Question: Are there some people who see everyone as though they’re in the uncanny valley and therefore have reduced respect for life?
Answer: Maybe, if this has to do with perception, and particularly how one perceives living things versus non-living things.
One of the more tasteful home decor items à Château Swivelchair is a pillow shaped like a cat that we call “Weird Kitty.” It mildly freaks out people and cats alike. (We dusted off Weird Kitty and showed this to an unsuspecting cat who sat glaring across the room, nostrils sniffing and pupils dilated).
We suspect that Weird Kitty is in the uncanny valley. The “uncanny valley” is a well known concept to those who work with robots, and basically describes the point at which “cute” or “interesting” becomes sufficiently life-like to turn into weirdness. We didn’t realize this was such an area of interest among those in a variety of fields, like, robotics (here’s an interesting site), and video games (recall the a 30- Rock episode where Tracy wants to make a video game called “Grand Theft Porn” and Frank advises that that is unfeasible because of the uncanny valley, see cached version on IO9). Here’s the chart:
http://www.androidscience.com/theuncannyvalley/proceedings2005/uncannyvalley.html
Babies, monkeys and our cat have demonstrated the aversion to life-like beings that look like them.
Demonstrating the objective fact that when one learns a new word, everyone starts saying it, because we just learned about the uncanny valley, we’re seeing the uncanny valley everywhere. Like, when we couldn’t sleep so we watched the Oprah rerun with Dr. Phil and the woman who’s father was a serial killer. (Promo clip here). The serial killer was filmed saying he didn’t care about human life, strapped the body of his victims to the bottom of his truck (for instance) and treated his victims with the callousness one reserves for inanimate objects. Hated inanimate objects. He also put cats in a barrel and set them on fire, and tortured kittens. He treated them like Weird Kitty– hated Weird Kitty.
Being wide awake at that point, we caught the remastered Hitchcock film, “Touch of Evil.” The scene where Janet Leigh wakes up in Tijuana after being drugged and she’s in the seedy hotel and sees, about 2 inches from her face, Joseph Calleia’s dead, bulging eyes (because he had just been strangled by Orson Wells and thrown over the bed such that his head was dangling ), reminded us again of the uncanny valley. (We stayed up. Oh well.) And then, there was an episode of Criminal Minds entitled “Uncanny Valley.” The episode was about a girl who was given electroshock therapy by her evil abusing psychiatrist father and compensated for this by drugging women to paralyze them and dress them as the dolls that her father took from her, or some such. (It’s a little more complicated than that and way too contrived for our tastes. A little crime genre goes a long way with us).
The uncanny valley, we think, is the perception of lifelessness, with the natural result being fear and disgust, or fisgust, a word we just made up. This may be why, after being run down by a sociopath and realizing that the person has no moral wiring, we feel disgusted — the sociopath, to us, is in the uncanny valley. (Those of you who have experienced this know this kick-in-the-gut feeling). They seemed lifelike. But they’re really Weird Kitty.
Much of the theory involving why we are creeped out by humanesque beings has to do with matching the life-likeness with actual life. This involves studying perception, more particularly, social or action perception. Below is an image from a recent report demonstrating that the brain is much more active (in areas involved with predicting actions) when figuring out life-likeness versus visually obvious robots or visually apparent humans (click to enlarge), there’s brains on blatant robots (top), brains on life-like robots (middle one, with all the dots) and brains on humans (bottom):
Chaminade, T., Ishiguro, H., Driver, J. & Frith, C. (2011) The thing that should not be: Predictive coding and the uncanny valley in perceiving human and humanoid robot actions. Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience.
Detecting biological motion is also involved, and perception of biological motion has a dotted line to perception of social emotion. We previously noted a recent paper that schizophrenia may involve faulty biological motion detectors, and failure to detect social emotion. This is pretty close to failing to perceive life.
