Yawning and Empathy

Researchers demonstrate link between contagious yawning and empathy.

Altruism and Complexity

Marlow and Berbesque find that "third-party" punishment occurs more often in more complex societies. Second party punishment is defined as punishing those who cheat, or do not cooperate with you. Third party punishment is defined as punishing those who cheat or don't cooperate with others. Perhaps the more complex a society you have, the more control you need over the people and the more control you need, the more sophisticated mechanisms of punishment you need?

Other information related to empathy

If you haven't read the NY Times Bestseller Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel Goleman, the author of the earlier bestseller, Emotional Intelligence, pick up a copy and read the evidence that empathy is a powerful communication device. There is also a CD version of the book in case you want to listen to it in your car while you're driving. Goleman, a graduate of the Department of Psychology at Harvard University shows a diverse and deep knowledge of the literature in the field of social neuroscience and other empathy-related fields of psychology.

Not only does he propound the power of empathy with strong evidence from many research studies, he also talks about ways empathy could have importance in juvenile detention residences and prisons, as well as at work and in relationships. Going deeper he relates what is experienced in social settings and with empathy to studies of the activation of specific neural groups like the amygdala (anger center, in what he calls the "lower road" pathways) and frontal cortex centers (logic center, in what he calls the "higher road" pathways).

Goleman explains how there is a link created between the brains of a healthy mother and her child relationship in which the mother is tuned in to what her child needs insuring that her child has a strong, safe connection as a base for exploring the world that affects how her child develops. He then extends this to understand behavior of people in relationships, at work, or in disciplinary situations that he claims are creating more criminals than curing them. Like Marshall Rosenberg, he supports strongly the concept of restorative justice, showing to me that this book was not your ordinary complaint about the way the system currently works, but actually offered up real solutions that work.

So if you're really interested in the basis of NVC, and would like to understand it at neural, psychological and social levels of thought, pick up this book.

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Altruism

I just read a post at greater good discussing recent research reported in the New York Times that identifies pet-owners willingness to give affection and love to their pets as evidence of "pure altruism". We give our pets love and affection with no expectation that the pet will give anything in return. Therefore generosity must carry its own rewards i.e. positive emotions, rather than being a means to some favorable end.

On the other hand, perhaps what the pet "gives" is similar to what humans "give" when they practice empathy. Although it appears that the pet gives nothing back, perhaps the mere reception of their love is a gift to us?