Empathy

Empathy is the capacity to recognize or understand another's state of mind or emotion. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes", or in some way experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself. Empathy does not necessarily imply compassion, or empathic concern because this capacity can be present in context of compassionate or cruel behavior.

Contents

Etymology

The English word is derived from the Greek ἐμπάθεια (empatheia), "physical affection, passion, partiality" which comes from ἐν (en), "in, at" + πάθος (pathos), "feeling"[1]. The term was adapted by Theodore Lipps to create the German word Einfühlung ("feeling into") from which the English term is then more directly derived.[2]

Theorists and their definitions

Discussion

Since empathy involves understanding the emotion states of other people, the way it is characterized is derivative of the way emotions themselves are characterized. If for example, emotions are taken to be centrally characterized by bodily feelings, then grasping the bodily feelings of another will be central to empathy. On the other hand, if emotions are more centrally characterized by a combination of beliefs and desires, then grasping these beliefs and desires will be more essential to empathy. Furthermore, a distinction should be made between deliberately imagining being another person, or being in their situation, and simply recognizing their emotion. The ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative process. However the basic capacity to recognize emotions is probably innate and may be achieved unconsciously. Yet it can be trained, and achieved with various degrees of intensity or accuracy.

The human capacity to recognize the bodily feelings of another is related to one's imitative capacities, and seems to be grounded in the innate capacity to associate the bodily movements and facial expressions one sees in another with the proprioceptive feelings of producing those corresponding movements or expressions oneself.[17] Humans also seem to make the same immediate connection between the tone of voice and other vocal expressions and inner feeling. See neurological basis below.[18][19]

There is some debate concerning how exactly the conscious experience (or phenomenology) of empathy should be characterized. The basic idea is that by looking at the facial expressions or bodily movements of another, or by hearing their tone of voice, one may get an immediate sense of how they feel (as opposed to more intellectually noting the behavioral symptoms of their emotion).[20] Though empathic recognition is likely to involve some form of arousal in the empathiser, they may not experience this feeling as belonging to their own body, but instead likely to perceptually locate the feeling 'in' the body of the other person. Alternatively the empathiser may instead get a sense of an emotional 'atmosphere' or that the emotion belongs equally to all the parties involved.

However, the full-blown capacity of human empathy is more sophisticated than the mere automatic resonance of the target’s affective state. Indeed, empathy is both about sharing the emotional state of others and understanding it in relation to oneself.[21] The capacity for two people to resonate with each other emotionally, prior to any cognitive understanding, is the basis for developing shared emotional meanings, but is not enough for empathic understanding. According to Decety and Jackson,[22] this requires forming an explicit representation of the feelings of another person, an intentional agent, which necessitates additional computational mechanisms beyond the shared emotional level. In order to understand the emotions and feelings of others in relation to oneself, second-order representations of the other need to be available to awareness (a decoupling mechanism between first-person information and second person information: similar to theory of mind).[23][24]

Contrast with other phenomena

Empathy is distinct from sympathy, pity, and emotional contagion. Sympathy or empathic concern is the feeling of compassion or concern for another, the wish to see them better off or happier. Pity is feeling that another is in trouble and in need of help as they cannot fix their problems themselves, often described as "feeling sorry" for someone. Emotional contagion is when a person (especially an infant or a member of a mob) imitatively 'catches' the emotions that others are showing without necessarily recognizing this is happening (Hatfield et al 1994). Telepathy is not a psychological phenomenon, but a supposedly paranormal phenomenon, whereby emotions or other mental states can be read directly, without needing to infer, or perceive expressive clues about the other person.

The development of empathy

When children watch short video clips depicting another individual in a painful situation compared with a non painful situation, regions of the brain associated with the processing of nociception are activated

By the age of two, children normally begin to display the fundamental behaviors of empathy by having an emotional response that corresponds with another person. Even earlier, at one year of age, infants have some rudiments of empathy, in the sense that they understand that, just like their own actions, other people's actions have goals.[25][26][27] Sometimes, toddlers will comfort others or show concern for them as early as 24 months of age. Also during the second year, toddlers will play games of falsehood or "pretend" in an effort to fool others, and this requires that the child know what others believe before he or she can manipulate those beliefs.[28] According to researchers at the University of Chicago who used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), children between the ages of seven and 12 appear to be naturally inclined to feel empathy for others in pain. Their findings, published in Neuropsychologia (June 3, 2008),[29] is consistent with previous fMRI studies of pain empathy with adults. The research also found additional aspects of the brain were activated when youngsters saw another person intentionally hurt by another individual, including regions involved in moral reasoning.[30]

Neurological basis

Research in recent years has focused on possible brain processes underlying the experience of empathy. For instance, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been employed to investigate the functional anatomy of empathy.[31] These studies have shown that observing another person’s emotional state activates parts of the neuronal network involved in processing that same state in oneself, whether it is disgust,[32] touch,[33] or pain.[34][35][36][37] The study of the neural underpinnings of empathy has received increased interest following the target paper published by Preston and De Waal,[38] following the discovery of mirror neurons in monkeys that fire both when the creature watches another perform an action as well as when they themselves perform it. In their paper, they argued that 'attended perception of the object's state automatically activates neural representations, and that this activation automatically primes or generate the associated autonomic and somatic responses, unless inhibited. This mechanism is similar to the common coding theory between perception and action.

