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Note: “Empathy In The Brain” is a guest post. It was first published here.

What is empathy and is it good for anything? Let’s find out.

Do you remember that episode from the PowerPuff girls in which the colorful clown is accidentally bleached, turning into an evil mime, and he starts absorbing all the colors from Townsville, stunning everyone into sadness (for our younger audience, this one)? That’s how I feel lately. In this landscape, I’ve been racking my brain for a genuinely positive topic, something that can distract while offering some comfort. Lots of demands for some internet text, I know. And I have no idea if my choice will actually accomplish any of that, but I’ve settled on empathy. Mostly because I want to cling to the hope that it might help counter at least some of the negativity drowning us.

But what is empathy?

According to some random Reddit person, empathy is useless. (We’ll come back to the function of empathy later on, but for now let’s try a more formal definition.) Unfortunately, like all higher-order emotional and cognitive processes, the formal definition is a bit fuzzy and lacking consensus. But all definitions have a few elements in common: empathy has to do with others, their feelings and/or thoughts, and mentally experiencing what they experience (while not confusing oneself with the other person).

Scientists sometimes distinguish between emotional and cognitive empathy. In the first case, we are directly affected by another person’s emotional state. This is probably what most people have in mind when they think of empathy. As a side note, it’s important to keep in mind that we are capable of empathizing with positive experiences as well, not just the negative ones. In contrast to emotional empathy, cognitive empathy requires that we make a conscious effort to imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to adopt their perspective. While it might seem strange to put perspective-taking under the umbrella of empathy (one more readily thinks of theory-of-mind here), researchers such as Frans de Waal argue that the two should be studied together because they both rely on shared representations of emotion (in other words, even when we employ cognitive empathy, we imagine what the other feels in a given situation).

What about compassion?

The distinction is as follows: empathy is the cause, compassion (or sympathy) is the consequence. Actually, compassion is one of the possible consequences. Another possibility is empathic distress. I think you’re already catching on that the second option might not be the best. In fact, while compassion motivates us to help the person in distress, ultimately leading to positive feelings, empathic distress causes negative feelings and withdrawal. There are many factors which influence what the end result of empathy is, including, but not limited to, our own capacity for emotional regulation and whether we believe we can help. The complexity of this topic requires its own post. For today, I’d like you to keep in mind that we can train ourselves to feel more compassion rather than more empathic distress.

Mechanisms of empathy

Now that we’re settled with the definition, let’s move on to more practical matters. Regarding the mechanisms of empathy, we will follow three directions. Broadly speaking, we will look at neurons, brain regions, and more abstract models.

Of course, we cannot have this conversation without digging up the former poster children of pop neuro, the mirror neurons. Discovered in the 90s, these neurons were observed to be active both when a monkey performed an action and when it saw someone else perform the same action. From here, the idea that mirror neurons are the neural basis for empathy took a life of its own. But as research progressed, it became clear that the activity of these neurons is neither necessary, nor sufficient for such a complex behavior as empathy. Today, the role of mirror neurons remains debated, but it is clear that, although they might still play a role in motor mimicry, they aren’t the sole explanation for empathy.

Moving higher up to the region level, studies based on fMRI have identified areas such as the anterior cingulate cortex, the insula, or the amygdala which show increased signals during emotional empathy, and areas such as the prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction in cognitive empathy. However, these brain regions behave similarly in other tasks that have to do either with emotional or cognitive processing, but not specifically empathy.

On the one hand, this supports the idea that empathizing involves shared representations, i.e. the brain displays similar activity patterns both when wefeel something and when we empathize with someone else. On the other hand, since these regions are activated in so many tasks, it’s difficult to draw conclusions about what their role might be. As neuroscience shifts towards a more network-based approach, it might be interesting to see whether the interactions between regions, rather than the regional activity in isolation, can tell us more about empathy mechanisms in the brain.

Finally, the more abstract way: one such way of thinking about how empathy works is the perception-action model (PAM) proposed by Frans de Waal, one of the most influential researchers when it comes to empathy, together with Stephanie Preston. While not relying entirely on mirror neurons, this model assumes that imitation or mimicry form the basis of empathy: observing someone else in a certain state leads to similar activity in our brains (though not necessarily identical). This bottom-up activity, however, can be influenced by our internal state, beliefs, experience, culture, and so on. In other words, we aren’t mindless mimicking machines empathizing left and right, but when we do empathize, our brains show similar activity.

