Is sociopathy a misdirected adaptation? by Bret Weinstein 

The loss to Evergreen is the world's gain. Fascinating video Professor.

Thanks so much for doing these vignettes, Bret. Love your insights and understandings.

I love every one of these I've come across. It's like a lullaby for the overactive mind.

How appropriate that this video ends with killing a bug and laughing about it. XD

I think this idea grossly underestimates the ability of sociopaths to manipulate others, and grossly overestimates the ability of others to control sociopaths.

I think the reason the percentage of sociopaths ('pure sociopaths', on the extreme end of the spectrum) remains at the percentage it does is because it's reached a sort of equilibrium. A certain number of sociopaths in a population can be beneficial either for the population or for the propagation of the sociopathic individuals' genetic information. But too many sociopaths in a population could possibly cause that population to function ineffectively, because empathy is required for societies to function properly (which is why it evolved in the first place). Also when talking about sociopaths it's handy to separate empathy into two sub-types. Affective empathy and cognitive empathy. Sociopaths usually do not lack cognitive empathy, but severely lack affective empathy.

Given this distinction between sympathy and empathy I'm forced to wonder if what makes a sociopath is some reduced capacity in sorting "us" versus "them." Either a reduced ability to recognize someone or something as an "us" or a hyper sensitivity in identifying a "them."

13:56 - 14:39 This is profound and subtle. I respect you. Peace and farewell.

Fell in love with a weird girl, she informed me at some point she suspected she was sociopathic to some degree or another. Made her so hard to understand. Her emotions didn't function in the same way they do for most of us.

Sociopathy is a spectrum.

It's fascinating to hear his description of a sociopath because it exactly fits my father . No sympathy , empathy only used as a tool to understand and control others , no capacity for actual love but only self pity and a real pleasure in seeing others suffer . Also highly successful and competitive . Charming people .

First sentence sounds like me trying to fill up space on an essay lol

Great to see you address this subject. It’s not hard to see why people encountering cruel, abusive or neglectful others, could develop a style of relating which lacks empathy / compassion fatigue.

I survived a relationship with sociopath. She's treated every boyfriend, fiancé, and both husbands like a new iPhone. Upgrades every September. It sounds funny, but I am very grateful to have been discarded early in that process, rather than later in life when I have things to lose. Scary, very scary. Very smart, very manipulative, very successful, driven, educated, scary.

Sociopaths care for their families because they think of their family as extensions of themselves. Sociopaths usually end up destroying their families whenever they family members define themselves for themselves and act accordingly.

Your depth of analysis appears both reasonable and factual. Downside is many people don't care for such depth and fact. Sad to say but please continue. There are also many who need and care for exactly what you deliver regularly with your talks/sessions.

All psychopathologies differ from the normal condition by degree, not kind. Sociopathy should be included in this.

Given everything he's said, why would he then dismiss Hitler as a "monster"? That doesn't get us anywhere at all.

I never feel more respected as a listener than when he riffs like this.

It's a super power because you don't make emotional decisions.

Bret keeps giving examples of ways in which it is useful to be able to shut off, to a certain extent & at a certain time, human empathy. It's true that not being emotional basket-cases, laid low by every bad thing we encounter, is not particularly useful. It's also true that being able to regulate those emotions can be very useful. Neither of those things has any bearing on people who are not capable of feeling those emotions in the first place. The continuum that Bret's examples suggests is one of strength or prominence or of specific emotional responses, or how well they can be managed, controlled, compartmentalized, etc., under different circumstances, in order to get the best result. Not having access to a normal emotion at all is well outside that continuum. A predator in the wild may be able to predict the actions of its prey pretty well, or it would be a lousy predator. This doesn't mean that they've got empathy for their prey, but even if we grant Bret the claim that the continuum is simply of levels of empathy (which doesn't actually fit the complete clinical picture of sociopathy, which goes way beyond empathy levels), it's not unreasonable to view people on the tail ends of a continuum as abnormal. There's a point at which too much or too little of something common can create dysfunction in a human, and labeling it as such is perfectly reasonable & acceptable practice. Mostly, I find it frustrating to listen to people who are not mental health professionals or researchers speak about disorders as if they were some abstract philosophical notion, instead of a real, often debilitating, destructive & dysfunctional condition that ruins the lives of actual human beings.

