Category: Empathy

Empathy has become a rare and valuable quality in modern society. Unfortunately, many people seem to lack empathy, which is the power to understand others’ feelings and emotions. Ignorance of one another’s emotions is a leading factor in discrimination, wars, holocausts, hate crimes, and any other acts of violence. It is extremely important to acknowledge that others perceive the world in different ways. We can practice empathy to further the greater good for the greater number of people in the 21st century and beyond by challenging prejudices, learning more about how others live, and listening and talking to each other. By practicing empathy, we can make a massive change in the right direction. Empathy will lead to peace and a calm, happy society.

To begin, prejudice and discrimination towards others are incredibly damaging and unreasonable, but they can be perfectly countered by having empathy. It is necessary to find similarities between one another to begin to appreciate their uniqueness and overcome suppressive labels and harmful misconceptions that have spread across the country. Empathy gives people the power to destroy the wall that divides them by sharing their emotions and numerous commonalities. We should learn to spend time with those we discriminate against so we can begin to empathize with them as we see how similar we all actually are. It is important to realize that everyone has their own struggles and problems, and that in the end, everyone is equal. Empathy can and will help us overcome hate if we begin to practice it.

Moving on, learning more about one another’s lives and even developing an interest in them is a second way of practicing empathy. Sadly, people have become increasingly self-centered in the past few years. As time goes on, their focus remains away from those around them. Arguably, the best way to empathize with someone is by understanding what they go through. We all should put ourselves in someone else’s shoes to see how they live. This will help us realize that we all have the same problems and deserve the same respect. Understanding what others go through and how their lives are similar is a form of empathy and will assist in recognizing why they feel the way they do.

Lastly, empathy can be exercised as we listen and open up to each other. By listening to what others have to say, it is possible to truly see the unique feelings they have and are experiencing. Having a conversation is perhaps one of the easiest ways to practice empathy as it lets us directly convey our emotions to each other. Conversing with one another allows us to grasp how others are feeling. Listening, talking, and sharing stories let us empathize with one another. Talking gives us the chance to explain our emotions and help others understand why we feel the way we do. This leads to understanding one another’s emotions, also known as empathy.

In conclusion, by invalidating discrimination, looking into the lives of others, and having conversations with one another, we can practice empathy for the greater good. Empathy has the power to end wars and violence as more and more people begin to realize that they are all the same. Everyone is going through their own struggles and perceives the world in different ways. By having the ability to emphasize and understand each other’s feelings, we can move beyond the 21st century peacefully.

It’s not a simple task to try and step into another’s shoes, however defying general beliefs to empathize with another is a feat many cannot achieve. The novel To Kill a Mockingbird was composed by Harper Lee and is told from the perspective of Scout Finch, a child growing up in Maycomb County with her father and brother in the 1930s. The reader is carried along with Scout as she expresses her evolving interpretation of the world and her deeply southern town. One of the primary themes in To Kill a Mockingbird is empathy. Throughout the novel, Scout displays a growing quantity of empathy toward those whom many Maycomb citizens might ridicule without remorse. A few fundamental instances that exemplify Scout’s growth into a mature adult include her developing interpretations of the Cunninghams, Mayella Ewell, and ultimately, Boo Radley.

One illustration of empathy is exemplified by Scout in relation to the Cunningham family. The Cunningham family is a fixture in Scout’s life. Scout’s evolving perspective on the members of this Maycomb family illustrates the progression of her maturity and nonconformance to Maycomb’s common beliefs in relation to her age. The reader’s introduction to the Cunningham family occurs early in the novel when Scout attempts to explain the absence of Walter Cunningham’s lunch to their teacher, Miss Caroline.

Scout’s endeavor to explain her rudimentary understanding of Maycomb’s social structure to goes awry when Miss Caroline ignores her and proceeds to publicly chastise her and strikes Scout’s hands with a ruler. In retribution, Scout beats up Walter, but when Jem acquires knowledge of it, he dismays her by inviting Walter to dinner. It is during this dinner that she confronts Walter for pouring syrup, an extravagance to him, atop the entirety of his meal. When chided for a second time that day, this time by the Finch’s maid, Calpurnia, Scout explains, “He ain’t company, Cal, he’s just a Cunningham- ” (Lee 33) Scout is insinuating that the Cunninghams are poor, and therefore lesser than Scout. However, Scout later realizes her fallacy, and subsequently defends Walter. This illustrates Scout’s nascent approach into an adult’s comprehension of Maycomb. She steps into Walter’s shoes, understanding he is not at fault for his situation, and that although his family may not be affluent, they work hard, and merit no less courtesy than herself and Jem. This, however, is not Scout’s only demonstration of empathy in the novel.

Scout also exhibits incredible empathy towards Mayella Ewell, the young woman who was impelled by her father to accuse Tom Robinson of rape. One would imagine that Scout would disdain Mayella, as her actions were based on falsehoods, not to mention the fact that she was endangering Scout’s father. However, in chapter nineteen of To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout expresses her compassion towards Mayella. She says, “It came to me that Mayella Ewell must have been the loneliest person in the world. She was even lonelier than Boo Radley, who had not been out of the house in twenty-five years. When Atticus asked had she any friends, she seemed not to know what he meant, then she thought he was making fun of her. She was as sad, I thought, as what Jem called a mixed child.” (Lee 256) Scout realizes how desolate Mayella’s life must be. She seldom leaves her residence, is forced to be the primary caregiver for the other Ewell children, is alienated by the Maycomb community, and when Scout’s father expressed the common decency to address her as “Miss”, she takes offense to it, believing he is deriding her destitution. Despite the tribulations that Mayella has generated for the Finch family, Scout still is able to recognize what this isolated girl must be undergoing. I believe this is one of Scout’s primary instances in which she was able to empathize with someone who has maliciously caused Scout’s family harm. This shows the emergence of one of Scout’s extraordinary attributes, the ability to empathize with someone she does not see eye to eye with. However, Scout’s pity for Mayella is not her ultimate demonstration of empathy in To Kill A Mockingbird.

Scout’s development of empathy is also affirmed in the case of “Boo” Arthur Radley. Boo was the subject of cruel and juvenile tales told by the children of Maycomb. Scout grew up terrified of his property and would quiver at the mere mention of his presence. As Scout matured, she was preoccupied with the trial and the threat against her family. The notion of “Boo” Arthur Radley was lost with other puerile fears as she became aware of how sinister people in the tangible world can be. During the conclusion of To Kill A Mockingbird, Scout learns that Arthur actually protected her and Jem from being murdered. She walks him home, and subsequently, stands on his porch. She reflects upon his view of the events that occurred, concluding that, “Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.” (Lee 374) Scout reckons that Arthur connected with “his children” in what ways he could. He viewed other Maycomb neighbors bestowing gifts upon the others and attempted to copy them, leaving presents in the tree. She regrets not leaving a gift in return, as neighbors usually do. She realizes that he was looking out for them in the only way he either knew how, or was permitted to. I believe this statement signals Scout’s complete exit out of that childish, follower mindset, and into a maturing adult. This quote demonstrates that she wholly comprehends that the social views of most citizens of

Maycomb are not based on fact, but, habit. Empathy plays a crucial role in Scout’s maturity. She begins the book subservient, someone who will blindly follow most people in authority. Her maturity can be held as an example of what many United States citizens need to imitate. In times where people believe singularly in their own values, many will not even attempt to understand others’ opinions. Scout displays that one must form their own opinions and ideas, even if they might be controversial to those in one’s vicinity. Looking back on the past, one might view the right choice as obvious, however, in the moment, the correct decisions are not always blatant. One must look at their present decisions and realize that even if their community may not agree with them, if they are making the kinder choice, they will never look back remorsefully upon their decision.

Mindfulness begins to get more attention in the field of psychology. From the beginning, mindfulness comes from Eastern traditions and this type of mindfulness is frequently connected with the practice of mindfulness meditation (Shapiro, Carlson, Astin, & Freedman, 2006). According to Brown and Ryan (2003), mindfulness describes being a state of consciousness which includes being attentive to one’s surroundings and experience. However, mindless is not being present or aware of the present moment and to be in that state all the time can be chronic for some people. Thus, the importance of mindfulness for people to get distance from irrelevant thoughts, lifestyles, and unsound behavior patterns seem to be important in the regulation of an individual’s behavior.

Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) is related and includes the practice, of mindfulness. The central idea of LKM is to elaborate a state of feeling unconditional love for all beings. LKM is flexible in which it can be done at any time in different positions (Hofmann, Grossman, & Hinton, 2011). In LKM, its central aim is to point compassion and to wish other beings well in life. It has shown that LKM can make changes in behavior. This, in turn can promote positive feelings and how people treat themselves and other people (Hutcherson, Seppala, & Gross, 2008). LKM makes people more attentive, improve positive emotions, and reduces negative emotional states (Hofmann et al., 2011).

