in a situation where not taking one or failing one would cost them anything.
You're flagged positive, you can't hold any job that will give you power over anyone.
That's just about any job. Even if my job is to clean up trash in the park, my boss doesn't expect me to be perfect. I have the power to do things like spending more effort in low-traffic areas than high-traffic areas, thereby making tomorrow's visitors' experience less enjoyable, or to focus on high-traffic areas to make their experience more enjoyable. If you say that's not having power over someone, you are mistaken. It's petty power, but it is power.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It recycles or it gets the hose!
I drank what? -- Socrates
Furthermore, psychopaths NEED to be identified as mental cases and not criminal cases! We lock people up in an overly simplistic system that fails to work with the real world; we never address the root problem: The criminal system needs to deal with mental illnesses (that includes addiction) as disease and not as debts to be paid to society. It is not business nor should it ever be thought of like a business. Pedophiles for example, should be put into mental hospitals and NEVER released until safe... not automatically released after their "debt" has been paid.
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That may not be the best example: Some of the horrors of Nazi Germany were so bad that killing someone before they were old enough to form lasting memories might have been the most merciful thing a conscripted prison guard could do.
The question becomes:
Did the guard kill the baby out of mercy for the baby? That's mercy-based action.
Did the guard do it out of fear of his own life, wishing to God he could think of another way out? That's fear-based action.
Did the guard do it "because it was his job." That might be Stockholm Syndrome, resignation to one's fate, escaping into an emotional shell, or something else that doesn't indicate that the person is evil as much as just being unable to handle the circumstance he was in.
Did the guard do it because he enjoyed it, a la Joseph Mengele? That's either a severe mental illness, evil, or some combination of both.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why would anyone ever voluntarily suffer on behalf of another?
Why? Love.
A vast majority of parents in Western cultures (and possibly world-wide) would gladly give their life to save the life of their child.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
When viewed as group organisms, societies, corporations, etc. can become "infected" by "pathogens" that can go from peer-to-peer -- and indeed tend to do so -- when the just-infected host has become nonviable.
The zeitgeist of cosmopolitan society is that borders ate the epitome of evil. "The Politics of Exclusion" is up there with child molestation in the hierarchy of sins. This zeitgeist produces virulence in the human genome -- virulence such as the ability to turn off empathy when it pays off for the selfish genes of the individual.
Seastead this.
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.
Explains how many companies, like Verizon, Comcast, RIAA, etc seem to not care. They're just all psychopaths that turn off their empathy switch while doing business.
... its an act.
I agree. It's more a matter of degree. For that matter, I figure there's far more non-criminal psychopaths out there than criminal ones. I figure that 'most' end up figuring that even though they don't actually care about their fellow humans, it's too much hassle to kill them. It takes somebody broken in yet another way to become a serial killer.
It could be a bit like some cancers that take multiple mutations to become really dangerous. Mutation A isn't deadly by itself, nor is B, but add them together and they're greater than the sum of their parts.
I don't read AC A human right
With very little training, they can go on to lead successful lives as car salesmen, patent lawyers, and politicians.
I do that. Only I'm told by a shrink that what I have isn't "really" empathy, because I am thinking about other people's feelings, not experiencing them immediately without consciousness of them.
It's useful. Empathy is a really good first approximation of a way to make people be nice, but it also makes people do really shitty things because they are Trying To Help and can't stop to consciously think through their actions and their effects. Since I conveniently happen to care whether people are happy or unhappy, for reasons other than empathy, I am more effective at making things better than people who are constrained by the limits of an unconsidered intuition.
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Even if the problem is 'criminal outlook', and it's not that simple, it's still possible to 'fix' criminal outlook with the proper rehab. By this I look at the recidivism rates of various countries - criminal systems that concentrate on rehab, while not 100% successful, largely succeed in preventing their tenants from committing further criminal acts upon release. Jails and prisons that don't spend any effort on reform are largely revolving doors - the criminals don't stop coming back until they're dead.
I question how we, as a society, can afford to have non-reforming prisons. If you can confine somebody in a reforming prison for 1/3rd the time with 1/3rd the expectation they'll come back afterwards as a non-reform prison where they often come out WORSE than they went in, as a libertarian and fiscal conservative* I can't help but become upset. Sure, a reform prison is a touch more expensive per year. But running it properly results in smaller government - fewer prisons, fewer court cases, etc...
