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Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty (Hardback)
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Short Description for Zero Degrees of EmpathyArgues that unlike the concept of evil, empathy has explanatory power. This title presents a way of understanding that leads individuals down negative paths, and challenges to consider replacing the idea of evil with the idea of empathy-erosion.
Full description- Publisher: ALLEN LANE
- Published: 07 April 2011
- Format: Hardback 208 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Psychology | Popular Science | Ethics & Moral Philosophy
- ISBN 13: 9780713997910 ISBN 10: 0713997915
- Sales rank: 12,230
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Full description for Zero Degrees of Empathy
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-erosion.
