Thursday, February 22, 2018

Cue Card Empathy


Image above: CHIP SOMODEVILLA VIA GETTY IMAGES
President Donald Trump holds his notes while hosting a listening session with student survivors of mass shootings.


Mr. Trump needs note cards to help him try to appear to be empathetic.

Inability to empathize is one of the key signs of a psychopath.

Do we want a psychopath sitting in the White House?

Or, do we want and need that person to be a normal, loving human being. One capable of relating to others,without cue cards?


At a “listening session” with victims of gun violence on Wednesday, President Donald Trump needed a reminder to listen.

We know this because Trump ? or one of his advisers ? helpfully wrote it down on a cheat sheet he carried into the meeting.

Cameras captured the list of five pointers while Trump held it in his hands during the session. Point No. 5 on the list reads, simply, “I hear you.”

In the president’s defense, it’s not unusual to bring notes to a meeting. But to need a reminder to let gun violence survivors know you’re listening to them, while at a “listening session” organized for that explicit purpose is ... well, very on-brand for Trump.

The guest list for Wednesday’s session included students and families affected by last week’s shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people. It was an emotional affair, as survivors of gun violence recalled lost siblings, frequently struggling to hold back tears.

Hopefully President Trump’s reminder to show empathy proved fruitful, and he was able to bring them at least a small amount of comfort.



"Professor Robert Hare is a criminal psychologist, and the creator of the PCL-R, a psychological assessment used to determine whether someone is a psychopath. For decades, he has studied people with psychopathy, and worked with them, in prisons and elsewhere. “It stuns me, as much as it did when I started 40 years ago, that it is possible to have people who are so emotionally disconnected that they can function as if other people are objects to be manipulated and destroyed without any concern,” he says."

“There are two kinds of empathy,” says James Fallon, a neuroscientist at the University of California and author of The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain. “Cognitive empathy is the ability to know what other people are feeling, and emotional empathy is the kind where you feel what they’re feeling.”

"Autistic people can be very empathetic – they feel other people’s pain – but are less able to recognise the cues we read easily, the smiles and frowns that tell us what someone is thinking. Psychopaths are often the opposite: they know what you’re feeling, but don’t feel it themselves. “This all gives certain psychopaths a great advantage, because they can understand what you’re thinking, it’s just that they don’t care, so they can use you against yourself.” (Chillingly, psychopaths are particularly adept at detecting vulnerability. A 2008 study that asked participants to remember virtual characters found that those who scored highly for psychopathy had a near perfect recognition for sad, unsuccessful females, but impaired memory for other characters.)"


Florida shooting: students walk out of schools to call for gun control





Guardian News
Published on Feb 22, 2018
Students across the US are walking out of their schools to protest against gun violence and demand stricter gun laws after last week's massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida. They're marching in solidarity with the survivors of the second deadliest public school shooting in US history to call for a ban on the sale of assault rifles of the sort used to kill 17 students and educators last week 

No comments: