The neuroscience of extremes: altruism and psychopathy

When she was 19 years old, a stranger saved Abigail Marsh’s life. Driving late at night, she swerved to avoid a dog in the highway. Her car spun across oncoming traffic, and she found herself facing backward in the fast lane. A man stopped his car, ran across six lanes of traffic, got into her car, steered her to safety, checked that she was okay — and then drove away. It all happened so fast that she didn’t have time to thank him or even learn his name.

A few years later, while partying in Las Vegas, Marsh was being harassed by a stranger. When she slapped him to make him stop, he punched her in the face, breaking her nose. Later, a group of strangers caught up with the man and beat him up.

These incidents sparked Marsh’s interest in extraordinary altruism — people who risk their lives to help strangers — and its opposite: psychopathy, marked by little or no capacity for empathy.

She wrote about these experiences and her research in her book The Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between. Marsh is a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at Georgetown University.

She joins us on The Connection to talk about the neuroscience of extremes and why fear drives human behavior in both good and bad ways.