Empathy and the brain

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Human empathy depends on the ability to share the emotions of others, to feel what other people feel. It is regarded by many people as the foundation of moral behavior.

But to some, the concept seems rather airy-fairy. What does it mean to say “I feel your pain”? Isn’t that just a fanciful flight of the imagination?

No.

For one thing, it turns out nonhuman animals–even mice and geese–show evidence of empathy (Decety et al 2016; Sivaselvachandran et al 2018).

For another, empathy has a neurological basis.

The same brain regions that process our first-hand experiences of pain are also activated when we observe other people in pain (Lamm et al 2011). Moreover, when we observe the emotional signals of others, we recruit brain regions associated with theory of mind, the mechanism that permits us to take the perspective of another person (Schulte-Rüther et al 2007).

This theory of mind mechanism, along with the ability to keep our own emotional reactions under control, may be of crucial importance for showing empathic concern, or sympathy. If I don’t consider your perspective and control my impulses, I might react to your pain as if it’s primarily an irritant or assault on me.

So empathy and empathic concern aren’t just ideas. They are rooted in concrete, measurable, physical phenomena, and are part of our nature. That doesn’t mean we aren’t heavily influenced by ideas, but it suggests that humans don’t depend on entirely on cultural training to develop a sense of empathy. 

Here’s a quick guide to the biology of empathy, including information about the development of empathy in children.

Empathy in nonhuman animals

In one experiment, 15 rhesus monkeys were trained to get food by pulling chains. Monkeys quickly learned that one chain delivered twice as much food than the other. But then the rules changed: If a monkey pulled the chain associated with the bigger reward, another “bystander” monkey received an electric shock.

After seeing their conspecific get a shock, 10 of the monkeys switched their preferences to the chain associated with the lesser food reward. Two other monkeys stopped pulling either chain—preferring to starve rather than see another monkey in pain (Masserman et al 1964).

Mice, too, respond to the display of pain by their companions. Researchers at McGill University put pairs of mice together and injected one or both of them with a substance that induces mild stomach ache.

Mice reacted to the pain by wriggling and stretching their legs. But the intensity of the reaction depended on social cues. Mice wriggled and stretched more when their companions were also in pain (Langford 2006).

Moreover, mice exposed to the sight of a suffering cage mate were quicker to back away from an unpleasant heat source—suggesting that witnessing their companion’s discomfort made mice more sensitive to their own pain.

So there is nothing particularly human about finding the painful experiences of others unpleasant. But why is “second-hand” pain unpleasant or upsetting?

Evidence for neurological “mirroring” during empathic experiences

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It’s one of the most fascinating discoveries about empathy and the brain: When we see other people getting hurt, we automatically experience heightened brain activity in the same emotional circuits that process our own, first-hand pain.

Dubbed “mirroring,” the phenomenon has been documented in adults and children alike (Fallon et al 2020; Lamm et al 2011; Jackson et al 2006). And there’s evidence that something similar happens when we observe other individuals experiencing something pleasurable or rewarding (Morelli et al 2015).

This doesn’t mean that your finger hurts when you see me get a paper cut! But it’s consistent with the idea that part of the empathic reaction is rapid and automatic. Observing my injury may trigger an immediate awareness of the affective or emotional quality of my pain (Riečanský and Lamm 2019).

Evidence for more effortful, complex reasoning

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“Mirroring” may help explain the emotions that empathy evoke in us, such as the personal distress we experience when we see someone else in pain. But empathy can also have a more cerebral side.

For example, suppose that Link hands Zelda the keys to his car, and says “You drive.” Is Zelda happy to get a turn at the wheel? Or does she accept because (even though she hates driving) she knows that Link has a headache, and she wants to appear cheerful and helpful?

Figuring out other people’s feelings can depend a great deal on perspective-taking, which requires background information, including some knowledge about psychology. In many cases, you’ll also make a mental effort to get the job done. You won’t get the answer instantly and automatically.

And if the other guy’s predicament has the potential to upset you, you are going to need a way to compartmentalize — to be a bit more detached. If you get overwhelmed by your own emotional reactions, it will interfere with your ability to truly understand him.

There’s a lot going on with this type of empathy (which researchers call “cognitive empathy”), and we can see the results in brain imaging studies. In experiments where people are asked to perform cognitive empathy tasks, a variety of brain regions are activated, including parts of the medial prefrontal cortex (DLPFC; DMPFC, MMPFC, VMPFC); the precuneous; and the temporoparietal junction (Weng et al 2013; Yu and Chou 2018).

And some studies highlight connections between cognitive empathy and moral reasoning. For instance, Jean Decety and his colleagues have investigated how the brain distinguishes between the victims of accidents and victims of aggression.

The neural basis of morality?

