The condition of man is a condition of war, wrote 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes. A quick glance through history books and today's news headlines certainly seems to support the longstanding idea that humans by nature are aggressive, selfish and antagonistic.
But this view simply doesn't fit with scientific facts, write researchers featured in the new book "Origins of Altruism and Cooperation"... The book's authors argue that humans are naturally cooperative, altruistic and social, only reverting to violence when stressed, abused, neglected or mentally ill.
This article shows you how to develop empathy and deals with helpful ways that allow you to perceive the world from another person's perspective.
The following article has a lot to share about compassion, empathy and in general the ability to think yourself into another person’s shoes, if you so want. It will also show you what you can do to develop and cultivate empathy. The origin of the famous proverb “before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes” was quite difficult to find, as there are many who simply rephrased and added their own “spin” to this commonly known quote.
Empathy is a critical aspect of human emotion that influences the behavior of individuals as well as the functioning of society. Although empathy is fundamentally a subjective experience, no studies have yet examined the neural correlates of the self-reported experience of empathy.
Furthermore, although behavioral research has linked empathy to prosocial behavior, no work has yet connected empathy-related neural activity to everyday, real-world helping behavior
Politics is making Americans dumb and mean. It's turning a generous, forward-thinking people into glib, defensive, narrow-minded bores.
Kristen Cambell of the National Council on Citizenship, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering civic engagement, was also in that last group. "Successful civic eRodriguez: A cultural civics lessonngagement," she told me, "is all about capturing and harnessing empathy. Ultimately, we're talking about wanting people to care for their neighbors, communities, their country."
At first glance, the word "empathy" evokes vaguely religious associations, something well beyond the reach of civic organizations. But strip away memories of Sunday school and you'll find a concept that's eminently useful in secular, public life. By Gregory Rodriguez
Men are not as 'tuned' in to people's feelings as women. A nasal spray can make men more in tune with other people's feelings, say a team of German and UK researchers.
They found that inhaling the "cuddle hormone" oxytocin made men just as empathetic as women.
This study is the latest of several that suggest that intranasal oxytocin seems to 'sensitise' people to become more aware of social cues from other individuals. by Emma Wilkinson
This booklet contains information for teachers and parents about including animals in our efforts to teach empathy to our children.
The purpose is to provide teachers and parents with information on the importance of empathy to children’s success at school and in their social and personal lives. It also illustrates the valuable role that animals play in the development of empathy and offers practical ideas for helping children learn this important skill through their everyday contact with animals.
This booklet was originally published by the Doris Day Animal Foundation which later became part of the Human Society of the United States.
Empathy, she explained, is largely mediated by a structure called the insula. It is predominantly a right brain structure that connects to the visceral organs-the heart and intestine. It also connects the brain with the skin and mediates sensations of touch and temperature. It is responsible for what is commonly referred to as a "gut feeling." Empathy, then, in its truest form, means to literally feel what another person is feeling.
True empathy, an actual physical experience, is somewhat rare. Empathy has healing power, both for the listener and the person being heard. It represents a profound attunement between two human beings. It is something to strive for in all relationships.
One of our tests of social understanding was to show people a set of photographs of people's eyes from Simon Baron-Cohen's Mind-in-the-Eyes test. Each photo is of someone's eyes as if seen through a letter box, with mouth and forehead not visible. In each photo the person is feeling and thinking something different, and people who take the test have to say what this is.
The test measures empathy, and what psychologists call theory-of-mind: understanding what another person might be thinking and feeling. The second test was of 15 video clips of people in social interaction, in which people have to answer a question about what was going on in each clip. We found that the more fiction people read, the better they were at the Mind-in-the-Eyes test, .. by Keith Oatley
Schwartz, 44, filed a lawsuit last week against the university contending he was dismissed from a master's degree program to be a family counselor after it was determined that he lacked empathy.
In an effort to get some attention for his situation, Schwartz was going to conduct an empathy workshop on Thursday at the polar bear pit at the St. Louis Zoo. by Deb Peterson
Industrial Design content and community site - articles, discussions, interviews and resources.
Great designers are great empathizers. It's what separates a design that has soul from one that's simply well-realized. In my experience as a design director and as a teacher, it's become painfully clear that the ability to connect with users is something design students must learn, as crucially as they need sketching and CAD. Unfortunately, the most common student design project has students designing with themselves as the target user. by Paul Backett
Empathy is crucial to human understanding. It allows us to see another's perspective and reminds us of our common, shared experiences. Unfortunately, a recent study published in Personality and Social Psychology Review shows that since the early 1980s empathy scores have dropped a significant amount. The causes for this are varied, and educators are already thinking about how to address this critical issue in the classroom.
While the low empathy scores published in the Personality and Social Psychology Review are troubling, they are not yet a reason for real concern. Empathy is not a fixed trait, rather, it is similar to a muscle that can grow or if not given enough care, can easily atrophy and wither away. By Bobby Mann
Full-blown empathy is when you can feel another person's walk, their energy, their breath, their anxiety, their wisdom, their suffering, their confusion, their brilliance, their hopes and fears...
