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

After reading a good review of this book in one of our routed journals, I decided to check it out for myself because I am interested in why some people seem to have a great deal of empathy and others do not.  Baron-Cohen and his colleagues investigated a lack of empathy in relation to cruelty by studying the brain, trying to find those pathways, and how they differ in people with different degrees of empathy.  He also looked at environmental and genetic factors that influence the empathy mechanism.

What he found is that all three influence how empathetic we are.  He also discovered that people who lack empathy are not automatically negative to our society.  People who suffer from Asperberger Syndrome and other forms of autism do not have much empathy but, because of the way their brains process information, they can have special talents.  However, there are immoral people whose lack of empathy leads them to commit cruel and even evil acts.  Baron-Cohen explains three different personality disorders in which this is the case:  borderline, psychopathic, and narcissistic.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in empathy and how the lack of it can lead to destructive behavior.  My favorite parts were about the three personality disorders and how the lack of empathy can be seen in each one.  206 pages including notes.

(The author is an expert on autism and the cousin of comedian Sacha Baron-Cohen.)