Re: "Is sociopathy a misdirected adaptation?" Brett, happy to see you posting to RU-vid. Have had concern for your struggles. I will leave it at that. Upon seeing the title of this video I understood immediately. I married a high spectrum sociopath (possibly verging on the psychopathic as regards temper and a sadistic aggression ), and am now divorced. I'd been discussing this with a friend and they suggested the possibility social science should investigate ways to restrict or isolate the negative interactions of the sociopath with others so the 'society' might benefit but I objected saying I believed that this characteristic may, in appropriate situations, actually be of benefit to the 'group'. My wife was an incredibly able and talented nurse and I was convinced this had much to do with her success in nursing. When I would be uncomfortably ill and sought to find comfort in her sympathetic 'embrace' I was always disappointed for reasons you might imagine. She often said to me while I was complaining of symtoms, "Well, go to a doctor!", and then go shopping at the mall. It's said that when there's a fire most people run away but there are those that run towards the fire. She was the type that ran towards it out of a naïve curiosity and not the morbid variety. I've preferred to use the terms "hyper-empathic" and "hypo-empathic" for obvious reasons and we all know people that are too sensitive for their own good or the true good of others (the kindness that kills). As to empathy vis a vis sympathy. Why are there no 'empathy" cards? An empathy card would be insulting or at least insensitive as if saying you know how the bereaved feels upon the death of their spouse, parent, child while you have no spouse, your parents live and you are not a parent of the child you have not lost. The sibling might empathize the loss of the parent or, having also lost a spouse or child likewise yet without these all that respect to pain, suffering, agony of that friend, relative, associate must be imagined, hypothesized or, at best, sensed. This is why there are no 'letters of empathy'. Though these definitions or connotations may have alternative meaning to yours I think most probably not. Enjoyed this video very much. Your are an excellent teacher and this is meant in all sincerity. Thank you for this video!

This insight is nothing short of brilliant - that we all do, or can, turn off empathy as and when we think it may be warranted to address more present concerns. This ability probably becomes more valuable as one has authority over other people, since organizational objectives must often be prioritized over individual people, else no one will have a job to be concerned about.

Did Bret just say there are people who want to do away with Dyslexics? Dyslexics of the world we should UNTIE! against this oppressor class!

I've been maligned as a sociopath before and the way I've explained it is the following. I have such extreme empathy beyond the average humans understanding that I comprehend the larger picture. As a result I have noticed the use of empathy by ever expanding groups of people for the goal of manipulating them into group objectives that act against the majority of life on earth. I've noticed that being on team human makes me the "bad guy" as humanity is a parasite on earth that will one day overtake its resources, killing its host. I'm acutely aware of multiple ongoing battles of all the life forms who I view as equals, even those killed by my own immune system to favor my group of cells. I have come to the conclusion that the most moral stance is to not act in favor to, or opposition of these groups and their conflicts. Acting only in my own interest in a way that leaves the fewest casualties and is most beneficial to all parties. So now they just call me selfish or self centered, or try to slander my ego to badger me into picking a side. I'm fine with this, because I feel what you feel as well, I simply do not care.

I have always thought that every successful society needs a group of people that is socialized well enough to function in their society, while having the lack of empathy required to kill societies enemies.

sadistic sociopaths can have lots of empathy, (they need high empathy to know how to inflict maximal hurt, and thus get maximal power). What they are lacking is COMPASSION. Also That 4% number is so outdated. Now, approx 30% of the population are sociopaths. Most of them are so good at hiding it, it proably much higher.

*I didn't fully realize the depth of my compassion* before I decided to toss the tv and be very selective about radio programs. I had become numb. Now I simply cannot fathom how anchors routinely can behave so disingenuously and be so callus about it. It's hurtful to watch. In my case it all started with a sudden awakening, which felt very special, but probably is becoming more and more commonplace everywhere. The result was that it became clear to me I had a need - and was within my rights - to be as selective about my engagements as needed in order to make some meaningful impact in whatever ways came to my attention on the issues I deemed most important.

"Wreck civilization in a single generation" ~Bret Weintein Aug 27, 2017

Cognitive empathy vs emotional empathy is another way I've seen it explained. Psychopaths or sociopaths tend to have high cognitive empathy, but low emotional empathy. They can figure out how someone else feels or thinks, but has a hard time relating to that, themselves. Also, in the literature, psychopaths are defined by those that lack emotional empathy; who develop it without a traumatic event(s). Sociopathy is someone with lacks the same or similar attributes, but develops as a mechanism in response to stress/trauma. Also, in a slightly related topic; I remember something about high oxytocin levels in women (probably men as well) relates to greater in-group or familial empathy and protection, but also increases out-group aggression. Think of overly protective mother bear's attachment to child, but aggression to others. I remember hearing about it somewhere, but idk how robust the correlation is and if there's variation in expression of high oxytocin in different individuals.

Evergreen is ruled by sociopaths, they removed Bret to function normally. This fills the gap of my knowledge of so-called injustice and ways to find legal means that benefits both parties in ways that's not medieval witch-hunt. You're the man Bret. Very thank you

We all drop our empathy sometimes . These disorders are NOT defined by exclusive traits - that's personality 101 . It is the degree and persistence of different traits manifest .

i feel like i've been becoming more of a sociopath over time as if my mind is constantly tormenting its self so often that i find it hard to care about others because i'm worried about myself and as time progresses it seems to get worse

Hey Bret, big fan. I think Thomas Sheridan did the ideal thing by saying 'psychopaths have no compassion' when in general we say no empathy. There is cognitive empathy and effective empathy of course, and psychopaths are likely to have better cognitive empathy to non-psychopaths. I recommend the work of Thomas Sheridan on the subject. Loving yours/your wife's videos.

