Not only children, but also adults appear to imitate empathetic behavior in their fellow human beings. And that goes further than just copying behavior, according to new research. Seeing empathy makes your own brain more sensitive to the suffering of others.
If you have had multiple employers, you will probably recognize it. In one place things are nice and friendly. When one person gets coffee, the other is asked ‘if he would like a cup of coffee too’. Workloads are shared among each other, and when someone is ill, a colleague is happy to help. This is not the case at all at any other workplace. Everyone focuses on their own tasks and those who have finished their own work clock out without looking back.
Are the colleagues from the second scenario simply more antisocial compared to those from the first story? Researchers from the University of Wurzburg think not. According to them, this difference may be because empathetic behavior is contagious. And not entirely unimportant: so is the lack of it. After all, you are probably less inclined to go the extra mile if no one around you does.
Video surveys
Empathy – or the ability to empathize with someone else’s feelings – does not seem to be something you are simply born with or not. It is a quality that you continue to develop throughout your life. The researchers made this statement after using mathematical models and brain scans to investigate how empathy is socially transmitted to other people.
To do this, Hein and her team conducted a series of experiments with 36 female participants. The participants were shown videos of hands that appeared to be in pain, for example because they were pricked with a needle or hit with a hammer. The participants then had to report their own emotional response on a scale of 1 to 9. Then they saw the empathetic or non-empathetic reactions of others in the same videos and had to rate again how much they sympathized with the person in the video. Meanwhile, their brain activity was measured with a functional MRI scanner.
Adaptive emotions
What happened was remarkable. The participants adjusted their empathy depending on the reactions of others. When they saw that others sympathized with the pain, their own sense of compassion increased. And when they saw others being indifferent or even happy about the pain, their own level of empathy decreased. That difference was not only visible in the answers the participants gave about how much they sympathized, but also in the brain. Brain activity in the anterior insula, an area involved in processing empathy, increased when they saw someone sympathize and decreased when they did not see the other person sympathize.
Learning process
The researchers think this has to do with a kind of learning process that relies on expectations. Everyone has their own assessment of how empathetic you are in a certain situation. When we see someone react more empathetically than we had previously anticipated, a learning process begins. This is also called ’empathic conditioning’. The brain then assumes that it has misjudged the situation, which it corrects by generating more empathy in this case. Which works the same way when someone shows little empathy. The researchers saw exactly this effect, which had also been predicted in advance with calculation models, in their study.
Consciously change
In other words: empathy is a learnable and influenceable trait, which depends on so-called ‘observational reinforcement learning’. And that can affect both our personal and professional lives. “The good news is that we now know better how we can shape empathy in adults,” says Grit Hein. That can be useful in both directions. For example, increasing compassionate feelings could be useful to create more sense of community in a society and to reduce conflict. While lowering empathy can be useful to protect your own mental health or when you have to perform difficult tasks.
Respect
But it’s not that simple. Seeing empathy around you is not enough to really develop empathy, says Hein. “An atmosphere of mutual respect is also needed. You can respect someone without having empathy for that person, but it is a challenge to develop empathy if you do not respect the other person as a human being or when lack of respect is something that is accepted in a society.”
Individual differences
In addition, it differs per person to what extent someone sympathizes with the other. And also how sensitive it is to social transmission of empathy. This depends, among other things, on personality and motivation, but also on genetic factors. Some people are more or less susceptible to the influence of others on their own empathy. There will therefore always be people who remain more empathetic in a non-empathetic environment, or less empathetic in a well-empathetic environment. Even in your predominantly unpleasant or friendly office.
In the future, the researchers want to apply their model to other social behaviors, such as selfishness and aggression. They hope that their research can contribute to positive behavioral changes. By recognizing empathy as something learnable and influenceable, we could actively work towards more understanding and compassion in our society.
2024-02-25 18:03:06
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