Terms of Empathy
Your Pain Is My Pain—If You Play a Fair Game
By Thomas S. May
May 01, 2006
What enables us to feel empathy—to experience or share another person’s pain,
fear, joy, or any other emotion? Empathy, research indicates, is made possible
by a special group of nerve cells called mirror neurons, at various locations
inside the brain. These special cells enable us to “mirror” emotions.
However, the activity of these neurons can be modified by various factors,
including the relationship of the people involved. A new study suggests that, at
least in men, whether we empathize with another person’s pain depends on how
that person had behaved in the past, and, perhaps more important, whether we
like or dislike them.
Mirror, Mirror in the Brain
Mirror neurons were first discovered in the early 1990s by Italian scientists
who, while looking at the activity of individual nerve cells inside the brains
of macaque monkeys, noticed that neurons in the same area of the brain were
activated whether the animals were performing a partic-ular movement (reaching
for a peanut, for instance) or simply observing another monkey—or a researcher—
perform the same action. It appeared as though the cells in the observer’s brain
“mirrored” the activity in the performer’s brain.
A similar phenomenon takes place when we watch someone experience an emotion and
feel the same emotion in response, says Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist at the
University of California, Los Angeles. The same neural systems get activated in
a part of the cortex called the insula, which is part of the mirror neuron
system, and in the emotional brain areas associated with the observed emotion.
However, the amount of activation is slightly smaller for the “mirrored
experience” than when the same emotion is experienced directly, Iacoboni adds.
A recent study by Iacoboni and colleagues highlights the impor-tance of mirror
neurons and their role in the development of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). ASD
is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by impaired social
interactions.
Iacoboni’s team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate
neural activi-ty of 10 high-functioning children with ASD and 10 normally
developing children as they observed and imitated facial emotional expressions.
Although both groups performed the tasks equally well, children with autism
showed reduced mirror neuron activity, particularly in the area of the inferior
frontal gyrus. Moreover, the degree of reduction in mirror neu-ron activity in
the children with autism correlated with the severity of their symptoms.
Iacoboni says, these results indicate that a healthy mirror neuron system is
crucial for normal social development. “If you have ‘broken mirrors,’ or
deficits in mirror neurons, you likely end up having social problems, as
patients with autism do,” he says.
There are many kinds of mirror neurons, Iacoboni says. They include neurons for
hand actions such as grasping, holding, and tearing, and mouth actions including
biting, drinking, and a wide variety of facial gestures. “We also think there
are ‘super mirror neurons,’ although we do not yet have direct evidence for
their existence,” he says.
These super mirror neurons could control and inhibit the activity of lower-level
mirror neurons, Iacoboni suggests. He also hypothesizes that by modulating, or
modifying, the activity of other neurons, super mirror neurons could enable one
to experience either pain or joy, depending on the circumstances, when watching
another person suffer.
The top images show neural activity in the right and left brain
hemispheres of children who are developing normally. The middle
images show less activity in children with autism, while the
lowest pair show regions of mirror neurons in which normally
developing children had significantly more activity than the
children with autism. Images courtesy of Mirella Dapretto, UCLA
From Pain to Joy
In a study published in the Jan. 26, 2006, issue of Nature, Tania Singer, a
research fellow at the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience at University
College London, and colleagues found what could be, according to an accompanying
editorial, the first neuroscientific evidence for the existence of
schadenfreude, the joy derived from another’s troubles.
In order to investigate the conditions under which individuals empathize with
another person’s pain, the researchers first had their subjects take part in a
game in which the other participants were associates, or “con-federates,” of the
experimenters. The confederates played either fairly (displaying trust and
cooperation) or unfairly (exhibiting a lack of trust and cooperation), in an
attempt to make the subjects like or dislike them.
The research subjects always “moved first” and could show they either trusted
the other players, by sending them money, or mistrusted them, by withholding the
money. The confederates were always “second movers” and could choose between a
fair and an unfair response: returning high or low amounts of money.
“We used this game because we know that it is a very good way to induce strong
emotions,” Singer says. “If you engage in cooperation and trust and the other
person doesn’t trust you, you really start disliking this person. But if people
respond with cooperation, you begin to like them.”
An analysis of the results showed that subjects did indeed perceive the
confederates as being fair or unfair according to their game-playing strategy.
Furthermore, behavioral ratings confirmed that both male and female subjects
rated the fair players as being significantly more agreeable, more likeable, and
more attractive than the unfair players.
In the second part of the experiment, the investigators used functional magnetic
resonance imaging to look at brain activity patterns while the subjects observed
the confederates, who they thought were being given painful electric shocks.
As expected, subjects showed strong activation of pain-related brain regions
when witnessing fair players receiving electric shocks. However, these
empathy-related responses were significantly reduced in males when observing an
unfair person being shocked. Moreover, this effect was accompanied by “increased
activation in reward-related areas, which correlated with an expressed desire
for revenge,” the investigators reported.
Singer says the fact that some people appear to be pleased when others who had
been unfair are being punished can be explained in terms of evolutionary
psychology. “It is important for people to cooperate with one another, if
society is to remain stable,” she says.
“Therefore, it might be good if people punish those who are unfair and do not
cooperate, so that overall, society gets more and more cooperators.”
The scientists are not sure why men appeared to be less empathetic and more
revengeful than women toward unfair players. Singer speculates that this finding
is attributable to the study having involved the application of physical pain
(electric shocks applied to the back of the hand).
“If we had a psychological revenge, such as ruining the reputation of the other
player, perhaps women would behave the same way,” she says.
About Thomas S. May
Thomas S. May is a science and medical writer based in Toronto, Canada. He can
be reached at tsmay@nasw.org.