Decety’s team showed kids two sets of images. One set depicted people experiencing painful accidents. The other set showed people who were being victimized by aggressors (Decety et al 2008).

In both scenarios, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) revealed that merely looking at images activated brain regions associated with the first-hand experience of pain.

But when kids watched images of one person deliberately inflicting pain on another person, additional brain regions (in the orbital medial frontal cortex and the paracingulate cortex) were activated.

Brain imaging research and studies of brain-damaged patients suggest that these regions are associated with social interaction, emotional self-control, and moral reasoning (Blair 2007; Sturm et al 2006).

Were the additional brain regions activated because the kids were engaged in social and moral thinking? It seems very plausible.

The activation wasn’t caused by the mere presence of multiple people in the images, because researchers controlled for that. And when kids were debriefed at the end of the experiment, most of them commented on the unfairness with which the victims had been treated.

Empathy and the brain: Why kids are cruel

The study mentioned above measured the responses of normally-developing kids. What about kids who show a cruel streak?

Decety’s group (2009) conducted a similar fMRI study on teenage boys with conduct disorder, or CD.

This disorder is a serious psychiatric condition linked with behaviors like physical aggression, manipulative lying, sexual assault, cruelty to animals, vandalism, and bullying. It’s also a precursor to antisocial personality disorder in adulthood (Lahey et al 2005).

Researchers screened boys (aged 16-18) for CD, and showed them the same types of images of accidents and assaults mentioned above.

The results were very interesting.

I feel your pain…and it makes me lash out

In some respects, the boys with CD responded like boys in the control group.

In particular, the mirror neuron system for pain was activated in both groups.

But there were dramatic differences.

First, the boys with conduct disorder experienced less activation in brain regions associated with self-regulation, theory of mind, and moral reasoning.

Second, the boys with CD actually exhibited a stronger “mirror” response to accidentally-caused pain.

And, unlike controls, the boys with conduct disorder experienced strong, bilateral activation in the amygdala and striatum.

What does this mean? It’s not clear. The amygdala processes emotion. And the striatum is activated by strong stimuli—both pleasurable and aversive.

So there are at least two possibilities.

The aggressive boys might have gotten a pleasurable “kick” out of viewing the pain of others.

But given that their own pain centers were strongly activated, it’s also possible that observing second-hand pain triggered negative emotions—emotions that make the boys behave more aggressively.

As Decety and his colleagues point out, negative emotions—particularly in people with poor emotional control—can cause agitation and outbursts of aggression (Berkowitz 2003). This effect may be magnified in kids who have trouble distinguishing their own first-hand pain from the pain of others.

Decety and colleagues speculate that boys with conduct disorder may experience high levels of agitation or distress when they experience second-hand pain. When this distress is combined with poor self-regulation of emotion, they lash out.

But whether second-hand pain makes aggressive kids feel good or irritable, one thing seems pretty certain:

The brains of boys with conduct disorder responded more intensely to images of other people experiencing pain.

And this intensity was linked with the boys’ aggressive tendencies. The more strongly a boy’s brain responded to second-hand pain, the more highly he scored on measures of daring and sadism.

Can empathy be taught?

Animal studies and brain scan research might make us wonder if feeling empathy is a purely automatic process.

But, as noted above, empathy is really a package of abilities, and there is overwhelming evidence that empathy and empathic concern can be shaped by experience and culture.

On the negative side, experiments suggest that exposure to media violence can desensitize us, blunting the brain’s response to second-hand pain (Guo et al 2013). It’s also pretty clear that people downgrade the pain they perceive in victims when those victims are

  • strangers (Meyer et al 2013)
  • members of another race or outgroup (Xu et al 2009; Hein et al 2010)
  • or individuals marked by social stigma (Decety et al 2010).

That might sound bleak, but this same research suggests ways that we might enhance empathy. For instance, it seems likely that we can increase empathy for members of outgroups by reflecting on the similarities between us.

For more information, see this article on the importance of fostering empathy and these practical tips for fostering empathy in kids.



References: Empathy and the brain

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Decety J, Bartal IB, Uzefovsky F, and Knafo-Noam A. 2016. Empathy as a driver of prosocial behaviour: highly conserved neurobehavioural mechanisms across species. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 371(1686).

Decety J, Echols S, and Correll J. 2010. The blame game: the effect of responsibility and social stigma on empathy for pain.J Cogn Neurosci. 22(5):985-97.

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Decety J, Michalska K, Akitsuki Y and Lahey BB. 2009. Atypical empathic responses in adolescents with aggressive conduct disorder: a functional MRI investigation. Biological Psychology 80(2):203-1.

Guo X, Zheng L, Wang H, Zhu L, Li J, Wang Q, Dienes Z, Yang Z. 2013. Exposure to violence reduces empathetic responses to other’s pain. Brain Cogn. 82(2):187-91.

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Content last modified 2/2014

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