Psychopaths: Do they Have an On Switch to Their Empathy?

Empathy is defined as the ability to understand the feelings of those around you; it plays a role in everyday life. However despite the prevalence of such an ability there are those who lack it. “Studies show a long term decline in empathy levels amongst college students of nearly 50% in the past three decades.” There are a number of factors that could be responsible for this decline of empathy. There are correlations between wealth and sociopaths as well as executives at companies. World conflicts such as terrorism and religious difference, as well as abuse of online media could be responsible for causing empathy levels to plummet.

According to Roman Krznaric and latest neuroscience research “98% of us have the ability to empathize wired into our brain, but we’re living far below our empathic potential.” It is time for us to “regenerate our empathy both as individuals and as a society.” He suggests 5 ways to be more empathetic to switch on our “empathetic brains”. These 5 ways include: listening to others express their needs, have conversations with strangers at least once a day, look at things from other points of view, learn to read others emotionally and last but not least implement empathy lessons in the classroom for younger individuals. These are all strong methods of practicing empathy in small increments throughout the day because they allow us to interact with others and get used to the idea that “the world doesn’t revolve around me”.

James Fallon’s book The Psychopath Inside describes his life experiences and discovery that his brain scan as well as genetics matched that of serial killers—he too is a psychopath. He brings up the important question: “How does one know if one lacks empathy?” He explains if one lacks if then there is a good chance that person will have no idea they lack it in the first place because they will not know what empathy is to start with. Although Roman Krznaric’s 5 modes of empathy are reasonable in theory they only apply to every day life or those individuals that are merely starting to lose empathy. It does not see practical for those that actually are psychopaths. As Fallon stated: psychopath’s would not even know what empathy is so how would they even begin to practice it? Furthermore how would they even genuinely be empathetic? Fallon explained that he never thought he lacked empathy at all and lived a happy normal life and therefore would never question his sense of empathy. Now that Fallon looks back on everything he has learned from his behavior and comparisons to how others act and cry, that he really is different. In his case his intentions are never bad nor does he gain pleasure in hurting others—he lacks empathy and is therefore unable to feel bad if he hurts someone while in pursuit of his goals or amusement.

Krnaric’s methods to increase one’s personal empathy may benefit society as a whole but it seems unlikely that it would happen anytime soon with outside factors and tragedies occurring worldwide. The overall cloud of pessimism that plagues our society from time to time makes it difficult for individuals to put these 5 empathy increasers into action and as Fallon describes through his own experiences you make never even realize you lack empathy in the first place. While many can attempt to turn "on" their empathy switches for psychopaths this switch may not even exist.