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

With the right training, huh?

[i kan reed]

How about we hold their eyes open and force them to watch horrific, violent videos, preferably multiple at a time.

Re:With the right training, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll be cured all right.

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?

Re:With the right training, huh?

[Type44Q]

How about we hold their eyes open and force them to watch horrific, violent videos, preferably multiple at a time.

I doubt that would've caused them to vote differently yesterday...

Re:With the right training, huh?

[draconx]

listening to Mozart, with eye drops in order that their eyes won't wither ? Sorry Dude, It's been already tried ...

Nobody's tried Mozart; only Ludwig van Beethoven.

Re:With the right training, huh?

[Githaron]

That is what I was thinking. There are a lot of both emotional and logical reasons to turn the emotions back off. This is especially true if they have already killed, murdered, and/or raped people. Why feel guilty or sad when you don't have to?

Re:With the right training, huh?

[jason.sweet]

Holy fuck YOU'RE dense. Were you born without the ability to comprehend humor?

He probably switches it on and off at will.

Re:With the right training, huh?

[MightyMartian]

Indeed. We seem to have entire professions; like the legal system and upper management, dedicated to sociopathic individuals.

Re: With the right training, huh?

[MickLinux]

Nonetheless, empathy training does work.

When one of my children got caught bullying -- and that is one psychopathic behavior that MANY practice -- I searched for the right response, and came up with a book called "Small criminals among us: how to recognize and change children's antisocial behavior, before they explode."

The methods -- and there are multiple -- are all about empathy training.

My experience? Between that, and allowing a heavy use of the (Catholic) confessional, and a focus on the Christian aspects, that child is much improved. The book was very helpful.

Re:With the right training, huh?

[qbast]

Because we also reward them with jail.

Approaching the level of a psychopath is beneficial, getting caught crossing into is not (in general).

FTFY

Re: With the right training, huh?

[Immerman]

A fair point, and a good reason to further study empathy so it can be effectively promoted in our children and ourselves*. But I'm not sure how applicable it is to psychopathic criminals. It sounds like you used a behavior-modification technology backed by social and mythological indoctrination to help deflect a malleable still-forming mind onto a more empathic path. Fine, the tools and goals may change but that's what every culture does - children by and large accept our word on how the world works, so we can make up whatever damnfool story we want to try to shape them in a direction we want our society to go. But once a psychopathic mind has matured and acclimated to just how effective ruthlessly self-interested behavior masked behind a charming empathic personae is, then how do you propose to "inflict" empathy on them beyond what they find useful in the moment?

* Though actually I worry about the flip side as well - how many governments in the world do you suppose would be tempted by the ability to install an empathic "off switch" in their military and police forces, and what atrocities would that enable? One would presume that the ability to manipulate that switch to inflict empathy on an unwilling psychopath would at the very least provide a great deal of foundational research on how to do the opposite as well. Heck, you could possibly even do the same thing to your entire populace - empathy seems to be linked to our ability to cooperate effectively, a psychopathic populace might be considerably easier to control.

Re:With the right training, huh?

[Immerman]

But we don't - we only jail those psychopaths who (A) cross the line into violent crime, since white-collar crimes generally fund extremely effective legal defenses, and (B) get caught.

And neither violence or stupidity are directly linked to psychopathy itself, though without empathy violent appetites may find more fertile ground than in most minds.

Re:With the right training, huh?

[AvitarX]

We are only talking about the ones getting caught, right?

And they are quite likely to get caught again right?

That's how I read the summary at least.

Re:With the right training, huh?

[davester666]

So why don't we do that instead of electing them to public office or making them executives in the banking industry?

Re: With the right training, huh?

[sjames]

They've been trying to turn off empathy in soldiers since forever. In recent decades they've gotten somewhat better at it, which is why more soldiers end up with PTSD once empathy reasserts itself.

I wouldn't be too down on the church. For all it's faults, perhaps it's why we weren't overrun with psychopaths before and it's waning position in society may be why we have such a problem with corporate psychopathy now.

Re:With the right training, huh?

[ArhcAngel]

You're missing the point. It's important that these scientists do the research because it provides a reason to beg for funding for the research. That is essentially the only possible benefit from this train of thought...

