Lookin' Good

O.K., so he studies the vaginal fatty acids of menstruating chimpanzees.

Dr. Ryo Oda is also the author of a study that found that, well, really nice people look that way to others. (One clue: they smile a lot, genuinely.)

Ordinary college students, men and women, were able to distinguish which people were super-good (scoring in the top 10% for altruism) and which were super-not (bottom 10%), just from watching 30-second, silent videos of them talking.

So what about true psychopaths, thought to be masters at masking their true natures?

They're only .06 percent of the population; perhaps none found their way into the study?

Saxe Appeal

She's baaack. My girl crush continues with this latest TED video featuring the empress of MIT's eponymous Saxelab, Rebecca Saxe.

Saxe studies human theory of mind and morality.

She discusses her experiment involving the hypothetical case of a white powder that is either labeled "poison" but is sugar or labeled "sugar" but is poison.

How much moral blame a subject assigns someone who places the powder in a friend's coffee in each scenario can actually be altered by running magnetic currents through the subject's RBTJ, a part of the brain that controls moral reasoning.

After her presentation, the moderator says he hopes Saxe isn't taking any calls from the Pentagon on her work.

"I'm not. I mean, they're calling, but I'm not taking the call," quips Becks.

Love her.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Is it possible to be too empathic, too tuned in to what others are feeling and thinking, even to point where it impairs your functioning?

Sure, this is America, any excess is possible.

Columbia researchers have found that folks with Borderline Personality Disorder are better than the general population at reading the expression in other people's eyes -- and, gosh darn it, they're not always made happy by what they see.

Too much emotional information can be a real downer -- especially if you find yourself in a crowd of psychopaths or traumatized war veterans.

In fact, an overabundance of empathy may be what causes BPD in the first place.

Take the test to gauge your own ocular reading skills.

Fresh Err

What, exactly, is wrong with shorn-n-horn-rimmed talk temptress Terry Gross (Fresh Air)?

Does she, like, have any human emotions -- at all?

I swear she's on the autism spectrum.

Just today on the radio, she goes (paraphrase)"hmm you seem to be showing a lot of emotion while talking about your difficult past," to poor Tracy Morgan (30 Rock). She went all Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory on him, outing him for crying during the interview in the flattest of tones.

She's known for asking refreshingly simple, basic questions. Uh, I'm starting to think it's because she's sorta simple herself -- at least in the EQ department.

Meh, she's long-married with no children. This is public radio, I mean, if you can't have kids, adopt a discontinued toaster. Adopt something. No, Terry has no need for diminutive love objects. Which makes the thousands of conversations she's had with her (mostly) touchy-feely guests about their adorable children (and myriad attending child-rearing issues) kinda weird, 'cause you know the whole time she's thinking: "So glad I don't have kids, so glad, soooo very glad."

In other news, Duke researchers have found out that autistic peeps have less sensitivity to oxytocin (used to treat the condition), about 30% less that regs, 'cause of higher-than-usual numbers of gene-regulating molecules called methyl groups. Some of this may be inherited; they're looking into it.

Did I mention that I know a family in which the women are simply unable to breastfeed? They just don't have it in 'em. (Very rare.) Oxytocin triggers the let-down effect in breastfeeding and other maternal behaviors -- or doesn't. These are some cold beyotches. And the male, breast-n-love-deprived children of the family -- they some cold mfers.

Creature Comforts

So, here comes this new book, The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society, by Frans de Waal, which seems to draw upon examples of animal empathy to prove its existence in humans. I haven't read the thing yet, but at this (albeit early) stage, it begs the question for me: What about "Lessons from Our Own Human History and Experience," (I'm thinking Rawanda, BTK, Pol Pot)? I mean, how far can animals really take us in understanding ourselves, versus, say, looking at how people actually treat other people?

Now, I often refer to animal studies and will continue to do so, but I do so tongue-partly-in-cheek -- or wasn't that obvious? -- and partly because that's what's available in the empathy studies game. But I mean, we are some very special animals. And I have to believe that the behavior we observe in mice and even primates, while helpful, can take us only so far in explicating human ways versus studying, well, actual people. I mean, whatever "the difference that makes the difference" is, why we are the way we are, why we have culture and art and the Internet and shoes (caused by the advent of charred food, allowing our jaws to get smaller and our brains bigger as argued in Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human?), well, whatever it is, by now, it's a pretty big difference. We have diverged. And how. Big time. And how we treat one another can't fully be explained or excused by other critters' codes of conduct. We will not be shamed by dolphins and whales!

We're gonna have to shame ourselves.

Moral Arguments

Thanks for the comments on the Father Land post.

Also wanted to point people to a germane TED talk by Jonathan Haidt about the moral mind, politics and personality.

He compares how different political persuasions define "morality" differently, giving varying weight to five basic values: Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity.

