How to Develop Empathy

Empathy is understanding and entering into another's feelings, according to Princeton University's WordNet. The study of empathy has been around for centuries and the word was developed by the German philosopher Rudolf Lotze (1817-81). He combined the Greek word "empatheia" which means passion. The term empathize was coined in 1924. Its history has been checkered because the history of man has been checkered.

Jean Paul Satre delved into the seemingly blind eye of man to empathize with their fellow man in light of the Holocaust. His writings were a reaction to the horror he witnessed. Bruno Bettelheim's book, "The Informed Heart on Retaining the Self in a Dehumanizing Society," provides a first hand account of life in the concentration camps and his examination of the mass "blind eye" of society at large during the era of the Holocaust. His criticism extends to the passivity of the Jewish community as well. The surreal transformation of prisoners into the walking dead and the seemingly lack of connection that these individuals were fellow human beings allowed the Nazi offenders to perpetrate their atrocities. In short, the Nazis and the rest of the world lacked empathy.

There have been various psychologists, social scientists, economists and others that have tried to explain this lack of connection between the perpetrator and the acts which account for mass genocide, or random acts of indescribable horror between human beings. Theories of perceptions, genetic abnormalities, social dysfunctional conduct and power or class. All of these theories may have some ring of truth at least in retrospect, but offer little assistance in curbing on-going current atrocities from occurring.

Currently, scientists at Duke University have found that "Altruism is Associated With An Increased Neural Response to Agency." The study conducted by Tankersley, Stowe and Huettel and reported Nature's Neuroscience January 21, 2007 issue finds that tasks requiring the perception of agency activates the posterior superior temporal cortex of the brain, particularly in the right hemisphere. They demonstrate the differential activation of the posterior superior temporal cortex during action perception versus action performance as it relates to self reporting of altruism.

The importance of this work is that it appears to open up an additional course of study in the understanding of seemingly "blind eye" conduct at the brain chemistry level. If the person does not register a perception of agency, the niche of the brain devoted to altruism, passion and empathy simply does not register a response. This may over state the current status of the research, but it is a glimpse of the future whereby a joint effort of science and other disciplines may lead to a more complete understanding of mass "blind eye" malevolence.

Nature also reports another study whereby "Empathy Neural Responses Are Modulated by the Perceived Fairness of Others," by Singer, Seymour, O'Doherty et al. of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University College of London. In short this study finds that men in particular empathetic responses are shaped by a valuation of the other persons social behavior. Whereby, they empathize with perceived fair opponents while favoring the physical punishment of unfair opponents. In other words, the punisher rationalizes that even a minor cheater deserves not only to lose, but to be punished physically. In the study, men who observed cheaters being in pain registered little reaction in the fronto-insular or anterior cingulate cortices of the brain.

In conclusion, empathy is a term passed around as a learned behavior. That may be true, but there are components in the inner sanctum of the brain. Neuroscience may shed some light on how the brain and neural paths play a significant role in the development of human empathy which may unlock possible treatment modalities for select types of social pathology. In routine cases of indifference it is possible to train someone to consider what it would be like to live in someone else's shoes. Role reversals, play acting and story writing are techniques used to demonstrate empathy for our fellow human beings.