In the context of PAM, emotional empathy builds upon this basic mimicry mechanism, and cognitive empathy stacks up on top of the emotional part, allowing us eventually to adopt the perspective of others and maybe help them. Not all researchers agree with the basic premise of PAM, namely that empathy starts with passive imitation. Other models, such as the simulation model, assume that we internally simulate others’ thoughts and emotions, making empathy an active, top-down process, whereas social learning and cultural models view empathy as an environmentally learned behavior.

What this diversity highlights is that empathy is a multidimensional concept. While we still don’t have a complete picture of its mechanisms, it appears that empathy is the result of a complex interplay between automatic responses, cognitive processes, and social learning. And two of these can definitely be trained.

When does empathy start?

What’s usually hidden behind this is another question: are we born with it or not? (As a side note: we’re also not born with full bladder control, but nobody’s trying to argue that’s an unnecessary social construct.) This is a bit tricky to figure out, since we can’t really ask babies how they feel or whether they can imagine themselves in their parents’ shoes. To investigate this, scientists use different proxy measures.

For example, do babies cry when they hear other babies cry? (Sometimes.) Do they mimic happy/sad/angry faces? (Depends on the age.) Do toddlers comfort others who are upset? (Again, depends on the age.) Without going in detail through all of the studies, based on the data that I’ve come across, it appears that full-blown empathy isn’t present at birth, but it develops in the first years of life as the brain matures, with emotional empathy emerging between 1-2 years old, and cognitive empathy following later on, between 4-6 years old.

Do other species have empathy?

Yes. For some time, the answer to this question used to be no, then it progressed to controversial. These days, we have quite solid evidence that empathy is not uniquely human, but is found across a multitude of species. Examples include apes, rodents, and (by far my favorites) elephants. In general, social species with a high degree of encephalization (=big brains) tend to display empathetic behavior, helping conspecifics when they gain nothing from it or even when helping means giving up some advantage, such as extra food.

So is empathy useful?

Will society break down if empathy suddenly disappeared? Or is the Reddit user right? Of course, empathy isn’t a perfect tool. Our brains tend to empathize more with those we perceive as similar, and too much emotional empathy can lead to burnout. But in the form outlined here, empathy is useful. It allows us to understand others and the world around us and it motivates us to help those in distress. The fact that this behavior develops early in life and is present in other species is also an indicator that whatever empathy does has worked from an evolutionary perspective. More practically, there is some preliminary evidence that empathy-based interventions can be effective in reducing hate speech on social media. And we all know that empathizing and helping make us feel warm and fuzzy, so all in all, I wouldn’t write empathy off just yet.

References

Decety, J., & Holvoet, C. (2021). The emergence of empathy: A developmental neuroscience perspective. Developmental Review, 62, 100999. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2021.100999

De Vignemont, F., & Jacob, P. (2012). What is it like to feel another’s pain?. Philosophy of science, 79(2), 295-316. https://doi.org/10.1086/664742

De Waal, F. B., & Preston, S. D. (2017). Mammalian empathy: behavioural manifestations and neural basis. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 18(8), 498-509. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2017.72

Ferrari, P. F. (2024). Understanding Empathy and De Waal’s contribution within the fields of social neurosciences. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 105870. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105870

Gallagher, S. (2012). Empathy, simulation, and narrative. Science in context, 25(3), 355-381. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889712000117

Hangartner, D., Gennaro, G., Alasiri, S., Bahrich, N., Bornhoft, A., Boucher, J., … & Donnay, K. (2021). Empathy-based counterspeech can reduce racist hate speech in a social media field experiment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(50), e2116310118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2116310118

Jami, P. Y., Walker, D. I., & Mansouri, B. (2024). Interaction of empathy and culture: a review. Current Psychology, 43(4), 2965-2980. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04422-6

Preston, S. D., & De Waal, F. B. (2002). Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases. Behavioral and brain sciences, 25(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X02000018

Singer, T., & Klimecki, O. M. (2014). Empathy and compassion. Current biology, 24(18), R875-R878. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.06.054

Slote, M., & Slote, M. (2020). The Many Roles of Empathy. Between Psychology and Philosophy: East-West Themes and Beyond, 61-92. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22503-2_5

More About The Post:

As I’m sure you noticed in the title, “Empathy In The Brain And Beyond” is a guest post. I hope everyone enjoyed reading it as much as I did. I love all things psychology related so this was a treat.

If you enjoyed “Empathy In The Brain And Beyond” and would like to read similar posts by the author, check out their blog here. And of course, do leave any thoughts you have about the post in the comments section below.

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