Science of Evil summary

So far we’ve focused on cognition: empathy, we said, is the ability to think about our own minds while taking account of others’. But that’s only half the story. Cognition is a necessary condition for empathy, but it’s not sufficient. 

Empathy requires us to imagine another person’s inner life –  to mentally step into their world and understand what they’re thinking and feeling. But here’s the important part: this act of recognition has to be followed by a drive to respond with appropriate emotions of our own. Put simply, when we empathize, we don’t just ask someone how they’re feeling – we’re also mindful of how our actions affect them. We’re careful not to hurt their feelings; we consider whether it’s more appropriate to laugh or commiserate when they tell a self-deprecating story; we say things that make them feel good. This kind of “affective” or emotional empathy is about listening to what people say, but it’s also about interpreting tone, parsing body language, and reading faces. 

Empathy, as we’ve seen, isn’t simply on or off. When our focus narrows to ourselves, empathy dims; when it expands to include others, it brightens. Between these extremes lies a spectrum of possibilities. Think of empathy less like a light switch and more like a dimmer – it can be turned up or down.

At the lowest setting, empathy is imperceptible; at the highest, it’s turned all the way up, resulting in an overwhelming hypersensitivity. Most of the time, most of us fall somewhere between the lowest and highest settings. What moves us up and down this scale? Several powerful social factors come into play. 

Many adult psychopaths have two things in common: they experienced emotional neglect and showed consistent patterns of antisocial behavior as children. The link between abuse and conduct disorders in early life is well documented. However, this isn’t a simple cause-and-effect relationship – plenty of people who experience difficult childhoods grow up to be empathetic adults. So what’s the missing piece of the puzzle?

Scientists looking for an “empathy gene” typically focus their search on genes that regulate serotonin, a neurotransmitter linked to aggression. One gene in particular has caught their attention: monoamine oxidase-A, or MAOA. This gene produces an enzyme that breaks down serotonin. Higher levels of this enzyme mean that serotonin clears from the synapse more efficiently. That in turn decreases aggression. 

There may be neurological reasons why some people’s empathy diminishes, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else is wired to be empathic. How, then, do we develop empathy?

One possible explanation can be found in the work of Peter Fonagy, a professor of psychoanalysis at University College London and a practicing clinical psychologist. Fonagy theorizes that children gradually acquire the ability to see the world through other people’s eyes by attempting to “mentalize” their caregiver’s mind. Think of mentalization as a child’s earliest attempts to understand what others – particularly their caregivers – think and feel about them.