E is for Empathy

Lookin' Good

2009-10-26T13:41:00.005-04:00

O.K., so he studies the vaginal fatty acids of menstruating chimpanzees.

Dr. Ryo Oda is also the author of a study that found that, well, really nice people look that way to others. (One clue: they smile a lot, genuinely.)

Ordinary college students, men and women, were able to distinguish which people were super-good (scoring in the top 10% for altruism) and which were super-not (bottom 10%), just from watching 30-second, silent videos of them talking.

So what about true psychopaths, thought to be masters at masking their true natures?

They're only .06 percent of the population; perhaps none found their way into the study?

Saxe Appeal

2009-10-25T16:13:00.009-04:00

She's baaack. My girl crush continues with this latest TED video featuring the empress of MIT's eponymous Saxelab, Rebecca Saxe.

Saxe studies human theory of mind and morality.

She discusses her experiment involving the hypothetical case of a white powder that is either labeled "poison" but is sugar or labeled "sugar" but is poison.

How much moral blame a subject assigns someone who places the powder in a friend's coffee in each scenario can actually be altered by running magnetic currents through the subject's RBTJ, a part of the brain that controls moral reasoning.

After her presentation, the moderator says he hopes Saxe isn't taking any calls from the Pentagon on her work.

"I'm not. I mean, they're calling, but I'm not taking the call," quips Becks.

Love her.

Too Much of a Good Thing

2009-10-24T12:05:00.004-04:00

Is it possible to be too empathic, too tuned in to what others are feeling and thinking, even to point where it impairs your functioning?

Sure, this is America, any excess is possible.

Columbia researchers have found that folks with Borderline Personality Disorder are better than the general population at reading the expression in other people's eyes -- and, gosh darn it, they're not always made happy by what they see.

Too much emotional information can be a real downer -- especially if you find yourself in a crowd of psychopaths or traumatized war veterans.

In fact, an overabundance of empathy may be what causes BPD in the first place.

Take the test to gauge your own ocular reading skills.

Fresh Err

2009-10-22T20:36:00.009-04:00

What, exactly, is wrong with shorn-n-horn-rimmed talk temptress Terry Gross (Fresh Air)?

Does she, like, have any human emotions -- at all?

I swear she's on the autism spectrum.

Just today on the radio, she goes (paraphrase)"hmm you seem to be showing a lot of emotion while talking about your difficult past," to poor Tracy Morgan (30 Rock). She went all Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory on him, outing him for crying during the interview in the flattest of tones.

She's known for asking refreshingly simple, basic questions. Uh, I'm starting to think it's because she's sorta simple herself -- at least in the EQ department.

Meh, she's long-married with no children. This is public radio, I mean, if you can't have kids, adopt a discontinued toaster. Adopt something. No, Terry has no need for diminutive love objects. Which makes the thousands of conversations she's had with her (mostly) touchy-feely guests about their adorable children (and myriad attending child-rearing issues) kinda weird, 'cause you know the whole time she's thinking: "So glad I don't have kids, so glad, soooo very glad."

In other news, Duke researchers have found out that autistic peeps have less sensitivity to oxytocin (used to treat the condition), about 30% less that regs, 'cause of higher-than-usual numbers of gene-regulating molecules called methyl groups. Some of this may be inherited; they're looking into it.

Did I mention that I know a family in which the women are simply unable to breastfeed? They just don't have it in 'em. (Very rare.) Oxytocin triggers the let-down effect in breastfeeding and other maternal behaviors -- or doesn't. These are some cold beyotches. And the male, breast-n-love-deprived children of the family -- they some cold mfers.

Creature Comforts

2009-09-25T13:41:00.008-04:00

So, here comes this new book, The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society, by Frans de Waal, which seems to draw upon examples of animal empathy to prove its existence in humans. I haven't read the thing yet, but at this (albeit early) stage, it begs the question for me: What about "Lessons from Our Own Human History and Experience," (I'm thinking Rawanda, BTK, Pol Pot)? I mean, how far can animals really take us in understanding ourselves, versus, say, looking at how people actually treat other people?

