"Emotion and Morality in Psychopathy and Paraphilias"
Many sex offenders suffer from a paraphilia. Paraphilias are disorders characterized by recurrent and intrusive deviant sexual impulses. One paraphilia that shares some characteristics with psychopathy is sexual sadism.
Sadism, like psychopathy, is characterized by callousness, anger, and low empathy. Sadists derive sexual gratification from inflicting physical or emotional pain and suffering on others, and may thus represent the extreme end of the moral sensitivity spectrum” ranging from compassion to callousness. They show increased arousal (measured by penile plethsymograph responses) when perceiving people in pain, in sexual or nonsexual situations.
While this clearly represents profound moral insensitivity, the capacity for “normal” moral judgment has not been directly investigated in this disorder. Sadists may be less likely than other sex offenders to show cognitive distortions that justify moral transgressions, since an understanding of the immorality of their actions (causing harm) is precisely what facilitates sexual gratification. Thus, like psychopaths they appear to understand the wrongness of their actions. [via]
Unlike psychopaths who know right from wrong but just don’t care, I suggest that sadists, who also enjoy inflicting pain/suffering, would show increased activation in the domain specific frontoinsular (FI) cortex, hinting at a higher sense of a certain type of empathy (comparatively) and regulation of moral judgement, depending on amount of emotional processing exercised. Pleasure and reward centers should show similair activation. wah-psh.
Harenski, C., & Kiehl, K. (2011). Emotion and Morality in Psychopathy and Paraphilias Emotion Review, 3 (3), 299-301 DOI: 10.1177/1754073911402378
Greene JD, Sommerville RB, Nystrom LE, Darley JM, & Cohen JD (2001). An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science (New York, N.Y.), 293 (5537), 2105-8 PMID: 11557895
Is Neuroscience Incompatible with the Idea of Evil?
Most evil acts are not committed by the serial killers, the deranged, the lone demon. (…) Hitler may have been innately evil, but many of the Nazis who did the most gruesome acts were no more evil than your or I. Sad to say, but the subjects in Zimbardo’s infamous prison experiment were just regular college students. There was nothing in their brain structure that would predict their cruelty. Most of it came from the situation. Even if we understood 100% of the human brain, there is every likelihood that we would still just barely begin to understand why people can be so cruel, until we understand the environent itself.
I feel like Psychology Today is where people write opinions that attempt to please with an uplifting spin on semi current issues or cliche, kicked-to-death topics. The Glamour magazine of psychology sites. This happens to be one piece close to a actual critique, even though I still take issue with most of it.
Physician's Empathy Directly Associated With Positive Clinical Outcomes
It has been thought that the quality of the physician-patient relationship is integral to positive outcomes but until now, data to confirm such beliefs has been hard to find. Through a landmark study, a research team from Jefferson Medical College (JMC) of Thomas Jefferson University has been able to quantify a relationship between physicians’ empathy and their patients’ positive clinical outcomes, suggesting that a physician’s empathy is an important factor associated with clinical competence.
I’ve always appreciated a straight shooter, the focus is where it should be.
