Behaviorally speaking, heroes and serial do-gooders have a lot in common with sociopaths, according to this paper on psychology and neuroethics: "their personality traits are very similar, with only a few features to distinguish them."
Heroes and sociopaths: behavioral twins?
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This is extremely valuable information. I've sent the link for this article to everyone I know, making sure to mention your name, Xeni -- you're a wonderful, helpful person, and the world is a better place with you in it.
That paper on psychology and neuroethics isn't really a paper, but more like an informal opinion piece. It only cites one source, and that source (which I checked) doesn't directly address the editorial's argument. (You can tell the writer is fudging this by the language she uses to introduce the source.) It's an interesting subject, but honestly, I think the writer is just winging it. I don't think there's real information here.
She didn't bother to mention her primary source: every Batman comic ever.
what lorq said.
when you say "paper" i tend to think "peer-reviewed journal article."
typically, the peer review system picks up little things like "their/there" misuse. this column was basically an argument from anecdote.
incidentally, the writer of the column, a behavioral therapist, appears to have no research credentials whatsoever, based on my quick perusal of pubmed. although not a prerequisite to commentary, a research background tends to discourage these sorts of arguments-from-anecdote and controversial-for-the-sake-of-controversy types of writings, at least in the scientific domain.
I also note that the founders of the IEET seem oriented towards vaguely Kurzweilian transhumanist jerkoffitude. i work part time in the bioethics domain, but have never heard of them, and now i know why.
agree - the 'few features to distinguish them' are like, pretty severe differences, and they're 'few' because they're embedded in arbitrarily long lists designed to make the authors point.
also the assertion "Personality has consistently shown to be extremely heritable" is feels odd.
Likewise. The article is not convincing. I also reject the notion that being "healthy" means that you don't stick your neck out for anyone.
Surprisingly, there have been a number of studies that would tend to indicate this idea has some legs. While by no means is heritability predictive of behavior for any individual, some personality traits do show pretty clear evidence of heritablity. For obvious reasons, any conclusions that can be drawn from this evidence needs to be treated very cautiously and in no case should it be applied to an individual as being predictive of anything.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16934002
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1449275
http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp806845.pdf
The J-stor cite is firewalled, you'll need to have a memebership.
Informal opinion pieces can be valuable. A few psychology theories really DO have to come out of nowhere, and then be proven by further research. If all psychological theories were just parroting other people's research, where would the original breakthrough brilliant ideas come from?
This particular "paper" however, could benefit from some more backup. It sounds like she's basing her theory/opinion solely on her personal observations in a non-controlled environment, and on anecdote. How many people did she observe to determine the link? What kind of situations did she put them in, what responses did she intent to elicit to determine altruistic vs sociopathic? Not to mention she didn't even conform to APA style...I currently have a professor who takes 10 points off a paper for every APA style mistake. ((shudder))
Actually, her entire paper basicly boils down to this: "there are people who are otherwise like sociopaths, but altruistic instead of selfish".
Which is sort of obvious, in that every conceivable combination of personality traits is bound to exist, given the population of the world.
Related: Writers and storytellers of all sorts have been aware of this for years. All the best heroes and villains are fun-house reflections of those on the other side.
At the end of /The Lucifer Effect,/ social psychologist Phillip Zimbardo mentions that he is done with researching the social psychology of evil, that his last research study has made him more interested in studying the people who /don't/ succumb to social, environmental, or situational pressures to do evil. In most social psychology experiments into situational pressures to do evil, there are people who not only fail to succumb, but most of them try to stop the experiment cold, even at the risk of significant consequences to themselves. He said he wants to study those people, find out what they have in common, where they come from, how such people are made, specifically because he believes that if we knew how to raise our children to be heroes, every parent would want to do that.
When I read that, I concluded that Dr. Zimbardo doesn't understand human beings very well. Few if any parents would want their child to be the one who sacrifices their health, their wealth, or their career, let alone their life, to stand up for somebody else. And my experience is that the rest of us don't want to have people like that around us, because, as this opinion piece argues, their commitment to doing the right thing borders on the psychotic.
has made him more interested in studying the people who /don't/ succumb to social, environmental, or situational pressures to do evil.
seems to me Xeni is pretty fascinated with the notion.
The only people who don't want to have the x-altuists, as you put it - the 'people like that' - around are, in my experience, invariably up to something deeply selfish.
Well, Anonymous #10, I haven't read Zimbardo so I can't speak to that. But I couldn't disagree with your own conclusions more. "Their commitment to doing the right thing borders on the psychotic"? More likely, their commitment to doing the right thing borders on their *being better people* than those who succumb to the social or situational pressure to do evil. Lucky for all of us that these people aren't vulnerable to the social pressure of people who call them psychotic.
"And my experience is that the rest of us don't want to have people like that around us, because, as this opinion piece argues, their commitment to doing the right thing borders on the psychotic."
It depends. If you can convince 'em to stand out front and do things that are also useful to you but too risky or expensive for you to do, you can use them until they break.
The altruist is the most useful tool a selfish person can have.
In short, both virtuous individuals and egocentric assholes are not your average normal citizen, so they must appear similar... it's just a provocation. Real questions is at the end of article: "How exactly do we support necessary rule-breaking for virtuous intent, yet punish malicious rule-breaking for ill-intent? Can it be done? Maybe someday we will be able to write public policy that actually serves the best intent of the people, even if it means that once in a while, some rules need to be broken in the process." The point is in making the distinction - pre-conventional and post-conventional behavior are NOT at all similar, and we should develop more clarity in that respect.
Had I known that I could cash in on my misspent youth as a dungeon master by publishing research on the similarities between chaotic evil and chaotic good alignments, I most definitely would have been a psych major.
thanks, I'd found a link that claimed some traits were, but others didn't seem to be (which, tbh, suprised me). it was the suggestion that all were that I found odd.
De Niro in Taxi Driver any one?
I think this article is capturing part of the picture of two traits... empathy-selfishness and approach-avoidance.
They aren't related, but someone high on approach (risk-taking, high-energy, go-getter attitude) is going to be noticed and do a lot more than someone who isn't.
Someone high on empathy will act for others, and with low empathy they will act for themselves. Extremely low empathy is characteristic of sociopathy, but approach isn't related.
High Approach/High Empathy: heroes, as explained in the article. People who go to great lengths for others.
High Approach/Low Empathy: sociopaths who commit serious crimes, or step on everyone in their way in their job. Big-time users.
Low Approach/High Empathy: probably a very nice but quiet person. Might volunteer, do anything for their friends and family, etc. This person isn't likely to get a lot of attention for their efforts.
Low Approach/Low Empathy: a less noticeable kind of sociopath. The kind of person who steals from their grandparents, pockets the petty cash, lies on their taxes, abuses animals, and generally takes advantage of people. Bad, but they aren't taking risks that would get them in real trouble.
Someone with High approach and average empathy will take a lot of risks, will probably be primarily looking out for themselves and close relatives, but won't want to hurt anyone either.
I probably could have saved some time and just said: this is trait theory. (Primarily the two "Big Five" traits, Openness to Experience and Agreeableness.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_psychology#Trait_theories
Batman!
@stratosfyr | #18
Or to put it more succinctly:
High Approach/High Empathy: hero
High Approach/Low Empathy: villain
Low Approach/High Empathy: martyr
Low Approach/Low Empathy: mooch
Seems related somehow:
Inmates dancing to 'I Need a Hero'