A new study by British and German researchers has been making the rounds in the news and the blogosphere, noting that increased Oxytocin levels increase “empathic” response in men. The broad acceptance of evidence for the biological basis of empathy is beyond question these days, but I have a concern. I’ve been actively practicing empathy as a spiritual practice for many years now. In my experience, empathy, in addition to being an innate potentiality, is also a learned skill. The most important component of empathy in my experience is my intention to be present for another, to place my attention on the experience of another person rather than my own. I don’t necessarily feel “cuddly” when practicing empathy…
From Jeffrey Kluger at Time Magazine:
Psychiatrist Rene Hurlemann of Bonn University and neuroscientist Keith Kendrick of the Cambridge Babraham Institute were well acquainted with the power of oxytocin when it’s released the way nature intended. What they wanted to determine is if it could be artificially administered to a person to manipulate feelings of empathy and perhaps even learning. “Both learning and empathy are part of what’s known as social cognition,” says Hurlemann. “That’s our ability to feel what other people are feeling and take their point of view.”
To test how oxytocin might affect those capabilities, Hurlemann and Kendrick ran a two-part experiment. In the first, 48 males were divided into two groups — half received an aerosol shot of oxytocin and half got a placebo — and then shown evocative pictures of things like a crying child, a grieving man and a girl hugging a cat. They were then asked to describe how deeply they were feeling the emotions associated with the pictures. On the whole, the men in the oxytocin group exhibited “significantly higher emotional empathy levels” than those in the placebo group. This, despite the fact that all of the volunteers were able to describe and understand what was going on in the pictures and what the people in them were probably feeling.
Read more…