While I am of the same cynical cloth you seem to be cut from there is the possibility they could discern what chemical process happens in the brain to turn it on and synthesize a serum that the psychopath would then be induced to take once released to prevent the switch from turning back off. I'm sure many pharmaceutical firms would fund that research.

Re:With the right training, huh?

[ShanghaiBill]

So why don't we do that instead of electing them to public office or making them executives in the banking industry?

Because there is evidence that psychopaths actually make better leaders. There was an article about this a couple months ago in the Economist. By ignoring the suffering of individuals, psychopaths are able to focus on bold action for the greater good. This is especially apparent in war time, where compassionate leaders are often dithering and indecisive, leading to a prolonged war and many more deaths and wounds than needed.

Re:With the right training, huh?

[david_thornley]

Surrender talks were stalled, not underway. The Japanese hardliners had not yet decided to back off from their position (no change in government, Japan is not occupied, Japan tries its own war criminals, and Japanese troops are evacuated back to Japan by Japanese on a Japanese schedule). The US had already said that, if the Japanese people wanted to keep the Emperor, they'd keep the Emperor.

The Trinity blast was plutonium. The US wasn't going to drop the first implosion bomb on the Japanese, since they weren't completely sure it'd work. The Hiroshima bomb was just "bash the uranium together", nice and simple. The military knew the plutonium implosion bomb would work before the Hiroshima drop. Remember also that "some believe" some pretty weird stuff.

While Stalin was kept informed on the nuclear bomb program, the US didn't know this.

However, while I have seen evidence that the Nagasaki bomb was instrumental in the Japanese surrender, and that the US dropped the bombs to force Japanese surrender, evidence for other speculations seems thin at best.

Re:With the right training, huh?

[Sabriel]

Not this again. Psychopaths do not make better leaders, and they do not "focus on bold action for the greater good", because psychopaths don't have a greater good: by definition, they are antisocial, having "a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others". Any benefit to the greater good as a result of their actions is game theory in action, survival camouflage.

Let's take the example given in that Economist article you cite: "there are five railway workmen in the path of a runaway carriage. The men will surely be killed unless the subject of the experiment, a bystander in the story, does something. The subject is told he is on a bridge over the tracks. Next to him is a big, heavy stranger. The subject is informed that his own body would be too light to stop the train, but that if he pushes the stranger onto the tracks, the stranger's large body will stop the train and save the five lives. That, unfortunately, would kill the stranger."

The experiment exists in a metaphorical vacuum. In the real world, we have to consider the thought processes and context:

Utilitarian: "what serves the greater good?"
Psychopath: "what's in this for me?"

That is why you don't want psychopaths as leaders - civilian or military - unless you like everyone being utterly expendable for someone else's personal aggrandisement. A utilitarian general will lose a winnable battle to save his country (sacrifice one to save five); a psychopathic general will win or lose the same battle based on which works out better for himself - the country being ruined doesn't matter so long as the increase of his own power is assured.

A Clockwork Orange

[nicoleb_x]

Where have we seen this before...

Would this training work...

[NickDanger3rdEye]

...for politicians?

Re:Would this training work...

[Hatta]

They already know how to turn empathy on and off. When campaigning, turn empathy on. When legislating, turn empathy off.

Re:Would this training work...

[jellomizer]

While I see this as a joke.

The problem with Politicians and Empathy is that often they deal with issues that are more complex then the average Political internet ranter can rant about.

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. Trickle down doesn't work when you give the rich more money. But it does work if you take it away from them. Then you have issues of what should and shouldn't be tax exempt. If you say nothing is Tax exempt, then you go well what about donations to charity...

Now the good Politician will actually try to find the right balance. But that takes smart people to work that out. Politicians are People-People, they are actually not so good about thinking but dealing with people. So chances are they will stick with the party lines, where the party may support the science that only backs up their main line.

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:Would this training work...

[internerdj]

For the constitutional scholars libertarians profess to be; they seem to regularly forget the difference between taxation and governmental theft that led to the constitutional protections of personal property from seizure by the government.

Re:Would this training work...

[Firethorn]

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

Only because during the time that the tax rate was 90% there was not only far more exemptions, so nobody actually paid 90%, but we were effectively a closed economy - You couldn't just move somewhere else and maintain(most) of your wealth.

