Hey there, and welcome to Life Noggin.
You’re watching a friend hang a picture on the wall of your house.
She swings the hammer.
Her hand slips, and she smashes her thumb.
You rush to her side to make sure she’s okay, not just because you don’t want her
to sue you, but because she’s your friend and a fellow human.
You can imagine what she’s going through.
What’s happening in your brain is a complex process that we’ve evolved to help us survive
as a species.
It’s called empathy, and it’s ‘the capacity to understand or feel what another person
is experiencing.’
It’s different from sympathy in that you’re putting yourself in someone else’s place
and understanding what they’re going through, not just feeling sorry for them.
While empathy can be seen in other species--dogs and primates come to mind--it’s actually
rare in the animal kingdom.
So how did you lucky humans develop it?
Well humans gained empathy in three steps.
First, humans began pair bonding with our mates as a way of raising our young.
The need to cooperate with another person to keep babies alive encouraged our brains
to grow.
Second, humans started living in communities.
Having to regularly deal with other people made us smarter.
If you’ve ever had roommates who refused to /pick up after themselves on occasion/,
then you know how important it is to be able to live together in peace AND THROW OUT THE
GARBAGE ONCE IN A WHILE!
Third, human tribes had to cooperate to survive in harsh environments, where food was scarce.
Here, we learned the importance of putting the good of all over our own desires.
Essentially, /relationships/ are at the core of why we evolved the way we did.
Isn’t that beautiful?
Everybody reach out and hug somebody.
I mean, someone you know, if they’re cool with it.
Don’t hug strangers.
Studies have shown that people seeing images of others in pain experience activity in the
anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula, areas of the brain that process pain.
When you tell your friend, “I feel your pain,” you’re not just being cliche.
You kinda /do./ And that’s amazing.
Human beings are still naturally self-centered, however.
We project /our/ life experiences and emotional states on others.
To compensate for that, another part of our brains, the right supramarginal gyrus, separates
/our/ emotions from those we see in others.
It keeps us from going full Johnny Bravo on people and helps us understand what /they’re/
going through, even if it’s different than our own experiences.
Knowing this about human development, it seems obvious that empathy is part of our nature,
that it’s not something we /learn./ But that’s not the whole story.
We’re born with the basics of empathy, but it takes work to make us empathy pros.
See, children need to be empathized /with/ in order to fully experience empathy themselves.
If your caretakers empathize with you, you’re more likely to be an empathetic person.
On the other hand, you can be taught /not/ to empathize, or be born with a disconnect
in the empathetic centers of the brain.
Some researchers believe those who lack empathy due to, say, a difficult childhood suffer
from sociopathy, and those who are /born/ with an inability to empathize suffer from
psychopathy.
Words like “sociopath” and “psychopath” get thrown around casually, so it’s important
to know these are real conditions that people deal with, even if it’s only a small percentage
of the population.
Are you an empathetic person?
What other mental processes that we take for granted do you want to see covered?
Let me know in the comments.
Have you ever wondered if humans are naturally born good or bad?
Check out this episode.
Make sure you come back every Monday for a brand new video.
As always, I’m Blocko and this has been Life Noggin.
Don’t forget to keep on thinking!