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Empathy: The Contribution of Neuroscience to Social Analysis Vincenzo Auriemma full chapter instant download
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Empathy
The Contribution of
Neuroscience to Social Analysis
Vincenzo Auriemma
Empathy
“What is empathy? This book can help you rethinking this popular and taken
from granted idea today. It is an inquiry into the history of the concept, using a
strong trans-disciplinary approach at the crossroads of neurosciences, psychol-
ogy and sociology. Useful to scholars but also to people outside the academia,
since the author provides insights of possible application of the empirical
research.”
—Prof. Gabriele Balbi, University of Italian Switzerland, Switzerland
Vincenzo Auriemma
Empathy
The Contribution of Neuroscience
to Social Analysis
Vincenzo Auriemma
University of Salerno
Fisciano, Italy
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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Vincenzo Auriemma’s book is about empathy, that is, the ability to put
oneself in the shoes of others in order to understand their meaning and
intentions and feel the emotions felt by those being observed. The work
that follows is to be inscribed within the theoretical strand of the sociol-
ogy of emotions, an increasingly important field of research in contem-
porary theoretical reflection and one that has developed consistently
since the 1970s (Kemper, 1990). This strand has been formed by vari-
ously combining different perspectives and research groups: evolutionary
sociology, scholars of the structural-functionalist paradigm, sociologists
of culture, followers of microsociological theories, exchange theory and
symbolic interactionism. For this reason, some scholars such as Turner
and Stets (2005) believe that the study of emotions represents the van-
guard of contemporary microsociology.
However, the field of emotion research is not a recent one. Already
classical authors have dealt with it to some extent, one thinks only of
Durkheim’s concept of collective effervescence (1912) or even more pre-
cisely of Weber’s concept of versthen, on which Auriemma dwells. But
originally, the study had an organicistic approach, as it was inspired by
the works of Charles Darwin, William James and Sigmund Freud, who
treated emotions as a purely biological fact and, for that reason, univer-
sally prevalent. Later, social research broke away from the mechanistic
scientific model and affirmed a relational approach to empirical studies,
vii
viii Foreword
inspired by the works of John Dewey, Hans Gerth, C. Wright Mills and
Erving Goffman. As Arlie Hochschild points out, these authors while
recognizing a biological basis for emotions, social factors interact before
and after with the emotions one feels (1983, p. 221), in the sense that
emotions vary according to cultural norms and social context.
The centrality of the emotions to social theory is also offered by the
more recent theory of affect, which is an extension of post-structuralist
and post-modern theory, but also takes elements from queer theory and
natural science and technological studies. With all these approaches,
affect theory shares an interest in the deconstruction and decentering of
the subject, but differs from them in the weight accorded to the biologi-
cal factor in the social construction of reality. Specifically, affect theorists
are concerned with the ways in which bodies offer and receive affect
(Blackman & Venn, 2010, p. 9).
For these authors, affect is interrelated to emotion, in that the former
refers to the indeterminate, vital biological basis, while the latter is the
expression of this force when it encounters the socio-cultural processes
that make it explicit, conscious and expressible. Affect theory therefore
deals with the process from the biological origin (affect) to the social
expression of it (emotion).
These theorists refer to the new knowledge derived from research in
the life sciences, such as biology, genetics and neuroscience and represent
a move away from post-modern approaches that reject any dialogue with
the natural sciences. Indeed, a leading exponent complains that cultural
and social theory has wrongly distanced itself from and ignores impor-
tant findings of the natural sciences. In Parables for the Virtual, Brian
Massumi denounces the need to rework the concepts of nature and cul-
ture and to their relationship (2002, p. 39). The problem, then, is to
understand how nature and culture interact in new ways without the
reductionist temptations of one over the other and vice versa.
Vincenzo Auriemma’s work on empathy is to be inscribed in this cul-
tural frame. Indeed, in social dynamics and human interactions, the
empathic capacity of subjects is central, an aspect that often goes unno-
ticed but plays a crucial role in understanding and answering the funda-
mental question, ‘why society?’ and ‘how we can understand the dynamics
of social structures, conflicts and relationships therein?’ The book explores
Foreword ix
Bibliography
Blackman, L., & Venn, C. (2010). Affect. Body & Society, 16(1), 7–28.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X09354769.
Durkheim, É. (1912). Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, un
siècle après. L’Année sociologique, 62(2).
Hochschild, A. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human
feeling. University of California Press.
