In The Science of Evil, psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen attempts to redefine the term evil in terms of empathy and investigate the reason why some people have more or less empathy and what happens when we lose empathy.
What is Empathy?
According to Simon Baron-Cohen, empathy is a spectrum and we all lie somewhere on it, from high to low. He argues that empathy is distributed like a bell curve over the population, with people at the low end of the curve positioning at the psychiatric categories such as psychopathy, narcissism, and personality disorders.
Baron-Cohen states that empathy occurs when we suspend our single-minded focus of attention and instead adopt a double-minded focus of attention. He defines empathy as the ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion.
Measuring Empathy
Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues designed a scale that contains 40 questions related to two major components of empathy (the recognition and the response) to measure The Empathy Quotient.
Empathizing Mechanism: Levels of Empathy
Based on the EQ, the author lines up Empathizing Mechanism as seven likely settings:
- Level 0: An individual has no empathy at all. Some people are capable to display harmful actions towards others and cannot experience guilt at this level. Some people at Level 0 do not commit crimes or harm but they struggle with forming relationships.
- Level 1: Under certain conditions the person may show a degree of empathy, but if they are triggered, their judgement becomes completely clouded, a part of the brain’s empathy circuit “goes down” that would normally enable them to inhibit themselves from hurting others physically.
- Level 2: A person still have major issues with empathy. They have enough empathy to realize they have done something wrong, however they need feedback from the person that they hurt to realize their wrong action.
- Level 3: A person realizes that they have difficulty with empathy and may try to mask. They may avoid the situations where there are constant demands on their empathy because making the effort to “pretend to be normal” can be exhausting and stressful. Small talk and chatting may be overwhelming because it is unpredictable, they may realize they don’t understand jokes unlike everyone else. They prefer to be alone.
- Level 4: A person has a low-average amount of empathy and usually it doesn’t affect their everyday behavior. They feel more comfortable if the topic of the conversation is something else than the emotions. There are more men than women at Level 4, preferring to offer solutions to a problem rather than providing emotional support. Friendships usually based on shared activities than on emotional intimacy.
- Level 5: Individuals are marginally above average in empathy, and more women than men are at this level. Other’s feelings are on their radar most of the time. They hold back their opinions as they don’t want to intrude. They make an effort to understand what other people have in their mind. Here, friendships may be based more on emotional intimacy and mutual support.
- Level 6: Individuals with remarkable empathy are constantly focused on other people’s emotions. They usually go out of their way to be supportive. It is as if their empathy is in a constant state of hyperarousal.
The Empathy Circuit in the Brain
By using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), scientists discovered that there are ten major brain regions involved in empathy, and as a circuit these ten way stations’ connections are not linear, there are multiple connections between brain regions. These brain regions vary in activity according to person’s level of empathy. Especially, reduced activities in brain regions including the medial prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, and the somatosensory cortex are linked to lack of empathy.
The Effects of Early Stress on the Empathy Circuit
The author points out the reasons these differences in the brain with referring to neglect and abuse in the early childhood. Early stress affects the functioning of the hippocampus, activation of the neural systems and hormonal response to stress. Too much stress may cause irreversible shrinking in hippocampus and overreaction in amygdala. Baron-Cohen suggests that “these abnormalities in the brain is an evidence for the argument that instead of using the term ‘evil,’ we should talk about reduced (or even absent) empathy.”
The Empathy Gene
Even though environmental factors play a significant role in a person’s empathy level, it does not predict the outcome all the time. To detect the role of the genes, the author investigates the monozygotic and dizygotic twins. The studies that used observational method have shown strong genetic component to empathy. Another twin study that used questionnaire measures showed moderate heritability. Findings proof that certain personality disorders require genetic susceptibility.