An article that appeared in the Oct. 28 issue of The Post did not clarify the details of a study on lack of empathy in psychopaths published in September by Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, an academic publisher and research network. There were 120 inmates scanned in that study. It was funded by a $1.6 million grant for a four-year project, which is to include at least six or more studies.
One of the most widely researched areas of psychology is morals and empathy.
From burglars to rapists to murderers, Athens County has seen its share of criminals, but it is not always clear where the line is drawn between wrongdoing and mental disease.
“There’s obviously multiple ways people come to commit a crime... (some) people are not concerned about consequences in order to get rewards,” Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn said. “While most of us would like to have money, not many of us would rob a bank.”
With the amount of publicity crime gets, Blackburn said the justice system has designed a punishment system that makes people not want to commit crimes.
In order to better understand criminals’ thought processes, Dr. Jean Decety, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago, conducted a four-year project: a series of six studies that analyzed why psychopaths don’t feel empathetic about committing crimes.
The project was funded by a $1.6 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Three of the project’s studies have already been published, and there are three more to come.
One of the studies was just published Sept. 24 by Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, an academic publisher and research network.
“We have to break the concept of empathy down into its pieces and then look at how the components work together,” Decety said.
He added that social factors including racial bias, ideology and hatred and love could affect how empathetic a person is.
Decety’s study found that when psychopaths imagine others in pain, brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern do not activate. On the contrary, they showed an increased response in a part of the brain that is associated with pleasure, according to a Frontiers news release.
Approximately 600 inmates were studied in the entire project, and 120 of them were scanned in the study published in September.
The inmates were from prisons throughout New Mexico were shown “empathy-eliciting” videos of people experiencing physical pain while they were in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, Decety said.
He added that based on their brain activation during the videos, the fMRI scans classified inmates as high, middle or low psychopaths. The score assessed 20 psychopathic traits, including poor behavior controls, lack of remorse and pathological lying.
According to a study from Robert D. Hare in Psychopaths and Their Nature: Implications for the Mental Health and Criminal Justice System, about 1 percent of the general male population is psychopathic and 15 to 20 percent of the prison population is psychopathic.
Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail Warden Jeremy Tolson and Ricky Seyfang, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said they don’t track or keep records of inmates with psychopathy.
Though it is difficult to track psychopathy and keep it under control, Decety said that based on his study, the condition is avoidable.
“Research shows that attachment security provides a foundation for pro-social behavior, empathic concern and care-giving,” Decety said. “One very simple way to foster empathy and sympathy is just to be good, caring parents.”
kf398711@ohiou.edu
@KellyPFisher