Perception — the way one perceives things – seems key. Perception is a biological process and just as color blindness or deafness is a neural process, your perception wiring can determine what you see and how you feel about it. And there are those who have perception problems, particularly in perceiving faces. We previously proposed that paranoid delusions are a form of Capgras or other delusional misidentification syndrome (discussed in a terrific undergrad summary here). (These syndromes — involving difficulty in recognizing or even detecting a face — may have a genetic predisposition blogged here).With Capgras you see the person, but you think they’re someone else (“You’re not my mother, where’s my real mother?” We think we once had a cat with this).
We’ve also wondered if there was some kind of neural cross-talk, a la synesthesia, giving an immediate and involuntary response to facial visuals. We blogged about it here* with respect to spousal batters – those who selectively have proactive aggression, only against their spouses. Why do they spin out of control around their spouse? (Batterers treatment focuses on this, saying it’s a power and control thing). It may be a matter of perception: batter brain scans show an active precuneus — the brain area related to perception– when viewing films of violence against women:
. . .Maybe spouse abuse is the behavior resulting from a form of synesthesia hereby dubbed, “Spouse abuse” synesthesia. Using this framework, spousal abuse is really behavior resulting from a neural wiring cross-talk problem. The visual perception of a woman (i.e., spouse) results in (a) an involuntary connection with the emotion of defensive aggression directly, or, (b) an involuntary connection ascribing a threatening personality to the visual percept, indirectly giving rise to defensive aggression and hostile attributional bias. Or, heaven forbid, both (a) and (b). . .
Perhaps, sociopaths have a difficult time perceiving life. After all, schizophrenia and some other conditions involve difficulties in perceiving biological motion and social emotion. And, maybe the perception of others is simply skewed. Sociopaths tend to view others with contempt or disgust, and also have a tough time understanding why they should care about others at all. Perhaps sociopaths see others all the time as being in the uncanny valley. Maybe we are all Weird Kitties to a sociopath.
Update: 09.02.11: Is this another instance of a cat viewing an uncanny valley cat?
* We went back to the blog post and it wouldn’t show up, although the comments showed up. (Here). So we reposted it (here). Weird.
Sociopathy is such a strange niche in psychology. These are usually people who appear quite normal, even charming and successfull until you start evaluating their behavior over a period of time, or over a lifetime when you see the manipulations and lack of true concern for others. These are not normally people who voluntarily who present for treatment.
I think of most people (and animals) as machines made of meat. I wish I didn’t; I might enjoy life more.
In general, I don’t care what happens to strangers. If strangers are in pain, it doesn’t bug me. That doesn’t mean I’m going to take your candy and make you cry. But if someone else does and you cry, I might not have much of a reaction.
I just saw a man back his car into the side of a lady’s car as she drove past him. I laughed. I felt angry at the guy, and felt a bit sorry for the lady. But rather than stick around and be a good samaritan, lending support to the lady, I drove off and quickly forgot about it.
People report that I watch others with full attention, with cold eyes, as if I’m studying them.* This bothers some people.
After I bond with people – and I really don’t get this – they stop seeming like robots made of meat to me.
So there you have it. I guess I do view people the way you are saying. It makes me wonder how you view people. Apparently you view people differently.
* I’m going to have to work on my “warm eyes” now. Bill Clinton apparently does it like a master.
SD,
So then. We’re on to something. Machines made of meat. Ok then. We get it. We figured the psychopath empathy (or compassion) deficit resulted in a skewed sense of life as an observational matter. We wonder if there’s a connection to the parts of the brain that detect faces (and, in those with autistic spectrum conditions, sometimes anthropomorphizing is difficult — that is, difficult to find “faces” in inanimate objects
As an oxytocin receptor rs53576 GG variant carrier, we are particularly prone to putting ourselves in the shoes of others and considering their perspective, almost as an instinct. For us, this is,clearly, autonomic. We have to remember to sit back and observe the room in order to work it. We autonomically, almost as a 6th sense, consider the emotions/perceptions of the other, and when we cannot surmise these, we ask.
