If researchers at Monash University in Australia are right, there are physical reasons why some people exhibit certain kinds of empathy while others do not.

The researchers — who cited their findings in the journal NeuroImage, as reported in Medical News Today — believe that understanding the difference in “the emotional brain” could help to restore function to people with brain damage as well as to work with their emotional capacity in the workplace and other venues…

Why do researchers care so much about empathy? According to Bruna Martinuzzi in an article called “What’s Empathy Got to Do with It?,” empathy “allows us to create bonds of trust, it gives us insights into what others may be feeling or thinking; it helps us understand how or why others are reacting to situations, it sharpens our ‘people acumen’ and it informs our decisions.”

Defining empathy as “the ability to identify and understand another’s situation, feelings and motives,” Martinuzzi says that ii is “our capacity to recognize the concerns other people have, the ability to put ourselves ” in the other person’s shoes” or to see “things through someone else’s eyes”