To those of you who believe themselves to be sociopaths or have tendencies towards it (or generally those who'd like to be more empathetic towards others), if they rise your concerns about being a descent human being going forward through life I have good news, you can turn it into a good thing, at least I think that I managed to do so: 1) I'd argue that there is actually very little difference between simulating the emotion towards someone and having it*, apart from the fact that it's started by your conscious brain rather than the subconscious one, and with time the conscious response also becomes a habit and in that sense almost giving you an option to either be a sociopath or not. I think it might be thanks to mirror neurons * based on the assumption that you have feelings of your own that you can use as a base 2) Learn about people and how different they can be. It will help you be more empathetic regardless of sociopathy, as a shortcut(or a warm up ;) ) I'd recommend a Briggs Myers 16 personality types test, and go through all the descriptions cos this stuff is gold! 3) don't be afraid of your own emotions, listen to them carefully and learn the times when it's important to share them with people that you care about, make sure to study their emotions as they respond to yours. Helps with fine tuning your models and further habituation, lets call it the mirror neuron workout ;) 4) finally to be a good person you'll have to learn to treat all human as your brothers and sisters. I know it's a bit of a cliche but you're smart, just think of humanity as a team that you're on and all this people around you are you're teammates, or to be brutally honest assets. The better they are at what they do the better your live is going to become so it's good for you when there's good stuff around you, so start believing in karma ;). By rationalizing the need for inclusion of your fellow humans into your team you can become a sociopath in service of humanity rather than plow at it's margins PLEASE NOTE THAT I'M NOT A PSYCHOLOGIST AND WHAT I WROTE ABOVE IS NOT BASED ON LITERATURE BUT IT'S MY OPINION I was also never diagnosed with sociopathy but I believe this might be simply because I was never very keen on getting tested ;) Maybe I'm not a sociopath, or maybe we all are at times when the circumstances force us to be them, and when they pass we slowly learn to let them go or allow ourselves to drift into emotionless void The reason why I wrote this is two fold: I was really encouraged by this video, this is my coming out ;) so kudos to professor Weinstein, first time in my live someone presented sociopathy as a feature rather than a bug and it's a revelation to me as it really explains my struggles over the past Second because now believe that my case isn't special and sociopathy can be a good thing in a society. It allows for rational thought to be taken into account and hard choices being made when there are time to make them. I think that in some cultural setups sociopathy might even be nurtured, particularly in males. But it cannot be an excuse for being selfish. Treat others as you would like to be treated is the only real rule that's worth living by! Peace

Robert Hare does not regard people with one or two or three sociopathic traits (most of us have at least one) as clearly sociopathic. Out of the 20 traits he lists, one needs to have a fairly high score (based on the number and markedness of applicable traits), in order to be appropriately diagnosed as a sociopath. Weinstein seems prepared to label someone a sociopath based on one or two marked traits, and from the resulting frequency of "sociopathy" thus defined, concludes that it should not be considered a disorder. He also seems to exaggerate the percentage of high functioning, successful sociopaths, and on this basis, too, questions the appropriateness of considering it a disorder. In fact, the majority of sociopaths of ordinary intelligence are neither high functioning nor particularly successful, especially in the long run of a career. A great many sociopaths are derelicts, convicts, and addicts, and many who are not quite so wretched are barely hanging on and keeping it together.

How did I miss this channel before? More, more, more! Thank you Dr. Weinstein!

High level of cognitive empathy creates a database to recognize patterns and which is used as a translator to determine the best response to any given circumstance. Essentially creates a low superficial level of emotional empathy.

Sadistic sociopaths may have tons of empathy (which they need to know what psins their victims the most), but what they are lacking is compassion.

Thank you. More please. Much more please.

I wish i was a sociopathic -feeling guilt is horrible

There needs to be more talk about the prevalence of sociopaths in society. 3% of the U.S. population is 10 million plus sociopaths that cause so much harm on the oblivious who are naturally trusting and believe in the good of others and then bemoan the meanness of the world..When it’s just nature

A Biologist with no expertise in mental health talking so assuredly about Sociopathy is like a GP claiming expertise over the theory of evolution. The two fields are tangentaly related at best. While I don't doubt one or the other could become competent in such fields based in their base scientific skill sets I would think it wise to take what they say with a grain of salt and refer back to the actual experts of the field.

This is a big thing with combat vets. Having to understand loss and remove the feelings of sympathy that come in high stress areas. Mechanical actions only. It’s why so many have problems when they are back

