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June 19, 2025—Psychopathy in kids can be treated. Plus, the only bomb that can destroy Iran's nukes, and how exercise boosts the gut microbiome. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Maxar satellite imagery overview of the Fordo enrichment facility in Iran on June 14, 2025. No visible damage is observed. Maxar Technologies/Getty Images | | | | |
| Can Psychopathy Be Cured? | Some kids seem to be at war with the world. They defy rules, are aggressive toward people or animals, and display ongoing cruel behaviors like bullying. Sometimes these behaviors can be accompanied by a lack of empathy or a low emotional response. Such so-called callous-unemotional (CU) traits are seen in up to 2 percent of children. When they appear very early in childhood, they are overwhelmingly driven by genetics and more likely to develop into adult psychopathy. What it is: Like other personality disorders, psychopathy exists on a spectrum from mild to severe. The severe form is believed to affect around 1 percent of the general population and is far more common in men than in women. According to a study published in 2021, among people imprisoned in the U.S., up to one quarter of men and up to 17 percent of women meet the criteria for psychopathy. Kids with high levels of CU traits are often less sensitive to their own physical pain and do not feel empathy for the pain of others; they struggle to detect facial expressions of distress in others and brain scans show reduced volume in the orbitofrontal cortex, which is involved in understanding one's own and others' perspectives.
What can be done: For children with CU traits, punishment does not work. Researchers launched an experiment with 45 families with children between three and seven years old with severe CU traits and conduct disorder. In weekly one-hour sessions, therapists coached parents to interact with their kids with warmth and affection, to reward children for acts of compassion or kindness, and to avoid punishment and set consequences instead. For kids whose families stuck with the coaching, 58 percent of the children no longer met the criteria for CU at the end of the 21-week study period. Other long-term studies have found that around half of kids who have been diagnosed with CU behavior do not progress to psychopathy and instead go on to lead relatively normal lives, typically because of nurturing caregivers or other protective factors in their environment.
| | Geoscientist Jemma Wadham studies the ever-changing glaciers of the Arctic, analyzing their melt water for beneficial or toxic chemicals and exploring the methane-producing microorganisms beneath them. "I see myself as a glacier-forensics expert, uncovering what has happened beneath the glacier, like investigating a crime," she says. "Eventually, we hope that our research in Norway will contribute to scientists' understanding of how glaciers affect carbon cycling and marine life in other global settings, such as the Canadian Arctic and Patagonia in South America." Nature | 3 min read | | Read every article that interests you with a subscription to Scientific American. We offer special discounts for Today in Science readers! | | - Empathy is important to democracy, writes C. Daryl Cameron, an associate professor of psychology at Penn State University. "To me, empathy is a strength, not weakness—a way to attend to the people we value most. If we let ourselves become callous to others' needs, we risk losing sight of democracy and the importance of treating each other with dignity," he writes. | 5 min read
| | You might be surprised to learn that even social scientists struggle to define empathy. It means different things to different people, and it is difficult to categorize. When ordinary folks are surveyed, they say that empathy is a feeling; others focus on what a person does or says. Some think it is being good at interpreting others' nonverbal cues or being able to imagine someone else's experience. Likely, all these ideas are correct. And no matter the official definition, we humans need it, not just in our personal relationships, but to keep society together. How do you define empathy?
| | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | | |
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