Do Psychopaths Really Lack Empathy? What Brain Scanners Reveal

Imagine watching a video of a child crying over a lost toy. For most people, their heart instinctively clenches—that's affective empathy, a largely subconscious reaction. But what happens in a psychopath's brain? It turns out the same brain regions responsible for empathy don't activate on their own. They only light up when the individual is explicitly told to think about the other person's feelings. This isn't a defect—it's a different operating mode.

What the Scientists Discovered

The specific study describing this "manual switch" was published in the journal Brain in 2013, led by Dr. Harma Meffert and colleagues. They recruited individuals with psychopathy and a control group of typical individuals. Participants watched short videos depicting social interactions, such as someone being gently touched or, conversely, getting slapped. All of this occurred while they underwent fMRI scans to measure brain activity.

• In the control group, the "empathy network"—which includes areas like the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the amygdala—lit up automatically when viewing the videos.
• In the participants with psychopathy: silence. There was no spontaneous activity in this network.
• Then, the researchers gave a specific instruction: "Now, try to empathize. Imagine this is happening to you." And there it was—those same brain regions activated in the psychopathic participants. The capacity exists, but it is not automatic.

Why This Matters

This isn't about "bad people"; it's about mechanism. Psychopathy isn't a simple choice—it's a complex neurobiological condition. In approximately 1–2% of the population, the "empathy button" seems to only work manually. They can understand others' feelings (cognitive empathy) but don't automatically feel what others feel (affective empathy). That is precisely why they can lie, manipulate, or cause others pain without experiencing the internal conflict or emotional brakes that most people do.

A Fascinating Real-World Observation

Criminal profilers and psychologists have long noted that many psychopaths excel at faking emotions. They learn to recognize the correct emotional response for a situation and mimic it. They know to say "this upsets me" or "I am so sorry" because they've observed it in others. But for them, it's often like an actor reading lines from a script, not an actor living the role and feeling the emotion.

What About Treatment?

So far, there is no "cure" for psychopathy. But this research offers a nuance: if an individual with psychopathy can be taught to consciously "switch on" their empathy (e.g., through intensive cognitive-behavioral therapy), they can learn to reduce the harm they cause. They won't necessarily become "good" in the conventional sense, but they can become less dangerous by manually calculating the emotional impact of their actions.

Conclusion

Psychopaths aren't "soulless." They just seem to operate in manual mode. Their brains don't react to others' pain automatically—but they can if you explicitly tell them: "think about it." This isn't an excuse for harmful behavior, but it is a critical explanation. And yes, this detached "manual mode" is one reason some individuals with these traits can become brilliant con artists, or even highly successful CEOs—they see human emotions as tools to be analyzed, not as brakes on their behavior.

The research is real. Similar work (e.g., by James Fallon, a neuroscientist who discovered he had the brain scan and genetic markers of a psychopath) confirms: this isn't myth, it's biology.

Reference

• Meffert, H., Gazzola, V., den Boer, J. A., Bartels, A. A., & Keysers, C. (2013). Reduced spontaneous but relatively normal deliberate vicarious representations in psychopathy. Brain, 136(Pt 8), 2550–2562.