NOV 10

22: NOV 10. Unit Five: Empathy (and finishing with Partiality)

Assigned

• Robert Sapolsky, from Behave, Chapter 14, "Feeling Someone's Pain, Understanding Someone's Pain, Alleviating Someone's Pain." 521-535.
• Hidden Brain, "You 2.0: Empathy gym"

In-Class

• PP1 Assigned
• More advice for PP1

PP1: "What Do We Owe Strangers" Position Paper: 1000 words

• Stage 1: Please write a 1000 word maximum answer to the following question by Thursday, November 17, 2022, 11:59pm.

• Topic: What do we owe strangers as a matter of justice? Strangers are people outside of your "personal preference network" (PPN). Your PPN includes those you are inclined to help and who are often in cooperative relationship with you (e.g. family, friends, partners, and those with whom you have some groupish bond, like being "zags," sharing ethnic identity, or co-religionists). Consider strangers in your immediate community, country, and the world at large. Drawing on the concepts and theories that we have been discussing, present an argued view of what we owe strangers and why.

• Keep in mind:

• You are answering this prompt in the "first person," but you are giving reasons for your view and, implicitly, recommending it as a standard. So this is not just a statement of personally felt obligation, but also a view about what we should all accept as our collective obligation. This should be reflected in the kinds of reasons you provide as well.
• Your readers will not necessarily share your view, so you should say why your position should be acceptable to someone with a different point of view. You will not be assessed on which view (within a wide range) of justice you adopt, but on the quality of your writing and reasoning, and your focus on the prompt.
• You should assume that any obligations you have to strangers are contingent upon adequate resources (national wealth and personal wealth). You do live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but you may not be personally obligated to help strangers if you are struggling to survive. (Philosopher's generally believe "ought implies can" - you aren't obligated to do something you can't do.)

• Advice about collaboration: Collaboration is part of the academic process and the intellectual world that college courses are based on, so it is important to me that you have the possibility to collaborate. I encourage you to collaborate with other students, but only up to the point of sharing ideas, references to class notes, and your own notes, verbally. Collaboration is also a great way to make sure that a high average level of learning and development occurs in the class. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to NOT share text of draft answers or outlines of your answer. Keep it verbal. Generate your own examples.

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way. You will lose points if you do not follow these instructions:

1. To assure anonymity, you must remove your name from the the "author name" that you may have provided when you set up your word processing application. For instructions on removing your name from an Word or Google document, [click here].
2. Format your answer in double spaced text, in a typical 12 point font, and using normal margins. Do not add spaces between paragraphs and indent the first line of each paragraph.
3. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student ID number in the file. Always put a word count in the file. Save your file for this assignment with the name: "ObligationsToStrangers".
4. To turn in your assignment, log into courses.alfino.org, click on the "PP1 - What do we owe strangers" dropbox.
5. If you cannot meet a deadline, you must email me about your circumstances (unless you are having an emergency) before the deadline or you will lose points.

• Stage 2: Please evaluate four student answers and provide brief comments and a score. Review the Assignment Rubric for this exercise. We will be using the Flow and Content areas of the rubric for this assignment. Complete your evaluations and scoring by Monday, November 21, 2022 11:59pm.

• To determine the papers you need to peer review, open the file called "#Key.xls" in the shared folder. You will see a worksheet with saint names in alphabetically order, along with animal names. Find your saint name and review the next four (4) animals' work below your animal name. If you get to the bottom of the list before reaching 4 animals, go to the top of the list and continue.

• Use this Google Form to evaluate four peer papers. Submit the form once for each review.

• Some papers may arrive late. If you are in line to review a missing paper, allow a day or two for it to show up. If it does not show up, go back to the key and review the next animal's paper, continuing until you get four reviews. Do not review more than four papers.

• Stage 3: I will grade and briefly comment on your writing using the peer scores as an initial ranking. Assuming the process works normally, most of my scores probably be within 1-2 points of the peer scores, plus or minus.

