Human caring behavior is defined by empathy (i.e., resonating with others’ emotions), compassion (i.e., motivation to reduce suffering), and prosociality (i.e., helping others), underpinning human evolutionary success by fostering social bonds and cooperation. In contrast, psychopathy is defined by extreme uncaring (i.e., callousness, recklessness, violence) generating vast societal costs and suffering. Our program of research focuses on characterizing the full caring-uncaring spectrum, including investigations of empathy, affiliation, prosociality in typically developing samples and the presence of callousness and uncaring in children with behavior problems. The goal of this work is to fully characterize the developmental origins of individual differences in caring vs. uncaring to reveal why some children grow to be cooperative, empathic adults, while others veer towards antisocial or antagonistic conduct. This work has the potential to guide novel prevention and treatment efforts to reduce the societal harm caused by antisocial behavior, while pointing to novel ways to foster kindness and caring in ways that can improve well-being and the potential for happiness and flourishing.

Relevant peer-reviewed publications