The case for sociopaths as a sociopath: First of all, sympathy and Empathy are two different things in my opinion, so I disagree with his definitions as he actually has their significance somewhat reversed and that’s important. If sociopaths were unable to understand the emotions of others they could not be manipulative, in fact it is the sociopaths detachment from empathy but ability to sympathize that allows them to take advantage of those feelings. Sympathy is sort of like being able to identify, understand, and behave in a manner that fits the feelings of the other person and the situation. When you feel sympathy for someone who is sad you don’t “feel sad” with them and console them, but you may take pity on their sadness and console them. Those are two very different things, sympathy is intellectualizing feelings while empathy is experiencing those feelings without the need to think about them. It’s still possible to be a decent human being even without developed empathy if you’re cognizant and develop your sympathy. The issue is you still struggle to care about the effects of your actions until your actions cause damage when you lack empathy. Sympathy is more reactive where as empathy is more proactive, with empathy you are more averse to causing pain because you’ll also feel that pain, with sympathy you react to the feelings when they occur and defuse the situation. This is why sociopaths, while many want to be good people and never have explicit intentions of hurting others, often do. They can have highly developed sympathy which causes them to feel guilt and remorse for creating emotional pain but it’s not the same kind of remorse normal people feel, they feel bad for themselves and the ramifications it has on their own abilities to experience happiness. Weinstein here describes that emotion as regret. They care what others think and feel because being happy in this world is largely dependent on how those around you think of you and treat you. When someone causes pain they make it harder for themselves to experience positive emotions socially. This is why they often have no issues doing things like lying or cheating, they aren’t behaving based on how their significant other would feel, if they believe they can get away with it or avoid the social consequences via manipulation then they don’t feel significant levels of remorse because even if the other person ends up experiencing pain no personal consequences are suffered. They understand that they feel hurt and why, but they don’t necessarily care because they don’t experience those emotions with them. This is where I am, I have anti-social personality disorder. I desperately want to be a good person and have a sort of self hate toward myself that I never give long consideration to the consequences of my actions until afterwards. Even when I do I have terrible impulse control and have to challenge myself to say “how will this make them feel?” rather than simply empathetically understanding it as normal people do, I have to think about my actions far more for this reason. It’s actually made me really depressed and isolated, I’m so afraid of being emotionally abusive towards others I tend to cut relationships off before they get anywhere. You may say, “well that’s empathy”, but it’s not. It’s more that I’ve been raised in a very healthy manner that I can differentiate right and wrong and have very strong beliefs surrounding them, it’s sympathy I’ve developed as a counterbalance. However, I tend to say one thing and do another and because I’m aware I do that I take steps to not feel the guilt and remorse that comes with it. Not because I hurt them, but more like a self pity that I fucked up again and I’m not a good person. In order to not be a shitty person, I’ve essentially developed a strong ethical belief of right and wrong that causes myself pain to violate. A good way to think of it is hacking the narcissistic features of ASPD by tying self worth to behavior. I remember my grandma’s funeral recently and how awkward I felt. I miss her and I loved her, or maybe I miss simply what she provided in my life, the lines are grey when we talk about someone with my condition and what “love” really means to us. Still, the lack of sadness I felt startled me. Seeing the emotions on display of everyone I love and feeling like everything I said or did was just lip service. I felt so uncomfortable being unable to relate I just wanted to get out of there, I was so afraid of saying or doing something insensitive I just stayed quiet. I didn’t want to stick around and console my grandpa and the others and if I didn’t have that sense of right or wrong or care about how they felt about me I probably would have. People often characterize people with ASPD as the worst kind of people and it’s true a lot of these people do shitty things, but it’s easy to forget that just because we lack empathy doesn’t mean we lack emotion, we just lack the ability to connect emotionally. That is desperately depressing when you understand what that means, we’re in a sense destined to never experience real, true human love because we lack the ability to truly feel our partners feelings. We will want to, we are not islands or content in solitude, not all of us at least, but we’ll constantly have to choose between our feelings or theirs. We can never truly develop that bond or mutual emotional understanding. Empathy is what causes us to help people because we want to, because when their feelings improve they experience those improved feelings. Sympathy is what causes us to set aside our own feelings and prioritize someone else’s, usually because it has some personal benefit. We can’t sustain long term relationships because prioritizing the feelings of another over your own is very emotionally draining and eventually you stop caring about their feelings and that’s when the emotional abuse begins. This is why they say one of the main identifiers of a sociopath is an inability to sustain relationships. I’ve done this more than a couple times and I always regret it, so I’ve just given up. Even trying to find a relationship is pointless because it will never bring that fulfillment I envision it having unless the other person is highly empathic and constantly takes on the burden of my emotions, but I know that’s wrong and could never accept that. Not all sociopaths are happy to live that life of emotional solitude that allows them to freely manipulate others, some of us crave that ability to connect emotionally and be good but we’re constantly at war with ourselves because of what we lack. I have bipolar as well and have been suicidal on more than one occasion, existence without emotional connection is really morose. The successful sociopaths tend to take this negative and spin it into a positive, it’s their super power and makes them superior to others, it is in essence almost a coping mechanism. These are the people that behave terribly and commit grotesque crimes, because rather than feeling the pain and loneliness of their condition each violent or inconsiderate action affirms their self worth to themselves. For sociopaths like me who have been raised in a healthy family and understand why emotional connection and right and wrong exist on an intellectual level I can acknowledge it as a weakness and not a strength, but in doing so I’ve somewhat resigned myself that I will likely remain unfulfilled in life. If there is one thing I hope to do by writing my experience here, it’s to create an understanding that sociopaths do have feelings and do deserve respect and love, to the extent we’re capable of appreciating it. I don’t tell people I have ASPD because I know they’d instantly change how they view me, suddenly everything I do is nefarious and nothing I do can be trusted. I’m a ticking time bomb and everything I say has to be taken with a grain of salt. It’s this secret I hold onto that I can never let out. So if you ever see somebody who may have ASPD, try and talk to them about it in a non-accusatory way. Be open to accepting it so much as they’re open to being confronted when they behave poorly. We will hurt you sometimes, not usually physically but definitely emotionally. The misconception is that this was the intent of our actions, but they’re not, we simply behaved on our own emotions and lack the empathy that acts as a feature of impulse control in most people. You may find that many will cease manipulative behavior when they are met by someone who is willing to discuss the situation understanding that their behavior may not necessarily be of bad intention, they’re experiencing something emotionally and because they don’t have empathy are lashing out in any way they think will fix it, that’s what the manipulation is. Fear of loss, rejection, anger, loneliness. We feel distraught and rather than approaching it in a mutually beneficial way that takes into consideration the others emotions we do what we hope will simply “work”. If and when you leave we will hurt, we do feel hurt. As a result the most effective way to deal with us is actually intellectually, without emotion. Acknowledge their feelings and explain rationally to them how their actions make you feel and most importantly why their behavior will not address their emotions properly. If it ever turns violent leave the situation immediately as they are simply too lacking in impulse control to have in your life. If the emotional abuse is too much, you have no obligation to stick around either. However, you will find some who are capable of working on themselves if you give them the reason and the chance.

