Ali G star’s cousin delivers insight into human behaviour

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, lectured to a sell-out audience at Dundee University on Saturday.

The cousin of comedian and film star Sacha Baron-Cohen examined empathy, cruelty and understanding in his talk Zero Degrees of Empathy.

In the latest of the Saturday evening lecture series, he spoke about the characteristics that make our behaviour uniquely human by drawing on evidence gathered from sources as diverse as Nazi concentration camps and modern school playgrounds.

The professor of developmental psycho-pathology at Cambridge is renowned for his work on autism, including his early theory that autism involves degrees of mindblindness.