사이코패스에 대한 이해 이타주의, 공포, 그리고 뇌 기능

### 사이코패스 이해하기: 공감과 도덕적 의사 결정의 신경과학
* 🧠 이제 사이코패스는 **극단적인 사례와 공감 능력이 뛰어난 개인**이 공존하는 인구의 연속적인 변수로 이해되고 있습니다.
* 🤝 인간은 동족상잔의 진화 역사로 인해 **자신의 자손을 넘어 다른 자손을 돌보는 매우 이타적인 존재**입니다.
* 편도체는 공감의 핵심 요소인 공포를 인식하고 이에 대응하는 데 중요한 역할을 합니다. **사이코패스를 가진 사람들은 편도체가 덜 발달되어 위협에 대한 반응이 느립니다.**
* 💔 사이코패스는 **타인의 두려움을 인식하는 데 어려움**을 겪기 때문에 공감 능력과 도덕적 판단에 영향을 미칩니다.
* 사이코패스는 의사 결정 시 **측면 전전두피질에 더 많이 의존**하는데, 이는 일반적인 공감 기반 프로세스보다 감정이 덜 작용합니다.
* 👩 ⚕️ 성인의 사이코패스를 치료하는 것은 **자기애적 성향과 치료에 대한 저항**으로 인해 어렵지만, 일부는 **조작적이지 않은 진정한 관계**를 발전시키는 데 도움이 되는 개입을 통해 도움을 받을 수 있습니다.
* 🎓 연구에 따르면 **사이코패스는 효과적인 치료**를 통해 타인과 상호작용하는 새로운 방법을 배워 자신의 삶과 관계를 개선할 수 있습니다.
* 📚 이 동영상의 후원사인 Imprint는 **다양한 주제에 대한 지식을 심화**하고자 하는 호기심 많은 개인에게 추천하는 학습 앱입니다.

사이코패스는 인구 집단에 따라 다양하며, 배려하는 행동과 신경 구조에 영향을 미치고 공감과 도덕적 의사 결정을 방해합니다.

- 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
few minutes of your day

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The psychopathic brain is different—but it CAN be treated | Abigail Marsh, PhD

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사이코패스와 이타주의의 연속체

사이코패스는 이제 어떤 사람은 극도로 사이코패스적인 반면 어떤 사람은 반사이코패스적인 등 인구의 지속적인 변수로 이해되고 있습니다.

인간의 이타심은 자신의 자손이 아닌 다른 자손을 돌보는 친부모 종으로서의 진화적 역할과 관련이 있습니다.

연구에 따르면 매우 이타적인 사람들은 특히 공포를 경험하고 타인에게 공감하는 능력에서 사이코패스적인 사람들과 정반대의 신경 구조와 정서적 특성을 가지고 있는 것으로 나타났습니다.

공포를 처리하는 편도체의 역할

편도체는 인간과 동물의 공포 반응을 조정하는 데 중요한 역할을 합니다.

연구에 따르면 사이코패스의 위험에 노출된 사람은 편도체 발달이 미숙하고 반응성이 떨어져 공포를 인지하고 대응하는 능력에 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났습니다.

편도체는 공포에 대한 신체 및 행동 반응을 조정할 뿐만 아니라 전전두엽 피질로 정보를 보내 다른 사람의 시뮬레이션 및 인식된 공포를 기반으로 의사 결정을 내릴 수 있도록 안내합니다.

사이코패스가 의사 결정과 공감에 미치는 영향

사이코패스는 다른 사람의 복지를 고려하고 공감을 바탕으로 의사 결정을 내리는 능력이 부족합니다.

대신, 이들은 측면 전전두피질에 의존하여 보다 이성적이고 규칙에 기반한 결정을 내립니다.

나르시시즘과 비난 전가 경향으로 인해 사이코패스를 치료하는 것은 어려운 일이며, 이러한 사람들은 치료를 받기가 어렵습니다.

사이코패스가 변화할 수 있는 잠재력

사이코패스 성향의 사람들은 다른 사람들과 비조작적인 방식으로 상호작용하는 법을 배워 자신과 주변 사람들의 삶을 개선할 수 있습니다.

사이코패스 행동의 변화 가능성을 보여주는 훌륭한 연구 결과가 뒷받침하는 효과적인 치료법이 있습니다.

학습 앱인 Imprint는 아름다운 일러스트와 애니메이션 강의를 제공하며, 30,000개 이상의 별점 리뷰와 2023년 Google 올해의 앱으로 선정되는 등 높은 평가를 받고 있습니다.

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Imprint는 빠른 학습을 위해 이해하기 쉬운 카드로 제공되는 80일 과정의 필수 철학 강좌를 제공합니다.

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