Are people cruel because they lack empathy? Is cruelty always a matter of seeing others as less than human? Or are there some who simply enjoy seeing people suffer? These are some of the questions we’ll be tackling in this week’s show.

A popular theory is that something goes wrong with the empathy circuits in the brain of the cruel person. And that’s when you get violent or abusive behavior toward other people. This phenomenon is often described asempathy erosion．共情侵蚀的原因可能有很多，它可能是一种暂时的状态，也可能是一种普遍的趋势，这取决于个人和他们的环境。但当移情侵蚀发生时，它会转化为无法将另一个人视为完整的人。当我们不把别人当成完整的人，我们就更容易残忍地对待他们。

Evidence for this theory often includes the kind of language or rhetoric that is used in the buildup to (or in the subsequent justification for) extreme violence against groups of people, such as the Rwandan genocide, or the Holocaust. In both of these cases, the victims were characterized as “cockroaches” or “vermin” that needed to be exterminated by the perpetrators of the violence. They were dehumanized, thus making acts of extreme cruelty possible.

This theory certainly makes sense of mass violence, but I wonder if it tells the whole story. Are cruel actionsalways因为缺乏同理心?

To answer this question, I think we should look at more everyday instances of cruelty or violence, like road rage. On one reading, that familiar phenomenon fits perfectly with the theory that abusive behavior happens between people when there’s a breakdown of empathy. After all, we’re all driving around in our little metal boxes, separated from one another, and so we often fail to recognize each other’s humanity. So when someone cuts you off, boom! That’s when the abuse begins.

But notice I said, “when someone cuts you off.” That’s an important point that we ought not to gloss over. Road rage is usually a response to a perceived bad act on the part of another driver. Road rage isreactive．这并不是说你一开上了车就突然开始辱骂你遇到的每一个司机。但如果有人打断你，那就另当别论了。在路怒症中，愤怒和辱骂是对感知到的虐待的反应。

Defenders of the empathy theory might insist that the windshield hassome影响我们与他人共情的能力，从而导致路怒症现象。挡风玻璃制造了人与人之间的距离，就像电脑屏幕一样，这就是为什么我们在网上有这么多令人讨厌的行为。Road rage may be reactive, but a lot of online trolling seems to be unprovoked. There are people who troll just for the fun of it—albeit it a sick, sadistic fun. Surely that's a case where it's all about dehumanization?

同样，我不认为共情理论给了我们完整的图景。网络挑衅的目的是激怒对方。喷子试图引起情绪性反应。所以，他们完全意识到对方是人，是有感情的。In fact, they areexploitingthat fact to get their sadistic kicks. It’s precisely because the victim is human that they can be made to suffer.

But surely the trolls arestill缺乏同理心?这取决于你对"同理心"的定义如果你指的是关心或同情，那么当然，这是喷子可能缺乏的东西。但如果你指的是(更准确地)感受他人感受的能力，不幸的是，这正是那些恶意喷子所做的。虐待狂很擅长了解我们的感受，这正是他们如此有效地折磨我们的原因。

So what is going on in the minds of cruel people? Can people be empatheticandcruelat once?

Our guest this week, psychologist Paul Bloom, thinks that empathy is neither necessary nor sufficient for treating others with kindness and compassion. He has written a book on empathy with the somewhat surprising title,Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion．他将与乔什和嘉宾主持人，心理学家艾莉森·戈普尼克交谈。加入谈话!