With the development of alternate economies, globalization, etc... Moving your wealth is easier than ever, so reducing the tax rates works to slow the bleed, if not completely stop it.

Personally, I'd settle for a flat tax system. With the current tax system the ultra-rich($10M+) end up paying a lower percentage than the upper middle class (~$100k), thus at high levels our tax system is actually regressive. My fix would be simple: Make some rules about leveling capital gains, and tax progressively using the same scale we use for earned income.

Re:Would this training work...

[sjames]

As long as you make sure that gone is gone, that is, they don't get to leave and still do business here, the vacuum left by their departure becomes an economic opportunity for the rest. It's not as if these people are the only ones who possess the ability to run a business and employ people.

normal people can probably do it too

[iggymanz]

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

Re:normal people can probably do it too

[DigitalReverend]

The difference is that for "normal" people the default position for the switch is on and it requires effort to turn it off.

For psychopaths, the default switch is off and it requires effort to turn it on.

Re:normal people can probably do it too

[MightyMartian]

I think this is mainly to do with tribalism, which is a very very ancient set of instincts (we share them to a large degree with the other apes, just look at how chimp tribes behave towards each other). People are built to fit themselves into kin groups, which works pretty well when you're talking about relative small societies of a hundred or a few thousand individuals. Essentially it is an "us vs. them", "friend vs. stranger" recognition system.

If someone is seen as a stranger, they are a potential threat, and actions can be taken against them that one would not take against a member of one's own kin group or society (this is why murder of a relative or close friend is still seen in most societies as a much higher crime than murder of a stranger or an acquaintance). Through the ages demagogues have been able to manipulate this basic tribal instinct to group people based upon relationship to further all sorts of atrocities. Whether it's persecution, exile, slavery or genocide, once you've convinced a populace that your desired target group is somehow alien, you can convince that populace to do almost anything.

It's as the old story goes (and time for the Godwin); Hitler convinced an entire nation made of up people who adhered to a religion whose basic tenet was "love thy brother" that persecution and ultimately murder of millions of members of ethnic groups (Jews and Roma in particular) was perfectly fine, and yet even Hitler was a vegetarian who loved his dogs.

Whether this "empathy switch" in psychopaths is related to that I don't know. Obviously even in normal people there is a way to trigger the dehumanizing of groups if they can be convinced that they are alien threats. Mind you even look like genocides like the Jewish Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide, there was long standing prejudice and mistrust against the targeted group, so it's not as if appeared out of nowhere.

Re:normal people can probably do it too

[MightyMartian]

Breivik had convinced himself (well really, it seemed that a small group of far right wing whackos of which Breivik was the most extreme member) that socialists and leftists had sold out Europe and that the only way to save the situation was to commit an atrocity against innocents which would, somehow, spark a holy war in which Christian Europe threw out all the Muslims. I would also reference Timothy McVeigh, another individual who managed to desensitize himself and allow himself to be able to commit mass murder.

Again, I don't know whether this is related to the alleged "empathy switch" in sociopaths or not. It's also possible that Breivik and McVeigh were themselves sociopaths who masked their pathologies under the guise of extremist beliefs. But I tend to believe that, whatever their psychological issues, they were not sociopaths. In both cases they seemed to genuinely believe what they were doing was for the greater good (in McVeigh's case, it was in part revenge for the Branch Dividian disaster in Wako, suggesting that he empathized with Koresh and his followers a great deal).

why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone ever voluntarily suffer on behalf of another?

Re:why?

[ShieldW0lf]

The answer is, populations with the compulsion to sacrifice themselves on behalf of the group are more likely to reproduce themselves and abide, while populations without this compulsion are more likely to see their population decline and cease to exist.

The existence of human beings is a testament to this. We, ourselves, are a culture of cells that work together and sacrifice themselves for the good of the culture. When they stop doing so, the composite being that we are dies, and ALL the cells that make us up also die.

Re:why?

[Digital Vomit]

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

That reminds me of

[GeekWithAKnife]

...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?

Re:That reminds me of

[i kan reed]

Military killing depends a lot on dehumanizing foes. Battlefield terminology for foes almost always takes the form of a very non-human noun, whether it's "targets", "hostiles", or "alpha", the words that are used are never words that inherently imply personhood. There's a well-researched book about how this corresponds to good people being capable of terrible things.