• Stage 4: Back-evaluation: After you receive your peer comments and my evaluation, take a few minutes to fill out this quick "back evaluation" rating form: [1]. Fill out the form for each reviewer, but not Alfino. You must do the back evaluation to receive credit for the whole assignment. Failing to give back-evaluations unfairly affects other classmates.

• Back evaluations are due Friday, April 29th, 11:59pm.

Hidden Brain, Empathy

• Segment 1: Artist's performance art installation. Wafa. Internet connected paint ball gun. Iraqi artist, lost his brother in air strike. Thinking about drone warfare, thinking about consequences of actions... ends at 5:22.
• Jamil Zaki, The War for Kindness. Early 70s program for faculty, mom from Peru to WSU, married/divorced while Jamil was young, felt difference in parents' rules/values. Credits that to empathy. Parent's divorce was an "empathy gym".
• Benefits of empathy -- benefits both parties. empathic doctor-patient relationships, empathic partners. Giving empathy less depression, less stress, adolescents with emotional skill better adjusted in middle school.
• clip from Sesame street -- phone call from friend. Three components:

• 1. emotional empathy
• 2. cognitive empathy
• 3. empathy concern and compassion. 13:00
• autism spectrum disorders. often still have 1 but not 2
• psychopathy often have 2 but not 1

• Segment 2: Cultural instantiation of empathy. Sarah Conrath - survey research using validated instrument. Trend toward less empathy. Alot since 2000.

• Other variables: living alone. hard to know about link there. pretty speculative. We are more urban, solitary, and transactional. These interactions don't favor empathy. Internet? Might be a source of empathy, early idealism of internet. But we might be using the Internet in negative empathy ways -- no faces (!), avatars, text. Research on dehumanizing opinions from text vs. voice. (Tapping into a long line of theory about urban life and dehumanization.) segment ends at 21:30

• Segment 3: Costs and benefits of Empathy

• Trauma and empathy. Could go in different directions. Hurt people hurt people. But also "altruism born of suffering". Addicts become addiction counselors...etc. Research showing that showing American harsh video from 9/11 attacks increases willingness to torture. Other research: more wary of outsiders.
• But 9/11 was also unifying, eliciting empathy. (Change in stereotype of “New Yorker”)
• Paul Bloom, Against Empathy - empathy tends to be tribal, Zaki doesn’t disagree, adds that -- oxcitociin studies do turn up parochialism along with empathy. Zaki draws different conclusion. Bloom thinks we should give up on empathy. Believes that empathy is trainable. Could go in different directions.
• Sometimes we need to be less empathetic. Research on police officers showing strong empathy, even to officers in trouble. (Interesting insight on “police empathy” (good guys who made a mistake). In-group empathy (parochial empathy) might interfere with perception. High in-group empaths, even if empathic to outsiders, are not likely to allow threat to tribe. 29:23: Advice: If we want to open up to others (out groups - the people we discriminate against), we need to notice this. What if we are over empathic to our group?
• Professionals who need to use empathy (caring professions) might suffer from its expression. Defensive dehumanization (self-protection) -- blocking empathy for self-preservation. Example of therapist who doesn’t schedule depressed patient at the end of the day.
• Mark Panser study: Researchers set up table in busy student union soliciting donations, happy child/ suffering child. unmanned/wheelchair. You’d think the sad child and wheelchair attendant would be a winner. But it backfired! Other examples: Crossing the street to avoid a homeless person. Maybe we (especially high empaths) avoid triggering our own empathetic response.
• Empathy and Dehumanization: Study on whites reading about native Americans. Led to negative judgement of Native Americans to dismiss guilt (cog. dissonance). In “obedience to authority” studies, subject who shock confederates report liking victim less, death row officers tend to dehumanize inmates, more likely to lead avoidance or dehumanizing judgements. ends at 36:00

• Segment 4: Back to art installation; how to “pump” empathy.

• many thousands of shots. Lamp destroyed by aggressive person. Matt, a former marine, arrives with new lamp! Takes action (similar issue in Sapolsky). Zaki interprets both events. Others show up! Muffins, socks, online helpers. Virtual human shields. 36 people keep the button down to prevent panning the gun.

