“Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies,” Frans de Waal...
Until just 12 years ago, the common view among scientists was that humans were “nasty” at the core but had developed a veneer of morality — albeit a thin one, de Waal told scientists and journalists from some 50 countries.
But human children — and most higher animals — are “moral” in a scientific sense, because they need to cooperate with each other to reproduce and pass on their genes, he said.
Empathy, the ability to identify and to some extent feel another person’s emotions, is sometimes considered a sign of weakness; a fault that can interfere with the kind of upward mobility considered an ideal of a capitalist society. In his role as the amoral businessman Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film Wall Street, Michael Douglas famously stated “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind (…)”
However, with the exception of psychopaths (interestingly enough, some people theorize that psychopathy is an adaptive trait in corporate environments), people all share some degree of empathy. It’s the basis of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
When Occupy Wall Street and similar protests played out over the past year, the phenomenon looked familiar to Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal: He's seen similar moral outrage over economic inequity expressed by monkeys and chimps.
All this meshes with the message of de Waal's latest book, "The Age of Empathy."...
Here are a few more nuggets from de Waal's lecture and news briefing in Vancouver:
Empathy — the ability to share an emotional connection with other individuals — isn't unique to humans. But humans, like many other species, make a distinction between in-group and out-group connections. Having a sense of empathy for people beyond our "in-group," however that's defined, may be a "fragile experiment" being conducted by our species, de Waal said.
Biological research increasingly debunks the view of humanity as competitive, aggressive and brutish, a leading specialist in primate behavior told a major science conference Monday.
"Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies," Frans de Waal, a biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
New research on higher animals from primates and elephants to mice shows there is a biological basis for behavior such as cooperation, said de Waal, author of "The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society."...
"Human morality is unthinkable without empathy." Asked if wide public acceptance of empathy as natural would change the intense competition on which capitalist economic and political systems are based, de Waal quipped, "I'm just a monkey watcher."
Bernard Amadei: Empathy is not a pill that’s taken so you care about others; there are prerequisites. We’re all born with it, but our educational system makes us forget it. It’s about creating a level of cultivation and culture that allows people to remember it. For us, once we start working in the developing world, we remember it--whether we sustain it is a different story.
What fuels empathy is the sense of belonging to a bigger community. It breaks your heart to see people like you hurting: women hurting because they don’t have access to water, kids hurting because they’re playing in sewage. The education system forces people to unlearn the empathy they’re born with. It’s a system based on always seeming strong, on contributing to the economy, on being number one. It’s about celebrating all of those superlative statements. Being number one is the rule of game, and how we relate to others is fundamentally dismissed.
At lunchtime I chaired an event with Roman Krznaric that will soon be available to download from our website. In light of the event’s intriguing title, and my current oppressive workload, I wanted just to list the six habits(from scribbles of shifting slides, so not verbatim), and add a little thoughtlet on each of them.
1) Develop curiosity about strangers Who are all these people? Roman mentioned that people inclined towards empathy typically look for things that bring people together, rather than those that separate them. The next time you see a stranger who looks like a radically different creature, consider the abundance of things you must have in common, by virtue of being human, but also allow yourself to be pleasantly surprised by the differences.
If you want to become a better manager, work on improving your empathy. Ask clarifying questions to understand your people's situations better. Be sure to focus on emotional cues. Appreciate not only what others are saying, but also how and why they are saying it. Also listen for what’s not being said.
I can't stress enough how much empathy plays into effective management and leadership. In the work I do coaching executives, the ones who have the most trouble are those who never learned to express care. Without empathy, you will have a tendency to misread other people.
MedWire News Results from a US study show that impaired perspective-taking, a component of cognitive empathy, is associated with reduced functioning in patients with schizophrenia.
Empathy, or sharing and understanding the unique emotions and experiences of other people, is one of the key elements of social cognition, and prior studies suggest that empathic processes are impaired in schizophrenia," explain Matthew Smith ..
To investigate whether impairments in empathy are independently associated with poor functional outcomes in schizophrenia patients, the team studied 46 patients with the disorder...
