- It's a very common misperception that humans are fundamentally selfish- meaning every motivation that drives us is based in a desire for
what will benefit us, that we don't have any capacity for truly caring about other people. I think there are reasons to be confident that can't be true, and I think one of the most compelling is the existence of the
disorder called 'psychopathy.' So people who are highly
psychopathic genuinely don't care about other people's welfare. And so I think the fact
that psychopathy exists is pretty clear evidence that people are not fundamentally selfish. In addition, we now know
that psychopathy exists on a spectrum: so there's very psychopathic
people, people in the middle, but also people who are
sort of anti-psychopathic. Most of that distribution of people definitely have the capacity
to care for other people, and we've identified regions of the brain that specifically seem to encode the value of other people's welfare. I think it's really important for the reality of human nature based on the scientific literature
to be better understood, because trusting one another is a lot more enjoyable way to be, and it's more accurate,
frankly, than being cynical. And so to try to understand that better, I have been studying extreme
populations of people who have done things in the real world that suggest they're unusually
caring or unusually uncaring. My name is Abigail Marsh. I'm a professor of
psychology and neuroscience at Georgetown University, and I study the neural and
cognitive basis of empathy, altruism, and aggression. The way we think about
psychopathy now derives from the work of a psychiatrist
named Hervey Cleckley, who was a really legendary clinician who spent many, many years
studying people with psychopathy. He wrote a book called
"The Mask of Sanity," and I think that title
perfectly captures what it is that makes people with psychopathy unique, which is that they outwardly
appear completely normal, even super normal. They seem just like anybody else, but that really is a mask that's concealing inner
profound deficits in emotion and the way that they
engage with other people. In its extreme form, psychopathy can drive some of the most serious
antisocial behavior and violence that we see. So for example, the serial
killer, Gary Ridgway, is perhaps the most psychopathic criminal. He killed dozens of young women over the course of a few decades. We'll probably never
know exactly how many. His behavior, and also the
way he talked about them, made it clear just how little
he valued their welfare. He didn't think that they mattered. The thing that I think
unnerves people the most about serial killers like Gary Ridgway is just how normal they seem
to everybody around them. They had families, they were known members of their community that were not caught for many years, in part, because nobody suspected that they could be doing
such horrible things under the surface. And that's a really good
example of the mask of sanity. There's somebody doing things that are so awful under the surface that you would think there must be some sign of it externally. But in the case of some
people with psychopathy, there really isn't. I get asked a lot, "What's the difference between the term
psychopath and sociopath?" The main difference is that the term
"psychopath" or "psychopathy" is a scientific and clinical term, and the term "sociopath"
or "sociopathy" is not. It's really important to emphasize that no clinician or scientist
would ever refer to a person as a psychopath. We don't refer to people as their disease or as their disorder anymore. And so I refer to people
who have psychopathy or who are psychopathic. So what we know about psychopathy is it's a neurodevelopmental disorder, in its extreme form affects
probably 1% of people, maybe 2%. And it's pretty clear that people who go on to develop
psychopathy are different from a very early age because their brain is
developing differently. Psychopathy is best thought of as a constellation of personality traits, and the three key traits that
compose psychopathy include, most importantly, a mean,
callous disposition. They really don't care about
other people's welfare, and they'll do things
that hurt other people to benefit themselves. They're certainly more likely to engage in various forms of aggression, especially when that aggression is aimed at achieving a goal. So aggression can be divided
into two broad categories: Reactive aggression, which is the kind of aggression you show when somebody has made you mad, when you've been threatened,
when you're frustrated, and then there's proactive aggression- it's deliberate aggression
aimed at achieving a goal. So you threaten to hurt somebody in order to take their money or to take something that belongs to them. You threaten to reveal somebody's secrets so that they do what you want them to do. That kind of aggression is
really uniquely psychopathic. Second is a bold,
socially-dominant personality. That boldness really
reflects a fearless core. They don't seem to understand
why other people feel fear. They're not good at recognizing
when they're afraid, and if you have that problem, you're much more likely to do things that cause other people to feel fear without really understanding