Does anyone know where his definitions come from regards to empathy and sympathy? Those aren’t the definitions in psychology and actually caught me off guard as a researcher of community resilience, in both sociological and psychological constructs.

Thanks for your videos. Wonderful to see people that still think and gives me things to consider.

What makes you think the benefit is only ancestral? Do you think we have achieved some sort of utopia where compassionless men are no longer needed?

R.e.: Sympathizing with Hitler (7:20) Someone not deserving something (e.g. sympathy) does not imply we should not give that thing. I don't mean to say we ought to give the thing, but there is no moral requirement that we don't.

I have no empathy for sociopaths. If society should benefit from their agony or demise, hey... who cares!? Irony.

Please could you make a video on the difference between empathy and compassion. The book « against empathy » is very short about compassion. Many SJWs claim to be empaths (sic) but their circle of empathy is very narrow and they blame people who do not empathize with them so it is clearly used as a power and manipulation tool. And it feed their anger. On the other hand, the buddhist of tonglen which I believe to be the practice of compassion is soothing for the practitionner. It seems to me that empathy is something given by evolution but compassion is deliberate and must be cultivated like and with wisdom. I am curious of the input from a specialist of evolution.

I wants knew a guy who got quite upset with others who expressed shock and sadness at the news of Robin Williams suicide. “ if they didn’t do anything for you, then you shouldn’t mourn them” was what he said. This guy also was highly emotional, had a Vietnam veteran with PTSD as a father and a mother later diagnosed with schizophrenia. If sociopathy is anything, and when you consider soldiers, I would think it more an environmental adaptations to being in a highly chaotic environment for a prolonged period of time necessitating the minimization if not removal of their emotion in order to survive a situation. Either through over use, no longer seeing the value of the cultural taboo keeping it in check or perhaps even preference to feeling nothing over feeling the remorse of their actions these individuals just seem faster at “deactivating” The evolutionary mechanisms that humans have that make us feel bad for doing certain things which is critical for social structure. (Ie stealing, killing, raping, etc).

I was diagnosed as a sociopath before most people saw it as a spectrum and it was Effectively removed from the DSM. It was a psychologist with a very similar thought process as this man who got me to agree with the diagnosis and begin studying it myself. It certainly isn’t a disorder. In my estimation anyone who is not a Sociopath is this ordered And weak as someone who is an obligate Sociopath and cannot choose to feel

I think it's even possible to extend sympathy, and not only empathy, to one's enemies in certain situations.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the difference between sympathy and empathy, as per your description, is actually describing the difference between cognitive and emotional empathy. In that case, cognitive empathy is the ability to recognize and understand, intelligently, the emotions in others whereas emotional empathy is the _capacity_ to feel the same as they feel. Sympathy, more specifically, is then the _reaction_ of perceiving another being in distress, which does not necessarily elicit the same emotion as the observed being feels. A short example to clarify what I mean. I do fear that my articulations fall short. In my own opinion, I've never been good with words. Cognitive empathy is when you can tell what someone else is feeling. You recognize and understand that they feel a certain way, but you do not feel the same as they do. A psychopath may be very good at knowing what others are feeling, but he/she may be incapable of feeling the same way. They can put themselves in other people's shoes, but they can't feel what other people are feeling. Emotional empathy is when you feel what someone else is feeling. You can feel what they feel without understanding or even recognizing what that feeling is. Severely autistic people are highly sensitive to the emotions of others, however, they tend to be unable to recognize other people's emotions. They feel what other people are feeling, but they can't put themselves in other people's shoes. Sympathy is when you react to someone else's negative feelings, independently from what they are feeling. If someone is in distress, perhaps afraid and in pain, sympathy can manifest as sadness on behalf of the person in distress. We sympathize in funerals unless we knew the respective person closely, in which case, we feel what the person's closest feel. We empathize.

