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Essi Viding Books

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“People are prosocial creatures. We typically form enduring bonds with others. We find spending time with our family and friends rewarding, we rejoice in their good fortune, we want to help them and often go to a substantial degree of bother for others. This applies particularly in relation to people whom we consider to be part of our ‘in group’, but also often in relation to strangers.”

PeopleProsocial
Book:Psychopathy: A Very Short Introduction
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“The primary problem for individuals on the autism spectrum is not the inability to feel for others, but the profound difficulty in reading other people’s minds and consequently behaving in a socially appropriate manner. This means that individuals on the autism spectrum can come across as if they lack empathy, but in fact many of them report that they feel deeply for other people’s and animals’ misfortune.”

EmpathyAutism Spectrum
Book:Psychopathy: A Very Short Introduction
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“Perhaps one of the reasons that psychopaths find it difficult to resonate with other people’s distress is that distress emotions are relatively alien to them. If you do not feel something yourself, it is difficult to fully orient to and empathize with that feeling in others. For example, if you are not regularly distressed yourself, why would you be able to automatically resonate with other people’s distress? This also means that you may not automatically project the consequences of your behaviour in a way that evokes feelings of guilt. In this situation, what is there to hold you back if you want to look after ‘number one’?”

PsychopathsDistresss
Book:Psychopathy: A Very Short Introduction
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