Now, I often refer to animal studies and will continue to do so, but I do so tongue-partly-in-cheek -- or wasn't that obvious? -- and partly because that's what's available in the empathy studies game. But I mean, we are some very special animals. And I have to believe that the behavior we observe in mice and even primates, while helpful, can take us only so far in explicating human ways versus studying, well, actual people. I mean, whatever "the difference that makes the difference" is, why we are the way we are, why we have culture and art and the Internet and shoes (caused by the advent of charred food, allowing our jaws to get smaller and our brains bigger as argued in Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human?), well, whatever it is, by now, it's a pretty big difference. We have diverged. And how. Big time. And how we treat one another can't fully be explained or excused by other critters' codes of conduct. We will not be shamed by dolphins and whales!

We're gonna have to shame ourselves.

Moral Arguments

2009-09-12T10:48:00.007-04:00

Thanks for the comments on the Father Land post.

Also wanted to point people to a germane TED talk by Jonathan Haidt about the moral mind, politics and personality.

He compares how different political persuasions define "morality" differently, giving varying weight to five basic values: Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity.

Ingroup, Authority and Purity show the greatest disparity between left and right. For example, on a question about choosing a dog, Conservatives prefered a dog who was loyal but not warm to strangers, whereas Liberals went for a dog who was independent-minded and related to its owner as an equal.

Oh, and here's a quiz you can take to participate in Haidt's morality research.

While we're on the TED track, here's a truly jarring presentation by (the rather devilish-looking) psychologist Philip Zimbardo (author of the famed Stanford prison study and The Lucifer Effect) about how good soldiers turned bad at Abu Graib.

It includes VERY graphic pictures taken by the American reservists themselves of the torture they commited on prisoners. Horrifying!

He tries to explain how even previously normal people can commit dispicably evil acts.

It boils down to a kind of circumstantial group think and the power of authority. People will do things within anonymous organizational frameworks they would never do on their own. (Even so, some outliers do stand up and refuse.)

He advocates promoting everyday heroism among children.

The Smelly Side of Empathy, Part II and a Very Bad Connection

2009-09-11T17:57:00.003-04:00

So, smell and empathy seem to be related, both centered in the amygdala.

First it was the stressed vs. regular sweat identification. Now here's a study that suggests empathic folks are better at telling you by your scent.

A 2002 study came to the same conclusion and showed it's the right nostril of empaths that does the heavy, uh, sniffing.

Oh, and psychopaths have been shown to suck at smelling.

Speaking of psychopaths, from the ville of Jack the Ripper comes new evidence about how these bad boys' brains are different from yours and mine.

Using "advanced brain-scanning techniques" a King's College team has revealed "that a critical connection between two regions of the brain appears to be abnormal in psychopaths."

The worse the psychopath, the bigger the abnomality in a little something called the "uncinate fasciculus," which connects the -- you guessed it -- amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex.

Father Land

2009-09-11T07:26:00.008-04:00

A comment on an earlier post inspires a re-pondering of the whole left/right split -- not the left/right brain, but the political Left and Right, particularly now that health care is exposing the rift-o-rama big-time.

So, liberal people and conservative people see their existences rather differently, according to the previously-sited study by McAdams et al, which I shall go into more here.

The research took its cue from the work of George Lakoff, author of The Political Mind, proponent of the belief that family history and politics are intimately connected -- and predictive.

Basically, Lakoff says Republican people think polititians should practice tough-love like a strict father, heavy on rules and guidelines, fostering self-reliance and self-discipline. Dems model their pols on a softer parenting style, with children/citizens needing "love, empathy and nurturance" to fulfil their inner potential and become empathic and caring people.

The recent study tested this theory by asking participants from the left and right to relate what they considered 12 key scenes in their life stories and indicate why they were so significant. The researchers then counted the number of times each group included examples of "rules-reinforcements" (authority figures exerting control),"self-discipline" (exertion of moral control over emotions), "nurturant care-giving," and "empathy-openness."

Not surprisingly, the strict parenting themes appeared more frequently in the Conservatives' tales, while empathy and openness ruled in the Liberals' yarns. While nurturing care-givers also appeared in the right-wing stories, the take away messages from these interactions tended to be about increased self-reliance, whereas the lefties' lessons stressed becoming more empathic.

So, what does this say about health care reform? It's the war of two worlds. One which defines love (and politics) as teaching little Johnny to help himself so he'll grow big and strong, the other as lending little Johnny a helping hand so he'll do the same for others.

Can Strict Father and Doting Dad come together on the playground of life and come up with a single plan by which to parent both their kids?

Have you been to the playground (or the soccer field) lately?

Super Rat

2009-08-15T16:41:00.004-04:00

I've blogged about vasopressin (the anti-diuretic that also promotes bonding) before and my observation that chronically thirsty people seem to have less empathy.

