APR 13

23: APR 13: Unit Five: Empathy

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" If you don't have time for the whole thing, get through the first two segments. Up to 21 minuates.

In-Class

• Mention "Imagining the Just Society" wiki notes for previous class (and the handout).
• Briefly on our continuum of justice theories for PP1.

More on Continuum of Justice theories

• Our "continuum of justice theories" includes formal justice, Rawls, Capabilities, and Strong Well-being theories. Last class, we worked through these theories and some pluses and minuses of them that might figure into your assessment in PP1. Today, consider the theories in terms of the different questions they ask about "what we owe each other":

• 1. Formal Theories: "How do we guarantee equal treatment and fair rules for everyone?" (Justice is satisfied once we do this.) (Note: Formal Justice is included in each of the other theories, but can be argued as sufficient. Indeed, that is the traditional view.)

• 2. Rawls' Difference Principle: "How am I better off (either by income or public goods) for tolerating the effects of a competitive society (inequality)? (If I can't satisfy the difference principle, then I made an irrational choice from being the veil of ignorance. On the other hand, I only need to be a little better off for it to be rational.)

• 3. Capabilities: "How does my society help me achieve basic capabilities that promote my freedom to achieve my well-being? (Just societies focus on the "instrumental freedoms" that enable capabilities.)

• 4. Strong Well-Being approaches like utilitarian and happiness economists: "How much does the society promote the well-being of its citizens?" (The just society is centrally focused on SWB. Happiness is a better measure than GDP alone.)

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 - feeling emotions of others, or a version of those emotions.
• 2. cognitive empathy - trying to understand what others are feelings and why or what they are going through.
• 3. empathy concern and compassion. concern for what they are going through and desire for their well-being

• 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. Examples of survey items at 14:45. A lot since 2000.

• Other variables: Living alone. 10x compared to 1950. Hard to know about link there. pretty speculative. We are more urban, solitary, and transactional (less communal experience, more consumption experience). 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 "empathy negative" ways -- no faces (!), avatars, text -- not great triggers for empathy. 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!