It makes sense to say that feelings of empathy developed in order to better integrate oneself into a social hierarchy. Without feeing secondary guilt or suffering, how would one crave bettering their group and themselves?

An Educated/ Evolved Empath is what you speak of. Knows and understands the switch and is capable of controlling one's self-contained (Feeling to Thinking) ratio. The how to properly experience and excicute said actions per situational outcomes. Yes to be evolved is the answer. This is why it is said that the TRULY Educated Empath is the nightmare for the Unevolved Sociopath. Because we have the same awareness/ thinking abilities they have AND the ability to feel/ understand such depth and oneness. With the power to control self and choose... ALL choices... Where the true sociopath lacks the capacity to control self; they are/ become reactionary. So the real form of their reality is reaction based on reaction based on Reactions. Even with their plan of actions in play, their inability to BE TRUE SELF IS THEIR OWN DEMISE. A life of lies based in EGO is not One's True Self. Balance is the truest form of Evolutionary Perfection. TRUTH I love you and... I will kill you if need be. I love all living things but like those pesky mosquitoes- BAM! Self Presevervation and in Severitude to all humanity. The mosquito isn't the empath. The mosquito is the sociopath; feeding off others. The evolved empath doesn't need others in order to exist- feel validation. We are the true self controlled. We are from the inside out. Not the outside - in. The more this world becomes sociopathic the more unbalanced it has become. Children need to be raised with Emotional Feelings Sectrum Empathy w/ High Awareness Self Controlled Highly Thought Provoking Problem Solving Skills Based On Facts and... Balance in ALL THINGS. With all that said I do appreciate and agree that the sociopathic is a spectrum. Same to be said for the empathic as well. My point above is just a very small example of the vast differences in the two. The Evolved form of Sociopathic is of Destruction. The Evolved form of Empath is of Creation.

I had most of the same thoughts and then I heard about the way psychologists view sociopathy so I'm not sure what's true.

Very insightful, love your videos! Also, talking to someone makes the explanations sound more natural, I know some criticisms on your earlier videos were that they sounded too wooden, if that was the purpose I think its working. I personally feel really awkward talking to a camera without someone live on the other end, I can't get it to sound natural. I rarely feel little more than irritation, anxiety, or satisfaction, of my own accord. I feel happy when people I care about are happy, sad when people I care about are sad. I kinda always assumed that those emotions were solely shared experiences, some people tell me its not. I haven't looked into it, but it is something I've been mildly curious about, I've wondered if I have some sociopathic tendencies. My grandpa died recently and I didn't feel anything till I saw a picture of my grandma looking distraught.

God I hope this line of thinking never takes off. Humankind can afford to give more of a fuck about each others well being. We can do better

The Weinstein bros are two of my favourite people. Brilliant, both of you.

Brett will now have the opportunity to teach on a world stage versus on a small liberal college. He should write a book about his experiences or do speaking tours on preserving free speech on our college campuses.

Working on my mental health with various western and eastern techniques gave me a higher capacity for both empathy and regulating empathy when action is required.

Thats exactly what I assumed. The whole problem is these behaviors get rewarded as you said and therefore it continues generation after generation. In a great deal our world is created by these individuals though they rise to the top more easier than people with a a more normal and socialized behavior and emotions. Explains why the world is not so good it might could be. Interesting. Thank you.

This opened my eyes to many things. Thank you sir! We all have this ability. Some embrace it more.

Loved the video, very interesting concept with the crime boss and his family. I don't however share the same feelings about the empathy and sympathy part. It seems to me that sympathy lands more on the cognitive side or once removed from an effective state. I can conceptualize their situation and understand why they feel this way but I don't feel what they feel, I "understand" it. I feel the definitions affective and cognitive emapthy would have been better suited than empathy and sympathy on this topic. That's my un-asked for 2 cents.

like you kinda of want your surgeon to be sociopathic to a degree, while he is cutting your gut open you don't want that person to be overwhelmed with the pain that they are afflicting on your body.

The world desensitizes us to some things and makes us overly sensitive to others, but they are inappropriately applied. A wise king once said: "There is an appointed time for everything, A time for every activity under the heavens: A time for birth and a time to die; A time to plant and a time to uproot what was planted; A time to kill and a time to heal; A time to tear down and a time to build up; A time to weep and a time to laugh; A time to wail and a time to dance; A time to throw stones away and a time to gather stones together; A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to search and a time to give up as lost; A time to keep and a time to throw away; A time to rip apart and a time to sew together; A time to be silent and a time to speak; A time to love and a time to hate; A time for war and a time for peace."

It's no surprise that sociopathy is on the rise lately. We live in a society that rewards sociopathic behavior.

How much of sociopathy is based on childhood trauma where they were detached from themselves to survive and were created by neglect? Similar to Narcissism?

We have to find ways not to allow psychopaths near power. But first step is to inform andcteach everyone what a psychopath is. A lot of people do not have the proper information and education on psychopathology, hence people cannot even identify the entity or behavior..

