Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty
Book Details
- Publisher : Penguin Books
- Published : 2011
- Cover : Hardback
- Pages : 208
- Category :
Popular Psychology - Catalogue No : 32133
- ISBN 13 : 9780713997910
- ISBN 10 : 0713997915
Also by Simon Baron-Cohen
Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind
Price £32.00
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Simon Baron-Cohen, expert in autism and developmental psychopathology, has always wanted to isolate and understand the factors that cause people to treat others as if they were mere objects. In this book he proposes a radical shift, turning the focus away from evil and on to the central factor, empathy. Unlike the concept of evil, he argues, empathy has real explanatory power. Putting empathy under the microscope he explores four new ideas: firstly, that we all lie somewhere on an empathy spectrum, from high to low, from six degrees to zero degrees. Secondly that, deep within the brain lies the empathy circuit. How this circuit functions determines where we lie on the empathy spectrum. Thirdly, that empathy is not only something we learn but that there are also genes associated with empathy. And fourthly, while a lack of empathy leads to mostly negative results, is it always negative? Full of original research, Zero Degrees of Empathy presents a new way of understanding what it is that leads individuals down negative paths, and challenges all of us to consider replacing the idea of evil with the idea of empathy-starvation.
About the Author(s)
Simon Baron-Cohen is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, UK, and one of the co-discoverers of the 'theory of mind' deficit in autism. His books include Mindblindness (1995), The Essential Difference (2003) and Autism and Asperger Syndrome: The Facts (2009).
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