Ingroup, Authority and Purity show the greatest disparity between left and right. For example, on a question about choosing a dog, Conservatives prefered a dog who was loyal but not warm to strangers, whereas Liberals went for a dog who was independent-minded and related to its owner as an equal.

Oh, and here's a quiz you can take to participate in Haidt's morality research.

While we're on the TED track, here's a truly jarring presentation by (the rather devilish-looking) psychologist Philip Zimbardo (author of the famed Stanford prison study and The Lucifer Effect) about how good soldiers turned bad at Abu Graib.

It includes VERY graphic pictures taken by the American reservists themselves of the torture they commited on prisoners. Horrifying!

He tries to explain how even previously normal people can commit dispicably evil acts.

It boils down to a kind of circumstantial group think and the power of authority. People will do things within anonymous organizational frameworks they would never do on their own. (Even so, some outliers do stand up and refuse.)

He advocates promoting everyday heroism among children.

The Smelly Side of Empathy, Part II and a Very Bad Connection

So, smell and empathy seem to be related, both centered in the amygdala.

First it was the stressed vs. regular sweat identification. Now here's a study that suggests empathic folks are better at telling you by your scent.

A 2002 study came to the same conclusion and showed it's the right nostril of empaths that does the heavy, uh, sniffing.

Oh, and psychopaths have been shown to suck at smelling.

Speaking of psychopaths, from the ville of Jack the Ripper comes new evidence about how these bad boys' brains are different from yours and mine.

Using "advanced brain-scanning techniques" a King's College team has revealed "that a critical connection between two regions of the brain appears to be abnormal in psychopaths."

The worse the psychopath, the bigger the abnomality in a little something called the "uncinate fasciculus," which connects the -- you guessed it -- amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex.

Father Land

A comment on an earlier post inspires a re-pondering of the whole left/right split -- not the left/right brain, but the political Left and Right, particularly now that health care is exposing the rift-o-rama big-time.

So, liberal people and conservative people see their existences rather differently, according to the previously-sited study by McAdams et al, which I shall go into more here.

The research took its cue from the work of George Lakoff, author of The Political Mind, proponent of the belief that family history and politics are intimately connected -- and predictive.

Basically, Lakoff says Republican people think polititians should practice tough-love like a strict father, heavy on rules and guidelines, fostering self-reliance and self-discipline. Dems model their pols on a softer parenting style, with children/citizens needing "love, empathy and nurturance" to fulfil their inner potential and become empathic and caring people.

The recent study tested this theory by asking participants from the left and right to relate what they considered 12 key scenes in their life stories and indicate why they were so significant. The researchers then counted the number of times each group included examples of "rules-reinforcements" (authority figures exerting control),"self-discipline" (exertion of moral control over emotions), "nurturant care-giving," and "empathy-openness."

Not surprisingly, the strict parenting themes appeared more frequently in the Conservatives' tales, while empathy and openness ruled in the Liberals' yarns. While nurturing care-givers also appeared in the right-wing stories, the take away messages from these interactions tended to be about increased self-reliance, whereas the lefties' lessons stressed becoming more empathic.

So, what does this say about health care reform? It's the war of two worlds. One which defines love (and politics) as teaching little Johnny to help himself so he'll grow big and strong, the other as lending little Johnny a helping hand so he'll do the same for others.

Can Strict Father and Doting Dad come together on the playground of life and come up with a single plan by which to parent both their kids?

Have you been to the playground (or the soccer field) lately?

Super Rat

I've blogged about vasopressin (the anti-diuretic that also promotes bonding) before and my observation that chronically thirsty people seem to have less empathy.

Here comes another ripple in this parched tale/tail: Rats engineered to be deficient in the hormone seem to do better at certain tasks. They have "enhanced visuospatial attention performance and faster motor-initiation times."

Hmm, that geek chugging Mana potion in the corner who's reeeally good at Ikaruga...Just walk away slowly.

OxyMean?

What if the same thing that makes you care a lot about other people makes you care a lot about how other people are doing compared to you? That is, whether they've got more money, a better marriage, or a nicer house?

So, while you'd save your neighbor's kid from drowning, you'd kinda be wishing you had as nice a pool as they did while you were doing it. Or, if your pool is bigger, well, all the better, ha ha.

What if caring has a flip side, a dark side. Empathy plus envy...enpathy.

Or, what if the same indifference that makes you not give two hoots if your neighbor lives or dies also makes you never compare your yard/barbeque/car/pool/life with theirs?

Such are the conclusions being drawn by researchers at the University of Haifa, who are finding that oxytocin -- the much-celebrated bonding and empathy-promoting hormone -- may boost the intensity of social emotions generally -- including some not-so-nice ones.

Say it ain't so, oxy! But it makes sense. The least empathic people I know never compare themselves to other people, other people, what other people?