sympathy types
Empathy, sympathy, tenderness, compassion, imitation, "infecting" emotional state "infected" sensorimotor condition, understanding the perspective of others people concern, pity... If you start with terminology, immediately rise squabble over definitions, using which we describe exactly how way to resonate with the misfortunes of others (this includes the issue, which means the absence of such a resonance - pleasure from the misfortune of another, or simply indifference).
Therefore, let us, for lack of a better word, a "primitive" version of the response to the pain of others. This response is a so-called "contamination" sensorimotor state: you can see how someone with a needle prick hand, and your sensory cortex, where signals from your own hand come, there is a corresponding imaginary feeling. Perhaps, in this case and the motor cortex is activated, so that your hand is involuntary twitches. Or you look tightrope performance, while the hands are raised themselves to the side, holding the balance. Or someone close to Sunset
coughing - and the muscles in your throat, too, begin to shrink.More explicitly imitative motor skills can be observed in a simple imitation. Or "infection" emotional state - when the child begins to cry, because a number of other baby cried, or when a person is completely captures the violence of the raging crowd.
Accept someone else's internal state can be different. You can feel sorry for the person who is sick, [...] such a belittling pity is that the person you are attributed to the category of high heat / low competence. And each is known from the everyday experience of the meaning of the word "compassion". ( "Yes, I sympathize with your position, but ..."). That is, in principle, you have some means by which to relieve the suffering of the interlocutor, but prefer to hold them.
Further. We have the words to describe how this resonance with other people's status has to do with emotions and how - to reason. In this sense, the "sympathy" means that you feeling sorry about someone's pain, but not know pain. In contrast, the "empathy" includes the cognitive component of understanding the causes of someone's pain, puts us in the other person, we experience painful events together.
Yet there is a difference in the manner in which your own feelings conform to other people's misfortunes. When emotionally abstract form in the form of sympathy we feel sorry for the person to what he was hurt. But you can feel a bruised feeling, substitute, as if it is your personal, private pain. And there, on the contrary, more cognitively distanced sensation - understanding how to perceive pain suffererBut not you. State "as if this is my personal pain," is fraught with such intensity of experience that person will be primarily caring, how to deal with them, and only then he remembers the troubles of another, because of which so experiencing. […]
The emotional aspect of empathy
When you start to delve into the essence of empathy, it turns out that all the way pass through neurobiological anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). According to the results of experimentsThe Neural Basis of Empathy with neyroskanirovaniem, during which the subjects feel the pain of others, this part of the frontal cortex was diva neurobiology of empathy.
Given the well-known classical functions of ACC in mammals, its relationship with empathy was unexpected. Here are the features:
- Processing of information from the internal organs. The brain receives sensory information not only from outside but also from within, from the internal organs - muscles, dry mouth, rebellious bowel. If the heart beats and emotions from that miraculously become sharper - thanks to the AUC. It literally turns the "interior feeling" in intuition, because it is the "interior feeling of" affect the operation of the frontal cortex. And the main type of inside information, which reacts PEP - it's a pain.Interoception: the sense of the physiological condition of the body
- Tracking conflicts. AUC responds to conflicting feelings when not received coincides with the expected. When performing some action, you expect a certain result, but it is different, the AUC is alarming. In this case, the response will be asymmetrical PPK let to the known effect of candy you get three instead of the promised two - PPK in response to perk up. But if you get one, the AUC alarmed like crazy. PEP can be said about the words of Kevin Ochsner and his colleagues at Columbia University: "This is an alarming bell for all occasions, when in the course of the action something goes at random." […]
Looking from this perspective, it seems that the AUC is mainly engaged in personal affairs, it's great interested in your own good. Because surprise appearance at her kitchen empathy. Nevertheless, the results of numerous studies it appears that the pain or take (shot finger, sad face, the story of someone's misery - what causes empathy), be sure to excitedThe Neural Substrate of Human Empathy: Effects of Perspective-taking and Cognitive Appraisal PPK. And even more - the more the observer is excited by the AUC, the more pain a person experiences, causing empathy. ACC plays a major role when you need to ease the business experience of the other. […]
"Ouch, that hurts!" - this is the shortest way to avoid repeating mistakes, whatever they may be.
But even more useful, as it often happens, notice the misfortunes of others: "He was badly hurt, I better poosteregsya do the same." PPK is among the most important tools when fear and avoidance of danger are trained with a simple observation. The transition from "it all does not add up" to "I'm probably not going to do that" requires some auxiliary stage, something like induced representation of the "I", "I like him, will not be delighted with this situation."
Feel the pain of another person - means far more effective than simply know about the pain of another person. So for AUC is the most important their personal, other sorrows concerned her, but only in so far as. […]
The rational side of empathy
[...] There is a need to add on to the situation causality and intentional action, and then connect the additional cognitive contours: "Yeah, it hurts terribly head, and that's because it works on the farm, where everything is watered pesticides... Or maybe they went over great friend yesterday? "," This AIDS man, he that a drug addict? Or he infected blood transfusion? "(Activated by people stronger in the latter case, AUC).
