235. Fear, Emotional Recognition, and Empathy feat. Abigail Marsh

Fear is a common and important human emotion that we’ve all experienced at some time. But have you ever paid attention to how you react to fear in others? Your response may say a lot about your moral compass. Neuroscientist Abigail Marsh studied two groups of people, psychopaths and altruists, and how they interpret fear and other emotions in others. The psychopaths have trouble identifying fear in others, while the altruists respond immediately with empathy. The result of Marsh’s research is her book The Fear Factor: How one emotion connects altruists, psychopaths & everyone in between. On this episode of unSILOed, Abigail and Greg talk about her research and how these findings apply to all of our lives and interactions with people. Abigail Marsh is a professor of psychology at Georgetown University. She runs the Laboratory on Social & Affective Neuroscience which conducts research on human behavior and interaction.