<p>Correct me if I understand Kevin Dutton incorrectly. (I only base the below understanding on some media interviews and his website; I still have to read his books).</p>
<p>Let me attempt to summarize what he says:</p>
<ul>
<li>Morality has been developed to help communities survive</li>
<li>Most people have moral inhibitions that prevent them from behaving immorally, at least until they fight their own empathy and force themselves to behave more ruthlessly in spite of these inhibitions</li>
<li>However, there are also people unbounded by such inhibitions, who instead are motivated purely by selfish pragmatism. When this trait is paired with mental toughness, fearlesness, self-confidence, composure under pressure, concentration, charisma, charm we say that the person is a psychopath.</li>
<li>Psychopaths are typically considered 'evil' and therefore stigmatized. This is improper since a portion of psychopaths is beneficial, even vital to the survival of the community. These people are best suited for the necessary jobs of soldiers, policemen, CEOs, surgeons, etc. Psychopathy should, therefore, be best understood as a set of skills that is extremely dangerous if misused, but also extremely beneficial if used to serve the whole society.</li>
</ul>
<p>I may understand something incorrectly, but it seems to be that he offers such a dichotomy:</p>
<ul>
<li>The presence of moral inhibitions, empathy, lack of ability to efficiently behave in a decisive, ruthless or even violent way vs.</li>
<li>Amoralism, being motivated purely by selfish pragmatism, lack of empathy, the ability to efficiently behave in a decisive, ruthless or violent way.</li>
</ul>
<p>How can, therefore, ruthless people behave in a way beneficial to the society? If I understand Dutton correctly: precisely because of their selfish motivation, not in spite of it. If they are intelligent and self-controlled enough they may understand that if they start mugging others on the street they will just end up in jail; but they may also sign up to special forces and start fighting terrorists, protecting all more morally inclined citizens.</p>
<p>This is a chilling conclusion since it seems to entail that should the current political situation change then all police officers who now fight crime could, in a single day, become criminals themselves, preying on the innocent.</p>
<p>And this is where Duttons model (again, if I understand it correctly) seems counter-intuitive for me. It seems to preclude the class of people who act decisively, ruthlessly or even violently because of their idealistic, moral convictions, rather than because of their lack of such convictions. Such people may include:</p>
<ul>
<li>The Medieval ideal of a knight, who fights evil to protect the poor, wronged and downtrodden;</li>
<li>The theocratic terrorist who kills all infidels because of their strong religious convictions;</li>
<li>The WWII soldier or partisan who fights the Nazis because he is appalled by their crimes;</li>
<li>The cliched Knight Templar who fights for some ideology he strongly believes in.
All the above tropes are so common it is counterintuitive for me to seemingly preclude them.</li>
</ul>
<p>Were there any studies tackling this subject? Trying to establish if idealistic motivations for decisive, ruthless or violent behavior do indeed happen, or if decisive, ruthless or violent behavior is almost exclusively motivated by selfish and amoral motivations?</p>
<p>I suppose such studies might be tricky, because if the prevalence of idealistically motivated violence is indeed extremely low, then it might be useless to just ask people why they do what to do - their stated motivations will be just a facade for their actual motivations. For example, a police officer might answer they wish to enforce the law while in fact they hope to be able to bully others or maybe even kill someone if occasion happens without going to jail; or a terrorist may answer they serve Islam and do the will of Allah while in fact they traveled to ISIS because they wanted to go berserk and butcher others like there was no tomorrow and ISIS offered them the possibility to do so.</p>
<p>PS. Reason I'm asking this question: Sometimes I try to write stories as a hobby. And I have the idea for a story of a deeply empathic, compassionate person who is appalled by the perceived harm caused to others, as she cannot stand to watch others suffer unjustly. From this she finds surprising strength and charisma no one, not even herself, would consider her capable of; she takes arms and leads a rebellion in defense of her people. In the end she is not morally justified in her actions, but she firmly believes she is. Now I saw Dutton and I have doubts if this idea is not self-refuting? If traits such as 'charismatic', 'able to effectively take up arms and lead a rebellion' are not mutually exclusive with traits such as 'compassionate', 'empathic', 'idealistic', 'motivated by incapability to watch others suffer unjustly'?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-05-16T00:28:36.247Z
This seems more like philosophy than psych.
Bryan Krause
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-05-16T00:29:40.340Z
Perhaps differentiating between a learned moral code and innate moral compass would be useful at this point, though, these things are seldom mutually exclusive entirely.
Jiminy Cricket.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-05-27T14:32:12.917Z
Empathy and moral reasoning are separate and independent capacities. Compassion is about sense of connection or relation. Emotional empathy is about feeling what another feels. Cognitive empathy is about recognising or understanding another's emotion without necessarily feeling it. Moral reasoning is about mode of relation and shared duty or purpose. I discuss briefly the topic of empathy versus moral reasoning [in this linked answer](https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/90220/is-winning-competition-inherently-unethical/90225#90225).
Michael
<moral-psychology><aggression>
Is the ability to inflict violence effectively strongly inversely correlated with ability to make moral judgements?
gaazkam
# Is the ability to inflict violence effectively strongly inversely correlated with ability to make moral judgements?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2023-05-15)

Correct me if I understand Kevin Dutton incorrectly. (I only base the below understanding on some media interviews and his website; I still have to read his books).

