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Science of Evil summary

Name: Science of Evil
Author: Simon Baron-Cohen

Simon Baron-Cohen

On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty

19 mins

Brief summary

Science of Evil delves into the roots of human cruelty, exploring how empathy deficits lead to acts of evil. Simon Baron-Cohen examines psychological and neurological perspectives to understand and potentially mitigate these behaviors.

Topics

The Brain Mental Health Social Philosophy Social Psychology The Human Condition Ethics & Morality

Table of Contents

Science of Evil
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What’s in it for me? Decode the science of empathy.

Dr. Sigmund Rascher was a respected scientist. His work on human adaptation to temperature was systematic, rigorous, and insightful. It’s still taught in universities today. But Rascher conducted this research as a Nazi physician, and its horrifying truth would soon come to light

Rascher had a practical interest in reviving the human body after it had suffered hypothermic shock: his research supposedly aimed to help save pilots who crash-landed in the North Sea. However, in pursuing this research, Rascher became one of Hitler’s willing executioners.

Between 1942 and 1943, hundreds of inmates at Dachau concentration camp were subjected to his brutal experiments. They were stripped naked, placed in tanks of freezing water until they passed out, then plunged into a second tank containing either hot, warm, or tepid water. Up to 90 inmates died under Rascher’s supervision.

The guilt of men like Rascher was easily established at the Nuremberg trials, but a larger question remained: what enabled these extraordinary acts of cruelty? There was an obvious answer: evil. But while there were outright sadists and ideological zealots among them, the most striking aspect was the ordinariness of many defendants. Their actions were harder to explain. How had apparently normal people – possessed pen-pushing careerists and cultured scientists – committed such evil?

Using “evil” as an explanation creates problems. To stretch a concept so far weakens its explanatory power. That’s not the only problem: this explanation is also circular. If evil is the absence of good, which is what most definitions boil down to, all we’re saying is that Nazis, terrorists, or murderers do bad things because they’re not good. We’re falling into circular reasoning – assuming the very thing we’re trying to prove.

So what’s the alternative explanation?

In this Blink, we’ll look at Simon Baron-Cohen’s answer. His approach shifts the focus away from vague notions of evil onto a tangible psychological attribute: empathy. As we’ll see, the absence of empathy doesn’t only explain human cruelty – it can be measured in concrete, scientific ways.

With that in mind, let’s step into the darker corners of human psychology, where our investigation begins.

Cruelty becomes possible when we treat humans as things

That humans are capable of causing extreme harm to one another is well known. We bear witness to this distressing fact every time we open a newspaper or turn on the TV. The history of our species is, in part, a long tale of genocide, persecution, and torture. So if we move beyond the concept of evil, we need to find another way to explain this capacity for cruelty.

The answer, we’ll see, lies in empathy erosion. Unlike evil, which is hard to define and harder still to measure, this concept has sturdy scientific foundations.

But before we get to that, we need to clarify our terms.

Erosion is simple enough: it’s the gradual destruction or diminution of something. Empathy is a little more complicated. Originally derived from the German word Einfühlung, it literally means “feeling into.” It’s sometimes conflated with sympathy – a related but ultimately distinct concept. To sympathize is to feel compassion or sorrow with or alongside another person: while sympathizing, you maintain your own perspective. To empathize, by contrast, is to consider things from another person’s point of view – to “climb into his skin and walk around in it,” as the lawyer Atticus Finch puts it in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

Here’s what makes empathy special: when we take another person’s view of things, we don’t forget our own point of view – we straddle both perspectives. Empathy has a “double focus:” we’re thinking about our own minds while taking another person’s mind into account. This helps us understand what might happen when our empathy is eroded: we become single-minded. Our attention is like a spotlight with a narrow focus; it only illuminates our own interests and perspectives. The other person disappears from view.

More precisely, the other person as a person disappears from view. To understand this better, we can turn to the twentieth-century philosopher Martin Buber. According to Buber, we adopt one of two modes in our relationships with others. When we’re in the “I-thou” mode, we treat people as complete beings – that is, we see their inherent dignity and worth and act accordingly. When we’re in the “I-it” mode, we see things differently. We prioritize our own goals and treat others as a means to those ends. In this mode, we discount the other’s subjectivity and intrinsic worth.

This brings us to a working definition of empathy erosion: it’s a state of mind in which we relate to people as if they were things that either serve or interfere with our own interests.

Empathy is simultaneously rational and emotive

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 isn’t black and white – it’s a matter of degrees

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.

The making of a psychopath

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.

How early relationships shape our capacity for empathy

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.

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What is Science of Evil about?

The Science of Evil (2011) seeks to understand what causes people to be cruel to one another. Doing away with the unscientific concept of “evil,” it suggests that the deeds we commonly associate with that word can be better explained by an absence of empathy. Cruelty, it argues, becomes possible when we lose sight of others’ humanity and treat them as mere objects.

Who should read Science of Evil?

Anyone interested in empathy and interpersonal relationships
Professionals in mental health and therapeutic fields
Curious minds seeking to understand the science behind moral behavior

About the Author

Simon Baron-Cohen is a professor of developmental psychopathology and the director of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of over 600 scientific articles. His books include The Pattern Seekers and The Essential Difference.

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