WEBVTT

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These two Nazi scientists worked
at the Dachau Concentration Camp

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during World War II.

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They were conducting an experiment

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to see how long a human being
could survive in freezing water.

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Like good scientists,

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they took systematic measures
including duration until death.

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Examples of human cruelty
of this kind raise a big question.

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How is it possible
to treat a person as a mere object?

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The traditional explanation
for human cruelty is in terms of evil.

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I find the concept of evil
unhelpful and unscientific.

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It implies that the person is possessed
by some supernatural force.

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Even worse it's dangerously circular;

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if the definition of evil
is the absence of good,

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then all we're really saying

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is he did something bad
because he is not good.

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It hasn't really taken us
any further forward.

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In contrast the concept of empathy,

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I'm going to argue
is scientifically helpful;

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you can measure it, you can study it.

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Empathy has two distinct components --
cognitive and affective.

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Cognitive empathy is the ability

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to imagine someone else's
thoughts and feelings;

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putting yourself into
someone else's shoes.

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It's the recognition part.

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Affective empathy is the drive to respond
with an appropriate emotion

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to what someone else
is thinking or feeling.

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I'm going to argue
that low affective empathy

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is a necessary factor
to explain human cruelty.

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Empathy isn't all or none;
it comes by degrees,

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and there a individual differences in it.

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So it gives rise
to the empathy bell curve.

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Most of us are in the middle
of this spectrum

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with average amounts of empathy.

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There are some people
who have above average levels of empathy.

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But what are the factors

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that can lead an individual
to have low empathy

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either temporarily or permanently?

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What are those social factors?
What are those biological factors?

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One social factor
is obedience to authority.

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The experiment by Stanley Milgram
at Yale University showed

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that people are willing to administer
electric shocks to someone

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to help them learn,

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if they're instructed to do so
by an authority figure.

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This suggests that simply,

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following orders may be one factor
that can erode our empathy.

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A second social factor is ideology.

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When the terrorists flew the planes
into the World Trade Center on 9/11,

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We have to assume

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that they were in the grip
of a strongly-held belief

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that they were doing the right thing.

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Of course, we don't know

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whether the terrorists
who signed up for that action

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had low empathy to begin with,

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but it's possible

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that their ideological beliefs
were another factor

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that could erode
their empathy for their victims.

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A third social factor 
is in-group/out-group relations.

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In Rwanda, we saw one ethnic group
used propaganda

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to stereotype the out-group;

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describing them as subhuman
and as cockroaches.

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When we dehumanize a group as the enemy,

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we have the potential to lose our empathy;

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and we saw the catastrophic genocide

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that ensued.

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But none of these social factors
can explain individuals like Ted Bundy.

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He started his adult career
as a psychology student

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of the University of Washington

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where he volunteered
on a telephone helpline

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and persuaded women to meet him.

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And over the successive years,

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he committed rape and murder
of at least 30 women.

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We can assume that he had
good cognitive empathy

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because he was able 
to deceive his victims,

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but that he lacked affective empathy
- he just didn't care -

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and he lacked it in enduring ways.

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The evidence that psychopaths
like Ted Bundy lack affective empathy

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comes from an experiment by James Blair

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that was conducted in Broadmoor Hospital.

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He showed psychopaths and a control group

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three different types of images,

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threatening images, neutral images,
and images of people in distress.

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What he found was that the psychopaths

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only showed reduced physiological response

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when they saw the images
of people in distress.

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So this suggests that they lacked
affective empathy.

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People with autism have difficulties
with cognitive empathy.

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They struggle to imagine
other people's thoughts,

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their motives, their intentions,
and their feelings.

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But people with autism
don't tend to hurt other people;

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instead, they are confused by other people

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and withdraw socially, preferring
the more predictable world of objects.

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People with autism
have intact affective empathy

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because when they hear
that somebody is suffering

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it upsets them.

