Psychopaths Emotions
In the documentary, “Are you Good or Evil?”, the narrator mentioned those emotions could be the root of good or evil. Things like empathy, love, and trust include feelings that could make people be “good”. Some emotions that could lead to eviler actions are anger, selfishness, and narcissism. For example, someone who can’t feel empathy for another person might not care if someone needs help, or even worse, might not care about hurting them.
When we think of evil, psychopaths often come to mind. Many people believe that psychopaths can’t feel any emotions, but in fact, they actually do have a range that they can feel, it is just much less and much more muted than a normal person. However, they cannot feel some of the emotions that lead to kind actions, such as compassion and empathy. Compassion is the feeling of kindness towards another person, and empathy is being able to feel for another person and put yourself in their shoes. For psychopaths, scientific tests have shown that seeing another person in danger or pain produces no emotional response in them. They can understand what people are feeling, but they can’t feel it themselves. This allows them to manipulate other people for their gain and comfort- and not feel bad about it. Additionally, they cannot feel remorse- remorse is when someone feels bad for something they have done. If someone can’t feel remorse for the bad things that they have done, then there is nothing stopping them from committing even more bad actions. Additionally, psychopaths can remain unaffected by emotions in stressful situations, because scientific studies have shown that cortisol (the stress hormone) don’t stay in psychopaths systems as long as it does it neurotypical people.
Their lack of bonding, empathy, and stress/anxiety can paint a picture of psychopaths not having any emotions, which isn’t fully true. However, whatever emotions they do feel are very muted, and they mostly have to pretend or mimic other emotions that they see other people show.
https://neuroinstincts.com/do-psychopaths-have-emotions/
I find this topic extremely fascinating, how someone can simply lack the feeling of remorse, love, and empathy
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting how an inherent lack of certain emotions leads some psychopaths to become cold-blooded murderers while it leads others to become CEOs. Further, it sends an interesting message about what is valued in our society, based on what people commonly view as the factors that define "success." People who gain high-up positions, for example as CEOs of companies, are generally considered some of the most successful people, and many people desire these jobs in the work force, because of the wealth associated with these titles, in spite of other possible factors. The same characteristics we evidently look for in our business leaders are the ones that can be very effectively displayed by psychopaths, who tend to be able to get what they want by mimicking behaviors that are sought in certain environments. Psychopaths are able to do this by utilizing their natural sense of selfishness and not getting distracted or held back by empathy, by which many others may be easily affected, or consideration for how actions that may help them could also possibly hurt others.
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