Lack of empathy

Some psychologists, and psychiatrists believe that not all humans have an ability to feel empathy or understand the emotions of others. For instance, Autism and related conditions such as Asperger's syndrome are often (but not always) characterized by an apparent reduced ability to empathize with others. The interaction between empathy and autism spectrum disorders is a complex and ongoing field of research. According to recent fMRI studies[39] the syndrome of alexithymia, a condition in which an individual is rendered incapable of recognising and articulating emotional arousal in self or others, is responsible for a severe lack of emotional empathy.[40] The lack of empathetic attunement inherent to alexithymic states may reduce quality[41] and satisfaction[42] of relationships.

According to Simon Baron-Cohen, an absence of empathy might also be related to an absence of theory of mind (i.e., the ability to model another's world view using either a theory-like analogy between oneself and others, or the ability to simulate pretend mental states and then apply the consequences of these simulations to others). Again with regard to autism, not all autistics fit this pattern, and the theory remains controversial, and does not differentiate between cognitive empathy and affective empathy, nor do autistic people lack compassion. Francesca Happe showed that autistic children who demonstrate a lack of theory of mind (cognitive empathy) lack theory of mind for self as well as for others [43].

In contrast, psychopaths are seemingly able to demonstrate the appearance of sensing the emotions of others with such a theory of mind, often demonstrating care and friendship in a convincing manner, and can use this ability to charm or manipulate, but they crucially lack the sympathy or compassion that empathy often leads to. However, it has been claimed that components of circuitry involved in empathy may also be dysfunctional in psychopathy (Tunstall N., Fahy T. and McGuire P. in: Guide to Neuroimaging in Psychiatry, Eds. Fu C et al, Martin Dunitz: London 2003). Empathy certainly does not guarantee benevolence. The same ability may underlie schadenfreude (taking pleasure in the pain of another entity) and sadism (being sexually gratified through the infliction of pain or humiliation on another person). Recently, a functional MRI study conducted by Jean Decety and colleagues at the University of Chicago has demonstrated that youth with aggressive conduct disorder (who have psychopathic tendencies) have a different brain response when confronted with empathy-eliciting stimuli.[44] In the study, researchers compared 16- to 18-year-old boys with aggressive conduct disorder to a control group of adolescent boys with no unusual signs of aggression. The boys with the conduct disorder had exhibited disruptive behavior such as starting a fight, using a weapon and stealing after confronting a victim. The youth were tested with fMRI while looking at video clips in which people endured pain accidentally, such as when a heavy bowl was dropped on their hands, and intentionally, such as when a person stepped on another's foot. Results show that the aggressive youth activated the neural circuits underpinning pain processing to the same extent, and in some cases, even more so than the control participants without conduct disorder. However, aggressive adolescents showed a specific and very strong activation of the amygdala and ventral striatum (an area that responds to feeling rewarded) when watching pain inflicted on others, which suggested that they enjoyed watching pain. Unlike the control group, the youth with conduct disorder did not activate the area of the brain involved in self-regulation and moral reasoning.

Autism spectrum disorders

A common source of confusion in analyzing the interactions between empathy and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is that the apparent lack of empathy may mask excessive sensitivity.[45] An apparant lack of empathy may also mask a failure to demonstrate empathy can arise from inability (or not knowing how) to express empathy to others, as opposed to difficulty feeling it, internally.

Research suggests that many ASD individuals have a lack of theory of mind[46] (ToM) and alexithymia (85% of those with ASD's have alexithymia),[47] both of which conditions involve severe deficits in the individual's ability to be empathetically attuned to others. Alexithymia involves not just the inability to verbally express emotions, but specifically the inability to identify emotional states in self or others.[48] However, research by Rogers et al. suggests that empathy needs to be differentiated between cognitive empathy and affective empathy in people with Asperger syndrome, suggesting autistic individuals have less developed understanding of the feeling of others, but demonstrate equally much empathy when aware of others' states of mind, and respond more to stress experienced by other people than non-autistic people.[49]

One study found that, relative to typically developing children, high-functioning children with autism showed reduced mirror neuron activity in the brain's inferior frontal gyrus (pars opercularis) while imitating and observing emotional expressions.[50] The authors suggested that their study supports the hypothesis that a dysfunctional mirror neuron system may underlie the social deficits observed in autism. However, this finding should be taken with extreme caution, since it has not been replicated by other fMRI studies.[51]

Practical issues

Proper empathetic engagement is supposed to help to understand and anticipate the behavior of the other. Apart from the automatic tendency to recognise the emotions of others, one may also deliberately engage in empathic reasoning. Two general methods have been identified here (e.g. Goldie 2000). A person may simulate 'pretend' versions of the beliefs, desires, character traits and context of the other and see what emotional feelings this leads to. Or, a person may simulate the emotional feeling and then look around for a suitable reason for this to fit.