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This leads us to imagine

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that people with autism
and psychopaths are mirror opposites.

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The psychopath has good cognitive empathy
- that's how they can deceive -

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but they have reduced affective empathy.

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People with autism
have intact affective empathy,

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but struggle with cognitive empathy
for neurological reasons.

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Psychopaths don't come out of nowhere.

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Many of them have shown

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antisocial behavior 
and delinquency in their teens.

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John Bowlby at the Tavistock Clinic
in London studied delinquents and found

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that many of them had experienced
emotional neglect in early childhood.

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He argued that the absence
of parental love in early childhood

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is another factor
that can erode your empathy.

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But we know that early experience
can't be the whole story

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because not everyone
who has a bad childhood

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loses their empathy.

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Avshalom Caspi at the Institute
of Psychiatry in London showed

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that if you've experienced
severe maltreatment in childhood

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that increases your risk of delinquency.

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But your risk of deliquency
goes up even more

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if you also a carrier
of one version of the MAO-A gene

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shown here in red;

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so genes and environment interact.

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Another biological factor

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that is associated with empathy levels
is the hormone testosterone.

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In the fetus, testosterone
shapes brain development.

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We've measured testosterone

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in the amniotic fluid
that surrounds the baby

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in women who are having 
amniocentesis during pregnancy.

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We then wait for the baby to be born,
and we follow up the children.

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When the children were eight years old,

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we asked them which word best describes

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what the person in the photo
is thinking or feeling.

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Here the correct answer is
he is interested in something.

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What we found was that the higher
the level of fetal testosterone,

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the more difficulties the child was having

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at this test of cognitive empathy.

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How much empathy we show
is a function of the empathy circuit;

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a network of regions in the brain.

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Here we can look at just two of them:

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in red, for left ventromedial
prefrontal cortex,

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and in blue, the amygdala.

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This is Phineas Gage 
who suffered damage

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to his left ventromedial prefrontal cortex

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after dynamite blasted a metal rod
up behind his eye and through his brain.

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Before the accident, he was described
as a polite, considerate individual.

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After the accident,
he was described as rude

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and no longer able to judge

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what was socially appropriate
for different situations.

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He'd lost his cognitive empathy.

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Jean Decety at the University of Chicago
used brain scanning

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- functional magnetic resonance imaging -

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to look at the teenage delinquent brain

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whilst they were watching films
where somebody experiences pain

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such as when this piano player's fingers
got crushed by the lid of the piano

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falling down on his fingers.

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What he found was that teenagers
with delinquency didn't show

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the typical levels of activity
in the amygdala --

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part of the empathy circuit in the brain.

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But let's not forget
the positive side of empathy.

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Most of us have enough empathy,

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and some people
have high levels of empathy.

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When these two men formed a relationship

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based on mutual respect and on empathy,

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it let to the end of apartheid
in South Africa.

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Empathy is vital for a healthy democracy;

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it ensures that we listen
to different perspectives,

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we hear other people's emotions,
and we also feel them.

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Indeed without empathy,
democracy would not be possible.

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I met this two women
in Cambridge this week

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when they came to visit.

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On the left is Siham,
and she is a Palestinian woman;

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her brother was shot
and killed by an Israeli bullet.

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On the right is Robi;
she is an Israeli woman.

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Her son was killed
by a Palestinian bullet.

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These two women
have taken the courageous step

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of forming a relationship
across the political divide.

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They haven't given in
to the emotion of revenge

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which would simply perpetuate
the cycle of violence.

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Instead, they've used their empathy
to recognize that they both share

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the same sorrow, the same awful pain
of having lost a loved one.

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Empathy is our most valuable
natural resource for conflict resolution.

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We could wait for our political leaders

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to use empathy
- and that would be refreshing -

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but actually, 
we could all use our empathy.

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As Siham and Robi told me,

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"The conflict won't stop
until we empathize."

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Thank you.

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(Applause)