x Foreword
1 I ntroduction 1
Bibliography 5
2 Empathy:
A Theoretical Starting Point 7
1 The Concept of Sympathy as Origin 10
2 Verstehen in Weber’s Idea 16
3 Schütz’s Critique of Weber’s Conceptualization: The
Einfhulung 22
4 Lived Experience as an Element of Empathy: Simmel
and the Erleben 28
5 Empathy from the Late Twentieth Century to the
Present, Rifkin and de Waal 32
6 Empathy from de Waal’s Point of View 35
7 Toward an Applied Sociology, Empathy at the Center
of Neurosociological Reflections 39
Bibliography 43
3 Trans-disciplinary
Approach: Methodological Preface
for an Applied Sociology 49
1 The Difference Between Various Approaches:
Transdisciplinary, Multidisciplinary and Interdisciplinary 50
xi
xii Contents
4 Possible
Integrations Between Sociology, Social
Psychology and Social Neuroscience 89
1 How Social Neuroscience Can Contribute to
Social Analysis 90
2 Transdisciplinarity Between Economics and Sociology 96
3 Transdisciplinarity Between Social Psychology and
Sociology 99
4 Transdisciplinarity Between Social Neuroscience,
Cultural Sociology and Sociology 101
5 Neurosociology as a Response to Transdisciplinary
Discourses106
6 Neurosociology in the Analysis of Empathy 119
Bibliography127
5 Possible
Applications of Empirical Research: The
Subdivision of Empathy141
1 Possible Methodological Approach of Applied Research 146
2 Setting Up the Research Environment 154
3 Research Methodology 157
4 The Theory of Embodiment 163
5 Some Practical Examples, from Empathy as Care to
Virtual Empathy 168
Bibliography174
Contents xiii
6 C
onclusions177
1 Empathy and Emotion Analysis from Transdisciplinary
Networks: The Example of IRNSN 188
Bibliography196
B
ibliography201
I ndex243
1
Introduction
above all, new technologies aspects. In fact, after the pandemic that has
affected us, it has become necessary to rethink the concept of being a
community, even before the idea of social interaction, which is why
reflecting empathy even through the mediation of a screen, rather than
the analysis of the media that allow us to interact directly or indirectly
with society, could be the main key to initiate empirical research in a
sociological key. It will be necessary, therefore, to consider empathy in a
relationship between sociology and social neuroscience, corresponding to
a path that is not only theoretical, but can propose experimental research
hypotheses in order to understand whether empathy underlies human
and social relations. So, an intellectual endeavor that has been attempted
on several occasions, but has often only found its way into biological-
medical reflections, where some scholars, including Rizzolatti, have tried
to make discourses on empathy the preserve of a single discipline.
However, it should not be forgotten that such research supports sociology
in the observations made of it by the classics, who analyzed culture sym-
bolically (Auriemma, 2022a, b). Therefore, the text has been reflected
through a transdisciplinary approach, that is, an approach that does not
limit itself to recognizing interactions or reciprocities through specialized
research, but rather identifies those connections within a total system,
without stable boundaries between the disciplines themselves (Piaegt,
1971; Ammassari, 1985). This allows, on the one hand, a critical evalua-
tion of the thought and analyses of authors belonging to disciplinary
fields, seemingly, far from each other, and, on the other hand, to learn
from previously conducted research aimed at understanding empathic
attitudes and reshape them for sociological goals. Consequently, this is a
type of work that draws from multiple points of view, without presuming
to propose changes of course in reflections, bringing out a cultural uni-
versalism in favor of a biological universalism, rather trying to highlight
how empathy can be a transdisciplinary topic that offers considerable
opportunities for dialogue and comparison between different disciplines.
As anticipated, the starting point was an analysis of the reflections on the
connection between empathy, neuroscience and sociology beginning
with Weber’s Verstehen; thus, from the German sociologist’s discourses of
sociological understanding of it as opposed to positivism. In this way, the
element that links understanding to neurosociology is, predominantly,
1 Introduction 3
proposal for reinterpretation that allowed to mitigate the view of the mir-
ror neuron from an element predisposed to empathy, as argued by several
authors, to a neuron capable of bringing out the principle of imitation/
learning. Finally, it consists of an in-depth study of the concept and dis-
cipline called “neurosociology.” Specifying that this discipline should not
be the preserve of only one science, but should be characterized by trans-
disciplinarity, so as to return, through empirical research, a broad view.
The next step was to define the object of study of this discipline, that is,
it must be able to analyze social interactions and socialization in relation
to the structures and functions of the nervous system. Therefore, it must
emphasize the cultural and symbolic aspects underlying social interac-
tions. A key element of this chapter will be dynamic interaction, which
frees neurosociology from mere biological reductionism, inserting the
latter concept as a cognitive element and belonging to each person, useful
for understanding one of the points of view, contrasting it with what is
the great novelty of neurosociology, namely the analysis of social
interaction.
Bibliography
Ammassari, P. (1985). Validità e legittimità dell’analisi causale. Annali di
Sociologia, 91–117.
Auriemma, V. (2022a). Empathy as interaction as well, from Weber to neurosociol-
ogy. Quaderni di Sociologia Clinica.
Auriemma, V. (2022b). Empathy. The contribution of neuroscience to social analy-
sis. PM Edizioni. Varezze.
Piaegt, J. (1971). L’épistémologie des relations interdisciplinaires. Archives de
Philosophie, 141–144.
Sperry, R. (1993). A mentalist view of consciousness. Social Neuroscience
Bulletin, 15.
Ward, J. (2017). The student’s guide to social neuroscience. Psychology Press.
2
Empathy: A Theoretical Starting Point
1
They are attested by anthropology, the history of religions, and the soil of attachment in the
mother-infant relationship, sexuality, and numerous mental illnesses (Rifkin, 2011).