Understanding Psychopathy: Altruism, Fear, and Brain Function

Psychopathy varies across the population, affecting caring behavior and neural structure, hindering empathy and moral decision-making.

### Understanding Psychopathy: The Neuroscience of Empathy and Moral Decision-Making
* 🧠  Psychopathy is now understood as a **continuous variable in the population**, with extreme cases at one end and **highly empathetic individuals at the other**.
* 🤝  Humans are highly altruistic due to our evolutionary history as an **alloparental species**, caring for offspring beyond our own.
* 🧬  The amygdala plays a crucial role in recognizing and responding to fear, a key component of empathy. In people with psychopathy, the amygdala is **underdeveloped and less responsive to threats**.
* 💔  Psychopathic individuals struggle to recognize fear in others, impacting their ability to **empathize and make moral decisions**.
* 🧭  Psychopaths rely more on the lateral prefrontal cortex for decision-making, which is **less emotionally driven** than the typical empathy-based process.
* 👩‍⚕️  Treating psychopathy in adults is challenging due to their **narcissistic tendencies** and **resistance to therapy**, but some can benefit from interventions that help them develop **genuine, non-manipulative relationships**.
* 🎓  Research shows that psychopaths can learn new ways of interacting with others through **effective treatments**, improving their own lives and relationships.
* 📚  The sponsor of the video, Imprint, is recommended as a learning app for **curious individuals interested in deepening their knowledge across various topics**.

- Once upon a time, people thought that there were these people we could call psychopaths, who were over here, and then everybody else was just normal. And now, I think we understand that that's not true, and that psychopathy, like most psychological phenomena, is a variable that ranges continuously throughout the population. So, you have some people who are extremely psychopathic, truly heartless, don't care about other people at all, and then you have another end of the continuum as well, people who are anti-psychopathic, who care even more than usual about the average person, because care about other people's welfare is really the variable that is what differs across people at either end. We have a lot of information now about what it is that's different about people who are on the very low end of what I call the 'Caring Continuum.' My fundamental interest is in trying to understand how it is that humans care about each other.

Humans are among the most altruistic species that we have studied. One of the reasons that we are such an altruistic species is because we are what's called an 'alloparental species,' which means that we evolved to care for offspring that are not our own. Humans evolutionarily lived in small groups of, you know, 100, 150 people max, who had children that were so needy and resource-dependent that they couldn't possibly be cared for by just one set of parents. And we also know that across species, the ones that alloparent the most also tends to be the most altruistic, but humans do appear to be at the top. In addition, very altruistic people seem to be the opposite of people who are psychopathic in terms of their neural structure and function, and in some characteristic emotional traits. Scientists have been studying psychopathy for decades, and have determined that people who are psychopathic tend to be very antisocial.

tend to lack empathy or
compassion or remorse. But only more recently,
have we been identifying the early basic
neurocognitive building blocks of those deficits in psychopathy. One of the big ones seems to be. So if you don't experience fear yourself when you are under threat, you really struggle to empathize with that same emotion in other people. We can see that from
studies of physiology. We don't see the same
physiological changes under threat, like their hands sweating
or their heart racing when they're threatened. That seems to help us understand why people with psychopathy
have so much trouble recognizing when other people are afraid in, for example, an
emotion recognition task. Most people, when you show them a series of
emotional facial expressions, can recognize other people's fear, you know, maybe 60% or 70% of the time. In people who have psychopathy, it tends to be much less than that, sometimes pretty close to an inability.

to recognize other people's fear. And again, we think that's because the way that we recognize emotions in other people is by simulating that emotion, and that helps us identify
and respond appropriately. People who are at risk for
psychopathy show evidence that their amygdala is
developing inappropriately from a pretty early age; such that it ends up too small, and it's under-reactive to threats. Decades of research in humans and also non-human species have told us that what the amygdala
does is coordinate a lot of the responses that
are essential for fear. So it takes in information
from the environment about potential threats, and it signals other parts of the brain, regions like the periaqueductal
gray in the midbrain that coordinates the startle
response or freezing; regions like the hypothalamus that control our autonomic responding, so our hands sweating, our heart racing, our lungs expanding. And then of course our
behavioral responses to fear:

