In my experience, empathy has a neutral quality to it. Neutral, in that I am temporarily setting aside my own perspective to understand the perspective of another. As Frans de Waal points out in this video clip, though neutral by nature, empathy can be used in self-serving and even destructive ways. Watch this short clip from a conversation de Waal had this week with Carl Zimmer of Discover magazine:
Posts Tagged ‘Frans De Waal’
The dark side of empathy, with Frans de Waal
January 31st, 2010The Evolution of Empathy
January 27th, 2010
I’ve been posting a lot of Frans de Waal writings and video lately. I’m fascinated by the fact that empathy seems to have an instinctive basis. That its not purely a learned skill. In this article in Greater Good Magazine, de Waal explains that not only are humans innately empathic, but that empathy is not solely a human trait. From Greater Good:
Over the last several decades, we’ve seen increasing evidence of empathy in other species. One piece of evidence came unintentionally out of a study on human development. Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, a research psychologist at the National Institute of Mental Health, visited people’s homes to find out how young children respond to family members’ emotions. She instructed people to pretend to sob, cry, or choke, and found that some household pets seemed as worried as the children were by the feigned distress of the family members. The pets hovered nearby and put their heads in their owners’ laps.”
Are Humans Hard Wired for Empathy?
November 3rd, 2009Frans de Waal, a professor of primate behavior in the psychology department at Emory University, is the author of “The Age of Empathy.”
Ardi casts doubt on the notion that we have an innate killer instinct
By FRANS DE WAAL
Are humans hard-wired to be ruthlessly competitive or supportive of one another?
The behavior of our ape relatives, known as peaceful vegetarians, once bolstered the view that our actions could not be traced to an impulse to dominate. But in the late 1970s, when chimpanzees were discovered to hunt monkeys and kill each other, they became the poster boys for our violent origins and aggressive instinct.