Here comes another ripple in this parched tale/tail: Rats engineered to be deficient in the hormone seem to do better at certain tasks.They have "enhanced visuospatial attention performanceand faster motor-initiation times."

Hmm, that geek chugging Mana potion in the corner who's reeeally good at Ikaruga...Just walk away slowly.

OxyMean?

2009-08-15T13:54:00.007-04:00

What if the same thing that makes you care a lot about other people makes you care a lot about how other people are doing compared to you? That is, whether they've got more money, a better marriage, or a nicer house?

So, while you'd save your neighbor's kid from drowning, you'd kinda be wishing you had as nice a pool as they did while you were doing it. Or, if your pool is bigger, well, all the better, ha ha.

What if caring has a flip side, a dark side. Empathy plus envy...enpathy.

Or, what if the same indifference that makes you not give two hoots if your neighbor lives or dies also makes you never compare your yard/barbeque/car/pool/life with theirs?

Such are the conclusions being drawn by researchers at the University of Haifa, who are finding that oxytocin -- the much-celebrated bonding and empathy-promoting hormone -- may boost the intensity of social emotions generally -- including some not-so-nice ones.

Say it ain't so, oxy! But it makes sense. The least empathic people I know never compare themselves to other people, other people, what other people?

Nice Mice

2009-08-10T23:18:00.004-04:00

Researchers are probing the genetic roots of human empathy with some regular Stuart Littles.

Certain mice saw a bud get shocked at the sound of a tone, then later froze in fear when they heard the same sound: They made a connection between another mouse's experience and their own.

When another group of mice heard the tone, zippo.

The former were genetically engineered to be social and seek out others. The latter were from a strain of reclusive rodents.

Not Something to Sneeze At

2009-08-07T18:38:00.005-04:00

So, the cure for the common cold is . . . a caring doctor.

A Family Medicine study found that high-TLC physicians, those who scored in the top 25% on patients' Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE) questionnaires, enhanced snifflers' immune system responses, causing colds to become milder and disappear a day earlier.

A new twist on health care reform, for sure.

The Sweet Smell of My Stress

2009-08-07T18:04:00.004-04:00

I have empathy for the Stony Brook scientists who released their study about how humans have the ability to distinguish between the smell of other peoples' stressed-out sweat and their exercise sweat -- with only the former tripping the emotional, empathic centers of our brains -- one month after a German team found the same thing.

Live and ERN

2008-10-27T09:22:00.003-04:00

Have you heard of ERN, Error-Related Negativity? It's what bums you out (er, lowers your dopamine level) when you get an answer wrong on a test, make a mistake, transgress.

Have you ever noticed that some people don't seem to feel bad when they err? A great trait...to an extent. But, what if they don't seem to be bothered -- and it hurts them and you.

Beating oneself up too much is neurotic, but don't we all need a little neurosis to nudge us in the right direction sometimes?

Some folks don't flinch, whimper or whine, but are absolutely fine with failing. They would prefer to win, sure, but if they don't, they show nothing because they feel nothing. It's on to the next activity, business as usual. You could call it resilient...or really low in ERN...or something else.

Well, not surprisingly, in adolescent males, empathy and this ERN don't go together, but risk-taking does.

Psychopaths have been shown to be low ERN, never learning squat from their mistakes since they simply don't make them feel bad.

Political Parting

2008-10-07T23:37:00.007-04:00

I'm all for reaching across the aisle and all, but I swear sometimes I think Dems and Repubs are just too plain, damn different to coexist.

Enter neuroscience, discovering that, yes, left-wing brains are different from right-wing ones. To wit, a study out of Northwestern U.:

"Content analysis of 12 key scenes in life stories showed that conservatives, as predicted, tended to depict authority figures as strict enforcers of moral rules and to identify lessons in self-discipline. By contrast, liberals were more likely to identify lessons learned regarding empathy and openness...." HMMM

A country divided indeed.

Swede Success

2008-08-30T16:40:00.005-04:00

An elemental, if not terribly exciting, piece of science outta, well, Sweden, finds that, yes, having a common past experience makes us more empathetic with someone.

Subjects read stories, some of which mirrored their own lives, and rated the degree of empathy they felt.

Maybe that's the reason why, when comforting others, we tend to bring up similar situations we were in (my mother also died; I too divorced), not to make the other person feel better, or hog sympathy for ourselves, but to try to trigger our own sense of empathy.