When we see and feel life from somebody else's point of view, I think we can realize that for the most part other people are just trying to be happy in their own life in their own way. Sometimes their pursuit aligns with our own happiness, sometimes it is kind of neutral to us and sometimes it appears to be diametrically opposed to our own experience of well-being.
Want an empathy workout for your brain? Read a book! At right the blue shows activation patterns associated with emotional comprehension (blue) and perspective taking (yellow) when reading a story.
It turns out, when we read an emotional work, we activate a complex mentalizing network in order to think about the mental state of another person. Imagining a person in a different place takes more brain power (reading slows) and also activates the spatial network necessary to set up a scene in the brain.
Baron-Cohen has developed a new model for characterizing gender differences that he calls the systemizing/empathizing theory. Systemizing “is the drive to build or analyze a system, which is simply anything that follows rules or patterns.” Like Legos. And empathizing is the drive to “identify (and respond to) someone else’s thoughts and feelings...
He has found that higher levels of testosterone lead to a child who is more likely to be interested in systems and less interested in empathy and people. He concludes by saying that more research is needed. by Amy Windsor
Empathy is defined as identifying with another person's feelings, or emotionally placing one's self in the place of another. The trait is a theme in Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird...."
The overall character of Atticus Finch is an example of how empathy is used in the novel. He displays empathy in his strong beliefs of racial equality, which was uncommon in the 1930s in Alabama. by Scott Cornell, img http://bit.ly/qCuGfy
Empathy, then, develops from the experience of empathy—not from suffering. We tend to think of empathy as something that comes from “knowing what it’s like” to feel pain—but the origins of empathy are in shared nurture. People are most empathetic when they feel calm and safe: if your own needs aren’t being met, it’s hard to think of someone else’s. This is why it’s impossible to spoil an infant by responding to him or her—and why punishment doesn’t make bullies into nicer people
If you want empathetic kids, the best thing to do is to be an empathetic person and show kids why kindness matters. Also show them that it feels good— people are often embarrassed about the pleasure of helping others, seeing it as unseemly or as some kind of stain that makes an altruistic act into a selfish one.
by Maia Szalavitz, author Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential-- And Endangered
Exploring the role of empathy in a variety of Pacific societies, this book is at the forefront of the latest anthropological research on empathy. It presents distinct articulations of empathy in the Pacific region.
Buddhist roshi Joan Halifax works with people at the last stage of life (in hospice and on death row). She shares what she’s learned about compassion in the face of death and dying, and a deep insight into the nature of empathy.
How much empathy does one need to be an effective talk therapist? Can university professors aptly determine whether graduate students have enough of it to join the counseling profession?
These questions lie at the heart of a lawsuit that's been filed against Webster University by a miffed student, who was dismissed from the school's Master's-level counseling program in March. The week before David Schwartz received his termination letter, he claims his adviser told him he lacked the necessary empathy the profession demands. By John H. Tucker
RT's Anastasia Churkina tells the story of Yusef Ramelize -- a graphic designer who goes homeless in the Big Apple for one week every year to bring attention to the growing numbers of homeless people in the America. [Role Playing - to feel what it's like to be homeless]
At CCARE, Emiliana is continuing to investigate the multifaceted properties of compassion, running studies that investigate the effects of compassion cultivation on health, well-being and psychosocial functions and organizing events around highlighting compassion science and promoting greater exchange and collaboration.
Have you ever been annoyed by flip-flops in the scientific literature? Many people, for example, feel this way when it comes to nutrition science: Diet advice, it sometimes seems, changes almost as fast as hardware from Apple.
It can make one wonder about—even doubt—the usefulness of science. And so it was last week, when Greater Good Editor-in-Chief Jason Marsh referred me to a recently published article that contradicts the findings I talk about in this blog post about the relationship between empathy and prejudice. By Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton
The word prejudice refers to an opinion or feeling formed without knowledge, thought or reason. It is like judging a book by it's cover be it good or bad. But in the world prejudice is usually an unreasonable opinion of someone not something. And with empathy which means putting yourself in someone's position, does it reduce prejudice or promote it. This is a really debatable question as empathy can do both. Imagine, a person whom you've known your whole life does something horrible, but when you confront him, he has a questionable explanation for why he did it. By standing in his shoes, will it reduce prejudice or promote it? After all you've known him your whole life, would he really do such a thing? And yet all evidence points to him, and he has a motive for doing the crime too. This is but a simple example of how empathy can do both depending on how you look at it. That is why i find this article extremely intresting an would like to research more about it.
The Dalai Lama has been telling us for years that it would make us happy, but he never said it would make us healthy, too.
Compassion can’t cure cancer or banish suffering. But the steady re-orientation of the mind toward compassion can be the beginning of a virtuous cycle, with decreased stress boosting the immune system and the boosted immune system improving attitude, which can further enhance health.
And we can all take comfort in knowing that we are part of a larger movement, says Charles Raison, clinical director of the Emory University Mind-Body Program: “We ignored the emotions for 50 years, and like everything that gets ignored or undervalued, like real estate, there’s a goldmine there”—a goldmine whose wealth we all can share.
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