GRATITUDE AND EMPATHY

Basics of Humanity
“While you have dreams and ambitions, celebrate the journey that will take
you there. Love the tiny successes and the failures along the way. Practice
gratitude and stop putting off your happiness for the sake of achievement.”

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a

listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which
have the potential to turn a life around.”

I have seen lack of humanity, especially gratitude and empathy, in today’s world. I know
the values of empathy and gratitude. I want to share them with the rest of the world
because this is something that is needed, especially for now.

Since the beginning of early humans, there has been a drastic change physically and
emotionally. Things of high importance in those times were survival and procreation.
As humans evolved, so did their minds and thus, psychological and emotional changes
took place. Humanity is something that sets apart humans from other creatures in
many ways. The two basics of humanity are gratitude and empathy.

Gratitude and empathy are highly in “demand” due to the regressing humanity among
humans. Thus, I am prompted to talk about this.
What does Science say about Empathy?
Whether it’s watching a friend get a paper cut or staring at a photo of a
child refugee, observing someone else’s suffering can evoke a deep
sense of distress and sadness — almost as if it’s happening to us. In the
past, this might have been explained simply as empathy, the ability to
experience the feelings of others, but over the last 20 years,
neuroscientists have been able to pinpoint some of the specific regions of
the brain responsible for this sense of interconnectedness.

Five scientists discussed the neuroscience behind how we process the

feelings of others during an
Integrative Science
Symposium chaired by APS
Fellow Piotr Winkielman
(University of California, San
Diego) at the 2017
International Convention of
Psychological Science in
Vienna.
"When we witness what
happens to others, we don't
just activate the visual cortex as we thought some decades ago," said
Christian Keysers of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in
Amsterdam.

"We also activate our actions as if we'd be acting in similar ways. We

activate our own emotions and sensations as if we felt the same."

The above two paragraphs are just morsels taken from a research paper
among many of them. We can see that empathy is not just an ability but
something far more.
What does Science say about Gratitude?
When the brain feels gratitude, the parts of the brain that are
activated include the ventral and dorsal medial pre-frontal cortex. These
areas are involved in feelings of reward (the reward when stress is
removed), morality, interpersonal bonding and positive social interactions,
and the ability to understand what other people are thinking or feeling. 

Gratitude also has the capacity to increase important neurochemicals.

When thinking shifts from negative to positive, there is a surging of feel-
good chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. These all
contribute to the feelings of closeness, connection and happiness that
come with gratitude. 

 It helps with depression.

 It strengthens our connections with people.
 It lets people know we aren’t the type to take things for granted.
 It reinforces generous behaviour.
 It increases feelings of security and connectedness.
 It keeps the feel-goods around for around for longer. 
 It squeezes out negative feelings.
 It helps with depression.
Correlation between Gratitude and Empathy

A 2018 article discussing empathy in Current Opinion in Behavioural

Sciences shows there is a clear role played by the medial prefrontal
cortex (MPFC) in emotional empathy and associated positive emotions.
Such positive emotions include pride, joy, happiness, motivation and
wonder.

A 2019 experiment discussing gratitude in the journal Emotion shows

there is a clear role played by the MPFC as well, influenced by how
grateful study participants were. This particular
2019 study established the neuroscientific
connection between gratitude and life
satisfaction, looking specifically at the MPFC
region.

There is clearly an overlap between the MPFC’s

activation role in both empathy and gratitude.

Studied extensively in the past two decades,

gratitude has been shown to be a ‘gateway’ to
other positive emotions including joy, pride,
motivation and wonder. The MPFC may be the fundamental connection
between these very unique and rewarding feelings among humans.

 Affective empathy directly influenced gratitude, whereas no direct effect

of cognitive empathy was found. The results indicate that participants who
reported higher resilience also reported higher levels of gratitude and that
cognitive empathy strengthened this relationship indirectly. 
How to colourise your life with Gratitude and Empathy?
Gratitude and empathy have been proven to be positive and progressive
emotions. It is important to know how to implement them.
The best way to practise gratitude, according to me, is to follow the
principle of Omotenashi – except, we practise it in such a way that it
extends to ourselves. Omotenashi is the art of selfless hospitality. We
must be hospitable and grateful to ourselves. Only when we start
appreciating us, our journey, our strengths, our flaws, our actions, the
people and so on in our life, then can we experience gratitude at its
prime. This eventually leads to empathy. Empathy and gratitude are
extremely correlated. When we are grateful and appreciate anything or
anyone, we also connect to that particular thing or the person. For
example, I feel grateful for being a naturally calm and reserved person.
This enables me to empathise with
those who have a similar condition and
are going through that alone and help
them. We must start thanking ourselves
and the people around us for the good
things that exists in our lives. We must
start empathising with people, even
animals like dogs and cats, rather than
sympathising. Unlike sympathy, empathy allows one to find a solution for
the problem and present an effective result. I can sympathise with a
fractured puppy for a long time and I would still not have helped the
puppy. But if I empathise with the puppy, I could treat it with the required
procedure and thus, solving the problem. I would feel grateful for my
action and the role the puppy played in my life thus practising gratitude.
Both empathy and gratitude come together here serving as a positive
reinforcement in my life and thus helping me feel and become Better.
Sometimes, all people need is a listening ear, a shoulder to lean on and a
person to talk to. In the end, gratitude comes along and makes things
better.
We as humans need to justify the “human” in “humanity”. A simple way
to do that is to simply read my essay and implement what I have written.