Doggie See, Doggie...(oh, you get the idea)

2008-08-10T20:39:00.003-04:00

"Dogs catch human yawns" is the title of a new UK study.

This "may indicate that dogs possess the capacity for a rudimentary form of empathy."

Amazing, quite.

Though, as they're our best friends, guard and protect us, miss us, jump on us and generally love us, we kinda figured something was going on.

Chimps also copy human yawning, but who wants one of those hellions as a pet...

Pricks and Stones

2008-07-24T17:28:00.004-04:00

They (O.K., Harvard was involved) showed some "normal" people a video of a hand getting penetrated with a needle.

(Ouch!)

They hooked up their brains and . . .

Those who scored highest on the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) showed significantly less mirror neuron activity while watching this fright fest.

But wait, there's more.

A nasty little subset -- those who scored highest on a particularly charming trait called "coldheartedness" -- gave the least damn about the whole "needle through the other guy's hand thingie," so the brain monitoring showed.

Again, these were not patients, malfunctioning psychopaths in jails or hospitals, just regular folk off the street. Your boss maybe. Your ex.

Geez.

I Can't Believe She's Gone

2008-07-22T18:10:00.003-04:00

It is with full-blown sadness that I mourn the passing of someone I've never met, talked to or, save for one, what looks like old, photo, seen.

I'm talking about Kathy Krajco.

I exchanged an email or two as comments on her website shortly before she died. I was looking forward to a continuing dialogue...and now...

One of the clearest, strongest, truest voices on this thing we call the web, is silent. I feel gypped (politically incorrect word). But mostly I feel profoundly sad.

Sadder than I have when other people I've known better, longer, heck, than when people I've actually known, have died!

Why?

If you haven't read her blog and main website in their entirety, digitally run now -- leave this mere shadow of her blog behind. You can also buy her book.

My God, people, this is a loss. This was a Good person. I just know it. You would to, if you read her stuff.

Did I always agree? No. And we went back and forth a bit. But you know what? Kathy Krajco was so smart in that common sense meets great intellect kind of way, that I simply could not argue with her. I could feel the honesty, integrity, the personal truth of her words over the electric picket fence, so to speak, to such a degree that I wound up thinking that, yup, in a way, in her way, she was right.

For Kathy, bad people were bad. She didn't give a hoot how they got that way, I think. (She was a former science teacher, by the way.) In her opinion, they chose their dark path, albeit often at a very young age, and then got locked in. Evil has its rewards. It is very often the easy way, a free ride, morally and emotionally: all take and no give. To Kathy, I guess, trying to put evil's causes under a microscope (looking at hormonal and genetic causes, etc.) felt too close to excusing it. She cared, first and foremost, about educating and helping the victims of abusers. To that end, she discussed the evildoer's methods and motives. But devoting brainpower to figuring out what made the bad bad -- as this blog is wont to do -- I bet she thought that was a major waste of time.

But still, she was supportive of my comments and this website, even linking to it, which was a great honor.

I felt I knew her.

I know I will miss her.

Fight, Fight, Fight!

2008-06-26T09:06:00.007-04:00

O.K., empathy scientists aren't exactly to whom we turn when looking for WWF-quality (sorry, World Wide Fund for Nature) combat, but, hey, we'll take what we can get.

This latest tussle takes on one piece of the empathy puzzle: Do you need to care to act?

A new study examines the long-standing battle between developmental psychologist Martin Hoffman, who argues that empathic distress (suffering when someone else is suffering) is the gateway emotion for altruistic action and, in the other corner, social psychologist Daniel Batson, who says it's not required, as sometimes people "do the right thing" due to a sense of responsibility, social pressure or to make themselves look good.

This paper, at least, declares Hoffman the winner, offering fMRI results to show that empathic distress and empathic altruism "share a common basis."

So, I feel your pain -- and that's why I'm gonna do something about it.

Bad News

2008-06-25T16:57:00.007-04:00

I guess I kind of disagree with today's Supreme Court decision to disallow the death penalty for child rape.

If you torture, repeatedly rape and mutilate a child (or the equivalent), death should at least be able to be considered.

Then again, maybe a ban would deter someone from going farther and killing their victim.

This is reminding me of all kinds of bad things.