According to Wispé (1986), empathy has been described as in taking another person´s perspective. Empathy also describes as “to know what it would be like if I were the other person is empathy” (p. 318). The central idea of empathy is to understand the other person (Wispé, 1986). There have been done several neuroimaging studies on empathy. When seeing or visualize a person´s emotional state the same brain areas get activated. These brain areas get activated as if the person who watched or visualized the person also experienced the same emotions (Lutz, Brefczynski-Lewis, Johnstone, & Davidson, 2008). Empathy is based on another person´s feeling which can function as triggers of empathy. However, it has been suggested that emotional feelings that are shared can be identified with mirror neurons (Schulte-Rüther, Markowitsch, Fink, & Piefke, 2007).

In a study, both women and men with experience of the practice of LKM the last 5 years were studied and compared with beginners of LKM. The study results showed long-term meditators of LKM had more gray matter volume in the right angular and posterior parahippocampal gyri compared to the beginners of LKM. The right angular and posterior parahippocampal gyri are especially significant in affective regulation that is connected with an empathic response, mood, and anxiety (Leung et al., 2012). In another study, they examined if long-term meditators in loving-kindness and compassion would react differently to emotional and neutral sound during the meditation compared to a state of rest. This, in turn, was compared to meditation beginners. When negative sounds were presented greater activity showed in the insula in expert meditators compared to beginners. These results have been suggested to the importance of the limbic system plays in emotion sharing. This study also indicated in that all participants showed greater responses to all emotional sounds in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and anterior insula (AI) under the state of loving-kindness and compassion meditation than in a state of rest (Lutz et al., 2008).

There is still little empirical research that has been done on LKM and the effects of it have not received much attention (Hutcherson et al., 2008). It has not been stated before in relation to meditation, that right angular gyrus has structural changes (Leung et al., 2012). It needs to get more attention to see if there are some structural changes in the brain that is unique to LKM. The main focus in this literature review will be a focus on what effects LKM have on empathy, but also how LKM influences different brain structures.

First, I will search with keywords such as “empathy”, “loving-kindness”, “meditation”, “mindfulness”, “neuro correlation”, “structures” and which will be searching in different databases such as Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Scopus. Then I will sort the articles and make a list with the most relevant articles found.

Second, I will sort the most relevant articles, through examining relevant experimental designs that are used that is suitable to investigate the research question stated. Further, I will look more closely of analyses of the results and look more closely on effect sizes and p-values. After that is done, at last, I will take the remaining articles, and compare them with each other, in order to examine if all articles pointing out a similar (or the same) conclusion, or if there are big differences between the results.

References

1. Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of personality and social psychology, 84(4), 822. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.84.4.822
2. Hofmann, S. G., Grossman, P., & Hinton, D. E. (2011). Loving-kindness and compassion meditation: Potential for psychological interventions. Clinical psychology review, 31(7), 1126-1132. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2011.07.003
3. Hutcherson, C. A., Seppala, E. M., & Gross, J. J. (2008). Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. Emotion, 8(5), 720. doi:10.1037/a0013237
4. Leung, M. K., Chan, C. C., Yin, J., Lee, C. F., So, K. F., & Lee, T. M. (2012). Increased gray matter volume in the right angular and posterior parahippocampal gyri in loving-kindness meditators. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 8(1), 34-39. doi:10.1093/scan/nss076
5. Lutz, A., Brefczynski-Lewis, J., Johnstone, T., & Davidson, R. J. (2008). Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation: effects of meditative expertise. PloS one, 3(3), e1897. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001897
6. Schulte-Rüther, M., Markowitsch, H. J., Fink, G. R., & Piefke, M. (2007). Mirror neuron and theory of mind mechanisms involved in face-to-face interactions: a functional magnetic resonance imaging approach to empathy. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 19(8), 1354-1372. doi:10.1162/jocn.2007.19.8.1354
7. Shapiro, S. L., Carlson, L. E., Astin, J. A., & Freedman, B. (2006). Mechanisms of mindfulness. Journal of clinical psychology, 62(3), 373-386. doi: 10.1002/jclp.20237
8. Wispé, L. (1986). The distinction between sympathy and empathy: To call forth a concept, a word is needed. Journal of personality and social psychology, 50(2), 314. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.50.2.314

Video games are an amazing escape for anyone, they act as a story that you can control and can help you fully understand a character and empathise with them better than in any other media such as book or film. If you ask a person who plays video games, a moment that stuck with them for example a death of their favourite character. But there have been many cases of shootings and violence were people have blamed games. But a simple game where you throw a ball can’t really be the reason, can it?