How empathy plays a part in the healing process for those with eating disorders. By Judy Scheel,
Empathy is the ability to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings that are being experienced by another, and to feel what it's like to be in his or her shoes. Most eating disorder sufferers feel pain and fear, and are trapped by ruminating and self-loathing thoughts. Sometimes families, friends and the general public believe that eating disordered behavior is voluntary, or that the sufferer truly feels deep down that he or she is better than others. The reality is that any attempt to "appear" better than others is really a protection against these deep feelings of self-loathing, shame, guilt and loneliness....
The idea of empathy isn't so that family and friends can experience or take on the sufferer's emotions; it's simply an interactive experience shared between two people. Empathy transcends sympathy.
Welcome to the quick guide that helps explain the sign up process to the Global Cognitive Empathy Study (GCES). For more information please go to www.cognisess.com
The capacity of animals to empathise is of high potential relevance to the welfare of group-housed domestic animals. Emotional empathy is a multifaceted and multilayered phenomenon which ranges from relatively simple processes such as emotional matching behaviour to more complex processes involving interaction between emotional and cognitive perspective taking systems. Our previous research has demonstrated that hens show clear behavioural and physiological responses to the mild distress of their chicks. To investigate whether this capacity exists outside the mother/offspring bond, we conducted a similar experiment in which domestic hens were exposed to the mild distress of unrelated, but familiar adult conspecifics.
The human brain evolved to ensure our survival. One example of that survival instinct is our sense of competition – historically, it’s part of what drives us to wage wars over power and resources. But an equally powerful survival tactic is our ability to love and cooperate with others.
“A lot of times, that story never gets told,” says Karen Gerdes, a social worker at ASU. She is interested in empathy, which is the ability to perceive the world from other people’s points of view and to feel what they are feeling. Empathy is a complex emotion because it involves both unconscious, involuntary responses and conscious, cognitive processes. For example, suppose you’ve had a traumatic experience, like losing a loved one.
“You see someone else who is going through that experience, and your brain automatically starts firing as if it’s happening to you. That helps you to understand a little bit better about what that person is going through,” Gerdes says.
This ten-week course will articulate studies and theories in developmental psychology and developmental neuroscience on the domain social emotions and moral reasoning:
How infants evaluate social interactions Moral emotions Empathy and prosocial behavior Executive functions, self regulation Moral development Brain circuits associated with moral reasoning
Morality emerges as a child begins to think about right and wrong, recognize with the feelings of others, and act in prosaically ways. While thinking, feeling, and acting are all aspects of morals, this article spotlights on feeling and ways caregivers can endorse the development of understanding in young children.
Empathy, Infants, and Toddlers Empathy is essential to moral development since it allows us to recognize with the complete range of emotions experienced by others. The skill to empathize develops slowly and appears to be an essential precondition to acting in caring ways.
Marine biologists and philosophers have joined forces to support a controversial declaration of rights for whales and dolphins on the grounds that their astonishing intelligence and emotional empathy puts them on a par with humans.
Research into the complex behaviour of cetaceans – whales, dolphins and porpoises – is revealing that these sea mammals are so highly evolved and complex in terms of their behaviour that they deserve special protection with a universal bill of rights, they said.
Humans are not as competitive, aggressive and brutish as early theories suggest, according to new research...
During his address, Dr de Waal showed the audience videos from laboratories revealing the emotional distress of a monkey denied a treat that another monkey received, and of a rat giving up chocolate in order to help another rat escape from a trap.
"Human morality is unthinkable without empathy," he said.
But he told reporters the research also shows animals bestow their empathy on animals they are familiar with in their "in-group", and said that natural tendency posed a challenge in a globalised human world.
Rick Santorum is trying to bring back a version of George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism, with one major difference: very little talk of government programs.
Bush's version was a government-centric model, which his campaign brain trust used to differentiate him from the stereotype of the free-market conservative who cared little about the circumstances of the less fortunate...