Yesterday, a homeless ex-con who raped, slit the eyelids of, Krazy Glued the mouth of, poured bleach on, damaged the kidneys of with pills and finally set fire to a grad student for 19 hours was found guilty. He'll be sentenced in a month.

The purpetrator's reaction to his fate has been widely reported:

"The judge said that Williams was told a verdict had been reached, he simply turned over in his courthouse cell and went back to sleep."

Apparently he's lost a lot of his joie de vivre since he stopped being able to violate and torture (other) human beings.

Ethic Tale

2008-06-23T23:43:00.004-04:00

Good golly, what an interesting post about the development of our morality (replete with a little biproduct called religion) over at Evolving Thoughts.

Emanuel, Emanuel, Emanuel

2008-06-19T12:16:00.010-04:00

I'm having a delayed reaction to the wild Emanuel brothers appearance on Charlie Rose the other night, which was supposed to be about healthcare, but was not.

In a way it was about genetics.

Filial relatedness -- and not in a good way.

One brother, Ari, is the model for the monster agent, Ari, on HBO's Entourage.

One is some sort of holier-than-thou (wait 'til you're in pain, bucko) NIH ethicist-oncologist against assisted suicide.

(As the daughter of a dead cancer patient, alls I can say is: oy.)

Lastly, we have a "pitbull" congressman, a big "D" Democrat with a Republican personality.

Are you sensing the contradictions in this brood?

What I love about these guys is they are obviously all narcissistic but they wear the mantle of goodness like an Armani tux at a $20,000-a-plate fundraiser for the poor.

Charlie forgot about healthcare (hey, he's covered) and tried to get to the bottom of the brothers' respective and collective grandness.

Lot's of talk about values and service discussed at the childhood dinner table, which was very egalitarian and physically round, a mother who championed civil rights, a father who was a union supporter. . .

This with a Hollywood agent in the room.

Plus a lot of talk about report cards that were posted for all to see, fierce competition, achievement at all costs with a healthy sprinkle of that ultimate in moral contradictions (can you say "chosen people"?), modern-day Judaism.

By the end, I wanted to take a shower, call a therapist, renounce half my ethnicity and change my political party, not necessarily in that order.

Left is More

2008-06-17T16:51:00.007-04:00

If you're in a boring work meeting, a never-ending college seminar, or just toughing it out at the old in-laws, you might want to seat yourself on your boss's/professor's/relative's left.

Researchers studying right hemisphere activation and empathy have discovered that we tend to interpret faces as looking happier if they are portside as we face them.

Kinda counterintuitive, I think. I mean the term "sinister" and all that.

But maybe this brain glitch -- of being fooled by the appearance of those on our left and trusting them too much -- contributed to the left side's bad rep.

Basinette of Evil

2008-06-15T13:37:00.017-04:00

Babies, babies everywhere!

Big pregnant ladies about to burst!

'Tis the season of giving birth. Glorious signs of new life abound.

A good friend is expecting her bundle of...joy...any second now.

Got me thinking about the whole nature vs. nurture debate.

I mean, what are we, as mothers, to think if, after busting our butts and doing everything "right," the proverbial bad seed comes out of us?

It's a river in Egypt, for most of us, I expect.

But parents of horrors needn't be in denial or fret and feel guilty (at least the ones who didn't provide the meanie genes!): More and more evidence shows that, to a large degree, bad guys and gals are, well, born bad as babies.

What's more, our harsh or "bad" parenting may just be a result of these annoyingly naughty and haughty kids' behavior and not a cause of it.

As reported in Crime Times, genetic epidemiologist Henrik Larsson and colleagues have found that anti-social and so-called callous-unemotional traits (lack of empathy) are highly heritable (his previous work showed this also, as have many others'). The (poor) parents of these bad-behaving kids do tend to punish them more if they also have antisocial behaviors to go along with callousness (sins of commission plus sins of omission), says the study. But this harsh discipline is child-driven.

We're talking setting the table on fire, not forgetting to set the table, n'est pas?

So, what about some kind of genetic testing to avoid the Child from Hell?

You read my mind.

Another recent study has identified genotype GG (of the C-1291G polymorphism in the alpha 2A adrenoreceptor gene, or something like that) to be connected with low morality, low orderliness and depression in adolescents.

That's right, your nasty teen who never comes out of her messy room is a random victim of her genes.

Get her a "GG" t-shirt, bribe her way into community college and call it a day.

Did we mention the same genotype makes her crave sweet foods, become overweight and smoke cigarettes?

We're off the hook.