Had we seen the car accident you described, we would have stuck around to see if we could help (probably), but we wouldn’t have laughed. This laughing-at-the-demise-of-others is interesting to us. (Our post: Deconstructing the “evil laugh”. . )
You observe as though collecting data, if we understand correctly. Presumably this is utilitarian (to be able to use it later to your advantage), as would be the “warm eyes” musculature you mention. You mention diminishing “uncanny valley” once you “bond” — this is interesting, and we wonder if this has something to do with oxytocin/receptor activation in the parts of the brain relating to having a moral center. (Not to say that your moral center is totally active, but only activatable, perhaps). We’re guessing. The point is that once you have formed a social connection, you can detect emotion in others. (Whereas for us, we detect emotion in others whether or not we’re “bonded”). Again, we’re guessing.
I’m going to send you an email about some other things.
Some responses to your current points:
1) I’ve GG for rs53576 too. But maybe this guy – http://alienfjords.blogspot.com/2011/11/rs53576-and-empathetic-traits.html – is on to something (about GGs):
“They display more gullibility, warmth, and willingness to trust in general, but not if repeatedly abused, badly parented, or otherwise traumatized during formative years, in which case they rate as less trusting and (by some measures but not others) evince more emotional dysregulation as compared with AAs or heterozygotes.”
Compared to normal people, I’m paranoid and unhinged.
I’m interested in the emotions of others, but I’m somewhat neutral about them, so I’ve got a curiosity coupled with a poker face (flat-affect?) that seems chilly.
I suspect it is partly caused with being mistreated by others when I wore my heart on my sleeve.
Now that I understand people (having some understanding of myself), even though I view them (and myself) as meat machines, I actually feel more compassion for people, because I’m aware they are suffering too. We all want stuff we don’t have.
Hence, if I can be aware of that when interacting with others, I can hopefully generate some warmth and, although making strong eyes (ala Bill Clinton), not freak them out.
2. I felt like an ass for laughing when the one car struck the other – but a lot of people do that when they watch people getting hurt. E.g. those terrible videos you see on youtube where a guy gets hit in the testicles. When I saw the cars colliding, I thought, “This is it. This is the moment it is going down! And I made a point to ‘wake up’ and try to pay attention.” I don’t know if I was being zen about it or if I was being sociopathic; to some extent I think their attitudes (nonjudgemental awareness, even of nasty things) are similar.
3. Had I known either of the people, I would have had strong feelings about the situation. Instead it was like watching two (strange) cats fighting.
4. If anything, I felt bad for the girl. She was a victim, and the guy looked like a doofus brute. But I didn’t feel bad enough to do anything to help her.
5. I’m able to detect emotion in others, read people, etc. So are other narcissists, sociopaths, etc: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201202/are-narcissists-better-reading-minds
My problem is that their emotions and concerns seem cartoon-like until they matter to me. E.g. if you see someone being hysterical about something silly (e.g. think back to the Michael Jackson fans who’d get hysterical in his presence), you see their emotion and you think, “who are they kidding?” because they can’t possible feel so choked up in his presence. But apparently they do.
SD, (and anyone else who has sent an e mail) – apologies in advance for any delayed response/unanswered e mails. (We’ve been moving and so not current on answering our e mails — we’ll get caught up soon).
The OXTR GG remarks in the blog you site are consistent with what seems to be the social aspect of oxytocin biology: heightened social awareness. How one reacts to heightened social cues — and what one finds socially salient — could, we suppose, be a predisposition based on prior learned behavior (insert parental influence here). Perhaps this relates to paranoia: the social salient cues are those for hostility (and pro-social cues are ignored). One of our posts on paranoia:
Paranoiacs are angry and erroneously sense anger in others
(As we understand it, the oxytocin receptor “G” allelic variant tightly binds oxytocin, relative to the “A” variant. (And so a “GG” would bind oxytocin comparatively tightly on both chromosomal loci, whereas an “AG” would bind comparatively tightly on only one of the chromosomes).)