I like this. It resonates with me. Thanks, Bret. I look forward to more content from you

The actual question is how empathy is useful , for it is the rarity in creatures. I'd argue it's almost a wash between empathy and sociopathy. With a very slight but significant lean towards empathy. And it's quite contextual which determined which is advantageous. In the modern world, where the strange anonymous nature of most human interactions occur in, sociopathy may be the more advantageous. Give us a few hundred thousand years and I'd put my money on sociopathy. And the more I listen to Bret the creepier he seems to me regarding his social engineering fixation..

good topic, ive been fascinated with sociopaths and psychopaths most of my life, pretty much ever since I found out they existed. I also used to think I was a sociopath, because of how drastically different I react to tragedy (especially that which doesnt affect me, like 9/11) than other people. One of my rare disagreements with Bret, but I think that even people like Hitler do deserve some sympathy. Thats hard to do without truly understanding a person and their motives. Personally I think one of our biggest trials as a species, maybe even all life, is to be able to understand, sympathize, maybe even care for those who could or will do us harm. Just like I can feel sympathy for a wild animal who would ruthlessly kill me and anyone like my with great fervor and glee. The difference here between Hitler and a animal thats gone mad with blood-lust, is power. How much devastation and curelty they are capable of causing.

I hate what transpired that brought you here to the public,but I'm not sorry that we have you now. You deserve an audience that listens.

Is it possible to be a chronic empath? When I hear bad news, and it's not to do with me and mine, I do (or rather did, I am a bit more desensitised these days) feel the pain for quite some time and when I was younger I was deeply shocked to see that others were able to disregard the bad news and move on!

That comment at 13mins Free Market Anarchists are trying to devise such a system. Rendering sociopath and sociopathic entities harmless. Merely efficient in serving human kind.

My understanding of empathy and sympathy was quite different: I thought sympathy was the capacity to model another person's emotional state by considering their circumstances, allowing for rational understanding of the source of another person's emotions. Empathy I thought was a more subconscious process where the model of another person's psyche runs through one's own psyche, generating genuine emotions. In other words, sympathy is the capacity to understand another person's emotions, but without empathy, one can watch them occur with apathy. Empathy on the other hand is the capacity to run the model of another person's psyche through one's own, triggering genuine emotions. Empathy is therefore what triggers a response, e.g. to relieve another person's suffering (and so our own). Empathy without sympathy can however mean that we model the emotional state of other's poorly, and so experience emotions they do not have, and respond wrongly.

First off, please do keep doing these. You've got a platform whether you want it or not, and goodness knows we need more reality-based voices. Oh, and evolutionary biology is way more relevant that most people think... Not the evolutionary psychology stuff (which is mostly crap), but the complex adaptive systems and emergence angle. That applies to culture, politics, economics, and basically everything else humans do collectively. Empathy vs sympathy... Empathy (to me at least) is based on an innate 'mirror' sense which puts us in the shoes of the person we are observing. Autism (something I'm more personally familiar with) is often associated with a similar functional impairment with that sense. Maybe sociopathy is sometimes characterized by that 'mirror' sense working fine, but a lack of it connecting with something at a higher level so those perceptions just don't trigger emotions? Seems a bit implausible though. An alternative is that the sense is impaired but the deficiency is worked around by using other senses and a more analytical/learned (as opposed to innate) mental model to infer what other people are thinking and feeling. That seems to fit better. BTW: For some autistic people (it varies a lot), serious social disability can be mitigated a lot by explicitly teaching that "workaround". Especially when it is done as a child, the results can be pretty dramatic. Anyways... The upshot is that I probably wouldn't say a profound sociopath has empathy. They might well have developed a method for 'faking it' which works just as well (or even better) in many cases, but it isn't based on the same innate sense and mental subsystem. Empathy by necessity (again IMO), comes via an innate mirror sense and triggers the emotional centers... Sympathy comes when that trigger isn't suppressed by an antagonistic network.

A sociopath can be altruistic, as long as their curiosity is that way inclined.

Professor... climbing almost any hierarchy involves causing at least emotional harm to those you pass by. Overly sympathetic people can't stand to cause harm even when it is just and proper that they do so. Such people are not necessarily helpful to a society in all circumstances either. So there is a good argument to train out empaths from our society too. But I don't think we should be dabbling in social engineering on the level you suggest. It would involve, first establishing what the ideal level of compassion is for a person to have, 2. developing tests to accurately determine the level of sympathy in others. 3. Involve a level of indoctrination I am not sure I am comfortable with. 4. Make damn sure we never need the sociopaths (or the empaths for that matter) again before we start this, cause if we do, we are screwed.

