
Williams Syndrome: What World’s Most Sociable People Reveal About Friendliness - pseudolus
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/06/williams-syndrome-and-human-evolution/590797/
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0815test
Interesting, but this seems to be more about "superficial charm" than
friendliness, cooperation and reduced aggression _per se_. Psychopaths also
show superficial charm as well as a markedly reduced response to fear and
negative emotions in general, driven by comparable changes in the amygdala -
but they have _increased_ aggression and callousness compared to controls, and
this is thought to be a result of them lacking the ordinary social emotions
(which means they don't have "affective empathy" in the usual sense - and in
particular, their theory-of-mind intuitions are going to view _every_ social
interaction as a zero-sum, win-lose situation!). So it seems that there are at
least two independent mechanisms at play here.

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closeparen
Williams is not just superficial charm, it is also, for example, trust. People
with Williams often cannot manage the degree of skepticism needed to stay
safe, children cannot wrap their minds around stranger danger, etc.

Sort of like not feeling pain, it sounds great until you realize you can get
deep into horrifying situations with no idea that anything is wrong until too
late.

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0815test
Yes, but the article talks a lot about the former, and things we would expect
to cause the former (such as the reduced fear response, this does show up in
psychopaths as well) and only briefly mentions the hyper-trusting attitude -
as if one could conflate both or as if the hyper-trust was just a natural
consequence of the superficial charm. Though it makes sense that reduced fear
+ superficial charm + normal social emotions and affective empathy would make
for an extreme amount of trust, to the point of being entirely unable to
detect and manage social threats. In a way, if you're going to be fearless and
superficially-charming, it _might_ then be in your best interest to also be
callous and to lack a standard empathy response, since that attitude (though
quite damaging in very real ways, especially to the prospects for cooperation)
would at least protect you from other social predators!

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village-idiot
There’s a theory that dogs are just wolves with the canine equivalent of
Williams Syndrome.

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jfengel
It's a charming theory, though it's important to note that Williams Syndrome
also comes with a huge range of other problems that impact physical health.
Both impact the neural crest, which is suggestive, though the fact that dogs
are healthy indicates that the "canine equivalent" is also very different.