Some research suggests that people are more able and willing to empathize with those most similar to themselves. In particular, empathy increases with similarities in culture and living conditions. We are also more likely to empathize with those with whom we interact more frequently (See Levenson and Reuf 1997 and Hoffman 2000: 62). A measure of how well a person can infer the specific content of another person's thoughts and feelings has been developed by William Ickes (1997, 2003). Ickes and his colleagues have developed a video-based method to measure empathic accuracy and have used this method to study the empathic inaccuracy of maritally aggressive and abusive husbands, among other topics.

There are concerns that the empathiser's own emotional background may affect or distort what emotions they perceive in others (e.g. Goleman 1996: p. 104). Empathy is not a process that is likely to deliver certain judgements about the emotional states of others. It is a skill that is gradually developed throughout life, and which improves the more contact we have with the person with whom we empathise. Accordingly, any knowledge we gain of the emotions of the other must be revisable in light of further information.

Ethical issues

The extent to which a person's emotions are publicly observable, or mutually recognized as such has significant social consequences. Empathic recognition may or may not be welcomed or socially desirable. This is particularly the case where we recognise the emotions that someone has towards ourselves during real time interactions. Based on a metaphorical affinity with touch, Philosopher Edith Wyschogrod claims that the proximity entailed by empathy increases the potential vulnerability of either party.[52] The appropriate role of empathy in our dealings with others is highly dependent on the circumstances. For instance, it is claimed that clinicians or caregivers must take care not to be too sensitive to the emotions of others, to over-invest their own emotions, at the risk of draining away their own resourcefulness. Furthmore an awareness of the limitations of empathic accuracy is prudent in a caregiving situation.

Disciplinary approaches

Psychotherapy

Heinz Kohut is the main introducer of the principle of empathy in psychoanalysis. His principle applies to the method of gathering unconscious material. The possibility of not applying the principle is granted in the cure. For instance when you must reckon with another principle, that of reality. Developing skills of empathy is often a central theme in the recovery process for drug addicts.

In evolutionary psychology, attempts at explaining pro-social behavior often mention the presence of empathy in the individual as a possible variable. Although exact motives behind complex social behaviors are difficult to distinguish, the "ability to put oneself in the shoes of another person and experience events and emotions the way that person experienced them" is the definitive factor for truly altruistic behavior according to Batson's empathy-altruism hypothesis. If empathy is not felt, social exchange (what's in it for me?) supersedes pure altruism, but if empathy is felt, an individual will help regardless of whether it is in their self-interest to do so and even if the costs outweigh potential rewards.[53]

Education

An important target by the method Learning by teaching (LdL) is to train systematically and in each lesson the students-empathy. They have to transmit new contents to the classmates, so they have to reflect continuously on the mental processes by the other students in the classroom. This way - in addition - it is possible to develop step by step the students-feeling for group-reactions and networking.

With animals

Some students of animal behavior claim that empathy is not restricted to humans as the definition implies. Examples include dolphins saving humans (sympathy) from drowning or from shark attacks, and a multitude of behaviors observed in primates, both in captivity and in the wild. See, for instance, the popular book The Ape and the Sushi Master by Frans de Waal. Rodents have been shown to demonstrate empathy for cagemates (but not strangers) in pain.[54] Furthermore people can empathize with animals. As such, empathy is thought to be a driving psychological force behind the animal rights movement (an example of sympathy), whether or not using empathy is justified by any real similarity between the emotional experiences of animals and humans.

In fiction, art, and music

Some philosophers (such as Martha Nussbaum) suggest that novel reading cultivates readers' empathy and leads them to exercise better world citizenship. For a critique of this application of the empathy-altruism hypothesis to experiences of narrative empathy, see Keen's Empathy and the Novel (Oxford, 2007). In some works of science fiction and fantasy, empathy is understood to be a paranormal or psychic ability to sense the emotions of others, as opposed to telepathy, which allows one to perceive thoughts as well. A person who has that ability is also called an "empath" or "telempath" in this context. Occasionally these empaths are also able to project their own emotions, or to affect the emotions of others.