(And – we tripped up: there is a difference between detecting the emotion of others (so as to exploit it) and compassion (caring about the emotions of others, in a non-exploitative manner). )
Snoop Dog’s comments were interesting to me because while I feel deep empathy and compassion for other people’s pain and suffering even if I don’t know them personally, I don’t necessarily express that empathy (or act in ways that make its presence apparent) until I have some indication that a given individual has some too.
I think this stems from being raised by a father who easily qualifies as a narcissist and seems to have some sociopathic tendencies. He was very successful in business, but I don’t know if it was from being ruthless at the office though he could certainly be that way at home.
Honestly expressing my own emotions was how I always ended up screwing myself in terms of his response to whatever I was in trouble for doing or being scolded for, so I learned at the battle-hardened age of 8 that I needed to mask my feelings to protect myself; I can still vividly remember his eyes staring right through my young and scared-shitless self in the same sort of way that a snake watches a mouse and how at that exact moment it first dawned on me that I could not trust him to watch out for me, protect me, or treat me fairly (not surprisingly, that was a rather heavy burden for an 8 year old to carry; thank God for MDMA & friends).
So I tightened up and closed off all access to my inner self and emotions (and watched Pink Floyd’s The Wall a lot, lol) until I was confident that the person I was interacting with wasn’t just a predator looking for another meat machine to manipulate.
I suspect that when someone is capable of feeling compassion and empathy as deep as anybody can (but hides it most of the time) that it probably means it’s a learned behavior intended to allow one to endure (or survive) extended periods of close proximity to narcissists and/or sociopaths by not appearing to have emotions that signal “weakness” and can be manipulated or exploited.
As a coping mechanism, my lack of outward emotional expression worked very well until I moved out on my own and then the habit seems to have resulted in my having a harder time establishing new personal connections with people (until getting to know me, some of my friends initially saw me as a bit cold/stand-offish or lacking empathy since I hide my feelings so well). But at the same time, since they were rare while I was growing up I learned to value having close personal connections so highly that once I do ‘connect’ with someone they describe me as extremely warm and generous and compassionate and generally a pretty nice guy. So I don’t think I’m a narcissist or sociopath, though I can sometimes seem that way to those who don’t know me, though it happened less often as the years went by.
I guess I’ve learned (by necessity) how to dissociate my thoughts and feelings from my physical reactions or behaviors; I have an impenetrable poker face, evidenced by my winning a lot at live poker games and a few ill-advised but nonetheless successful high-stakes experiments messing with Customs officials at border crossings (since I knew that they’re highly trained to observe behavioral cues and I wanted an unambiguous test to determine if I was really able to control my behavior and microexpressions as well I thought I could; passing meant going home, failing meant going to jail and I always passed) and I’ve noticed that individuals I’ve identified as probable sociopaths seem to get inordinately annoyed by my presence just like they seem to when they encounter other sociopaths (who I’m guessing are perceived as competitors on some level or maybe are seen as worthless since they can’t be easily manipulated). I suspect their inordinately negative reaction to me might be due to my protective wall of ice that prevents them from getting into my head and manipulating me via my emotions just like dear ol’ dad used to do. And when you can see right through someone’s little game, they don’t like you at all but in the case of the pathologies under discussion here, that’s fine by me.
G.I.S.
Thanks for stopping by with this comment — we’re biased toward “nature” rather than “nurture” but your remarks tell the importance of the “nurture” part. (Our developing theory: “nurture” is a proxy for short term, possibly epigenetic or other changes resulting in the phenotype — like neural connections from learned behavior. Similar to PTSD.). We’ve known a number of offspring of high-functioning psychopaths who seem to overcompensate in other ways — like being an investigative journalist or prosecutor or some kind of position to speak truth to power. We know of one individual now with the FBI whose father (it was said) was a hit man in the mob.
Interesting about the poker-face flushing out the sociopaths in the crowd. High functioning psychopaths in our orbit also have low frustrational tolerance, so when they can’t read emotion (to exploit it), they display tantrum-type behavior.
