Socialism Selects for Psychopaths

The quotation below is an especially interesting point from a generally compelling review of psychologist and neuroscientist Abigail Marsh’s book, The Fear Factor.  In her book, Marsh presents research showing that altruists and psychopaths are at different ends of the spectrum when it comes to responding biologically to visible fear in other people.  That is, a picture of a fearful person triggers a more significant response in the (bigger) amygdalas of altruistic people than it does in the (smaller) amygdalas of psychotic people.

She even suggests that altruism toward strangers may be more likely in individualistic societies like the U.S. than in collectivist societies like China. This seems counterintuitive, but the idea is that in individualistic societies there is more social fluidity—strangers might always become friends, so it makes more sense to help them.

That’s one dynamic by which social evolutionary forces might make people individualistic societies more altruistic than those in socialistic societies, but I’d propose another.  When government steps in to claim the job of caring for and protecting people, it allows everybody to ignore fear and other expressions of need because they have no individual responsibility.

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Another implication of this line of thinking is that the power structures of socialism (also communism, progressivism, and so on) will select for those who focus on the collective over individuals’ fear.  After all, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; omelets must be broken for the greater good.  Given their relative response to others’ fear, who will better serve the state in this project, the empathetic or the psychopaths?

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