During last night’s debate, empathy was on display from the beginning. In his opening statement, Romney invoked various struggling women he’d met on the campaign trail: a woman in Ohio who has been unemployed since May and asked ‘can …

Is there a spectrum of empathy wiring in human beings, from people with high degrees (Mother Theresa) to those where it may be missing altogether (Hitler)? Is part of the tendency to look away from pain self-protective – if seeing pain puts us into a p…

Scientific evidence shows that we can teach our brains to feel more compassion, both for others and ourselves. Imagine how the world might be…With practice, it’s thought that compassion can be enhanced and this will increase the likelihood of a…

Neuroimaging suggests psychopaths have reduced vicarious activations when simply witnessing pain but less so when asked to empathize. This inspired us to distinguish the ability from the propensity to empathize. We argue that(i) this ability–prop…