Let me attempt to summarize what he says:

* Morality has been developed to help communities survive
* Most people have moral inhibitions that prevent them from behaving immorally, at least until they fight their own empathy and force themselves to behave more ruthlessly in spite of these inhibitions
* However, there are also people unbounded by such inhibitions, who instead are motivated purely by selfish pragmatism. When this trait is paired with mental toughness, fearlesness, self-confidence, composure under pressure, concentration, charisma, charm we say that the person is a psychopath.
* Psychopaths are typically considered 'evil' and therefore stigmatized. This is improper since a portion of psychopaths is beneficial, even vital to the survival of the community. These people are best suited for the necessary jobs of soldiers, policemen, CEOs, surgeons, etc. Psychopathy should, therefore, be best understood as a set of skills that is extremely dangerous if misused, but also extremely beneficial if used to serve the whole society.

I may understand something incorrectly, but it seems to be that he offers such a dichotomy:

* The presence of moral inhibitions, empathy, lack of ability to efficiently behave in a decisive, ruthless or even violent way vs.
* Amoralism, being motivated purely by selfish pragmatism, lack of empathy, the ability to efficiently behave in a decisive, ruthless or violent way.

How can, therefore, ruthless people behave in a way beneficial to the society? If I understand Dutton correctly: precisely because of their selfish motivation, not in spite of it. If they are intelligent and self-controlled enough they may understand that if they start mugging others on the street they will just end up in jail; but they may also sign up to special forces and start fighting terrorists, protecting all more morally inclined citizens.

This is a chilling conclusion since it seems to entail that should the current political situation change then all police officers who now fight crime could, in a single day, become criminals themselves, preying on the innocent.

And this is where Duttons model (again, if I understand it correctly) seems counter-intuitive for me. It seems to preclude the class of people who act decisively, ruthlessly or even violently because of their idealistic, moral convictions, rather than because of their lack of such convictions. Such people may include:

* The Medieval ideal of a knight, who fights evil to protect the poor, wronged and downtrodden;
* The theocratic terrorist who kills all infidels because of their strong religious convictions;
* The WWII soldier or partisan who fights the Nazis because he is appalled by their crimes;
* The cliched Knight Templar who fights for some ideology he strongly believes in.
  All the above tropes are so common it is counterintuitive for me to seemingly preclude them.

Were there any studies tackling this subject? Trying to establish if idealistic motivations for decisive, ruthless or violent behavior do indeed happen, or if decisive, ruthless or violent behavior is almost exclusively motivated by selfish and amoral motivations?

I suppose such studies might be tricky, because if the prevalence of idealistically motivated violence is indeed extremely low, then it might be useless to just ask people why they do what to do - their stated motivations will be just a facade for their actual motivations. For example, a police officer might answer they wish to enforce the law while in fact they hope to be able to bully others or maybe even kill someone if occasion happens without going to jail; or a terrorist may answer they serve Islam and do the will of Allah while in fact they traveled to ISIS because they wanted to go berserk and butcher others like there was no tomorrow and ISIS offered them the possibility to do so.

PS. Reason I'm asking this question: Sometimes I try to write stories as a hobby. And I have the idea for a story of a deeply empathic, compassionate person who is appalled by the perceived harm caused to others, as she cannot stand to watch others suffer unjustly. From this she finds surprising strength and charisma no one, not even herself, would consider her capable of; she takes arms and leads a rebellion in defense of her people. In the end she is not morally justified in her actions, but she firmly believes she is. Now I saw Dutton and I have doubts if this idea is not self-refuting? If traits such as 'charismatic', 'able to effectively take up arms and lead a rebellion' are not mutually exclusive with traits such as 'compassionate', 'empathic', 'idealistic', 'motivated by incapability to watch others suffer unjustly'?

**Tags:** moral-psychology, aggression

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: This seems more like philosophy than psych.  
> **username_2**: Perhaps differentiating between a learned moral code and innate moral compass would be useful at this point, though, these things are seldom mutually exclusive entirely.  
> **username_3**: Empathy and moral reasoning are separate and independent capacities. Compassion is about sense of connection or relation. Emotional empathy is about feeling what another feels. Cognitive empathy is about recognising or understanding another's emotion without necessarily feeling it. Moral reasoning is about mode of relation and shared duty or purpose. I discuss briefly the topic of empathy versus moral reasoning [in this linked answer](https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/90220/is-winning-competition-inherently-unethical/90225#90225).  

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