Empathy

In trying to understand human cruelty and evil, Simon Baron-Cohen focuses on the role of empathy. He sees “zero degrees of empathy” as an important factor in a number of psychological personality disturbances: Borderline Personality Disorder, Psychopathic (antisocial) personality disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder. But he also sees cases where little capacity for empathy is not associated with immoral behavior (Zero Positive): Asperger’s syndrome and Autism. Part of the difference, in his thinking, reflects a difference in “cognitive empathy” and “affective empathy.”

Abigail Marsh (2017) also distinguishes between, “the sort of cognitive empathy that is linked to Theory and Mind and autism” and “the kind of empathy that is important for caring and altruism: sensitivity to other displays of vulnerability and distress.” (p. 228). [She also notes, in the same discussion: “you should never take people’s self-reported empathy at face value.]

• Marsh sees a common thread between the behavior of psychopaths (antisocial personalities) and altruists: “The fact that altruists show heightened empathic responsiveness to others’ fear also reveals an important truth: there is a critical distinction between being fearless and being brave. Many psychopaths are genuinely fearless, and as a result they have difficulty understanding others’ fear. That altruists are so empathically responsive to others’ fear suggests that, rather than being fearless, they are unusually sensitive to fear.” (p. 153)
• She looks at the neurological basis of extreme altruists and relates this to the concept of “allomothering, which literally means ‘other mothering,’ or taking care of infants other than one’s own.” (p. 172). She has come to believe that sensitivity to cues of fear in other is especially important in altruists, “empathy can take many forms and that each form is driven by partially distinct processes, such that is perfectly possible to have a high degree of empathy for other’s’ fear but not their anger” (p. 151). Marsh believes, “the urge to care is tripped by perception of what ethologist call ‘key stimuli’ that characterize babies and young children. These features include a large head, large eyes, and a small chin and jaw, features that set children apart from adults across nearly every vertebrate species and that elicit care from adults very effectively. . . . . “the resulting babyish proportions, termed kindchenschema by the ethologist Konrad Lorenz, create an appearance of cuteness and cuddliness that draws in adults’ attention and causes them to respond with increased care.” (p. 180)

Panksepp view empathy as built up on the CARE system (Panksepp & Panksepp, 2013). The CARE system reflects “deeply subcortical” primary-process responses supporting emotional contagion and CARE (primal form of shared feelings, “emotional contagion”, “affect sharing”, “reflexive empathy”), it exerts bottom-up influence on learning and development, leading to Empathetic habits (largely basal ganglia—upper ‘limbic’). Empathetic habits exert bottom-up influences on ruminations and thoughts, affecting Full cognitive empathy (compassion and sympathy): tertiary-process cognitions (largely cortical and limbic). Cognitive empathy exerts top-down cognitive regulation on Empathic habits, which exert top-down conditioned responses on the Care system. Panksepp views the key neural structures of the CARE system as the ventral PAG, MFB, medial hypothalamus and preoptic area, corticomedial amygdala, mid-cingulate; and the primary neurochemistries as oxytocin, vasopressin. He sees cross-species manifestations of empathetic responses in mammal species.

Jean Decety and Jason Cowell (2014) discuss the relationship between empathy and morality. They argue that these two concepts should not be used interchangeably and note that the concept of empathy is, “a multidimensional construct comprising dissociable components that interact and operate in parallel fashion, including affective, motivational, and cognitive components.” (p 529).

• Emotional component: “reflects the capacity to share or become affectively aroused by other’s emotions (in at least in valence, tone, and relatively intensity).” (p. 529)
• Motivational component: “(empathetic concern) corresponds to the urge of caring for another’s welfare.” (p. 529)
• Cognitive component: “similar to the construct of perspective taking.” (p. 529)

Emotional sharing (emotional component)

• “emotional sharing (sometimes referred to as empathic arousal or emotional contagion) plays a fundamental role in generating the motivation to care and help another individual in distress and is relatively independent of mindreading or perspective-taking capacities.” (p. 529)
• “often viewed as the simplest or a rudimentary form of empathy and can be observed across a multitude of species from birds to rodents and humans”, “Empirical work with animals and humans demonstrates kin and in-group preferences in the detection and reaction to signs of distress.” (p. 529)
• “when individuals are exposed to facial expressions of pain, sadness, or emotional distress, or even when they imagine others in pain, brain regions involved in the first-hand experience of pain (i.e., the pain matrix or salience network) are activated. These regions include the anterior cingulate cortex (AAC), anterior midcingulate cortex, anterior insula, supplementary motor area, amygdala, somatosensory cortex, and periaquedual gray are of the brainstem. Thus, observing another individual in distress or in pain induces a visceral arousal in the perceiver by eliciting neural response in a salience network that relates to interoceptive-autonomic processing (Seeley et al., 2007) and that triggers defensive and protective behaviors.” (p. 530)

Empathic concern (motivational component)

• “All mammals depend on other conspecifics for survival and reproduction, particularly parental care, which his necessary for infant survival and development.”, “The level of care varies by species, but the underlying neural circuitry for responding to infants (especially signals of vulnerability and need) is universally present and highly conserved across species.” (p. 530)
• Note a similar idea in the distinction some authors make between “empathy”: know how another feels and “compassion”: doing something to alleviate their distress

Perspective Taking (cognitive component)

• “refers to the ability to consciously put oneself into the mind of another individual and imagine what that person is thinking or feeling.” (p. 530)
• “Assuming the perspective of another (like being in a wheelchair) brings about changes in the way we see the other, and these changes generalize to people similar to them, notably members of the same social groups to which they belong” (p. 530)
• The components of empathy, “are modulated by both bottom-up and top-down processes, such as those involved in group membership, and this can affect prosocial and moral behaviors.” (p. 532)

This can lead to “unfortunate features of empathy”: our empathy tends to be greatest for those “like us”, members of our group, tribe, etc.

