"Man is by nature a social animal" and in order to cope in the established social environment, every mentally healthy person should be raised as a master of social communication. Empathy is an important form of connection with others, defined as the ability of the individual to feel or imagine the emotional feelings of another living being. To a large extent, the development of empathy predetermines the quality and building of the individual's relationships in both the interpersonal and social spheres, which in turn determines the quality of life of the individual. Our quality of life is the quality of our relationships and empathy is its building ground.
There are three types of empathy:
- Emotional empathy - arises in the immediate perception of the other person's experiences and in a situation of other beings’ unhappiness manifests itself in the form of compassion.
- Cognitive empathy - based on intellectual processes - (comparison, analogy) and means understanding the situation or condition of the other.
- A priori empathy - the a priori nature of empathy is rejected by Freud and Piaget. Researchers believe that empathy increases with age, but consider the development of children between 18 months and 7 years as a period of lack of empathy and specify that at this point in their lives children are unconsciously self-centered and unable to accept the point of view of the other.
However, two researchers MacDonald and Messinger point out that newborns who have been exposed to the sound of another baby crying often show reactions to "disaster - a phenomenon called reflexive, reactive crying or emotional surrender." Newborns respond more strongly to another baby's crying than to various types of controlled stimuli, including silence, white noise, synthetic crying sounds, inhuman crying sounds, and their own crying. "This suggests that the baby reacts with stress reactions to crying to another baby, and not just in response to the noise of crying, this can be seen as a very early precursor to the empathic response. The specificity of reflexive crying to the sounds of other babies' cries supports the idea that there is a biological predisposition to react to the negative emotions of others.
Marco Jacoboni examines several areas of the brain involved in empathic and empathetic behavior. Studies of macaque monkeys have revealed a special class of motor neurons, called mirror neurons, that respond in a similar way to the perception of one's own actions and the actions of others. There is evidence that the human brain contains a similar mirror neural system that underlies the premotor and surrounding areas of the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain. Mirror neurons and the mirror neural system alone are not responsible for empathic feelings, but they are thought to provide a neural basis for connecting our own and others' experiences. The importance of the function of mirror neurons for the development of empathy is emphasized in the Perception-Action Model of Empathy proposed by the theorist de Waal. According to this theory, looking at another's emotional state automatically and unconsciously activates personal associations with that state, causing a reaction to another's experience, as the individual would react to his own (when it is not suppressed).
Such scientific surveys show that empathy lies down deep into our biology as a specific way nature has secured our species not to lose connection and understanding as well as a coping mechanism of help. And keep in mind that empathy is not constricted to human beings but to all beings making us biologically (if the theory is accepted) the guardians of the Earth.
This doesn’t mean that empathy cannot be developed or suppressed by the environment we live in. There is another survey that shows the amygdala (the part of the brain that is responsible for feelings and emotions, empathy included) is much bigger in people that show heroic actions through their life and much smaller in psychopaths (the clinical name for a person that is incapable of feelings and expressing emotions). The new science neuroplasticity shows that different parts of the brain change when stimulated consistently through our whole life. So if we stimulate empathy the amygdala grows, and thus grows the part of the brain that corresponds to all emotions. So think about that when you are feeling lack of love or somebody cannot show their emotions – stimulate their ability for empathy, put them in such situations and encourage their proactive empathic behavior.
by dr. Helen
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