Stress and Empathy

Would you ever think that being around strangers makes you generally less empathetic? What if just a little bit of positive interaction with a stranger made you generally more empathetic? 

President Obama has discussed the so called 'empathy deficit' in the United States citing the many times politicians have called for welfare cuts on the poor. Others say that empathy is the social glue that holds our societies together without us clawing for our own fortune all the time. 

A new study published in the journal Current Biology says that empathy has a lot to do with how stressed you are being around strangers. Student participants were separated into various scenarios: alone, with a friend, with a stranger, between two strangers given a stress-blocking drug, and between two strangers that had played Rock Band together for 15 minutes. They were then asked to submerge their arm in cold ice water and rate their pain. This is a common technique for professionals to see how different stimuli and behaviors can subsequently affect how one perceives pain. For the purpose of this study, seeing an increase in pain above an initial baseline is an indication of feeling another's pain or empathy. 

Participants that were alone or sitting with a stranger reported experiencing the same level of pain. But, when paired with a friend or with someone whom they just played 15 minutes of Rock Band with, participants reported experiencing more pain. "It would seem like more pain in the presence of a friend would be bad news, but it's in fact a sign that there is a strong empathy between individuals - they are indeed feeling each other's pain," said Mogil, one of the authors of the study. The group that was given the stress-blocking drug, which inhibited a flight-or-fight stress response, experienced more pain in the prescience of a complete stranger, indicating an increase in empathy. So it would seem stress has a lot to do with our ability to be empathetic with one another. 

Sometimes after a stressful day we only contemplate on our own difficult matters rather than the struggles of others. Often this narrows our perspective and shies us away from realizing our own fortunate situations. Being social beings has benefitted our society in many ways over the course of our evolution and continuing to be empathetic towards others only propels our social relationships in everyday life.  

http://neurosciencenews.com/empathy-emotion-psychology-1714/

“Reducing Social Stress Elicits Emotional Contagion of Pain in Mouse and Human Strangers” by Loren J. Martin, Georgia Hathaway, Kelsey Isbester, Sara Mirali, Erinn L. Acland, Nils Niederstrasser, Peter M. Slepian, Zina Trost, Jennifer A. Bartz, Robert M. Sapolsky, Wendy F. Sternberg, Daniel J. Levitin, and Jeffrey S. Mogil in Current Biology. Published online January 15 2015

Eli