• “Even the most advanced forms of empathy in humans are built on more basic forms and remain connected to affective, communication, social attachment, and parental care—the neurobiological mechanisms of which are highly conserved across mammalian species . . . . Thus, care-based morality piggybacks on older evolutionary motivational mechanisms associated with parental care. This explains why empathy is not a direct avenue to morality and can at time be a source of immoral action by favoring self-interest.” (p. 533)
  • This is the same point that Dr. Greene makes in his discussion of empathy and it’s limitations (2013): “we face two fundamentally different kinds of moral problems. The first problem is Me versus Us. This is, once again, the basic problem of cooperation, the Tragedy of the Commons. Our moral brains solved this problem primarily with emotion. Feeling of empathy and embarrassment impel us to (sometimes) put the interests of others ahead of our own. Likewise, feelings of anger and disgust impel use to shun or punish people who overvalue Me versus Us. Thanks to these automatic settings, we do far less lying, cheating, stealing, and killing than we otherwise could, and that enables Us to succees.” (p. 293) But this solution contributes to the second problem: “Us versus Them. It’s our interests versus theirs, or our values versus theirs, or both. . . . Here our disparate feelings and beliefs make it hard to get along. First, we are tribalistic, unapologetically valuing Us over Them. Second, different tribes cooperate on different terms. Some are more collectivist, some more individualistic. Some respond aggressive to threats. Others emphasize harmoney. And so on. third, tribes differ in their “proper nouns”–in the leaders, texts, institutions, and practices that they invest with moral authority. Finally, all of these differences lead to biased perceptions or what’s true and what’s fair.” (pp. 293-294)
  • Sapolsky (2017) also points out the limitations of empathy: “All things considered, it is a pretty remarkable thing that when an individual is in pain, we (i.e., we humans, primates, mammals of often are induced to be in a state of pain also. . . . But at the end of the day, the crucial issue is whether an empathetic state actually produces a compassionate act, to avoid the trap of empathy being an end unto itself. The gap between the state and the act can be enormous, especially when the goal is for the act to be not only effective but also pristine in its motives.” (p. 550).
• “It has been argued that moral progress involves expanding people’s concern from the family and tribe to humanity as a whole. Yet, it is difficulty to empathize with seven billion strangers or to feel toward a person one never met with the degree of concern one feels for one’s own baby or a friend. One of the recent ‘inventions’ that, according to Pinker (2011), contributed to expanding empathy is the expansion of literacy during the humanitarian revolution in the 18th century. In the epistolary novel, the story unfolds in a character’s own words, exposing the character’s thoughts and feelings in real time rather than describing them from the distancing perspective of a disembodied narrator. Preliminary research suggests that reading literary fiction temporarily improves the capacity to identify and understand others’ subjective affective and cognitive mental states (Kidd & Castano, 2013).” (Decety and Cowell, 2014, p. 534)
• Also, meditation practices can increase empathy (Goleman & Davidson (2017). A particular form of meditation, compassion or metta meditation, has a focus on increasing empathy but sustained practice in most meditative approaches (attention focused, mindfulness, metta) appears to usually have some enhancing effect on empathy.

But, good emotions (alone) don’t make us good people (just like bad thoughts don’t get us into trouble)–it is translatting our good emotions and thoughts into action that counts in the world (and for ourselves), especially when this does not immediately serve us. Courage is the fitst virtue.

• Dr. Marsh, concludes from her research and that of others, that our perception of fear in another face elicits empathy and a motivation to provide care: “the urge to care is tripped by perception of what ethologist call ‘key stimuli’ that characterize babies and young children. The features include a large head, large eyes, and a small chin and jaw; features that set chidlren apart from adults from adults across nearly every vertebrate species and that elicit care from adults very effectively.” (2017, p. 180)
• fear produces some of these facial features
• psychopaths show impaired perception of fear in others; extraordinary altruists show hightened sensitivity. Dr. Marsh concludes that allomothering (taking care of infants other than one’s own), “is altruism, really. species that allomother are perennially attended to vulnerability, distess, and need, and they are primed to respond with nurturing and care when they spot it, even if the object of their care is unfamiliar or unrelated to them.” (2017, p. 184). “across all the primate species, including humans, the single best prdictor of altruistic behavior was allomothering.” (pp. 184-185). “Recall that my own research, and that of others, finds that one of the single best predictor of altruism is responsiveness to fearful facial wxpressions.” (pp. 185-186).
• She also cites evidence that, “altruism can bring real pleassure”, “altruism is reinforcing” (p. 250), which she sees as a very positive finding: “That the reinforcing nature of altruism can ultimately make it self-sustaining is entirely consistent with the neuroscience literature. For example, an intact maternal care system is necessary only to kick off maternal care in rodents like rates, not to keep it going. Once a mother rat has had the experience of successfully caring for offspring, even blocking all her oxytocin recpetors and completely disabling the maternal care system will not affect her well-learned ability to mother. The deep-seated emotional urge to care may be a vital springboard for altruism, but one altruistic behavioir has taken root, it can self-perpetuate through sheer force of habit.” (p. 251). “the amygdala is not by itself the source of care or altruism or compassion. These are complex emergent phenomena that arise from activity in a network of interconnected brain regions. The amygdala is a vitally important node in this network, but it is only one node.” (p. 251).

We can learn to be more altruistic, caring, compassionate to others. Like so many things, it just takes practice.