One of the most recent event that shook everyone was the Jacksonville shooting. This event transpired because David Katz was participating in a gaming tournament in Baltimore. When he lost he walked away and returned with a gun, he proceeded to shoot and kill 2 people and injure 10 others. The media initially blamed video games but later those accusations were discarded as more people showed research that suggested that it wasn’t the video games that cause the violence.

There are positives though for example it can help to reduce pain. “Conscious attention is required for the experience of pain”, says Professor David Patterson of the University of Washington’s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine. A company called SnowWorld has also started to use virtual reality to treat burn patients. Amazingly they have reported that patients, who play it while having dressings changed report a 40-50% reduction in pain. This is because the patients become completely immersed in the game and forget about their pain.

Video games could be called a distraction however there are many cases where the distraction has become an addiction. It is becoming more and more apparent that it has even been medically recognized and they are calling ‘Gaming Disorder’ and are saying it could be a serious medical condition. It is when people prioritise video games over their school and social lives. “Recent research on 7000 online gamers found 12% experienced ‘addictive’ signs of playing”, says Professor Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University. The advent of violent gaming can also desensitize people and draw them away from empathic behaviour and closer to cold, factual action: being exposed to violence can lead some to become indifferent or less reactive when actually faced with such events. These are some of the reasons for which the military is increasingly employing such games to draw in new candidates (the others being that video games can be considered as training regimens for specific skills, like flight simulators for flying drones for instance). Desensitization does nonetheless have its place within given contexts, scenarios or professions: take for instance, surgery procedures where doctors need to train NOT to react or feel anything while completing a procedure.

It’s not just mental health that video games affect they also could affect people’s physical health. There is a condition called nintendo thumbs which is where you damage your tendons and the nerve endings in your thumb, this is caused by repeated by hours of repeated movement. You can also hurt your spine permanently by slouching when playing. A study by a man called Gregory West who is an associate psychology professor at the University of Montreal showed that people in the group that played action video games lost gray matter in the hippocampus. And people who played Super Mario games gained gray matter in the hippocampus. Low gray matter in the hippocampus can lead to mental health disorders such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Where action games have proven to affect your body badly, puzzle games have been proven to actually help your brain. Nanyang Technological University carried out a study to find out how the game ‘cut the rope’ affected how fast the people who played the game could think on their feet when they played for an hour a day, 5 days a week for 4 weeks. After 20 hours, players of Cut the Rope could switch between tasks 33 per cent faster, were 30 per cent faster in adapting to new situations, and 60 per cent better in blocking out distractions and focusing on the tasks at hand than before training.

However although there is a lot of evidence to show that you shouldn’t play video games there are people that say that video games can be have positives. “Research dating right back to the early 1980s has consistently shown that playing computer games (irrespective of genre) produces reductions in reaction times, improved hand-eye co-ordination and raises players’ self-esteem”. This is interesting because for how much evidence there is against why you should play video games, there is also an equal amount of reasons people give to play them. For example the point that it can increase the likelihood that you get depression, but then there is the point that it can increase your self-confident. It was also found that the best gamers can make choices and act on them up to six times a second, four times faster than most people. In another study by researchers from the University of Rochester in New York, experienced gamers were shown to be able to pay attention to more than six things at once without getting confused, compared with the four that most people can normally keep in mind. Also scientists have found that women who play games are better able to mentally manipulate 3D objects.

Video games are also very useful for helping people with mental disabilities, they have been said to have a calming effect and also helped them with basic language, maths, reading and social skills. A person called Horn, E., Jones, H.A. & Hamlett, C conducted an experiment that researched the feasibility of a video game system for developing scanning and selection skills. He did this by training three children with different handicaps for example severely limited vocal speech.

Video games can damage you physically and mentally but just like anything else it can only do this when you use them in excess, however they can help people become healthier when the right games are played and for a good amount of time. Video games by themselves are not dangerous but what they can do to people is where it can cause problems.

