Please step up to the microphone over here and make sure it is a question. Secondly or lastly, normally at the end of the night we would ask you to fold up your chairs. However, we have nerds trivia night this evening, so leave your chairs where they are. In fear fear ago marsh records using and as seminar i to discover happens in the brain to make some people respond empathetically to the fear of others while some remain indifferent and the answer published for the first times timewise in the enigma which controls in response. Combining heroes and psychopathic patients she brings science to life. Katherine heinz of Science Magazine says those who seek to comprehend the origin of fear will find this book a key factor in the increase of understanding associate professor of psychology at georgetown. She will be joined in conversation tonight with barbara bradley. Please help me welcome them to politics and prose work. Good evening. Can everyone hear me . Wonderful. I first met abby in 2013 when i was doing research on altruism and in the course of our interview i realized abby has a very wide range of interests in her research, some kind of pollyanna to Hannibal Lecter from generosity to psychopathy and whats wonderful about abby as a journalist for me is she has this happy combination of being a deeply rigorous scientists and also someone who could make science accessible to and interesting to all of us and her book is much the same way, sark, insightful, fascinating, engaging and all those things so we will have conversation tonight. Lets start with how you dive into the research. What attracted you to the research that led you to light in the dark . Will, the seeds of the research were planted a long time ago, 22 years go i think at this point, so apologies for those of you that have heard this story more than once. My interest in altruism and what makes people care about the welfare of people around them spot on from a day when my life was saved by a stranger after a car accident in my hometown. Just in brief, that night i was driving home down the interstate to my home when a dog darted out in front of me and for those of us a dog lovers did i did what anyone would have done which you should not do, dont swerve. That is what i did. My car was spinning out across the freeway finally landing in the fast lane of the freeway facing backwards in the oncoming traffic and the force of the spinning out caused of the engine to die and i was stranded with no access to cell phone this was in the 90s and i was sure i was going to die. Cars streaming for me were swerving and i dont know long i sat there being sure i was going to die until a man appeared at the passenger side window of the car inside looks like you could use help. [laughter] yes, i think i could and he ran around the car, got it running again and threw it in drive and got us back across the freeway to safety and pretty much disappeared inside you will be all right. You will be a league at home and i said im okay, okay, i wasnt. He said take care of yourself and drove away. I did not know his name and im pretty sure i forgot to say thank you and in theory people help other people and even people might make true sacrifices, but nothing like having it happen to you to make it real and to bring the real mystery of human caring for others alive and so that question for you to seven my brain and i think its been the research that followed. We cant know exactly what was going on in that mans brain, but except for good thoughts, but how does altruism work in the brain, what is that the mechanism mechanism we are very much on our way to answer that question and its a question people have been trying to answer for a while. The fact that altruism is behavior thats intended to help someone else suffering in distress ends to model it is a lab inspires causing someone to suffer or be in distress and there is no that would approve of this as my students know and so instead we took a clinical approach to the problem which was find people that do things out touristic out the real world , bring them in the lab and see what might be different about them. And the root of what we found is that altruism seems to be motivated by partly things happening inside the amygdala, the structure of the brain involved in emotional processes and in brief what we found is people very out touristic, like people who would donate a to a stranger and people who attended the structure is larger than it is in the average person and more active in response to the side of another person in distress in particularly someone else frightened which suggest they may have a stronger a path that corresponds to other distress of fear which may motivate them to help. We have talked a bit about the kidney donors. Do they present differently, where they more obviously generous as well . In sort of the general walks of life quebec as. Sure, absolutely and whats interesting about people who have donated kidneys to strangers which again there is nothing obviously different about them compared to anyone else and you wouldnt necessarily know it about someone when you first meet them although there is a sense that of it being treated as a friend quickly rather than having a attractive warming up. Or more closed experience. But its true people who donate kidneys to strangers are altruistic and many other ways. They tend to donate blood and often involved in charitable work and its amazing. I remember you saying the kidney donors didnt think of themselves as generous whereas other people who might donate kidneys for their family it was a harder lift for them. True. Among the many out touristic kidney donors ive worked with many know people who have donated to family members and what surprised them is that people who donate kidneys to friends and family which seems were obvious often report having had to think about it and it took a long time to decide to do this whereas people who donate kidneys to strangers often report the decision was into instantaneous. They heard a Kidney Disease is the ninth leading cause of death in the us and what an enormous number of people die because it takes so long to get a kidney and they hear this and that it is possible to donate to a stranger. We can live a fine with one kidney unlike that they decide i will donate. That suggests there is a difference. I think thats