Transformative psychology #6: Neuroscience of empathy

Psychological researchers have found that "work in humans and nonhuman primates converges in describing a close relationship between emotional contagion, mimicry, and social closeness" (Ferrari, 2014, p. 300). While there is no scientific claim or basis in any assertion that mirror neurons guarantee an empathic response in all individuals in all situations--mocking disabilities is an example of the opposite and of course there are many others--neuroscientists are possibly moving toward consensus that without our animal innate ability to mirror others behaviors, including facial expressions and body movements, empathy might not be as possible as it clearly is.

Of course there is a continuum of empaths, all the way from those who almost eagerly put their lives in danger to protect others to those who operate only transactionally and strictly in their own self-interest. Most humans seem to fall some distance from both endpoints of that spectrum or continuum.

When deëscalating someone, the psychological empathic approach is crucial, as is the role of empathy in moderating, facilitating, and mediating. Given our natural range of empathic choices in the heat of conflict, we can instruct ourselves to come down where it will do the most good.

Scenario One: 

Mandy and Jim are escalating in an argument in a dinner party. You choose how to use your empathy. You back Jim, showing him great camaraderie and protective friendship, discounting Mandy's points. Your empathy escalates the conflict, assisting in damaging the long friendship of Mandy and Jim, as well as you and Mandy.

Scenario Two: 

Mandy and Jim, dinner party argument--same start. As they escalate and each start becoming louder and more aggressive and dismissive of the other, you choose to practice your empathy by quietly asking questions, first of one, then the other. Your quiet search for the most rational components of their arguments is your mirroring approach, your empathic approach, connecting possibly less to their physical expressions and more to the variables of their intellectual constructs, constructs that you are asking them in turn to reveal more clearly to you. If your empathic approach works, you (or one of them) may well discover enough common interests to maintain their mutual respect, if not agreement.

Both of your approaches are rooted in empathy.

Does that make empathy categorically good or invariably effective? Hardly. 

Thus, merely asserting to ourselves or to others that "I was trying to protect my friend," or "I acted out of sympathy for him," is not a legitimate claim to either good relational upkeeping or even smart intentions. Empathy expressed in ways that uplift and strengthen social bonds can show social evolutionary adaptiveness. Empathy that seems based in more of a zero-sum analysis can possibly do more harm than good.

References

Ferrari, P. F. (2014). The neuroscience of social relations. A comparative-based approach to empathy and to the capacity of evaluating others’ action value. Behaviour, 151(2/3), 297–313. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1163/1568539X-00003152