Interview: Simon Baron-Cohen, Psychopathologist and author

Published on Thursday 24 March 2011 12:42

Simon Baron-Cohen tells Lee Randall whyweshould stop using theword evil to explainwhysome people seemso cruel

Why are some people cruel? The question has absorbed Simon Baron-Cohen his entire conscious life. With his new book, Zero Degrees of Empathy, the professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, and director of the Autism Research Centre there, proposes that we stop using the word "evil", and start evaluating human behaviour in terms of empathy - because unlike evil, he says, empathy can be explained and quantified.

Baron-Cohen's soft, soothing voice and habit of making eye contact have surely been assets in his quest to understand the human psyche. Despite having several previous books and nearly 300 academic articles to his credit, he's every inch the proud father when the publisher presents him with a brace of hot-off-the-presses copies of his new book, and his evident excitement is endearing.

Empathy, says Baron-Cohen, "is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling, and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion." So it's a two-step process: recognition and response. Philosophically speaking, won't those who believe in the concept of evil find his book frustrating?

"Yes. It's philosophical but also emotional. When somebody does something bad, there's an emotional desire for revenge. We want to see them as evil, because then it entitles us to punish them. Trying to get at an explanation - and in my case, a scientific explanation - does lead to greater understanding. When you have greater understanding, you are more willing, not to excuse the person, but to understand the factors that could have contributed. One of the consequences is to challenge the notion of free will. The person who committed the awful act may not have had entirely free will behind their act."

Empathy can be affected by a range of medical conditions, including autism, the study of which has made him even more famous in scientific communities than his cousin Sasha - he of Borat notoriety - is in the world of entertainment.

"There are many different ways in which you can end up with low empathy," he says. "A range of medical conditions can affect it, including autism and the personality disorders borderline psychopath and narcissist.

"There can also be cultural factors. If your culture sanctions certain behaviour, if you can see certain groups of people as sub-human, your beliefs could allow you to switch off your empathy.

"I think the argument is that there are lots of routes by which you could lose your empathy: some are biological and some are cultural."

The classic example, he says, is people who are physically or sexually abused as children, and go on to become abusers themselves. "They were deprived of what should be their birthright, an affectionate and safe environment to grow up in. We sometimes think, 'Oh well, kids will survive, kids are robust,' but actually the evidence suggests that early neglect and abuse does affect long-term outcome, including the ability to have trusting, long-term relationships.

"In such cases, to what extent should we blame the adult abuser, if they themselves are a victim of an earlier event? It's not to say that we should excuse it, but it throws into question whether this is simply an act of free will, or whether there is some determinism, in this case early environmental determinism, driving their behaviour. Seen in that light, rather than thinking about prison as the appropriate place to deal with an abuser, we might be thinking about therapeutic programmes."

What are the chances of that, though? Slow, costly solutions tend not to find favour with politicians, I argue. He agrees, with an ironic laugh. "It goes to economic issues about how should a civilised society spend its money?

"They are very important questions. Which is more cost-effective, or which are politicians more likely to choose, if they have finite resources? Those are separate to the basic question of understanding why someone did something. If it's more appropriate to see their behaviour in a medical context, then why are we putting them in prison rather than some sort of mental health treatment programme?"

Baron-Cohen wrote Zero Degrees of Empathy because he's convinced that "empathy is one of the most valuable resources in our world".

And that's why it's so important to focus on some of these empathy-damaging conditions. "One take-home message from those conditions is that when you lack empathy you're capable of doing awful things to other people. The very simple implication is that empathy must be hugely important if we want to reduce the amount of harm that's done in society. And society itself could become more empathic towards those that are abusers, rather than dismissing them as bad or evil. Very often you read about a court case where they say the defendant showed no remorse - end of story. The journalist and the public are looking for some sign that this is a person that we can connect with, that despite their horrific crime, there's some sort of subjectivity. (When] they don't see it, they then, in a sense, turn the person into an object, and say because they didn't show remorse, therefore they are evil. Society instantly condemns the person."