evidence that whatever drives the decision they make is in the brain, not sort of protracted conscious weighing the cost of benefits and that amygdala is deep down in the brain. So, are there differences cracks are there differences in generosity say between gender combinations, animals, i mean, our women better than men . Are some countries better than other countries, some animals better than others . Absolutely and this is one of the things that became the focus of my work and how there is a continuing of the caring in humans wears some people have a huge amount of caring for their people, most are somewhere in the middle and in some people at the other end who dont seem to care about others at all. When it comes to big differences i dont see much of a difference in terms of how altruistic they are to strangers. A few more women than men donate kidneys to strangers, that the proportion is like 55, 45. We see altruism towards a strangers increase in middleage , so quite a few of our altruistic are in their 40s, 50s and 60s. Why do you think that is . Great question. May have something to do with this sort of increase, since that for satisfaction that arises as one has accomplish the things you been looking to publish as life progresses. It may have to do with the deepseated issues in the brain went now identified yet. We also have identified in the course of the work we have done that if you look across geographic areas you see a correlation between altruism towards strangers in particular and roles like prosperity and wellbeing where it seems to be a case within states in the us and nations around the world that people become better off, healthier, more educated, letter etc. And altruism towards a strangers in particular tents to go up which i think is optimistic because we know wealth education and prosperity continue to rise, so thank goodness is not inevitably associated with a huge drop in altruism. How about animals . I love animal research. I would have happily written on entire book, but i dont actually do animal research. There spake differences in animals to the extent to which they will care for anyone who is not directly related to them. You call it aloe mothering . Yes. Its a phenomenon called aloe mothering which means taking care of babies that are not your own and all animals have some capacity to care because they care for their own babies, but in some species there seems to open in unlocking of the potential to care. Mothers of some species rats are incredibly altruistic. Liens are incredibly altruistic believe it or not. They can be extremely aggressive , but they also do this amazing thing which is taking care of babies that are not their own within the pride. We look across species at species were adults take care of babies that are not their own are also the most altruistic and it seems to support the idea that all altruism emerges from the ability for parents to care for their children and when the capacity explodes upwards and outward altruism can flourish. Where do humans rank . We rank it really high we have some of the best aloe mothers around around primates where the most species. If you could cross primate species that aloe mothers and most are also the one centered altruistic among strangers and humans are at the top of the list. Around the world its natural for babies to be taking care of only by their own mother and i find it strange and incorrect belief in the modern world that a baby must spend maximum amount of time with its own mother to be maximally healthy because thats probably any other culture doesnt. Most cultures around the world especially if you look at hunter gatherer babies are taken care of by hundreds of people over the record day and handled by lots of people and if you think about it, it allows babies to learn to trust people and form loving bonds with people who are not just one Single Source of attachment. So, you come to this a bit earlier, but are we as a nation getting more altruistic because you read the paper it and feels like we are getting more tribal, so whats going on . We are tribal, no doubt about it and whats interesting as we know travel is not helpful when it comes to altruism. We tend to treat people we view as now grouped much different than people as an group, but when talking about altruism with a stranger we are getting more and more altruistic without a doubt. Every year if you look at the trend of Charitable Giving among volunteering, Blood Donation kidney donation, everything its all going up. Its Pretty Amazing and of course not really ever covered in the media because thats not sensational or fascinating. In doing research, more often then a long time lets shift from optimism to Hannibal Lecter now which is really interesting. Tell us a little bit about how psychopathy works in the brain. Psychopathy you can think of the other end of the caring continuum and while its true humans is seem to be endowed with the capacity to care as a result of having babies we have to take care of, any Human Capacity can go awry during development and the psychopathy is a dildo but all disorder that seems to be partly related to problems, not impart but completely and seems to result in people having no capacity to care for anyone but themselves and something that occurs in a severe form for about one to make two years old and we discover people who are psychopathic have brains of the opposite of people who are very altruistic, so whereas altruistic have a mcgillis that are larger, people psychopathic have the opposite. So, the title of your book is about the fear factor, what role does fear or the ability to recognize fear in others, what role does that have been psychopathy . One of the things observed about psychopathy from the beginning and research scientifically for maybe 60 or 70 years is that people who are psychopathic 10 to have a peerless personality. They are not susceptible to punishment, dont respond to things threatening strongly and this is a reason people that are psychopathic tend to offend and reoffend because the way punishment is supposed to work if you dont fear then you wont do the thing that results from the punishment. So, for a long time it was suspected something must be wrong in their amygdala because everyone knows thats the source and essential for the ability to develop a normal fear response. You and i