Heck, I remember reading that in the USA several of the founding fathers ran rather progressive criminal reform systems. In one case each inmate was assigned a 'counselor' who basically had full control over the inmate's progression through the system. Recidivism was under 10% afterwards, however the program eventually ended due to cost/complexity. It was tough finding qualified counselors and expensive to keep them, as each counselor only had 1 inmate to care about and the position part time.
*IE balanced budget, low taxes, programs have to be able to justify their cost.
I don't read AC A human right
I'd say a better example would be this guy, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, in a picture you should all recognize.
Besides this incident, Loan was known as a non-corrupt officer that advocated for hospitals, had 5 kids, ran a pizza shop after the war, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
It would be even better to track down the history of the individual to see what may have caused the switch to appear in the first time. Was it a traumatic childhood?
Not that it may apply to everyone, but some persons may have used the empathy switch as a means of survival.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Well I guess that makes me a psychopath?
Look, I think this research is dangerous. Anyone knows that unless we actively decide to think about someone else's pain we have a mechanism that helps shield us from that. This is a dark road to labelling almost anyone a psychopath. Hooray for drug comapnies!
-
How about we hold their eyes open and force them to watch horrific, violent videos, preferably multiple at a time.
They'll be cured all right.
Inspector: Dr. Brodsky, that boy you were treating... I have to inform you that he's just killed another man and committed serious assault and sexual violence against a further twelve people.
Brodsky: What?!
Inspector: Even worse, he told us that he'd really enjoyed the treatment, and that all those films you showed him got him "ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence".
Brodsky: What? This can't be... we forced him to watch acts of bloody sadism and violence for a fortnight.
Inspector: You *assured* us that the association of violent and sexual images with the unpleasant and traumatising effects of the serum would cause permanent avoidance of such behaviour in future and render him safe. What the blazes happened, woman?!
Brodsky: (Trying to remember something) Serum, serum... oh, you mean the fear-inducing drugs. Damn... I *knew* there was something we'd forgotten. My bad!
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Beware of psychopaths wearing correctly positioned hats... their switch is off!
It might be more about who the person identifies with. If someone grew up to be an abuser they identify with the person doing the deed and get a rush from the hormones they would usually get. Because encouraging someone to feel bad about something just isn't going to stick.
Good leaders run toward problems, bad leaders hide from them.
...it all makes sense. I still wish you would all die in a fire, but at least not I know why.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Your opinion is that of an armchair historian, with a very different perspective than leaders at the time had.
It could be said that Neville Chamberlain was a compassionate leader...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
empathy seems to be linked to our ability to cooperate effectively, a psychopathic populace might be considerably easier to control.
I think you have it backward. A psychopathic population would be incredibly hard to control. The reason I don't stab you in the face and take your wallet is because I empathize with you as a person. Without empathy, you are an bag of annoying meat that has the $50 in pocket change that I want. Without empathy, people would act out impulsive behavior much more frequently.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Perhaps, but I didn't say anything about making society more peaceful did I? Just easier to control. And psychopaths are less likely to be able to cooperate effectively to resist the jackbooted thugs who've come to collect your 80% government tithe.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Test some folks who have performed heroically in combat, killing others to defend their friends.
An "empathy disable" switch did not evolve by accident.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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
- so they are trying to fix something that is not broken... sounds like various treatments for many other non-issues.
Just because psychopaths are a key demographic for expanding your religious movement doesn't mean they are good for society in general.
So, these people were diagnosed as psychopaths in advance ...
ELITISM: It's always lonely at the top. Uninvited company is rarely welcome.
