title: Empathy as a driver of prosocial behaviour: highly conserved neurobehavioural mechanisms across species.
abstract: Empathy reflects the natural ability to perceive and be sensitive to the emotional states of others, coupled with a motivation to care for their well-being. It has evolved in the context of parental care for offspring, as well as within kinship bonds, to help facilitate group living. In this paper, we integrate the perspectives of evolution, animal behaviour, developmental psychology, and social and clinical neuroscience to elucidate our understanding of the proximate mechanisms underlying empathy. We focus, in particular, on processing of signals of distress and need, and their relation to prosocial behaviour. The ability to empathize, both in animals and humans, mediates prosocial behaviour when sensitivity to others' distress is paired with a drive towards their welfare. Disruption or atypical development of the neural circuits that process distress cues and integrate them with decision value leads to callous disregard for others, as is the case in psychopathy. The realization that basic forms of empathy exist in non-human animals is crucial for gaining new insights into the underlying neurobiological and genetic mechanisms of empathy, enabling translation towards therapeutic and pharmacological interventions.
authors.affiliation: The Child Neurosuite-Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, 5658 South University Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA decety@uchicago.edu.
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Decety
authors.affiliation: Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Inbal Ben-Ami
authors.initials: IB
authors.lastname: Bartal
authors.affiliation: Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 8AH, UK.
authors.forename: Florina
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Uzefovsky
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel.
authors.forename: Ariel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Knafo-Noam
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D005075:Biological Evolution; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D004645:Empathy; D006801:Humans; D066233:Psychology, Developmental; D012919:Social Behavior; D013315:Stress, Psychological
keywords: biological mechanisms; caring; development; empathy; evolution; prosocial behaviour