Scientist says evil can be treated

 

Sat May 7, 2011 3:2PM

A Cambridge University scientist says evil is a lack of empathy which can be measured and monitored and is susceptible to education and treatment.

"I'm not satisfied with the term 'evil'," Reuters quoted Cambridge University psychology and psychiatry professor Simon Baron-Cohen as saying.

"We've inherited this word... and we use it to express our abhorrence when people do awful things, usually acts of cruelty, but I don't think it's anything more than another word for doing something bad,” he added, saying that “we need a new theory of human cruelty.”

In his recent book Zero Degrees of Empathy, Baron-Cohen suggests a rebranding of evil and defining it in terms of lack of empathy.

Director of the Autism Research Center at Cambridge defines empathy in two parts; as the drive to identify other people's thoughts and feelings, and the drive to respond appropriately to those thoughts and feelings.

According to Baron-Cohen, if people fully use their capability to empathize many conflicts in families and society will be resolved.

"If you think about conflict resolution at the moment, usually we are dependent on diplomatic channels, legal frameworks, or military methods,” he said.

“But all those things operate at a very abstract level and they don't seem to get us very far.

"Empathy is about two people -- two people meeting, getting to know each other and tuning in to what the other person is thinking and feeling."

One of the world's top experts in autism and developmental psychopathology, Baron-Cohen cites at least ten brain regions which make up what he calls the "empathy circuit."

When people hurt others, parts of that circuit are malfunctioning. He also sets out an "empathy spectrum" ranging from zero to six degrees of empathy, and an "empathy quotient" test, which ranks people along that spectrum.

Baron-Cohen says people are in the middle of the spectrum, with a few particularly attuned and highly empathetic people at the top end.

He says those who fall at the bottom end of the scale should not be labeled evil, but should rather be seen as sick or "disabled," who need to be helped with their empathy deficiency.

"I try to keep an open mind. I would never want to say a person is beyond help," he says. "Empathy is a skill like any other human skill -- and if you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it."

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/178720.html