If you don’t see the connection (frustration about not seeing an emotion to exploit —> tantrum ) you can be spun around, particularly as a child we would think. We’re interested in observing this kind of anger reaction – could it be sort of an autistic spectrum behavior? Does this have to do with stressors — and the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis? Is it that the stress of not being able to discern the emotional temperature of another results in stress and that results in tantrums?
It is common knowledge that non-Asian people generally think “Chinese people look the same”, or that non-black people generally think blacks “look the same”.
I’m wondering if people that agree with those statements think Chinese or blacks look more uncanny. That is, are they more inclined to think Chinese or blacks look like machines made of meat?
I can easily imagine that if you think the “other” people look the same, you also think they look less human.
SD you are clearly on to something. What is the path facial recognition –>affiliative machinery –>emotional behavioral response?
Why do people respond by saying “aww” to kitten videos? (Pardon if you are not so responsive to animals given your past admitted behavior, but you get the drift). I don’t know that particular kitten. Why do I think it’s “cute”?
Why did Mr. Zimmerman blow away a kid in a hoodie? African american? Hoodiness? Teen aged boy? What was this that changed this boy from “human kid who has parents who love him” to “non-human”?
“Uncanniness” ,we think, is a proxy for “non-life form.” Of course, there is no respect for life for a non-living item. There may be disgust — as who would want a robot made of “meat” as you say?
The question of whether “out-group” members are viewed as though uncanny seems to be separable from “outgroup” hostility in general. (PUBMED)
For instance, oxytocin up the nose increases cooperation both within a group and between groups (PUBMED).
On the other hand, oxytocin promotes ethnocentrism. (PNAS paper).
We’ve tried to piece together the machinery for facial recognition together with social/affiliative behavior. Our post on wife-batterers, for example, uses a synesthesia framework, Wife batterers: A synesthesia subtype for domestic violence perpetrators? The point is that the parts of the brain relating to visual perception have a dotted line to life-form detection.
That bit about oxytocin increasing ethonocentrism fits. It looks like Oxytocin isn’t the “love everybody chemical” at all but just the social chemical. I bet it does make narcissists feel more entitled and selfish.
About kittens: Despite being able to hurt animals when I consider it necessary, I actually like animals, young and old. Similarly, some guys that work slaughtering animals like animals a lot too; somehow their liking animals doesn’t get in the way of them doing their job.
Robots made of meat – I actually like observing them and trying to figure people out. That includes my own nasty self. But these days, I actually like looking at all sorts of stuff, good and bad. Also, now that I understand that people and animals are pretty much always unhappy and trying to get something they don’t have, I’ve got more compassion for them than I’ve ever had.
I suspect Zimmerman shot Trayvon because Zimmerman was getting beat up and feared for his life. Working against Trayvon: he was 160 lbs, at least 6 feet tall (at least 3 inches taller than the shooter) and black. A lot of people – black or white – would be very scared if attacked by a 6′ tall 160 pound black male.
It amazes me to think that wife beaters have so much in common with synesthesia. Those guys are really screwed up. How can that sort of delusion be at all adapative? I guess I’ve got more compassion for them now (in the same way I cut paranoid people slack), but golly gee is that terrible.
It reminds me of borderline women, who often have serious delusions. I wonder if wife battering is the flip side of that.
SD, oxytocin and its cogent receptor and regulatory systems, seem relevant to social awareness generally, rather than any particular kind of response. In other words, it’s the spark of social awareness fires. Whether that is a beach bonfire or nuclear destruction is another thing.
This is of interest: can you learn “compassion” if you’re not naturally compassionate? (I mean true compassion, not just faking it.) So is this like learning to write right handed for a leftie? Or is it like trying to see if you are blind? The reason for asking is that if the neural connections are not there, they’re not there. This also goes to your other comment re: plasticity. In other words, can one do brain exercises to develop “compassion” if you don’t have those connections to begin with?
