Dr. Julia Shaw on evil



Luke McBain 


NEUROPSYCH — 

"Dark empaths": how dangerous are psychopaths and narcissists with empathy?

Dark personality traits include psychopathy, 
Machiavellianism, and narcissism. 
Is there room for empathy?




1. Bad brains can lead to bad decisions. Now, one of these brains is the brain of a psychopath, and the other brain is one of normal control. Now, what we see is that the psychopath is missing activity both in the part of the brain that is responsible for good decision-making and in the part of the brain that's responsible for empathy. Now, this means that it's much easier to hurt somebody and to make bad decisions because if you don't feel the same things that the person you're aggressing against feels, it's easier to aggress. But of course it's not a sufficient explanation. It just makes it more likely, it makes it easier to do harm to others. 


                                            
2. So a second theory, a second factor that we need to consider is personality. Now, people like to talk about psychopaths, but there are other types of personality characteristics that we know are associated with increased levels of behaviors we might label evil, including narcissism, including sadism, and including Machiavellianism. And together, actually, these also exist on what's called a subclinical scale; that means that you might not have a diagnosis of a full-fledged, for example, psychopath, but you might meet some of the criteria. And if you meet some of the criteria for all four of these, then you are significantly more likely to harm other individuals.




3. So three, another thing that strongly facilitates bad behavior. Bad culture can also lay the groundwork for bad behavior. Right now, there's a lot of talk about sexual harassment. I don't think it's surprising that in a society that treats women as inferior to men, in a society that teaches boys that women are seductive temptresses, that they're not particularly good at science, that they're not particularly good at math, that men, understandably perhaps, treat women differently. We as a society have laid the groundwork for certain values and beliefs, and when someone acts in ways that are in line with the values that we've taught them, we shouldn't be surprised.




4. Bad supervision or a lack of rules and regulations can also contribute to bad decision-making. A theory called "routine activity theory," or "RAT," suggests that if you put suitable victims in a place with motivated offenders without appropriate guardians, like regulators, like police, they are significantly more likely to commit crime. Now, one of the things that we're seeing right now is that online rates of crime are astronomical. And part of the rationale for that is that the cyber-RAT, that online, when we have so many potential victims and so many potential perpetrators in the same space without regulation, we get into trouble.




5. But my favorite theory, my favorite theory of all that I think really helps explain the worst kinds of atrocities, that helps explain the Jeffrey Dahmers of the world, that helps explain why people in military situations can do awful things, why humans are capable, good, normal humans are capable of genocide is dehumanizing people.


Reflections of a serial killer.

25 years after Jeffrey Dahmer’s first headline.

By Anne E. Schwartz · Published August 2, 2016.

'...Jeffrey Dahmer, 31 when he was arrested in 1991, sexually assaulted, killed and dismembered 17 men and boys – 16 in West Allis and Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and one victim in Ohio – all between 1978 and 1991....'


Because when we stop seeing people as human beings, it makes us capable of the worst kinds of atrocity. And one of the ways that we do that is by calling people evil. When we call someone evil, we're trying to communicate to someone that, "This person, I don't even want to try and understand. This person is so different from me that I'm not even going to consider them a human being; I'm going to use words like 'monster' instead." And the problem is - as Nietzsche has said in his critique of the concept of evil, especially of the dichotomous concept of good versus evil rather than in more nuanced understanding, suggesting that we're all a mix of things that some people consider good and others consider evil - is that when you start fighting with monsters, you have to be careful that you don't become the monster.




In Evil, Shaw uses a compelling mix of science, popular culture, and real life examples to break down timely and important issues.


https://www.drjuliashaw.com/evil
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)