Thread by @garwboy

Empathy, as in recognising, understanding, and *sharing* the emotional state/experience of others, is a vital ability of the human brain. It makes us what we are.
However, one problem is, that our own emotions and experiences can distort the process.

Here's more #BrainStuff

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A surprising amount of our brain's processes are geared towards detecting, recognising, and recreating the emotions of others. We're constantly, often without realising, broadcasting our inner state, and human brains have evolved to recognise and interpret these cues.

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As I say, we often don't even realise this is happening. You ever walked into a room after a huge argument has happened and immediately felt uncomfortable, or noted a 'frosty atmosphere'? That's what's happening there.

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You may not consciously know what's happened, but the post-argument people in the room when you enter are broadcasting signs of tension, anger, hostility, sadness etc. Your subconscious picks this up and shunts it to your conscious regions, so you feel awkward and off.

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However, the brain is a busy organ with finite resources, and numerous studies show that it's harder for us to correctly recognise and share the emotions of others if our own emotional state is very different. Among other things, it means more work for our brains.

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Like, if you're currently happy, and you encounter someone who's very sad, your brain has to do more work to change from a positive to negative emotional state in order to empathise with the other person, compared to if you were in a more neutral or negative state yourself

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There's also the fact that our brains are egocentric, by default. They do what they can to apply what we know to the world around us, but our knowledge stems from our own experiences and perspective. Hence we often default to assuming everyone thinks/feels the same as us.

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The upshot of this is, we find it harder to empathise with or understand people experiencing things markedly different to what we're experiencing. Our own emotions sort of distort the process.

Thankfully, evolution recognised this problem, and installed a fix.

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An interesting study from the Max Planck institute revealed that a region of the brain, the right Supramarginal Gyrus, essentially correct the distorting effect of our own emotions and ego, and allows us to empathise 'correctly'

mpg.de/research/supra…

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You know when you go for an eye test and the optician puts all the different lenses until one slides in and everything becomes crystal clear? The right supramarginal gyrus is essentially doing that, but with empathy instead of eyesight.

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It's an elaborate process though, and the data suggests that if the right supramarginal gyrus is compromised in some way, or we have to make empathetic judgements too quickly, the distorting effect of our own emotions remains, and we struggle to empathise with others

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There's also the fact that the systems in our brain are like muscles, in that they work better and have more influence if we just use them more. The more emotional experience and expression we go through, the better our 'emotional competence'.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional….

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This is why I rail against 'constant happiness' or 'toxic positivity'; you're actually limiting/reducing your brain's ability to process the other emotions. So, when bad experiences do occur, because they inevitably will, you'll struggle to deal with them, emotionally.

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Similarly, the whole 'men must be stoic at all times, and never show feelings' stereotype is incredibly dangerous. It's suppressing a vital part of your brain's mechanism for dealing with stress and trauma. That suicide is so common in males is, sadly, unsurprising.

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But there's also the fact that if you've never had to deal with seriously negative experiences or hardship, your ability to empathise with others that have will be limited. And you'll probably lack much impetus to try, because you've never had reason to.

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We can experience *cognitive* empathy, where we consciously figure out what someone must be feeling, and relate to/share their emotions. But this is more of a laborious process.

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This is very important, because being able to empathise with someone is often a key factor in relating to, understanding, and *valuing* them. Humans are a cooperative species, and we act in the interests of others more when we can empathise with them.

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But, if you've never experienced anything particularly bad or traumatic, or never had to struggle, you're more likely to lack the ability or drive to empathise with those who have. Because your brain may not have developed the necessary processes to do so.

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This is just how the human brain works. It shouldn't be a problem though, as long as we don't put the most privileged and pampered members of society in charge of the most vulnerable and desperate.

Not sure why the #CPC21 tweets made me think of this, but there you go

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Addendum: this is covered in depth in my next book, which is out in 2023, but I go into it in my other books

The Idiot Brain

amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/178335…

Psycho-Logical

amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/178335…

Today's #BrainStuff thread explores empathy, why it's important, why our brains often struggle with it, why certain people may lack it, and why we should stop putting those people in charge of countries

#SciComm #Brains #Neuro

https://twitter.com/garwboy/status/1445714913976930317