99. GOOD and EVIL
What can we say that is new about good and evil? Editors at The National Geographic thought there might be something new about this fundamental issue of our human existence. As a result, there was a major report in the magazine on “The Science of Good and Evil.” What follows is what I have learned from that report.
The subtitle of the report refined its content: What makes people especially giving or cruel? Researchers say the way our brains are wired can affect how much empathy we feel for others.
The report begins with a reminder of the mass shootings that happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School and at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, as well as other examples of evil in our society today. However, the report also includes inspiring examples of people risking their lives to help others in need or in a crisis as a result of what scientists call extreme altruism. “Extreme altruists and psychopaths exemplify our best and worst instincts. On one end of the moral spectrum, sacrifice, generosity, and other ennobling traits that we recognize as good; on the other end, selfishness, violence, and destructive impulses that we see as evil.”
“At the root of both types of behaviors, researchers say, is our evolutionary past.” They hypothesize that we evolved our inclination to help one another because cooperation was needed for the survival of large social groups — but because these groups had to compete for resources, we were also inclined to harm our competitors. Our two faces were necessary for our survival.
Researchers are leaning toward a common emotional trait — empathy — the intrinsic ability of our brains to experience the feelings of others to sort out this conflict of opposites. The good emerges from our capacity for empathy, the evil from our lack of empathy.
Signs of empathy show up in early childhood, but an “active disregard of others” also appears in a small minority starting in the second year of life. When these children were followed into adolescence, there was a high likelihood of anti-social tendencies as well as getting into trouble. Those adolescents with what researchers identified as callousness and lack of emotional expression showed extreme aggression in fights and vandalizing property. In addition, some of these individuals ended up committing major crimes.
Some of this empathy deficit may arise from inherited genes; however, those from empathy deficit parents, when adopted by parents who provided a nurturing environment, were far less likely to exhibit callous unemotional traits.
Studies of psychopaths were revealing. Psychopaths can fake empathy even though they have a total disregard for the feelings of others. “They really just have a complete inability to appreciate anything like empathy or guilt or remorse,” says neuroscientist Kent Kiehl. Kiehl, for two decades, scanned the brains of prison inmates. Nearly one in every five adult males in prison in the U.S. and Canada scored high in psychopathy.
“Kiehl is convinced that psychopaths have impairments in a system of interconnected brain structures — including the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex — that help process emotions, make decisions, control impulses, and set goals. … The psychopath appears to compensate for this deficiency by using other parts of the brain to cognitively stimulate what really belongs in the realm of emotion. … The psychopath must think about right and wrong while the rest of us feel it.”
“The majority of people in the world are neither extreme altruists nor psychopaths, and most individuals in any society do not ordinarily commit violent acts against one another.” However, there is a willingness of adults “to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority.”
“Our capacity to empathize and channel that into compassion may be innate, but is not immutable. Neither is the tendency to develop psychopathic and antisocial personalities so fixed in childhood as to be unchangeable.” Multiple studies are ongoing to find effective ways to offset empathy deficit personalities.
Q: To what extent do you agree or disagree with this research?
