Simon Baron-Cohen

A groundbreaking and challenging examination of the social, cognitive, neurological, and biological roots of psychopathy, cruelty, and evil Borderline personality disorder, autism, narcissism, psychosis: All of these syndromes have one thing in common -- lack of empathy. In some cases, this absence can be dangerous, but in others it can simply mean a different way of seeing the world. In The Science of Evil Simon Baron-Cohen, an award-winning British researcher who has investigated psychology and autism for decades, develops a new brain-based theory of human cruelty. A true psychologist, however, he examines social and environmental factors that can erode empathy, including neglect and abuse. Based largely on Baron-Cohen's own research, The Science of Evil will change the way we understand and treat human cruelty.

On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty

The Science of Evil

Paulina 

What started out as an intriguing promise for discussing empathy psychologically turned into an argument about understanding autism and a pretty narrow-minded view of psychopaths and how the court system handles psychiatry.

I'm not an expert on these topics, but I did do an experiment in college using the Empathy Quotient so I was intrigued by this book. There was unfortunately no mention of how many gaps the EQ leaves, and that it is actually a broken measure for empathy, even if it is the only one that exists. I was very confused on his views of psycopaths, and while he made some weak nature versus nuture arguments, nothing seemed to add up to an argument about why a lack of empathy turns into the grand scales of violence. He mentions treating humans as objects, but rarely correlates the examples with sociological factors (I kept reminding myself he's a psychologist, but it seems his understanding of his own research was weak at best).

I was lost when he delved into the pathos arguments about autism and how autistic individuals can be awesome. How does this have to do with evil? He spent more time on borderline personality disorder and autism than he did on actually arguing that the lack of empathy directly correlates to violence (but sorry, he actually says it doesn't, so I'm really lost as to why he wrote this book to make an argument only then to undermine it himself).

In the very last section, he finally starts trying to make a point. By then, he throws in that empathy is the most important thing we have, and that we need to have a DSM category for empathy erosion disorders. I might have been more convinced if the argument wasn't fully based in pathos and anecdotes. I get it, people with autism get a bad reputation and it's not their fault, but you can't convince me that someone who rapes a woman because he doesn't know better, and would likely do it again because he thinks he did no wrong, is someone we can have walking free in society.nI also thought his understanding of the criminal justice system was poor, as he is using a micro lens of view instead of the meso or even macro levels of how it operates. The temporary lack of empathy doesn't mean a woman should be let down easier for killing her children. She knew what she was doing and, while obviously a horrible act for stupid reasons, she carried it out with efficiency.

Overall I was very disappointed in this book. He had poor editing (jumped from using he to she/he to they in one sentence) and needed to sit down and come up with a more precise argument. He kept referencing horrible acts but then failed to show me how, in the research cited, it actually meant anything. I also feel he doesn't understand psychopaths as well as he thinks, because while they are more inclined to commit crimes, they simply lack any empathy at all. They usually realize at a young age they don't feel the same emotions or empathize with others, and that isn't something they will learn. There are psychopaths who just end up using people but don't commit crimes, though it's not as broadly discussed.

ETA: I'm also not a fan of how he cherry picked research and then failed to give me actual numbers on the research groups used to prove a point. Telling me Denmark did a study on boys and 4% that almost died at birth committed 18% of the crime means absolutely nothing to me. Was it a study of 50 boys? An entire generation? The country? His explanations for the empathy circuit were pretty void of detail as well, just telling me that they showed less activity in xyz parts of the brain at certain times. Less than what? How did they normalize the measurement? Or is he saying the activity decreased when seeing the images or situations? He should know better than blindly citing sources, as he is a researcher himself. I'm not sure if he "dumbed" it down for the masses or if he felt people would just absorb the numbers blindly.

Honestly the best thing that came out of this book was discovering that someone used Phillip Zimbardos prison experiment to write a book, Ordinary Men, which I will follow up with for hopefully better reading. For those who don't know, it was an experiment where college students were brought into a mock prison setting and divided into prisoners and guards. The extreme changes in behavior happened so fast that full blown riots were breaking out within the first two weeks. Zimbardo and his team had to shut the experiment down because it got out of hand so fast. Now why was this mentioned so quickly and not used in an argument about empathy and cruelty? I have no clue. Assuming we're not throwing it out the window due to some questionable ethics and claims Zimbardo became more involved than necessary, it would make for a more sound platform of debate on how quickly those given the feeling of power dominate, objectify, and then victimize others. Especially since, before the experiment, they were normal functioning students.

The Science of Evil On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty

Reviews