whether we decide to run away, whether we decide to fight, whether we decide to
help others in danger. The amygdala's not doing
all of those behaviors, but it is sort of
coordinating the whole show. You could sort of think of it as directing the performance. So when there is a threat
in the environment, whether you're in danger or whether you see
somebody else in danger, the amygdala responds much more weakly than it does in typical people and sometimes doesn't respond at all. The amygdala also sends information to regions of the prefrontal cortex, in particular, a region on the bottom of the prefrontal cortex called the rostral anterior cingulate and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. And these regions use the information the amygdala is sending
to guide decision-making. And because the amygdala is
responsible for simulating, empathizing with, and recognizing other people's fear,

that information is probably not making it to the prefrontal cortex
in people with psychopathy. In addition, the amygdala is involved in calculating the value
of other people's welfare, so, how bad or good is
this thing happening to this person? Based on the choices I make, how bad or good will their outcomes be? That information is
also not making its way to the prefrontal cortex, and as a result, people who are psychopathic
are much less likely to make decisions based on how they will
affect other people, in particular, how they
will affect other people who are in danger. And I think that this is
probably the fundamental pathway that is broken in people with psychopathy that causes other people harm, because these particular pathways are just not encoding the
information correctly. As a result, people who are psychopathic, when they are engaged
in moral decision-making and social decision-making tend to rely on a different part of the brain.

called the lateral prefrontal cortex that's involved in sort of applying rules to decision-making. And so they'll think about decision-making in a much more rational way. You know, am I supposed to do this, or am I not supposed to do this, which can be useful, and it can help you get to the same decision, but it isn't going to be as emotional and motivating as a decision that's based in true empathy for other people. The difficulty with treating psychopathy and treating persistent antisocial behavior in adults is that people who are psychopathic tend to be quite narcissistic, and they tend to blame their problems on other people - and that's not a good recipe for seeking therapy. However, some people with psychopathy are insightful enough to figure out eventually that the common thread in all of the problems in their life is them. They're the one who keeps blowing up their relationships and losing their friendships and losing jobs.

and causing other
problems to emerge, right? It's their own decision-making
that's the core. If you can get that insight, and if you come across
the right information that indeed these problems can be solved, people who are psychopathic can learn to interact with other people differently. They can learn to interact with them in a non-instrumental way, right? To be honest, to be genuine in their
relationships with other people rather than in every interaction, thinking about: How can I get a leg up on this person? How can I put them in my debt? How can I manipulate them? You don't have to interact
with other people that way. There are some excellent studies that show that treatments are effective, and people with psychopathy
can learn new ways to interact that make
their own life better and that certainly make life better for everybody around them. Are you the type of person who likes to spend a
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The psychopathic brain is different—but it CAN be treated | Abigail Marsh, PhD

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The Continuum of Psychopathy and Altruism

Psychopathy is now understood to be a continuous variable in the population, with some people being extremely psychopathic and others being highly anti-psychopathic.

Humans' altruism is linked to their evolutionary role as an alloparental species, caring for offspring that are not their own.

Studies have shown that very altruistic people have opposite neural structures and emotional traits compared to those who are psychopathic, particularly in their ability to experience fear and empathize with others.

The Role of the Amygdala in Processing Fear

The amygdala plays a crucial role in coordinating fear responses in humans and animals.

Research suggests that individuals at risk for psychopathy show underdevelopment and an under-reactive amygdala, impacting their ability to recognize and respond to fear.

The amygdala not only coordinates physical and behavioral responses to fear but also sends information to the prefrontal cortex to guide decision-making based on the simulated and recognized fear in others.

The Impact of Psychopathy on Decision-Making and Empathy

Psychopathic individuals lack the ability to consider other people's welfare and make decisions based on empathy.

Instead, they rely on the lateral prefrontal cortex to make more rational, rule-based decisions.

Treating psychopathy is challenging because of the tendency for narcissism and blame-shifting, making it difficult for these individuals to seek therapy.

Psychopathic individuals can learn to interact with others in a non-manipulative way, improving their own lives and the lives of those around them.

There are effective treatments supported by excellent studies that show the possibility of change in psychopathic behavior.

Imprint, a learning app, offers beautifully illustrated, animated lessons and has been highly praised with over 30,000 5-star reviews and a title of Google's App of the Year in 2023.

Imprint's Interactive Philosophy Course & Special Offer

Imprint offers an 80-day course on Essential Philosophy, presented in easy-to-grasp cards for quick learning.

The platform covers a wide range of topics, including psychology, history, and science, catering to curious thinkers.

For Big Think audience, there's a special offer of a seven-day free trial and 20% off an annual membership, available through the provided link.