As to wife batterers, the whole mal-adaptive (evolutionarily) thing is what’s so puzzling to us. Just in a purely evolutionary balance sheet framework, why devote resources to mating at all if you’re just going to trash them? Regardless, we put batterers in a special category since they are selectively lacking in compassion — only toward spouses and family. (If we understand, these guys are frequently well liked among male peers).
I think you can learn compassion. Most people would learn it when they are young, without trying. My own experience: I’ve become more perceptive of the mental states of others, and spontaneously (and if anything, against my own bidding), I feel compelled and better (in the sense of scratching an itch, not feeling hubris about myself for having done a good deed) when I take action to help them.
I attribute that change to doing some zen meditation – http://www.hms.harvard.edu/hmni/On_The_Brain/Volume12/OTB_Vol12No3_Fall06.pdf
Experiencing concern for others, and feeling bad about their discomfort was a terrifying experience, because it has such huge implications for oneself. Just being aware that others (and there are billions of them) have their own emotions, hopes, dreams, cares, concerns, etc is amazing and awful, because it makes me feel so unimportant.
These guys are trying to study compassion, and promote it: http://compassion.stanford.edu/about/background.html
Tibetan Buddhists have mental exercises they do to try to increase compassion.
Zen Buddhists look down on that stuff – why try to shape your experience of the universe? Why not just try to wake up and experience it fully?
I’m in the zen camp, because it is simple, amoral and practical. I suspect I’m for it (and against the Tibetan change yourself to be more compassionate) because of the phenomenon you hinted at here: http://neurologicalcorrelates.com/wordpress/2007/09/26/neurological-correlates-neuromarketing-dont-try-to-guilt-trip-the-disagreeable/
Basically, I don’t want to feel manipulated into being compassionate. I don’t want any pressure to be compassionate. If you do that to me, I immediately feel afraid and nervous, because when I was younger, that sort of talk generally took place in situations that ended badly for me.
If I do my meditation, wake up and discover that I’m compassionate, great. That’s me being genuinely compassionate, not forcing it. It actually happens.
One benefit to being more compassionate is being able to view oneself with less self-delusion. I’m all for that. I suspect most of my problems in life come from me deluding myself.
One odd thing about self-awareness, however, is becoming aware of how callous I am, and an awareness that sometimes I’m just not bothered by it. Normal people seem to be:
* more restrained with their anger and anger-motivated actions
* better at ignoring/rationalizing the nasty things they do
* when confronted with their “bad” behavior, less likely to feel shame
* more freaked out when they realize that they are sometimes callous & nasty
Currently, I’m attempting to:
* develop more awareness of my anger
* develop more restraint while angry. That is, when acting out, do it with a cool head, or not act out at all
* be very aware when I’m doing nasty stuff
* accept myself despite doing bad things (compassion)
* decide what to do based not on shame, but what I consider right or wrong
My hope is that in the end, I’m going to wind up like a (shameless) self-aware sociopath with tremendous self control, and less like a self-deluded narcissist with anger management problems.
FWIW – I think the wife batterers are a bit like borderlines, in that borderlines can get along with people they don’t know, but they’ve got self-destructive delusions that ruin their relationships with the people they do know. It is tragic. I’ve got no respect for the wife beaters that that experience their arms as hitting their spouses uncontrollably; they might as well be defective robots that need to be unplugged.
I think you should look at the battered wives too. Apparently most of them crawl back to the beaters and beg to be taken back. That and it seems like they really have the hots for the wife batterers; they are turned on by those sorts of men more than by non-beaters.
Here’s an article that shows that kids think of robots as having feelings. They also think of it as “unfair” to put a robot away in the closet:
http://phys.org/news/2012-04-children-humanoid-robot-emotional-moral.html
Perhaps this explains why Tamogotchi were so popular; the kids thought of them as things with feelings.
It is interesting to contrast that behavior with the slavery found (until very recently) in nearly all human societies. E.g. we have modern Sudanese Arab slave owners, and in the past had, Roman, Greek, Jewish, Arab, Chinese, etc. slave owners.