Are psychopaths, “heartless people” as they are often called, really capable of feeling the pain and emotions of others? Neuropsychologists have proven that an emotionally cold, antisocial person is able to respond to suffering in the same way as ordinary people. But for this it needs to be “stirred up”.
They are not just people with a difficult character. In childhood, out of curiosity, they torture animals, manipulate relatives and friends, and blackmail teachers. They learn early on how to use others for their own ends and learn to imitate emotions in order to elicit desired responses from others.
Growing up, they become either dissolute adventurers or subtle manipulators (therefore, they often make a successful career in politics and business). Until now, it seemed that psychopaths could not understand or even simply feel the experiences of other people. And without empathy, you can’t assess the harm from your actions, you can’t understand how much they can affect others.
Empathy is an innate ability to put oneself in the place of another, to understand what he feels, by facial expression, body position … Dogs, cats, monkeys and many other higher animals are capable of empathy.
This sensitivity is largely due to the action of neurons called “mirror”. They are activated when we perform an action or see (imagine) someone else is doing it.
We seem to “try on” the behavior of another person and thus understand it. We are talking about a whole system of connections, in which the insular lobe of the brain (part of the cerebral hemispheres) plays the most important role. So if psychopaths really do not have empathy, they will not have this particular part of the brain active.
The problem of psychopaths is not in the inability to perceive other people’s experiences, but in the fact that their nervous system lacks excitement.
Testing this hypothesis, the neuropsychologist Harma Meffert from the University of Groningen (Holland) refuted it and proved the opposite (1). Neurons in the corresponding areas of the brain are active, which means that heartless, cruel, antisocial people are still capable of empathy.
But unlike most of us, their impulse transmission mechanism seems to be “jammed”, and the desired effect must be provoked artificially. In an experiment by Harm Meffert, participants with psychopathic personality disorder were shown small video clips in which hand movements expressed two different emotions.
In the first fragment, one hand was stroking the other, in the second, it was hitting it with force. During the scan, the tomograph did not record activity in areas of the brain associated with the manifestation of empathy. But when the experimenter directly asked the participants to describe (and imagine) what a person who is hit on the arm feels, their brain activity became almost comparable to that observed in ordinary people.
The problem of psychopaths, according to Meffert, is not the inability to perceive other people’s experiences, but that their nervous system lacks excitement. Perhaps this is the key to why sometimes the most hardened criminals experience a sudden impulse of remorse and even do noble deeds (for example, at the cost of their lives to save small children).
1. Brain, 2013, vol. 136.