Lecture 3 Empathy Flashcards
What are the positive and critical aspects of empathy?
Positive and Critical Aspects of Empathy
● Recognizes empathy’s positive role in caring interactions.
● Initiates a discussion on the validity of empathy, acknowledging both positive and potential drawbacks.
Examples:
● Positive: Highlights successful fundraising (€1.9 million) for a child with a rare disease (Jayme).
● Critical Case Study (Victor, 7):
○ Victor, with a rare immune disease, sought funds for expensive medication.
○ Raised ethical concerns as the Belgian government deemed it unethical to fund uncertainly effective medication.
○ Astrazeneca eventually covered the costs, raising questions about the ethical distribution of resources → This is a problem of empathy, it is being abused to have you pay for something unethical. It is not an ethical distribution of money
What are the charactertics of Empathy?
Empathy is myopic (short-sighted)
Empathy makes you focus on something that is nearby, that is close to you, that looks like you, it is not necessarily wrong but it makes you nearsighted.
Empathy is selective
We think people that look like us are better than others; it defines, to some extent, how we relate to other people. For example, we have less empathy for homeless people, for refugees on a small boat, but we do not generally empathize a lot with this, but a picture of a refugee boy dead on a beach did impact us greatly (it is only one person).
Empathy is fleeting
Farmers’ protests at the same time as hundreds of refugees dying, what do we care about? The farmers’ protests. ‘Empathy makes us make bad decisions’
Empathy can be destructive
Would you ever have torture if humans would not be empathic? Only humans perform actual ‘torture’.
What is the Matryoshka metaphor?
Empathy is a multifaceted construct, consisting of a lot of aspects that have generally built up through evolution and became more complex along the way.
- Emotional contagion/automatic contagion: the feeling of what someone else is feeling, automatically taking over the (emotional) responses of someone else.
- Personal distress: taking over the stress response of somebody else, leading to a form of empathy which is not actually empathy anymore, but personal distress. You risk getting too overwhelmed by someone’s stress, shifting focus from helping them to dealing with your own emotions.
- Concern: mature empathy means caring about others, understanding their needs, and being able to separate their feelings from our own.
- Mentalizing (cognitive empathy): cognitive empathy involves using our brains to read expressions or eyes, helping us understand what others are feeling or thinking.
- Multifaceted integration: to really help someone, we need a mix of emotional understanding, personal connection, and cognitive empathy.
- Great (?): acknowledging the importance of having various forms of empathy, not just one, to avoid responding in the wrong way to someone’s feelings or needs.
What are the differences between sexes concerning empathy? Homocide example
Annual homicide rates in Chicago and England & Wales → almost all homicides are executed by young males, excessive violence is in large part caused by young males.
HPG axis; how people produce testosterone (males more than females). There is a strong increase in testosterone levels (not necessarily a causality) How does testosterone have effect on aggression? It makes you more emotionally reactive, especially towards things that are threatening or related to survival. More attention and stronger responses towards these phases. Testosterone effects on dominance, seems to have greater effect for example assuming dominance. Reductions in fear and stress responses. Reductions in empathic responses (emotional responses towards faces of others). Testosterone seems to downregulate mentalizing.
How does Testosterone facilitate aggression?
● Being more dominant
● Worse emotional responsiveness (to angry faces)
● Reduced fear and empathic responding
Testosterone can bias the output of the amygdala, it affects connectivity of the amygdala with other regions. Connectivity in the brain is an important part of where violent behavior comes from. Balance between testosterone and cortisol; testosterone does not do this alone, there is a theory that testosterone works together with cortisol (relevant when it comes to emotional reactiveness and aggression), cortisol is activated when there is stress, the output of the stress system. It might be that people who use violence have lower levels of cortisol but higher levels of testosterone (hormonal profile).
Link between endocrinology(hormones) and morality: due to empathy
It can affect moral behavior, and can lead to immoral behavior.
Bias for utilitarian decisions:
● Men (Testosterone)
● Antisocial personality disorder
● Women after testosterone administration
What is the role of empathy in antisocial personality disorder?
Empathy might play a role in how people are able to show behavior that for most of us is averse. They do not take the perspective of other people into account or do not act on it, their own personal interest is more important than that of others. Where does this come from? The different components of empathy are not well integrated. people with psychopathology are able to show affective empathy, they are able to read the mind of somebody else (some are especially good at it, and can use it to manipulate people), but these aspects are not integrated with each other and are not intrinsically empathic, they can use it but do not use it automatically. The amygdala is less responsive to moral transgression.
How does psychopathy relate to empathy?
Showing no responses to others’ pain. Is it because they cannot? Probably not. In most cases of psychopathy, there is more often motivational problem than a problem related to ability → much more self-oriented
How does Reduced anatomical coupling between amygdala and OFC (frontal cortex) relate to empathy
Reduced functional connectivity between amygdala and OFC in conduct disorder.
And after testosterone administration; reduced connectivity of prefrontal regions with the amygdala, but a stronger connectivity with more brainstem-like regions which can explain the emotional reactivity.
How does Prefrontal-limbic activation affect aggressive behavior
● Refers to the brain regions that influence emotions and empathic responding.
● Influences how we behave aggressively.
● Connected to how we handle emotions and show empathy.
● Testosterone’s Role:
○ Hormone testosterone plays a part in regulating these behaviors.
● Interactions with Other Hormones:
○ Works together with cortisol and serotonin, other hormones that influence stress and mood.
● Impact on Moral Behavior:
○ Affects moral behavior through changes in empathy.
○ Can potentially lead to violent actions.
● Neural Circuitry:
○ Empathy, aggression and morality rely on overlapping neural circuitry, which is biased by endocrine systems.
○ These pathways are influenced by the body’s hormonal systems