• Zaki project: Used virtual reality “scenes” to have inside experience of homelessness. Scenes of typical events in homeless experience. Simulation increased empathy even 30 days later and more supportive of housing policies. (Sheds light on research showing the wealthy are less empathic.)
• Acting and empathy. Might pump empathy. Study involving adolescents in theatre v visual arts. Thespians pumped more empathy. Reading fiction also does this. (Moth stories, story core, human interest stories on news.)

• Manchester U fans study: Levine: study involving rabid fans, asked them to write about why they love Man U. Taken to another building, they encounter a jogger confederate sometimes Man U, Liverpool, blank jersey. More likely to pass over Liverpool jogger. Second version: Why you love soccer. Equal help. Blank jersey left behind! Point: we have some flexibility in how we frame our group membership. A station at the empathy gym!

• Back to Zaki's childhood experience. Lesson to learn that very different people could have deep and authentic experience. Also, we can have different values because of our experiences, equally determinative in opposite directions. "Naive realism" false. Empathy helps you understand that someone’s world is as real as yours.

Sapolsky, Behave, C 14, 521-535

• starts with "exposure to an aversive state" -- we call it empathy, but what is that?

q1: When does empathy lead us to actually do something helpful?

q2: When we do act, whose benefit is it for?

• sympathy -- feeling sorry for someone's pain. But could also convey distance or power diff. pity.
• empathy -- includes a cognitive step of understanding the cause of someone's pain and "taking perspective"
• compassion -- S. suggests this involves empathy plus taking action.

• Emotionally contagious, compassionate animals.

• we are 'overimitative' - chimp / kids study524
• mouse studies -524- alterations of sensitivity to pain on seeing pain; fear association seeing another mouse exp fear conditioning. Mouse depression ensues! research suggesting mice respond proportionally and to social group (cagemates).
• Consolation: lots of species engage in consolation, chimps show third party consolation behavior, no consolation behavior in monkeys (another reason not to trust monkeys) -- prairie voles!
• 526: rats, amazing rats -- US/them behaviors, some flexibility. review the details.

• Emotionally contagious, compassionate children

• 527: describes mechanism of empathy: early emo contagion in kids may not be linked to cognitive judgement as later, when Theory of Mind emerges. Neural activity follows this progression. “As the capacity for moral indignation matures, couple among the vmPFC, the insula, and amygdala emerges.” Perspective taking adds other connections.

• Affect and /or Cognition?

• Affective side of things.

• Some neurobiology: the ACC - anterior cingulate cortex - processes interoceptive info, conflict monitoring, (presumably cog. dissonance). susceptible to placebo effect. ACC activates when our internal and external “schemas” of the world are amiss.
• Importantly, ACC activates on social exclusion (Cyberball game), anxiety, disgust, embarrassment, but also pleasure, mutual pleasure. (ACC activation is maybe a good proxy for the state that empathy and compassion address: We help each other settle our ACCs down.). Empathic responses involve our ACC, which is activated by your pain

.

• ACC also involved in action circuits. Oxytocin, hormone related to bonding. Block it in voles and they don't console. Awwww!

• How does self-interested "alarm" system of the ACC get involved in empathy? Sapolsky's hypothesis 530: Feeling someone's pain can be more effective for learning than just knowing that they're in pain. Empathy may also be a self-interested learning system, separate from helping action. Maybe not a “moral emotion” until we use it that way.

• Cognitive side of things: How do we bring judgements about desert and character to bear on empathic responses? Chimps do. They only console victims. Reason allows us to shut down empathic responses.

• One of Sapolsky’s weirder analogies at 532 re: the militia leader.
• Cognition comes in with emotional pain, judgement abstractly represented pain (a sign), unfamiliar pain. (Takes more cog resources to process others' emo pain.) Also with Thems. 533.
• socioeconomics of empathy 534: wealth predicts lower empathy. Less likely to stop for pedestrians. the wealthy take more candy! (This can be primed by asking test subjects to make upward or downward comparisons prior to the choice event.)
• especially hard, cognitively, to empathize with people we don't like, because their pain actually stimulates a dopamine response! Empathy is part of our preference network behaviors!