That's one helluva guy you're citing there. Breivik's pagan alterego.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Jews were kicked from Egypt, Spain, Poland, Germany: They all nazis too? Do you know WHY they were?? Ever been to Europe to ask THEIR people??? I have. They pull swindles enmasse on others endlessly is why. Same with Gypsys/Romany (jews too). Case in point example I was told how they operated: Say your family were bakers for centuries. Handed down father to son, doing well locally in that timeframe. Jews from other areas would set up a competing bakery, and underwrite costs of their bakery to price the native competitor out of business and then raise their prices to usurious levels, shylock style. They were told nearly a year in advance (but your books don't say it, since the publishing houses and media are jew owned) to leave Germany and they would not. What happened to them was a result of their own stupidity, greed, and their natures. You cannot turn a crocodile into an eagle. Now, before anyone feeds me any bullshit, why would all of those nations do that? They're all nazis or insane, right? Yea, ok "right" (sarcasm). Too much evidence is against them on that account from too many nations. They aren't allowed to rip one another off, and view others (goyim) as cattle. Look into their talmud, see what they feel is "ok to do" (such as rape a 3 yr. old little non-jew girl. I imagine once that cat got out of the bag, every father in said nations wanted them the FUCK out. I know I would). Don't get me wrong either: I have pals that're jews. They're generally decently educated and interesting to speak with because of it, however, I know 1 thing: They'd cut my nuts off for other jews. It's just how they are. It is all they have and they stick together like glue. That is also why they're JEWS first, citizens of the nation they are in, second (a distant second). I know them from the inside on that account. I asked one of my pals about the Talmud and she said "You don't want to know what's in there, it will piss you off". So I did some research. She was right. What backs me up? History and many other nations reacting the same way to them over time immemorial. They are truly their own worst enemies at times. In my opinion they're doing the same to the USA. It's just how they roll. After WWII, they were put into palestinian lands (stolen from the natives) to attempt to isolate them. Give them a chance too, being humane. What'd they do? Migrate to other areas to keep their crap up, because they are not allowed to burn other jews. They made Israel a very "international" state, but again, why? To fill it with victims (goys) to usuriously abuse. Again, they're nature is so transparent, it does them in, all thru history. Too bad they are not strong enough to overcome it since it does them in every single time. "God's Chosen People"? Sure - when you wrote the book, of course you'd call yourselves that. Seems the way they act to others and their talmud's laws (Baba Necia and others) are more from Satan than the God I know. I've had racism directed my way. I resist using it. I detest it. However, I can't argue with facts and actual sources that lived through some of what I noted above from Europeans.
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.
I thought maybe it was just me. Happens in Firefox 21.0 on Mountain Lion. Seems like it started happening about a week or two ago. The funny thing is the links still open in a new tab, but the current tab also goes to the same link, forcing me to click the back button to get back to the Slashdot article. Half the time I wind up back at the top of the page and have to scroll back down and find my place again. That gets real old real fast. So what exactly is the point of this attempted Command+Click hijacking and/or blocking script? Why the hell did some jerkface even bother to write the code that does this?
The only other website (that I can think of) that does this to me is SportsmansGuide.com. Both here and there all this script really seems to do is make it extremely obnoxious to use the site.
I expect much better from a supposedly geek/tech oriented website. Silly me, right?
Fix it, Slashdot. Fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it FIX IT!!!!ONE!!!
Yes. We've enough psychopaths, thanks. I basically see them as humans with all the social adaptations removed. In my opinion you simply don't want one in your life - because given the chance, they'll fuck you over and never look back. Simple as that really.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Isn't all empathy pretend? One imagines what the other person is feeling, the same way they imagine anything else. The difference is whether they let it control their actions. I've always thought the empathy definition of psychopathy was flawed. It seems too simple, almost as dumb as "they hate our freedoms", to imagine that the only problem with psychopaths/sociopaths is that they don't have the capacity to care.
Is this relevant to women?
Casteism
I sounds like they have the best of both worlds.
It might make more sense to train "normal" people to have this advantage.
Being a Psychopath does not make you a criminal, nor does it make you violent.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I think these brain scans prove that they are not pretending. At least not any more than anyone else.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Good idea helping a psychopath learn to turn on empathy. So long as it's on they would be more 'normal'.
Not sure though how it would work in practice.
Anyone remember Crichton's "The Terminal Man"?
The jackbooted thugs wouldn't stand a chance in a society of psychopaths. A police state doesn't fundamentally work, unless fear overcomes the impulse to fight back and as mentioned impulse control isn't a trait that a psychopath has in abundance. You don't need to organize to fight authority, if everybody is fighting authority.
You would send out a couple of thugs to go collect someone in public to try to put some fear in people, and they would get murdered, because they irritated the wrong person on the way.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!