Empathy is a large piece of what is discussed when talking about the concept of evil. In class, we spoke about 3 different domains; eye of the beholder, the individual and societal aspects. Empathy was discussed for all of these domains, as it is the piece that ties all three together. I think this the most important aspect as for the eye of the beholder, they need to have empathy for the victim, the perpetrator or both. For the individual committing the act, empathy needs to be turned off or not be there in the first place and in certain societal aspects, empathy also needs to be turned off in order to commit the evil actions, such as exclusion of out groups or war crimes. This idea of empathy, or lack thereof, was the main topic in the readings this week, which is why it is important to discuss.
A lack of empathy can be either cognitive or affective. Cognitive empathy refers to the ability to be able to understand others thoughts while affective empathy is the ability to understand others emotions (Baron-Cohen, 2011). This is important to distinguish in the ideas of positive and negative degrees of empathy; positive such as Autism and negative such as psychopathy. Both have a lack of empathy as a defining feature, while those with 0 degrees positive can still systemize and their affective empathy can be intact, which means they can still recognize someone’s feelings without being able to understand them (Baron-Cohen, 2011). Lastly, as discussed in class, a lack of empathy is necessary to commit these acts of evil, but is not sufficient, which is why individuals who have Autism are not more likely to commit evil acts (Baron-Cohen, 2011). This is important to realize when discussing a lack of empathy in regards to evil, and moving forward should be kept in the back of our minds!
The people we are most accustomed to in the media are those who experience a complete lack of empathy, both cognitively and affectively, as they are the most likely to commit acts in which hurt those around them. More specifically, Baron-Cohen (2011), found that most psychopaths lack affective empathy but their cognitive empathy is still intact. These individuals were discussed in class to have a lack of remorse, to do it for their own benefit and have no real rationale or reason. With these characteristics in mind, Chris Watts who killed his pregnant wife and 2 daughters, can be hypothesized to have psychopathy. Psychopaths were defined by Baron-Cohen (2011) as being selfish, doing whatever it takes to satisfy their own desire and have a complete disregard for others. Chris had an affair with another woman, and when he was caught, his wife threatened to leave him and take their children. He stated after he killed her that he felt as though something was implanted in his mind, and he had no control over it. He then killed his 2 daughters when they asked questions about what had happened to their mother (Shapiro, 2019). In order to kill your wife who is pregnant with your children, as well as your 2 young daughters, I believe that an individual cannot experience any empathy, as well as has the qualities of a psychopath laid out by Baron-Cohen. He then proceeded to lie and say that his family had left him, as well as leave out clues to make it look this way such as his wife’s wedding ring (Shapiro, 2019). The only part of this that seems to bother him is the fact that his daughters last words were “Daddy no!”. Even though this does haunt him, he does not appear to express the empathy needed to understand how this act hurt all of those around him. Overall, I think this example demonstrates his lack of empathy towards his own family, as well as a disregard for others such as his family left behind, ex. her parents and his parents. This shows that a lack of empathy is crucial for those who commit evil acts.
Verschuere (2018) discusses the central features of psychopathy, which relates directly to the readings, media article and discussion for this week. I think this is important to focus on as psychopathy and specifically a lack of empathy have been themes this week. This research article studied offenders in prison, by conducting a scale called the PCL-R which has operationalized psychopathy (Verschuere, 2018). A lack of empathy was discovered to be a core feature of psychopathy, specifically a lack of affective empathy. It is also the trait used most often in describing youth psychopathy (Verschuere, 2018), which is important in the study of these individuals. This study demonstrates how a lack of empathy has, and continues to be a defining feature in psychopathy, and these individuals are most likely to commit these evil acts.
Due to empathy being such a defining feature in individuals, society and the eye of the beholder, it is crucial to understand how a lack of this trait negatively impacts these individuals. As was mentioned, a lack of empathy does not mean one will commit these evil acts but it is needed in order to. This topic will continue to come back as the semester continues and is important to remember.
References:
Baron-Cohen, S. (2011). The science of evil: On empathy and the origins of cruelty. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Shapiro, E. (2019, March 7). Chris Watts’ daughter’s heartbreaking last words before he killed her: ‘Daddy, no!’. ABC News. Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/US/chilling-confession-chris-watts-told-police-killed-pregnant/story?id=61477303
Verschuere, B., van Ghesel Grothe, S., Waldorp, L., Watts, A. L., Lilienfeld, S. O., Edens, J. F., . . . Noordhof, A. (2018). What features of psychopathy might be central? A network analysis of the psychopathy checklist-revised (PCL-R) in three large samples. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 127(1), 51-65. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy1.lib.trentu.ca/10.1037/abn0000315
Harper's Psyc 4720 Blog 
Hi Harper! I think your highlight of those with no empathy having nothing to lose and wanting to benefit themselves is a really big indication of those who commit evil acts. One who has Asperger’s, or someone else who has low affective empathy, may not actually behave in a harmful way. I read another blog that reported that spoke about how a lot of individuals lack the “felt empathy” but they can understand it and behave in an empathetic way. Perhaps the difference is that by committing an evil act, a reward/benefit is achieved. With Chris Watts, he wanted his family out of the way and that was his benefit, in addition to the serious lack of empathy that allowed him to kill off his three kids and his wife. I think it was the perceived benefit of not having a family that pushed him from a lack of affective empathy to a lack of cognitive/behavioural empathy.
In my opinion, people are completely shocked by what Chris did. In relation to the concept of eye of the beholder, we might think that this act was particularly bad because we can relate to the victim(s), as a parent or as a woman. I think that the degree you can relate to the victim, the more you blame the perpetrator. Whereas if you’re a husband and you’re wanting out of the relationship, you can scale back the amount of empathy you feel.
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Hi Harper. I really like the quote that you use in the beginning because I think it is super important for understanding empathy. People who lack empathy aren’t at risk of committing evil acts but a lack of empathy is needed when an evil act. I also think it was important for you to mention that psychopaths only lack one form of empathy, not just empathy as a whole. The story of Chris was a good example of what you were talking about because even though he wanted revenge on his wife, he killed his own daughters.
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Your mention of having a lack of empathy because they turned it off is interesting. It brings up the distinction of having zero empathy because of a state or a trait. Chris Watts seems to be lacking empathy altogether, so this is a good example of zero empathy as a trait, while excluding out-groups may require people to turn their empathy off due to the circumstances, making this more of a state. It’s also odd that Watts was bothered by his daughter’s plea to him, because this suggests he had some empathy towards his daughter, even temporarily, despite the fact that overall he seems to lack both empathy and remorse.
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I agree with what you said about needing to lack empathy in order to commit evil acts, but I do still think that people who are empathetic can still do evil things. For example, murder. Someone could kill their significant other in a heat of the moment experience, where they just get so angry that the individual does it impulsively. In order to love someone, I think you need to be able to be empathetic, and I’m sure the act would haunt that person who killed their S.O.. I do think, though, that to commit an intentional act of evil, a person would need to lack empathy.
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Hi Harper!
I like the points you made about how lack of empathy is necessary to commit acts but not sufficient. Something that your post brought to mind for me was how much empathy must a person lack to commit these acts? I know that there are different scales of empathy, but does murder require a greater lack of empathy than armed robbery? Does the victim and their relationship to you factor in? It seems that this man must have had an intense empathy deficit if he was able to kill his whole family, but at the same time he cared about the last words of his daughter. The empathy levels of incarcerated people is something that I also looked at and something that I find very interesting. I think that concern for others is something that humans generally feel is a universal trait, so knowing the amount of people that have low empathy and the high concentration of those individuals in prison is interesting. Look forward to your next post!
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