Re:How would you know

[i kan reed]

Well, if they don't want to go back to their seat in congress after the treatment, they're better.

Re:knowledge is power

[somersault]

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.

Re:How would you know

[i kan reed]

They simply won't accept that some people are born evil and need to be locked up for life or executed for the safety of the public. And many people have paid the price for that arrogance.

You dismiss religious absolutism, but you're willing to accept the idea of someone being unavoidably "evil"? Do you realize how subjective that is? How hypocritical? Not everyone who disagrees with you does so because they are incapable of compromise, sometimes it's because you are.

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:Fixing the will

[sribe]

But why would they want to?

To stay out of prison.

They may never be nice people. They might always be aggressive arrogant jerks. But maybe they can be simply a jerk rather than an actual criminal.

Although I suspect that has much more to do with impulse control than empathy, and so this could indeed turn out to be completely worthless, it does seem at least worth investigating.

Obligatory

[K. S. Kyosuke]

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.

Did they test lawyers?

[coldsalmon]

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.

Empathy isn't always good

[PPH]

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.

Re:How would you know

[dkleinsc]

How would you know if they have been rehabilitated?

That's easy: Make them sit on the Group W bench and fill out a form with the following words:
"KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?"

Re:There's only one empathy switch

[Gilmoure]

It recycles or it gets the hose!

Re:How would you know

[i kan reed]

And, we've discovered that certain kinds intervention before age 18 is really effective at decreasing crime rates among these people. And notably, in spite of the fact that we have all these awesome criteria, less than 10% of those who meet our best criteria ever really do anything wrong. NOVA had a fascinating documentary about it. (I'm at work and can't verify that's the right video). If we could trivially split people into categories of "future murderer" and "non-murderer" it wouldmake life easier, but we cannot.

Mod parent up.

[bussdriver]

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.

Re:Mod parent up.

[Artifakt]

I agree that paedophilia is a consequence of some sort of mental illness, but that "NEVER" is difficult to quantify - it would seem the only way to achive it is to keep the person in for life. Would it change your opinions any to know that back in the 1960's there were a number of programs to treat paedophiles in prison and then monitor them long term after release, and what sort of numbers they produced. These were studies in the US and Canada, involving in total over 10,000 subjects that were in the prison systems for child molestation at the time.

Several programs produced a tremendous 'cure rate' : For hetero molesters who had a related child as at least one of their victims, the percentage who did not repeat offend even after 20 years after release was 78%. The worst percentage was for homosexual molesters who targeted unrelated children, and a. that 20 year did not reoffend number was still 57%, and b. the programs tried to 'cure' the homosexuality as well, which probably made treating the paedophilia aspect much harder (or at least most of the psychiatrists that were involved with these programs have concluded that was a problem in retrospect).

Therapy, particularly focusing on how the paedophile feels incapable of the demands of more adult relationships and massivly incompetent at such things as dating and even making casual conversation with potential adult partners, shows a better success rate than attempts to rehabilitate either economic criminals or violent offenders. One big reason you hear the claim that paedophiles cannot be rehabilitated is that some of these therapy programs used psychoactive drugs under an individual psychiatrist's control (and yes, the patients were informed the programs might involve them being asked to take psilocyben or ketamine or even LSD). When many of these drugs became illegal, the US DoJ asserted they had no theraputic value even under the strictest physician control, and when these programs were mentioned, DoJ representitives made an amazing outburst of claims that paedophiles NEVER reformed. This message was hammered into the media as part of a US government media campaign claiming that various psychoactives needed to be classed as Schedule 1 Narcotics, and there was apparently no actual science behind the claim. In other words, it was a lie, 'justifed' by the need to add the psychoactives to the war on drugs.

Throwing babies into the ovens

[davidwr]

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.

Most parents would gladly suffer for their kids

[davidwr]

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.

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.

Re:Or Room 23

[Jane Q. Public]

The phrase is based on Buddhism if that's really relevant.

Not really.

But this is one of those cases in which I can hardly be embarrassed by a "whoosh" moment. It doesn't bother me in the slightest that I was not a "Lost" fanatic.

Didn't you forget something?

[Dogtanian]

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!

Peace in our time!

[TiggertheMad]

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...

Psychopaths only ...?

[david614]

So, these people were diagnosed as psychopaths in advance ...