have had this discussion and theres also the inability to recognize fear in others. Why does someone who can truly spot here and someone else tend them towards the psychopathic acts . This is i think from the most Interesting Research my students and i have done is i think what we have discovered in that when you see or hear or think about someone elses experiencing fear , in order to understand the emotion of your feeling theyre feeling you have to recreate or simulate that emotional state within your own brain we know its essential to experience for yourself and so if you dont have a strong amygdala response when you hear or see some and also prayed you cant what that emotion is like and you fundamentally can understand what the other person is feeling or sort of empathize. So, the break that would stop the normal person from hurting the other person is not their . Correct. Normally if one of us saw someone try to buy something they were saying or doing our ability to simulate with the fear experience might be like would be enough to stop us from doing that think and if you dont have the ability to do that you go right on ahead. The second time we had a long conversation it was when i was writing for the atlantic on when youre they call it when your child is a psychopath, which probably struck fear in the hearts of many many readers. Turns out you can see the traits of psychopathy fairly early, three or younger, sometimes. Can you just explain whats going on . What you have part with kids in your research. What have you seen when he worked with kids . The most interesting thing about the children we have worked with who have psychopathic or emotional traits is they dont really stand out i always say that if i were to break in all the kids i have studied that have psychopathic straights and mind them up and makes them in with the kids that are perfectly healthy you would never pick anyone out of the lineup. Theres nothing different about them. Why is that brain wise . We think they are pretty specific, quite different that people who have serious cases of autism are schizophrenia which are brain why disorders. Psychopathy results from problems in a localized and leaves most of the brain and most functions intact to. You were bringing in kids that were six, seven or eight . We tried to bring in kids who were eight. Turns out were when kids are not carried and only eight years old which is too young to really be motivated by compensation and you need them to lie still without moving more than 4 millimeters over the course of 45 minutes it doesnt work well at all, so we gave up trying to bring in 8year olds and brought in 10 yearolds. Could you spot you said is global and hard to spot, but what did you seen these kids when the child has these traits how does it present quebec we were looking at their brain scan and when you scan people who are healthy the typical thing you see when you present them with someone who is fearful while in the brain imaging machine, on average people show ace draw amendola which we are trying to simulate the Emotional Experience that person is having an children with psychopathic straits did not see that at all infected bit negative and we also found the less amendola response they showed the worse their aggression wasnt in particular this instrumental aggression people who are psychopathic are known for which his goal directed aggression. You are trying to get something and you hurt them by doing it. Did you see any behavior that trouble to from any of these kids . Luckily, not so much with us. I think we had one child steel some food out of the cafeteria on their way to get a scan and another one worked so much with one of my graduate students that his mom joked he should ask her to the prom. Other than being surprising its not terribly troubling. What was more serious was the stories they told us about what they do in their daily lives. Like . Some of the worst things i heard about was a child who found a aid and threw it to the library making people believe the library was being attacked by terrorists. Another one ran the operation of his bedroom and was i think he was 13. He wasnt any taller than me and he was charging High School Students like a dollar a day interest and if they didnt pay up he would threaten them with guns. The absolute lack of the imperviousness of the consequences of what he was doing was amazing. So, we are talking about psychopathy and you think about Hannibal Lecter, but are all psychopaths violent . Definitely not here to most of the kids we worked with were violent at least to some of the time abusing animals, extremely oppressive at home and the school and had been kicked out of multiple schools and their fate their parents and families were living in fear of them. One boy would repeatedly take his parents to a hotel because they were afraid he would burn the house down. That said there was nothing about being psychopathic that makes you violence. Violence is used more as a tool to get what they want, so if the violence is a useful tool to get what you want then you might be violent, but especially some of the girls we worked with. If you are smaller female, violence is not an effective tool so they would use other methods to get what they wanted. When they grow up to be adults, and theres this term i have heard successful psychopath can you, i mean, i think all of us would like to know and maybe we already know, what is that mean . With a successful psychopath . First of all i love that term because it implies there is excess as it being a psychopath and thats a contradiction in terms successful psychopath is seven and makes their way in the world and seems to sort of skirt under the radar of the behavior. They may be a terrible person and everyone around them may feel they are deceitful and manipulative. Burning made off as someone whose name comes up who may have been a psychopath even though there was not a whole lot of pilots in his background. What you are looking for to see if someone is seriously psychopathic are core traits of psychopathy that distinguish people from other and social population is the remorseless temperament where theres a persistent pattern of engaging in behavior that caused people suffering cuban people normally close to you and failure to register that your behavior is causing people to suffer and the lack o