Eliicia Villasenor

OGL 220 notes

What is empathy and why is it important? (Kendra Cherry)

- Empathy involves the ability to emotionally understand what another person is going

through

- First introduce in 1909 by psychologist Edward B. Titchener

- Researchers have found that different regions of the brain play an important role in

empathy, including the anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula.

- 2 factors contribute to our ability to experience empathy: genetics and socialization.

Empathy is a choice (By Daryl Cameron, Michael Inzlicht and William A. Cunningham)

- Studies have shown our empathy is dampened or constrained when it comes to people of

different races, nationalities or creeds.

- The relationship between empathy and morality:

- Paul Bloom believed empathy is a “parochial, narrow-minded” emotion — one that “will

have to yield to reason if humanity is to survive.”

- empathy is a choice that we make whether to extend ourselves to others. The “limits” to

our empathy are merely apparent, and can change, sometimes drastically, depending on

what we want to feel.

- psychologists Karina Schumann, Jamil Zaki and Carol S. Dweck found that when people

learned that empathy was a skill that could be improved — as opposed to a fixed

personality trait — they engaged in more effort to experience empathy for racial groups

other than their own.

- An experiment conducted by Michael Inzlicht, along with the researchers Jeremy

Hogeveen and Sukhvinder Obhi, found that even people temporarily assigned to high-

power roles showed brain activity consistent with lower empathy.

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- Even those suffering from so-called empathy deficit disorders like psychopathy and

narcissism appear to be capable of empathy when they want to feel it.

Mental models (Phil Johnson-Laird and Ruth Byrne)

- Mental model = mental representation; mental models can be constructed from

imagination, perception, or the comprehension of discourse

- mental models can be traced back to Kenneth Craik’s suggestion in 1943 that the mind

constructs “small-scale models” of reality that it uses to anticipate events.

- Each mental model represents a possibility

Ted Talk: How to make stress your friend (Kelly Mcgonigal)

- Study was conducted: 43% of the people studied on had a higher chance of dying

from stress BUT these people were the same people who believed stress was

unhealthy

- Oxytocin: primes you to do things that strengthens close relationships, enhances

empathy, makes you more willing to help those you care about - released when

you hug someone “the cuddle hormone”

- Oxytocin is a stress hormone. Doesn’t only act on brain but acts on body; protects

cardiovascular system from negatively dealing with stress. Helps heart cells

regenerate, it strengthens your heart

- Study of 1000 adults for 5 years in the US. Started by asking “how much stress

did you experience in the last year and how many times did you help others?” -

major stress event increased risk of dying by 30% BUT the people who spent time
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caring for others showed NO stress related increase in dying; caring created

resilience.

- Choose to view stress response as helpful you create the biology of courage; and

when you choose to connect with others through stress you create resilience

- Stress gives access to our heart; compassionate and actual physical heart

Stress, Portrait of a killer

- Robert Sapolsky studied baboons in Kenya, East Africa to get a better understanding of

stress. The baboons were not stressed by other animals or their environment, they were

stressed out by each other

- Stress response is critical for survival (stress response = adrenaline and glucocorticoids

that comes out of the adrenal gland)

- Human beings can’t seem to find their “off switch” for stress

- Stress is the body’s way of rising to a challenge

- It was thought that stress caused ulcers but in the 80’s they discovered that ulcers came

from a bacterial disease, BUT then a few years later it was discovered that stress has the

ability to shut down the immune system which then leads to ulcers

- Stress can clog our arteries, restrict blood flow and jeopardize the health of our heart

- Sapolsky conducted a study with his mentor Bruce McEwan on lab rats and discovered

stress can shrink brain cells

- Stress shrank the part of the brain responsible for memory (hippocampus)
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- Babies exposed to stress in the fetal life can suffer consequences of that for decades after

birth

- Telomeres: protect the ends of our chromosomes, shorten as we age; stress hormones can

accelerate that process

- Dr. blackburn co-discovered an enzyme, telomerase, that can repair damage from chronic

stress