The Fear Factor

September 1, 2017
Through her studies with anonymous kidney donors and teen psychopaths, Marsh proves that a person's ability to recognize fearful expressions determines his or her proclivity towards altruism or psychopathy. In short, MRI scans of the amygdala show that altruists are highly sensitive to others' fear. Meanwhile, psychopaths literally cannot recognize fearful expressions, probably because they don't experience fear themselves. If this sounds oversimplified (what about cultural factors and childhood traumas?), Marsh's varied examples, tests, and interviews irrefutably illustrate the link between fear, altruism, and the amygdala. In affectionate, personal anecdotes, Marsh often refers to the man who saved her on the expressway as an extreme altruistby definition, someone who will risk his or her life to help a stranger with no expected reward. Supported by her studies, Marsh argues, optimistically, that most people genuinely feel compassion for each other, and that cruelty is the exception to human nature, not the norm. Recommend this fascinating text to readers of pop psychology and true crime fans who wish to better understand the minds of potential criminals.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)