NOV 10

21: NOV 10. Unit Five: Empathy

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" listen to at least 1/2 of the podcast for today and the other half for Thursday.

Segment 1: Artist's performance art installation. 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:

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

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 911 attacks increases willingness to torture. Other research: more wary of outsiders.
But 911 was also unifying, eliciting empathy.
Paul Bloom, Against Empathy - tribal empathy is bad, but Zaki -- oxcitociin studies do turn up parochialism. Zaki draws different conclusion. Believes that empathy is trainable.
Sometimes we need to be less empathetic. Research on police officers showing strong empathy even to officers in trouble. 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. What if we are over empathic to our group?
Professionals who need to use empathy (caring professions) might suffer from its expression. Defensive dehumanization -- blocking empathy for self-preservation. Study table in busy student union, happy child/ suffering child. unmanned/wheelchair. But it backfired! Maybe we (especially high empaths) avoid triggering our own empathetic response. Study on whites reading about native Americans. Led to negative judgement to dismiss guilt (cog. dissonance). In obedience to authority studies, death row officers, more likely to lead avoidance or dehumanizing judgements. ends at 36:00

Back to art installation. Lamp destroyed by aggressive person. Person 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.

Project using virtual reality 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.
Acting and empathy. Might pump empathy. Reading fiction. (Moth stories, story core, human interest stories on news.)
Manchester U fans study: Levine: study involving rabid fans, Write about why they love Man U. Taken to another building, 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!
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.

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.

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 mouse 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 -- prairie voles!
526: rats, amazing rats -- US/them behaviors, some flexibility. review the details.

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.
Some neurobiology: the ACC - anterior cingulate cortex - processes interoceptive info, conflict monitoring, (presumably cog. dissonance). susceptible to placebo effect. Importantly, ACC activates on social exclusion (Cyberball game), anxiety, disgust, embarrassment, but also pleasure, mutual pleasure.
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, separately from helping action.

Cognitive side of things: How do we bring judgements about desert and character to bear on empathic responses?

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. the wealthy take more candy!
especially hard, cognitively, to empathize with people we don't like, because their pain actually stimulates a dopamine response!