The metaphor of musical resonance reinforces certain ideas around empathy that are often misconstrued. Gauss, suggests that, “In popular usage the idea refers to the emotional resonance between two people, when, like strings tuned to the same frequency, each responds in perfect sympathy to the other and each reinforces the responses of the other”[55]However, within the musical semantic universe, the better metaphor is that of overtones and undertones, by which an instrument incapable of replicating a particular frequency (pitch), nevertheless, resonates with pitches sharing certain harmonic structures. Harmonic resonance, unlike pitch replication, suggests appropriate differentiation between the two instruments, between model and beholder, while retaining a sense that some accuracy is required. One Chinese translation for empathy contains the two characters not for the replication of pitch, but for harmonic resonance. This Chinese translation aligns with the forms of empathy which arise intuitively or non-cognitively.

In history

Some postmodern historians such as Keith Jenkins in recent years have debated whether or not it is possible to empathise with people from the past. Jenkins argues that empathy only enjoys such a privileged position in the present because it corresponds harmoniously with the dominant Liberal discourse of modern society and can be connected to John Stuart Mill's concept of reciprocal freedom. Jenkins argues the past is a foreign country and as we do not have access to the epistemological conditions of bygone ages we are unable to empathise.[56] The reader will not be astonished at the conclusive issue about empathy and history. Only events and their products meet or not empathy. It is impossible to forecast the effect of empathy on the future. We can pay attention to the means of language of telling events. We above checked a contemporary subject may not take part in the past. A past subject may take part in the present by the so-called historic present. If we watch from a fictitious past, can tell the present with the future tense, as it happens with the trick of the false prophecy. There is no way of telling the present with the means of the past.[57] The way of making the study of empathy functional is still long.

In philosophy

In the 2007 book "The Ethics of Care and Empathy," philosopher Michael Slote introduces a theory of care-based ethics that is grounded in empathy. His claim is that moral motivation does, and should stem from a basis of empathic response. He claims that our natural reaction to situations of moral significance are explained by empathy. He explains that the limits and obligations of empathy and in turn morality are natural. These natural obligations include a greater empathic, and moral obligation to family and friends, along with an account of temporal and physical distance. In situations of close temporal and physical distance, and with family or friends, our moral obligation seems stronger to us than with strangers at a distance naturally. Slote explains that this is due to empathy and our natural empathic ties. He further adds that actions are wrong if and only if they reflect or exhibit a deficiency of fully developed empathic concern for others on the part of the agent.

In phenomenology, empathy is used to describe the experience in which one experiences what the Other experiences. It should not, however, be understood as some kind of magical or telepathic connection, but rather as the experience of experiencing something from the Other's viewpoint, without confusion between self and other. This draws on the sense of agency. In the most basic sense, this is the experience of the Other's body, and in this sense, it is an experience of "my body over there." In most other respects, however, the experience is modified so that what is experienced is experienced as being the Other's experience; in experiencing empathy, what is experienced is not "my" experience, even though I experience it. Empathy is also considered to be the condition of intersubjectivity, and, as such, the source of the constitution of objectivity.

Gender differences

The issue of gender differences in empathy is quite controversial. It is often believed that females are more empathetic than males. Evidence for gender differences in empathy are huge for self report questionnaires of empathy in which it is obvious what was being indexed (i.e., the issues of social desirability and gender stereotypes) but are smaller or nonexistent for other types of indexes that are less self-evident with regard to their purpose.[58] However, a series of recent studies, using a variety of neurophysiological measures, including MEG,[59] spinal reflex excitability, [60] electroencephalography, [61] [62] have documented the presence of a gender difference in the human mirror neuron system, with female participants exhibiting stronger motor resonance than male participants. In addition, these aforementioned studies also found that females participants scored higher on empathy self report dispositional measures, and that these measures positively correlated with the physiological response.

See also

  • Empathic concern
  • Intercultural competence
  • John D. Mayer
  • Daniel Batson
  • Jean Decety
  • Frans de Waal
  • Marshall Rosenberg
  • Daniel Goleman
  • Spatial empathy

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  59. ↑ Cheng, Y., Tzeng, O.J., Decety, J., & Hsieh, J.C. (2006). Gender differences in the human mirror system: a magnetoencephalography study. NeuroReport, 17, 1115-1119.
  60. ↑ Cheng, Y., Decety, J., Hsieh, J.C., Hung, D., & Tzeng, O.J. (2007). Gender differences in spinal excitability during observation of bipedal locomotion. NeuroReport, 18, 887-890.
  61. ↑ Cheng, Y., Decety, J., Yang, C.Y., Lee, S., & Chen, G. (2008). Gender differences in the Mu rhythm during empathy for pain: An electroencephalographic study. Brain Research, in press.
  62. ↑ Cheng, Y., Lee, P., Yang, C.Y., Lin, C.P., & Decety, J. (2008). Gender differences in the mu rythm of the human mirror-neuron system. PLoS ONE, 5, e2113.

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