He accepts the need for punishment and prisons - we have to signal that certain acts are unacceptable - but asks why we can't also keep the therapeutic framework in mind when we detain people?

"The detention may be to protect other people, but it doesn't mean that we have to treat that person in an inhumane way."

Empathy exists on a spectrum, from low (zero) to high (six). An individual's "score" is affected by environmental factors, but also by conditions in at least ten interconnected brain regions, and by genetics. Baron-Cohen also argues that a zero rating "doesn't invariably lead someone to do awful things to others". Some individuals on the autistic spectrum, for example, have empathy difficulties, but their brains have enhanced pattern-recognition and systematizing capabilities.

"It's not that they are in some way better than the people with autism who don't have those talents. but I'm exploring whether there's a connection, on the one hand, with losing your empathy, and on the other hand, developing these special talents? What I argue is that in people with autism there's a second mechanism we need to look at, the systematising mechanism. We all have the capacity to see patterns but some people see them much more quickly and easily. They're looking for systematic relationships, so the world of mathematics is comfortable and straightforward because you're looking for lawful relationships. But the world of emotions - why someone's face suddenly changes or why someone reacts suddenly in a particular situation - is far less lawful, it's far less full of patterns. Why do we see, in that particular medical condition, a co-occurrence of low empathy and strong systematizing?"

Baron-Cohen's name is synonymous with autism, but he admits that he didn't choose the field, so much as happen upon it. "After I graduated I worked as a teacher in a small unit for children with autism in north London. Six kids and six teachers, so very intimate and intense. I became fascinated by autism and went on to do a PhD. Like most people who do PhDs, once you go deeper into a subject, the puzzle gets more and more fascinating."

When he was starting out, in the 1980s, doctors thought incidences of autism were around four per every 10,000 kids. "That was rare. Today it's considered to be one in 100, which I would see as common. One per cent means that in every primary school or community of about 200 kids there are going to be at least two kids with autism. That makes it much more ordinary.

"It's not that the earlier statistic was wrong. In those days we didn't have the category of Aspergers, at least not in English, it existed in German. So today we include it on the autistic spectrum and it's doubled the numbers. Also, there's been very good lobbying by parents, especially in the US, leading to very powerful charities developing that raise funds for biomedical research. When that happens, there's much more awareness and recognition."

What about people who register at level six on the empathy spectrum? Might that be as crippling as level zero?

"I'd love to know the answer to that. We haven't really had a chance to look. We can see that they exist. When you do population studies, people score at that level, but we haven't called them in to see what they're like. The people at the other end tend to be researched disproportionately, usually because they need help.

They either come into a clinic or have ended up in jail. One possibility is that you can never have too much empathy, maybe there is no upper limit when it becomes detrimental.

"Another view might be that the optimal level is in the middle. It needs to be tested. I have heard the view that if you couldn't switch off your empathy, if it was in a state of hyper-arousal, then it might mean you could never really focus on your own projects and personal ambitions.

"You'd always be worrying about other people.

"It's easier to ask the Medical Research Council for funding to look at people who are suffering, where the research could have a direct benefit for society. But you're right, just because we haven't come across these individuals in clinical settings doesn't mean that we shouldn't be asking questions."

Ultimately, he says, "The process of observing actually changes us as scientists. In psychology you can't always separate the scientist from the thing they are studying. The subjectivity of the scientist plays a role. It can't be ignored, and must be recognised."

Isn't it lucky, then, that the very people who can't put themselves into other people's shoes, have a champion who, by dint of his curiosity, has turned it into an art form?

• Zero Degrees of Empathy is out on 7 April from Allen Lane (an imprint of Penguin Books), priced 20. Simon Baron-Cohen will be speaking at Edinburgh Science Festival on 22 April. For information visit www.sciencefestival.co.uk.