The Neuroscience of Empathy, Compassion, and Self-Compassion

Larry Charles Stevens,C. Chad Woodruff

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780128098387
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Neuropsychologie

The Neuroscience of Empathy, Compassion, and Self-Compassion provides contemporary perspectives on the three related domains of empathy, compassion and self-compassion (ECS). It informs current research, stimulates further research endeavors, and encourages continued and creative philosophical and scientific inquiry into the critical societal constructs of ECS. Examining the growing number of electrocortical (EEG Power Spectral, Coherence, Evoked Potential, etc.) studies and the sizeable body of exciting neuroendocrine research (e.g., oxytocin, dopamine, etc.) that have accumulated over decades, this reference is a unique and comprehensive approach to empathy, compassion and self-compassion.

• Provides perspectives on empathy, compassion and self-compassion (ECS), including discussions of cruelty, torture, killings, homicides, suicides, terrorism and other examples of empathy/compassion erosion
• Addresses autonomic nervous system (vagal) reflections of ECS
• Discusses recent findings and understanding of ECS from mirror neuron research
• Covers neuroendocrine manifestations of ECS and self-compassion and the neuroendocrine enhancement
• Examines the neuroscience research on the enhancement of ECS
• Includes directed-meditations (mindfulness, mantra, Metta, etc.) and their effects on ECS and the brain

Chapter 1

What Is This Feeling That I Have for Myself and for Others? Contemporary Perspectives on Empathy, Compassion, and Self-Compassion, and Their Absence

Larry Stevens

C. Chad Woodruff Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, United States

Abstract

We begin our adventures into the neuroscience of empathy, compassion, and self-compassion with origins and definitions of these critical social constructs. We explore the numerous variations and nuances for our understanding of each of these terms including conceptualizations from the most prominent researchers in the field. We then launch into a polemical dialogue between the authors not only to dive to greater depths into the underlying permutations of each of these terms but also to endeavor to engage the reader in the excitement that a refinement of these concepts brings to the research community and to stimulate creative thinking, further dialogue, and, hopefully, more research into the neuroscience of empathy, compassion, and self-compassion.

Keywords

empathy

compassion

self-compassion

emotions

cognition

definitions

origins

classifications

Our comprehension of the concepts of Empathy, Compassion, and Self-Compassion is by no means settled at this stage of scientific and public discourse. This realization is particularly striking within the context of compassion, as this idea has been around for well over 2500 years. Even more remarkable, perhaps, is our understanding of the expression of empathy, which according to de Waal can be traced back well beyond the emergence of humans and our closest ape and chimpanzee primate ancestors to its earliest vestiges in the expressions of self-other differentiation, emotional contagion, and preconcern in dolphins, whales, and elephants (de Waal, 2009). The notion of self-compassion, which also finds its origin in early Buddhist teachings, is perhaps the most clearly understood of the three, largely due to the contemporary formulations of Neff (2003a,b). In this chapter, we will explore the origins and definitions of these three concepts by engaging in a stream of polemical encounters between the authors of this narrative. We shall also consider consequences of the absence of each of these expressions in human behavior. In so departing from the more typical manner of only academically introducing and discussing important concepts in the introductory chapter of this textbook, we hope to engage the reader in not only the depth, complexity, and implications of these terms, but perhaps more importantly in a creative exploration and beginning consensus toward their meanings in and ultimate ramifications for contemporary culture.

Origins

As noted above, we can trace the origin of empathic behavior to the actions of nonprimate mammals, most remarkably to elephants, dolphins, and whales. De Waal estimates that the neurological vestiges of empathy stretch back over a hundred million years and can be witnessed in motor mimicry and emotional contagion in primitive mammalian species (de Waal, 2009). We rather commonly see these manifestations in mockingbirds imitating the whistles and calls of other birds and even of humans (mimicry), in dogs howling to the plaintive cries of coyotes in the distance or, perhaps more compelling, in human infants in a nursery joining in after one starts to cry (emotional contagion). And perhaps in a more advanced but still primitive vestige of empathy, the expression of what de Waal calls preconcern may be seen in the seemingly automatic approach behavior of young rhesus monkeys to an injured peer, when the comfort of mother is also closely available. There are numerous compelling examples of nonhuman primates manifesting behavior which clearly appears to be empathic. Such behavior is hypothesized to have emerged because of its evolutionarily selective, prosocial, protective, and survival value (Decety, Norman, Berntson, & Cacioppo, 2012 de Waal, 2008, 2009; Gonzalez-Liencres, Shamay-Tsoory, & Brüne, 2013; Preston & de Waal, 2002).

A perhaps most telling example of apparently fully developed empathy in animals even lower on the phylogenetic scale, in elephants, is the following account from de Waal:

I saw an incredible act of targeted helping. An older female, perhaps close to 65, fell down in the middle of the night. It was a very rainy, muddy jungle environment, difficult for us to walk around, I can only imagine how difficult it was for a tired old female to get up. For hours, mahouts and volunteers alike tried to lift her. In the meantime, her close companion, Mae Mai, an unrelated female of about 45, refused to leave her side. I say refused because mahouts were trying to get her out of the way (tempting her with food). She may have sensed that they were trying to help, because after repeated tries to lift the fallen female with human hands and with another elephant tethered to her, Mae Mai, in a rather agitated state, got alongside the old female, and with her head, tried to push her up. She repeatedly tried to do so, ending each failed attempt with frustrated trunk smacks to the ground and rumbling. She seemed highly committed to staying with her friend.

When the old female died, a few days later, Mae Mai urinated uncontrollably, and started bellowing loudly. When the mahouts tried to take down a large wooden frame to try and raise the old female, Mae Mai got in the way and wouldn’t let the wood anywhere near her dead friend. Mae Mai then spent the next two days wandering around the park bellowing at the top of her voice every few minutes, causing the r...