Empathy & Compassion

Psychopaths’ Brains Aren’t Wired To Show Empathy, Study Finds

by |Published

Psychopaths are unable to show empathy toward others because their brains aren’t wired to do so, according to a new study in JAMA Psychiatry.

http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1681369

Researchers from the University of Chicago used brain imaging technology to find that psychopaths have less activation in certain parts of the brain and high activation in other parts of the brain, compared with people who are not psychopaths, in response to scenarios of people being purposely hurt.

Scientific American provides a good definition of a psychopath: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-psychopath-means

 

You may also like

Leading With Empathy: Human-Centered Design and Engineering: there is a growing movement for a more empathic product-design process.
Published

Leading With Empathy: Human-Centered Design and Engineering: there is a growing movement for a more empathic product-design process.

Product design is a fundamentally compassionate act. After all, the best products come from designers who listen intently to the populations they serve and have empathy for the people who might use their product or service.Unfortunately, the world…

Everything you think you know about animals is wrong: How science is forcing us to reconsider the twin myths of human superiority and dumb creatures
Published

Everything you think you know about animals is wrong: How science is forcing us to reconsider the twin myths of human superiority and dumb creatures

Human beings are the most intelligent, and therefore important, of all the world´s species, right?We deserve our superior status over other animals because of the following scientific truths: that only humans are self-aware and feel empathy, that…

A Dynamic Model of Empathy: Jock McKeen at TEDxGabriolaIsland
Published

A Dynamic Model of Empathy: Jock McKeen at TEDxGabriolaIsland

Jock McKeen is an accomplished presenter and author. Starting out as an emergency physician In A Dynamic Model of Empathy, McKeen argues that empathy is not a thing but a developing, cyclic, and lifelong process. He demonstrates the similarity of…

Futurity.org – Psychopaths not wired for empathy
Published

Futurity.org – Psychopaths not wired for empathy

Psychopaths show less activity in areas of the brain linked to empathy when they view images of people in distress, a study shows.This is the first time that neural processes associated with empathic processing have been directly examined in individual…