"'Compassionate conservative' was the shorthand that would signal to the world that Bush was different,"
Empathy is a relatively new word, only having come about in the 20th century. While most social work classes discuss empathy to some extent, few schools have incorporated the latest research into the curriculum. But Gerdes believes they soon will, because empathy is an important concept for both social workers and the general public.
“When you have an empathy deficit, like Hitler did, you have genocide,” Gerdes says. “When you have appropriate empathy, those things don’t happen because you’ll interfere with them happening. You’ll do everything you can, because it’s at the core of our human interaction that I try to understand you and you try to understand me.”
Mike Lewinski's comment February 20, 2012 11:40 AM
I like this. It reminds me of something that the poet Denise Levertov wrote, which is one of my all time favorite quotes by anyone:
"There can be no self-respect without respect for others, no love and reverence for others without love and reverence for oneself; and no recognition of others is possible without the imagination. The imagination of what it is to be those other forms of life that want to live is the only way to recognition; and it is that imaginative recognition that brings compassion to birth. Man's capacity for evil, then, is less a positive capacity, for all its horrendous activity, than a failure to develop mans most human function, the imagination, to its fullness, and consequently a failure to develop compassion."
Jonathan Rowson posted this cool article on how to be or become more empathic - it's actually a brief summary of a recent talk at the RSA by Roman Krznaric:
Drawing on his new book, 'The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of How to Live', cultural thinker Roman Krznaric reveals how empathy - the art of stepping into the shoes of another person and seeing the world from their perspective - can not only enrich your own life but also help create social change by helping us challenge prejudices and overcome social divides.
Drawing on everything from the empathy experiments of George Orwell to developments in industrial design, from the struggle against slavery in the eighteenth century to the Middle East crisis today, Roman explores six different ways we can expand our empathic potential.
All our political candidates need to be sent back to compassion school. They need to take vows before they run for office that they will have compassion for we the people, for each other, for our global family, for the earth. These candidates need to become more than talk show hosts or master of ceremonies trying to woo us for votes. We condone such terrible behavior on television, candidates attacking each other, doing anything to win. Politicians shouldn't be allowed to act so hatefully anymore.
I miss the time of the Philosopher Kings, creative thinkers with a conscience who were connected to the mysteries of human life and the universe. People who could get beyond their egos to see there is a greater meaning and purpose to leadership than grandiosity or powe
A conversation with Sonali Ojha, Ashoka Fellow and founder of the Dreamcatchers Foundation
Ashoka: How do you build a school culture in which empathy is practiced daily?
Ojha: One of the things that’s very important in terms of transforming a school, or inviting the empathy piece into parents’ teachings, is that people need to understand that empathy is not about, “let’s take 20 minutes today and be empathetic.” It’s about creating a spiraling level of activity and engagement in school life, where no matter where you go. From the moment you walk into the school to the time you leave the school, no matter the nature of your engagement, you are invariably asked questions and placed in positions and placed in dichotomies where you will be forced to transact empathetically.
The Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training.
This week, 14 noncommissioned officers at Camp Zama took turns wearing the “pregnancy simulators” as they stretched, twisted and exercised during a three-day class that teaches them to serve as fitness instructors for pregnant soldiers and new mothers.
The Global Cognitive Empathy Study (GCES) is a cross-cultural research project; it aims to better understand which cognitive and emotional (intelligence) skills are universal and key to things like leadership, organisational style and relationships. From the data collected we hope to shed more light than ever before, on the similarities and differences in human cognition & emotional intelligence across continents, cultures and demographics.
Based in the USA, Emotionwise is headed up by world-renowned social psychologist Professor Dacher Keltner, doctoral candidate Daniel Cordaro, and over a dozen other talented researchers from University of California, Berkeley. Emotionwise has developed the first scientifically validated expressional intelligence assessment tool backed by over two decades of facial expression and vocalization coding research.
This profile on UC Berkeley Professor Dacher Keltner highlights his breakthrough research on the science of kindness and compassion. Video by Random Acts of Kindness
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