Simon Baron-Cohen - The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty

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Table of Contents

PRAISE FOR

THE SCIENCE OF EVIL

What makes someone evil? Whats the brain got to do with it? Baron
Cohen confronts the most urgent and controversial questions in social
neuroscience. Both disturbing and compassionate, this brilliant book
establishes a new science of evil, explaining both its brain basis and development
. Baron-Cohen fundamentally transforms how we understand
cruelty in others and in so doing forces us to examine ourselves.
Reading this book invites us to widen our own circle of empathy
compelling us to grow and comprehend, if not forgive.

Andrew N. Meltzoff, co-director of University of Washington
Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and co-author of
The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us about the Mind

Simon Baron-Cohen displays once again his ability to bring science to
bear on troubling and controversial issues. Arguing that we explain nothing
by describing acts of wanton cruelty as evil, he explores the simple but
powerful hypothesis that such acts can be traced to a distinct psychological
statea lack of empathy. He backs up his claim with a wealth of
researchfrom developmental psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and
genetics. Those who have to deal with the aftermath of cruelty may not
agree with Baron-Cohens analysis but they will surely be informed and
provoked by his boldness and originality.

Paul Harris, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education,
Harvard Graduate School of Education

ALSO BY SIMON BARON-COHEN

The Essential Difference

Mindblindness

IN MEMORY OF

Peter Lipton (19502007),
professor of philosophy of science,
Cambridge University, who combined precision
in explanation with humor and compassion; and

Judy Ruth Greenblatt (19332008),
who gave her five children and five grandchildren
their internal pot of gold

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book isnt for people with a sensitive disposition. You cant write about human cruelty in a cheerful way, so if youre looking for a fun read, proceed no further. In this book I attempt to redefine evil in terms of empathy and look at why some people have more or less empathy than others and what happens when we lose it. Distressing and even shocking as the material may be, the nature of empathy is (to me, at least) endlessly fascinating, and the research behind it has been exciting (an odd choice of word in the circumstances), primarily because I have such a wonderful group of talented scientists as colleagues. I am pleased to have the chance to thank them here.

Scientists collect bizarre things (Charles Darwin famously collected beetles and finches). In our case, as empathy researchers, we collect emotions! Our DVD Mindreading is where we house all 412 of them. Ofer Golan, Sally Wheelwright, Jacqueline Hill, and I developed this electronic library, and Ofer Golan, Emma Ashwin, Yael Granader, Kimberly Armstrong, Gina Owens, Nic Lever, Jon Drori, Nick Paske, Claire Harcup, and I developed a second DVD (The Transporters) as a fun way to teach empathy to preschool children with autism who struggle to achieve this.1

Scientists also develop new ways to measure things. For us the challenge was to come up with new ways to measure individual differences in empathy. First, Sally Wheelwright, Carrie Allison, Bonnie Auyeung, and I developed the Empathy Quotient (see Appendix 1). To track down where empathy might be hiding, Chris Ashwin, Bhismadev Chakrabarti, Mike Lombardo, John Suckling, Ed Bullmore, Meng-Chuan Lai, Matthew Belmonte, Jac Billington, John Herrington, Howard Ring, Steve Williams, Marie Gomot, Ilaria Minio-Paluello, and I conducted brain-scanning studies. To investigate the trouble with testosterone and its impact on empathy,2 Bonnie Auyeung, Rebecca Knickmeyer, Emma Ashwin (ne Chapman), Svetlana Lutchmaya, Liliana Ruta, Erin Ingudomnukul, Lindsay Chura, Kevin Taylor, Peter Raggat, Gerald Hackett, and I collected amniotic fluid from babies and blood samples from adults. Bhismadev Chakrabarti, Frank Dudbridge, Sharmila Basu, Carrie Allison, Sally Wheelwright, Grant Hill-Cawthorne, Lindsey Kent, and I also hunted for empathy genes. All of these projects have been fascinating.

Keeping a busy research lab running smoothly while writing a book assumes wonderful administrative support: Gaenor Moore, Paula Naimi, Jenny Hannah, Carol Farmer, and Rachel Jackson have been an amazing admin team. Gaenor also cheerfully created the reference list for this book, no small feat, for which I am extremely grateful. Bhisma Chakrabarti and Mike Lombardo both generously commented on draft chapters in this book. Mike in particular taught me more social neuroscience during this process, which was invaluable. Helen Conford and Stefan McGrath at Penguin UK have been patiently waiting for this book since 2004! Helen gave me insightful, careful feedback as the book took shape. It took six years to write because the hunt for empathy genes was not quick. Katinka Matson and John Brockman, my agents, showed the same remarkable patience in waiting for this book to be born.

I have been studying empathy for thirty years, and my aim now is to put this remarkable substance onto the table so that we can all look at it from every angle. In my first book, Mindblindness , I focused on one part of the nature of empathy (the part related to how we understand other people, that is, the cognitive part of empathy) and on the case of autism, where empathy difficulties abound. In my second book, The Essential Difference, I included the second part of empathy (the part related to our emotional reactions to people, that is, the affective part of empathy) and on how the two sexes differ in empathy. In that book I again explored the flip side of empathy, with an analysis of the difficulties people with autism face in acquiring this essential skill.

Now, in The Science of Evil, I examine why some people become capable of cruelty and whether a loss of empathy inevitably has this consequence. This book goes deeper than I have gone before by drilling down into the brain basis of empathy and looking at its social and biological determinants. This book also goes broader by taking a close look at some of the medical conditions that lead to a loss of empathy. My main goal is to understand human cruelty, replacing the unscientific term evil with the scientific term empathy.

I want to thank Charlotte Ridings and Jan Kristiannson for their excellent editorial suggestions and Thomas Keheller and Melissa Veronesi at Basic Books for their help throughout.

I give special thanks to Bridget Lindley for all her support, to my parents (Judy and Vivian) and siblings (Dan, Ash, Liz, and Suzie) for their dependable humor, and to my children, Sam, Kate, and Robin, for their playfulness and encouragement. I hope I gave them enough of the internal pot of gold that I got from my parents, who got it from theirs.

Explaining Evil and Human Cruelty

When I was seven years old, my father told me the Nazis had turned Jews into lampshades. Just one of those comments that you hear once, and the thought never goes away. To a childs mind (even to an adults) these two types of things just dont belong together. He also told me the Nazis turned Jews into bars of soap. It sounds so unbelievable, yet it is actually true. I knew our family was Jewish, so this image of

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