Fear, Disgust, Empathy are Good for Mental Health

The lack of normal human feelings of fear, shame and disgust can lead to psychopathic derangement in adulthood. This has been reported by experts in the online journal Psychological Science.

A child without fear is an abnormal child because fearlessness lays down the foundation of full-blown psychopathic disorder in later life.

The evidence to support this concept has been seen in examples of psychopaths around us who have great difficulty learning about pain - and their ability to recognize fearful expressions.

Some parents have experienced the fact that ‘troubled’ kids don't respond normally to fear-inducing punishments. This makes it very hard for them to teach the children right from wrong.

It is also possible that the issue may be neurological – there may be a problem with attention, which makes psychopaths unresponsive to fear-provoking stimuli.

Thus, psychopaths appear fearless because they are not attentive to things that scare other people.

A third suggestion is that psychopaths may lack the faculty of processing the constant, automatic scanning of the social environment. This understanding takes place in the sub-conscious awareness.

Children who lack this basic cognitive machinery can never learn to decode normal signs of danger. Without acquired fear, they fail to socialize into adults with a conscience.

This theory was tested on a group of boys with ‘troublesome histories’ at school and at home. They were screened for ‘callous unemotionality’ which includes disregard for others' needs, shallow emotions and lack of remorse and empathy. They were also tested for being impulsive, conduct problems and for signs of narcissism - bragging, which is seen in many adult psychopaths.

The results have definitely proved the fact that children with psychopathic traits cannot process certain cues automatically - especially those of fear and disgust. These two emotions are closely related in the primitive mind, and ‘troubled’ kids are socially 'lost' about them.