Dissociating the ability and propensity for empathy.
Neuroimaging suggests psychopaths have reduced vicarious activations when simply witnessing pain but less so when asked to empathize. This inspired us to distinguish the ability from the propensity to empathize. We argue that (i) this ability-propensity distinction is crucial to characterizing empathy in psychiatric disorders such as psychopathy and autism, (ii) that costly helping might be best predicted by the propensity for empathy, and (iii) suggest how social neuroscientists can start exploring this distinction.
Social Brain Lab, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Meibergdreef 47, 1105BA Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Department of Neuroscience, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands. Electronic address: c.keysers@nin.knaw.nl.
Christian
C
Keysers
Department of Neuroscience, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands; Social Brain Lab, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Meibergdreef 47, 1105BA Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Electronic address: v.gazzola@nin.knaw.nl.
Valeria
V
Gazzola
D001288:Attention; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology*; D004213:Dissociative Disorders / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D004645:Empathy; D006801:Humans; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D009042:Motivation; D059906:Neuroimaging