Something like this train of thought chimps coming to console the innocent victim of aggression, not the aggressor. [...] In children more pronounced cognitive activation profile appears in the age when they begin to distinguish between pain "samonanesonnuyu" and caused by another person. According to Jean Deseti, who studied the issue, it says that "activation of empathy in the early stages of information processing moderated established relationship with another person. " In other words, cognitive processes are the gatekeeper, deciding whether empathy or that misfortune with dignity.
Of course, the cognitive task will be a sense of a strange emotional pain - as less obvious than the physical; here markedly more involved dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (PFC). Exactly the same thing happens when someone else's pain did not live there, and in the abstract - on the display lights up the point when a person with a needle prick his hand.
Resonate with the pain of others also becomes a cognitive task when it comes to the experience that the man himself had never experienced.
"I guess I think I understand how upset the military leader - he missed a chance to give a command ethnic cleansing of the village; I have something like that was when I was in kindergarten blew in the presidential elections of the club "good works". " It requires mental effort already, "I think I understand ...".
For example, in one study, subjects discussed in patients with neurological problems, the participants discuss the neurological type of pain in these patients was not familiar. In this case, the awakening feelings of empathy requiredHow do we empathize with someone who is not like us? A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. a strong performance of the frontal cortex than in the discussion of pain known to them.
When we are asked to sympathize with a man whom we do not like or moral condemnation, then we played a real battle in the head - in fact pain hated not only activates the ACC, it still causes a stir in the mesolimbic reward system. Therefore, the task is to put yourself in their shoes and feel their suffering (not to gloat) becomes a real test of cognitiveIntergroup differences in the sharing of emotive states: neural evidence of an empathy gap, Not even remotely resembling congenital automatism.
And probably most strongly these neural pathways are activated when you need to move from a state of "how I would feel in his place" to state "how he feels right now in place." Therefore, if a person ask focus on the point of view of an outsider, it is activated not only the temporoparietal junction (VTU), but also the frontal cortexMedial prefrontal cortex subserves diverse forms of self-reflectionShe pulls down the command: "Stop thinking about yourself!".
[...] When it comes to empathy, it is not necessary to separate the "mind" and "feeling" is an imaginary division. Both are necessary, "mind" and "feel" balance each other, forming a continuum, and "Reasonable" end of hard work is done, when the differences between the sufferer and the observer initially obscures similarity. […]
What does all this mean in practice
There is no guarantee that the state of empathy will lead to participate. One of the reasons is quite brilliantly caught writer Leslie Jamison: "[Empathy] also carries a dangerous sense of performance - if you feel something, then do something. It is tempting to think that the sympathy of someone's pain itself is moral. And the problem of empathy is not that because she feels ugly, and that, on the contrary, feel good and virtuous, and this, in turn, makes us see something of empathy in a self-sufficient, whereas it is only part of the process, it catalyst".
In this situation, the words "I feel your pain" have become the modern equivalent of useless bureaucratic formal expressions like "sorry for your location, but ...". And more than that - they are so far from the action, which does not even need an excuse "but", which basically means: "I do not I can / will not do." If someone's suffering is considered to be valid, then this is only exacerbated; better to try to alleviate it. […]
From a biological base of everything is clear. Here we have seen how a person is suffering from pain. Assume that before this we were asked to imagine yourself in his place (inside view). As a result, we have activated the amygdala, and AUC, and islet area; and in addition, we report an increased level of anxiety and stress. And if you are asked to present themselves not on someone's place, and the feeling of the other person (view from the outside), the activation of these brain regions and decrease the power of experience.
And the stronger the first attitude, the more likely that people will try to reduce their own stress, will, so to speak, avert their eyes.
And the dichotomy of action / inaction can be amazingly easy to predict. Put in front of the observer suffering from pain. If it is, the observer, the heart rate will accelerate - it is an indicator of anxiety, agitation amygdala - that is very unlikely to actThe Relations of Emotionality and Regulation to Dispositional and Situational Empathy-Related Responding in favor of the sufferer, and is unlikely to make a pro-social act. And those who commit such an act, the heart rate at the sight of the suffering of others to slow down; they can hear the needs of others, not just feverish knocking in his chest.
It turns out that if I at the sight of another's suffering will begin to suffer myself, then my first concern is I find myself, and not a real sufferer. And any man would. We've seen it before, when discussing what happens if you increase the cognitive load - people behave less favorably in relation to outsiders. Similarly, if a person is hungry, he is less inclined to be generous - why would I think about someone else's stomach, since I myself rumbling in the abdomen. And if a person is made to feel like an outcast, he will become less compassionate and generous. […]
In other words, empathy rather will lead to action, if stripped of suffering, increase the distance.
[...] Yes, we begin to act not because of the fact that the pain is felt the suffering of others - in this scenario, people will run away rather than help. Detachment aimed to help, it may seem a good way - it would probably be a good idea consider all slowly and carefully to make an informed decision altruistic? But here we are waiting for an alarming fact: the thoughts easily lead to the most simple and convenient conclusion - it's not my problem. Therefore, in the commission of a generous act will not help either hot (limbic-adjustable) the heart or the cold reasoning of the frontal cortex. This requires internal, driven to automatism skills: writing in a pot, to ride a bike, to tell the truth, to help those in need.
Learn more about empathy, as well as other features of the brain and behavior, see the book by Robert Sapolsky "Biology of good and evil."
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