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New Study Indicates that Empathy Can Spread Through Social Interactions
You Are the Company You Keep: The Contagious Effect of Observing Empathy
To feel empathy is human — the ability is a core aspect of what makes us us, and what makes societies function as a whole. It plays a critical role in how we form relationships, communicate, collaborate, and how we act towards those we interact with. And, yet, there has existed a long-standing preconception that the empathic ability one has is fixed and cannot be modified by anything once adolescent development ends. When describing empathy, folks say “I am very empathetic” and “They don’t have empathy” with a sense of finality akin to “I am alive” and “He is a human”.
Recently, however, scientists have delved deeper into the dynamics of empathy, and uncovered a fascinating phenomenon: it can be socially transmitted. Not only can our ability to be empathetic vary throughout our lifetime, it can vary from one interaction to the next. Discover how a newly published study has shed light on how empathy flows through our social connections and reveals the pathways through which it is shared, amplified, and sometimes, diminished.