Empathy has been researched in the field of learning sciences thoroughly for its eminent effect on learning outcomes. In the field of psychology, there is no common definition of empathy that everyone agrees upon. However, in this essay, empathy will refer to “an affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another’s emotional state or condition” (Arghode et al., 2013, p. 7). Because of its high relevance in learning, the prolonged nature vs. nurture debate of empathy has inspired many researchers to formulate a framework and conduct an empirical research. This essay aims to compare two contradicting theoretical approaches of empathy, whether empathy can be learned or not. Moreover, it will address how these contravening theories of empathy can have different implications in learning and teaching.

Empathy is innate

It is widely believed that humans are born with a tendency to feel what others are feeling. One of the most prominent model that advocates this viewpoint is Preston and de Waal’s ‘perception-action model’ (Preston & Waal, 2002). This model originates from the perception-action theory of motor behavior which indicates overlying representations for performing and observing actions (Waal & Preston, 2017). Applied to emotional phenomena, it suggests that “attended perception of the object’s state automatically activates the subject’s representations of the state, situation, and object, and that activation of these representations automatically primes or generates the associated autonomic and somatic response, unless inhibited” (Preston & Waal, 2002, p. 4). The term ‘subject’ refers to the person who empathizes while the ‘object’ refers to the person who is being empathized. The term ‘attended’ comes from the fact that strong empathic reaction demands the subject to attend to the state of the object. This mechanism accentuates that the subject’s perceptions choose the elements in the environment that require a response from them. In other words, subjects are prone to show empathic responses to those objects that they count on to obtain their personal goals. This is seen from the study conducted by Chapman et al. (1987) that aimed to investigate affective and dispositional factors in the motivation of children’s helping. They found out that empathy and feeling of guilt motivate children to help others the most. The result showed that human children are more susceptible to help others when they feel responsible for the object’s distress.

Perception-action model also explained possible causation of empathic behaviors in humans from evolutionary perspective. It explicates that the evolution of a perception-action organization of our nervous systems leads to empathy. We are simply more prone to code others’ actions as if they were ours, simply because it is much more efficient. Preston and Waal (2002) also stated that we are inclined to show empathic responses because such tendency leads to higher chances of reproduction by avoiding predators or attackers. It is important to note that this tendency is more often seen from group-living animals, in other words, social animals. It is also widely believed that humans have evolved to comprehend of others’ emotions to increase the chance of survival by becoming better parents and players in nature. Researchers have found that infants are inclined to imitate others’ facial expression, indicating the predisposition for empathy (T. M. Field et al., 1982). In conclusion, perception-action model suggests that humans understand others’ emotions through their personal, manifested representations which alter their empathy based on the past experiences (Waal & Preston, 2017).

Empathy can be learned

On the other hand, many researchers have attempted to challenge the acclaimed belief of empathy as an innate trait. Heyes (2018) proposed the dual system model of empathy. According to this model, there are two systems in empathy; Empathy1 as an emotional contagion and Empathy2 as an empathic understanding. While Empathy1 revolves automatically, Empathy2 includes more controlled processing, meaning relatively slow and intentional processing. Although Empathy1 is believed to develop in early age in humans, adequate amount of researches affirm that even this aspect of empathy is learned.

One of them is the Learned Matching hypothesis, which suggests that Empathy1 is based on a matching mechanism formulated during the development by associative learning (Heyes, 2018). Self-stimulation, synchronous emotion and affect mirroring contribute to this associative learning. Specifically, this hypothesis implies that, affect mirroring is an important source that impacts the development of Empathy1 in human infants. That is, caregivers’ imitation of infants’ emotional revelations is the driving source behind Empathy1, not the other way around. There is a plethora of evidence that this imitation by caregivers occurs very frequently (Ray & Heyes, 2011). These experiences in infants enable them to construct corresponding associations between external and internal emotional stimuli, which in turn enable emotional contagion (Heyes, 2018).

Furthermore, a study that observed children of depressed mothers added weight to this belief. A study conducted by Field and his colleagues (Tiffany Field et al., 2009) reported that infants of depressed mothers appeared to be less responsive to faces and voices. In other words, these children seemed to experience less affect mirroring than the infants of non-depressed mothers. They asserted that the lower level of responsiveness is ascribed to higher arousal, less attentiveness and less empathy of these children. Therefore, empathy is something that infants learn from their caregivers / parents, rather than an innate trait that they are born with. To conclude, learned matching hypothesis alludes to the malleable nature of empathy and its development during lifespan.