I used to be somewhat of an obligate sociopath? When I was a kid, around well, from my birth all up until when I started to practice more conscious self regulation somewhere around let's say.... 8-10.... I used to kick, bite, scratch, cuss out, punch (to some degree at least). I am not terribly proud or happy about who I used to be and it's hard to reconcile with it but I think my experience with it now is a reflection of what made me into who I was back then. I wasn't nurtured as a child for reasons/in ways I could disclose but will choose not to. I used to feel (internally) angry whenever somebody expressed grief, and I used to feel somewhat repulsed and disgusted by people showing affection for each other, especially when using the word 'love', going so far as to label it as sentimentality. And the interesting thing is, to my perspective it was sentimentality. However, here's the crucial difference; while I have had my stints with violence even after that, apart from one incident, they have been under the influence of some kind of mind altering either lack of substance like hypothyroidism, or dissociative problems or similar. The thing that most people don't realize is that a trademark 'sociopath' like myself doesn't necessarily have to be a person who embraces their qualities. I think at some point in my life, pretty early on, I realized that if I embraced this head on I would completely run my life in the absolute gutter and die. I looked into and thought hard about these things as I started to notice that, when I pulled at some of the threads that I personally could even notice though I was so emotionally stunted, I saw that there was a different type of life for me, and I hesitate to speak in advance but I think I'm largely over it by now. I'm 24 now and it took intense and extensive introspection coupled with a tremendous amount of social trial and error, all from the age of like 11 to now, which is around when I started to realize that people around me DID NOT LIKE ME. Nor did I like myself or anything. I could either seek to exacerbate this, or reverse it. Still working with a lot of the guilt that made me so strange in the first place, and the guilt that followed from my actions because of it, although I sought to keep it relatively lenient and I think I did, all in all. I nurtured pretty much only my good side, at least as far as I understood it at any given time period that I've 'been in'. Anyone who's curious and might be reading this comment, well, I could answer your questions if you have any.

Excellent video. Thanks for posting. As a curious note, it´s interesting to see how he crushes a bug at the same time that he is talking about empathizing and love. A very small example of how violence to other life forms has been so normalized in our world view to become invisible even to great minds like Bret´s.

Shame that university education has lost, at least for now, this guy's intellect, and his humanity. Imagine a conversation with him, vs. one with some random antifa...sad.

It seems like empathy has changed definition in the last 20 years. Empathy was described as the ability to feel the feelings of another because a person has experienced a similar situation. Sympathy had the definition of empathy without experience. I don’t go to school in English until 6th grade eve though it is my first language. It may have been a misconception.

i would say whats being missed is there are some that are good at acting out and projecting fake empathy very well and very skilled at using it as a manipulated form of control or weapon

One could say that Romeo Dallaire suffered and was strengthened by his lack of sociopathic behaviour. He'd have been better off, as an individual, being more sociopathic, while trying to prevent harm during the Rwandan crisis. But he'd not have been able to inspire the world with his first hand accounts of suffering, as these accounts were simply far too heartfelt and genuine to ignore. The issue can't be framed as "good" or "bad", despite our current cutlure's obsession with 8-year-old cognitive etiquette.

What do you think about Paul Bloom's promotion of rational compassion as opposed to empathy and do you think that it is possible in current society for an obligate sociopath to be a better philanthropist, because they can focus their resources on doing the most good, rather than being swayed by empathy?

So basically our world is too sick to even accurately study sociopaths

Isn't sympathy the idea of understanding why someone else does it and empathy the idea of actually feeling it yourself?

Is there a difference between sociopathy and psychopathy? It seems the terms are used interchangeably, which is why I avoid saying "sociopath" and use the term "psychopath" very carefully lest it come off as hyperbole.

As someone on the sociopathic scale...this hit home like rhonda rousey hitting the mat in her return match.....hard and fast

Don't be a sociopath take the social path.

your comment at 2:28 the last minutes of 'fail safe' henry fonda movie...always stuck with me how the first set of images were, images but nyc images heart wrenching. saw it young, made me resistant to the anti-russian bandwagon. oh and mama bear...i usta say, 'i would die for what believe in but not kill.' then i had children, i would have torn someone apart with bare hands teeth and nails if they had threatened my babies....so yeah sociopath-ish.

First objection. Something being in 1% to 4% doesn't disqualify it from being a disorder. Depression affects a fuckton more people, and is a disorder. Two, a disorder can be something that negatively affects others rather than oneself directly. Three, I think you need a separate word from Sociopathy to describe "not being overly emotionally affected" by something. Sociopathy would be this quality in an excess amount. Four, I think there has to be more of a distinction between empathy and sympathy, as they are normally used. Finally, I think we'll need to be able to accomplish sympathizing with all present persons before we can start extending that too much into the future.

They do range across the entire scale and each is capable of feeling each emotion at different levels. But... they have cognitive empathy in full, as do Psychopaths. So they can realise what emotions people are feeling or will feel, but they don’t FEEL it. Sociopaths also have triggers which will relate to their trauma. So randomly they may empathise or even briefly sympathise with a character on a show or could be anybody.

What is the evolutionary advantage of sympathy as opposed to empathy.

Don't kill the insects, empathize with them.

Wish I had sat through thus dude’s lectures during my undergrad. I’d pick at his brain and talk about ideas, endlessly.

This fellow deals with psychopathy as an abstract --- a book study. Let him deal interpersonally with the bastards and I expect he'll be the one to change.