Empathy

** Today, empathy is generally considered to be the ability to view another’s perspective from the first person, using “an emotional, embodied, or experiential aspect”.
 * Empathytoc
 * Definition **

Historically, empathy comes from of the German // Einfühlung ////, or “feeling into,” // and while the meaning has evolved and split since first coined by Robert Vischer in 1886 to discuss aesthetic value , most fall somewhere within two areas, and speak to our ability as primates to live in social groups.

// Affective empathy //, or //resonant empathy//, is the ability to feel as another feels. Zaki et al. conducted a study in 2009 establishing that the mirror neuron system is responsible for resonant empathy, , and .* // Cognitive empathy // or //perspective taking//, is the ability to imagine what another is thinking or feeling. This is most closely associated with activity in the right Temoro-Pariteal Juncture or the rTPJ, , , and.

Combined, these create // empathic inference //. Empathic inference is the ability to correctly assess another person’s thoughts or emotions. **Neural Substrate** In 2009, Zaki and his team established the mirror neuron system as responsible for resonant empathy,. Resonant empathy occurs “predominantly on a subconscious level of awareness and appears to be functionally linked to the activity of mirror neurons located in the parietal and inferior frontal cortical areas”.

Cognitive empathy is most closely associated with activity in the right Temoro-Pariteal Juncture or the rTPJ, , , and.

The absence of empathy is frequently, though not always, linked to “aggressive and acquisitive behaviors that ignore the rights or suﬀ ering of others”. A notable exception to this is with people on the Autism Spectrum, where empathy deficits are linked to social withdrawal, not aggression, violence, or criminal behavior.

**Anthropology and Empathy** Within anthropology, empathy is studied in relation to disorders such as autism or schizophrenia, and health care related issues such as patient/caregiver interactions within biomedicine as well as cross-culturally, in theories of psychopathology , and in intersubjectivity. Empathy is also studied cross-culturally by ethnographers who look at the differences between interpretations of empathy at a cultural level, as well as critically concerning ethnographers use of the term empathy to cover their own transference. Biological anthropologists have studied empathy in relation to human evolution. In “Whatever Happened to Empathy,” Hollan and Throop argue that it is time for a renaissance in the study of empathy within anthropology, pointing out its relevance to life path theory as well as evolutionary modeling, and asking “what processes of dehumanization allow one human to do overt and extreme harm to another”.

**Case Studies/Examples** Deficits of empathy are found in male partners who batter their spouses, though they display normal empathy toward other women,. Clements, et al. examined whether males who batter their partners have empathic accuracy toward those partners. They separated 71 couples into three groups, Violent, Non-Violent/Distressed, and Non-Violent/Non-Distressed. They taped each pair in conversation over a topic that was pre-determined to elicit a stressed response. Afterwards, they were separated and each watched the tapes, stopping them whenever they remembered a thought or an emotion and writing that down.

Next they watched the tape again, while it was paused at the partner’s stops, so that they could write down what they thought she was thinking or feeling. The men were also shown stimulus tapes of two unknown women, discussing their divorces with their psychiatrists and similar data was generated. Neutral observers, matched to the subjects by gender, also watched the husbands’ or wives’ tapes to create a neutral control group. They found that the violent wife scored within the same range as did the observers, the NV/D and NV/ND women, though they did better than the control group did at rating the violent husbands because violent men were harder for the objective observers to read.

Battering husbands had a normal level of empathic accuracy with strange women, but performed significantly below that with their own wives. Furthermore, they were not randomly inaccurate. Instead, they saw their own wives’ expressions as rejecting, scornful, or disdainful, but they saw other woman’s expressions with the same level of accuracy that neutral observers did ( .).

//Cognitive empathy//, the ability to read intentionality, has been shown to be controlled, at least in part, by the right Temporoparietal Junction (rTPJ). Saxe demonstrates in her research that suppression of the rTPJ can make it difficult for an individual to correctly distinguish another person’s actions from intents.

Rebecca Saxe “How We Read Each Other’s Minds” media type="youtube" key="GOCUH7TxHRI" width="560" height="315"

Related Terms/Pages
Empathy is most noticeable when partially or totally absent. Empathy deficits are notable in people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Psychopathy , , Juvenile Conduct Disorder and Autism , Antisocial Personality Disorder , with Schizophrenia , , or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder , , &  and after traumatic brain injury.

Online Resources-
”media type="youtube" key="Aq_nCTGSfWE" width="392" height="219" When Empathy Fails-“Zero Degrees of Empathy”

media type="youtube" key="rFAdlU2ETjU" width="336" height="187" align="center" A Hormonal Basis for Empathy - “The Moral Molecule”

Animal Studies:
Empathy Studies in Rats media type="youtube" key="nyolz2Qf1ms" width="336" height="187" align="left"

In Primates: media type="youtube" key="GcJxRqTs5nk" width="336" height="185" align="left"