Abigail Marsh
Abigail Marsh
Abigail Marsh is an American psychologist and neuroscientist who works as a professor at Georgetown University's Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program, where she is the director of the Laboratory on Social and Affective Neuroscience. Much of Marsh's work pertains to the study of altruism and why people may help others at their own cost.
"“Once the proto‑mammalian brain was equipped with the wholly novel and evolutionarily necessary capacity to care about the welfare of other beings outside the self, there was no limit to what other kinds of love could theoretically be felt.”"
"“The most effective way to conquer fear with anything is just to deliberately expose yourself to it in small doses, and gradually up the level of threat, with a professional (counselor) if necessary, because fear in some ways is a habit.”"
"“Fearlessness is a core part of a psychopathic personality. … People with psychopathy are really bad at recognizing when other people are afraid. And the reason we think that is because they don’t feel fear strongly themselves.”"
"“Yet another problem with the ‘threat response’ theory is that it has difficulty explaining why damage to the amygdala impairs not just people’s ability to respond appropriately to fearful expressions but their ability to even identify them … like a colour‑blind person searching for a number in a featureless array of brown dots.”"