what the big deal is, and they just don't respond to risk and threat and punishment
the way that other people do. That happens to be one of the reasons that the polygraph doesn't work, because that's one of
the things the polygraph is picking up on is fear
responses when people are lying; people with psychopathy
don't have those responses, not nearly as strongly, at least. And third is being
disinhibited or impulsive. They'll steal things from people, they'll steal things from stores. They'll lie often easily, and not really even for any reason. It's not really your fault
if you have these traits. That's not to say that you
don't deserve consequences. If you hurt somebody
and you're psychopathic, I would never argue that- but I think it's really important that we balance our desire, that they experience some consequences from what they've done with our understanding that they didn't choose to be this way. On the other end of the spectrum are people who are anti-psychopathic, people who are, in some cases,
extraordinarily altruistic, who do things to help others at real risk and cost to themselves, like rescuing people
from drownings or fires or donating organs or bone
marrow to other people. They're genuinely unselfish. And I hesitate to say that because the image that that conjures up in most people's minds is if somebody who's
sort of saintly, right, they think of them as
like a guardian angel or somehow superhuman. It's not like they never swear. It's not like they
never get, you know, mad when they're stuck in traffic. They're just ordinary people in most ways. The character of Iron Man is
a really interesting example because, of course, he is very altruistic. He does a lot of things
to help other people, but he doesn't seem like an
altruist should seem, right? He's kind of a wise-cracker. He's done some things that are
less than savory in his past, but at core, you can tell that he really does care about
the other people around them, and he will go to great
lengths to help them. And so in some ways, I think that's a more realistic depiction of a genuinely altruistic person than the more sort of flat, one-dimensional old-school
character like Superman. Although extraordinary altruism is not a clinical condition, obviously, it is typified by traits that set altruists
apart from other people. So first, their humility. They tend to think of
themselves as just the same as anybody around them, despite the fact that they have actually done
some pretty unusual things, and that seems to be a really
core feature of altruism. If you think that everybody
is equally special, helping others makes more sense. They tend to believe in the
goodness of other people. They're much less likely to believe that others can be truly evil. Finally, they seem to be more sensitive to other people's distress. They're more likely to empathize with and recognize other people's
fear and also their pain. What's really unusual about
extraordinary altruists is that even when it comes to people who were very distant from them, people who were only
acquaintances or even strangers, they still seem to value their welfare. We're supposed to help
people who are close to us if they're in trouble, but if it's a perfect stranger, most of us don't see it as an
obligation in the same way. And yet extraordinary altruists, I don't think really see it that way. They really do think, "Well, this is a human being whose, you know, welfare is
fundamentally important." If people are interested in knowing how altruistic
versus psychopathic they are, there are a couple tests
out there on the internet that you can use to test yourself. One of the better self-report
tests of psychopathy is called the TriPM, and it's available on the
website of PsychopathyIs. It is a brief but very well validated test of that bold, dominant,
relatively callous personality that typify psychopathy. And you can get a percentile score and find out where you fall. If you get a very low score
on a psychopathy test, it may be a sign that
you're highly altruistic. But another way to test that is using a personality
test called the HEXACO. What it really captures is the
degree to which you believe that other people fundamentally matter versus are exploitable for your own good. There's really good evidence that people can become more altruistic. If you look at global trends, you see generally that people are donating
more money over time. They're helping more strangers over time. One of the things that seems to make people
become more generous is when they themselves are doing better. And I think because they
have the psychological and physical resources to do so, so that's really good news because it means that policies that promote flourishing and well-being will probably also promote generosity. But the best evidence for how people can become more
generous is by just starting. And so I generally recommend that if people would like
to become more altruistic, you think of some small
feasible way to do things to help other people, and it should naturally
proceed upward from there- because one of the absolute
best things about altruism is how incredibly pleasant it is. It's such a source of joy for
most people to help others. And that becomes a
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