Measuring the Immeasurable?
In 2012, two scientific colleagues at my university, Drs. Lisa Olson and Celine Ko, began a study to measure the physiological and psychological effect of the Compassion course on the students.
They wanted to see if the stories of personal transformation played out in terms of quantitative scales and lab levels. The initial results confirmed what the various religions have always said: Compassion is good for us.
The authors provide a comprehensive review of the neurobiology of empathy and compare this with the neurobiology of psychopathic predatory violence—the most extreme deficit of empathy. This suggests that the specific areas of the prefrontal…
An international team led by researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York has for the first time shown that one area of the brain, called the anterior insular cortex, is the activity center of human empathy, whereas other areas of the brai…
To give two examples, Shaun King, a prominent writer and activist wrote in the New York Daily News that “Donald Trump is a full-fledged bigot. If you support him, you are too”. Similarly, the social justice writer Arthur Chu has&n…
This story nicely illustrates the phenomenon of selective empathy. The word “empathy” came into the English language in the early 20th century as a translation of the German word “Einfuhlung,” which means “feeling into.&rd…
