"Jean Decety is a French American
neuroscientist specializing in developmental neuroscience, affective
neuroscience, and social neuroscience. His research focuses on the
neurobiological mechanisms underpinning social cognition, particularly
emotion, empathy, moral reasoning, altruism, pro-social behavior, and
more generally interpersonal processes. He is Irving B. Harris Professor
of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago." (wikipedia)
Class:
The Social Brain and Empathy
"The experience of empathy is a powerful interpersonal phenomenon and a
necessary means of everyday social communication. It facilitates
parental care of offspring. It enables us to live in groups and
socialize. It paves the way for the development of moral reasoning and
motivates prosocial behavior. Empathy is an essential cornerstone of the
patient-doctor relationship. It is associated with better outcomes and
fewer malpractice claims. For a very long time, empathy has been a focus
of speculation in philosophy. But in the past decade, empathy research
has blossomed into a vibrant and multidisciplinary field of study, which
includes developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, social
psychology, and affective social neuroscience."
2012 -
The Roots of Empathy Found in Rats
A collaboration by University of Chicago neuroscientists Inbal Bartal,
Jean Decety, and Peggy
Mason has produced groundbreaking findings on empathy and helping
behavior. Published in
Science, the paper, entitled Empathy and Pro-Social Behavior in Rats,
finds that rats repeatedly
work to free their trapped cagemates, motivated by empathy for their
distress.
A leading University of Chicago researcher on empathy is
launching a project to understand psychopathy by studying criminals in
prisons. Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor in Psychology and
Psychiatry, has received a $1.6 million grant from the National
Institute of Mental Health to use fMRI technology to examine the neural
circuitry of criminal psychopaths.
2006-04 - Mirrored
Emotion
"A basic human impulse affecting the course of history, culture, and
personal connections, empathy is also a neuro-logical fact—and one
that’s increasingly understood. TO NEUROSCIENTIST JEAN DECETY, empathy
resembles a sort of minor constellation: clusters of encephalic stars
glowing in the cosmos of an otherwise dark brain. “See how they flash,”
Decety says, pointing to the orange-lit anterior cingulate cortex and
anterior insula on an fMRI scan. “This person is witnessing another
person in pain. ... What’s interesting is that this network of regions
is also involved in the firsthand experience of pain.”
The neuroevolution of empathy
"There is strong evidence that empathy has deep evolutionary,
biochemical, and neurological underpinnings. Even the most advanced
forms of empathy in humans are built on more basic forms and remain
connected to core mechanisms associated with affective communication,
social attachment, and parental care. Social neuroscience has begun to
examine the neurobiological mechanisms that instantiate empathy,
especially in response to signals of distress and pain, and how certain
dispositional and contextual moderators modulate its experience.
2010-12
-The Neurodevelopment of Empathy in
Humans
"Empathy, which implies a shared interpersonal
experience, is implicated in many aspects of social cognition, notably
prosocial behavior, morality and the regulation of aggression. The
purpose of this paper is to critically examine the current knowledge in
developmental and affective neuroscience with an emphasis on the
perception of pain in others. It will be argued that human empathy
involves several components: affective arousal, emotion understanding
and emotion regulation, each with different developmental trajectories.
2009-09-24 - First academic conference on empathy will examine its
advantages, disadvantages
(see
also Conferences)
"Decety will present “The Benefit and the Costs of Empathy: the Price of
Being Human,” in which he’ll look at the physiological and social costs
associated with being too empathic. A growing number of Decety’s
functional neuro-imaging studies of pain empathy demonstrate the overlap
between the first hand experience of pain and the perception of pain in
others."
05. What are the limits of empathy in Pain?
MD, Dr. Hillel Braude, Clinical Ethics, McGill
University, Canada
Prof. Jean Decety, Neurobiology, Psychiatry, University of Chicago, USA
"In
recent decades, empathy research has blossomed into a vibrant and
multidisciplinary field of study. The social neuroscience approach to
the subject is premised on the idea that studying empathy at multiple
levels (biological, cognitive, and social) will lead to a more
comprehensive understanding of how other people's thoughts and feelings
can affect our own thoughts, feelings, and behavior. In these
cutting-edge contributions, leading advocates of the multilevel approach
view empathy from the perspectives of social, cognitive, developmental,
and clinical psychology and cognitive/affective neuroscience."
Contents
Introduction
Seeking to Understand the Minds (and Brains) of People Who are
Seeking to Understand Other People's Minds
Jean Decety and William Ickes
Section 1. What Is Empathy?
Chapter 1. These Things Called Empathy: Eight Related But Distinct
Phenomena -
C. Daniel Batson
Section 2. Social, Cognitive, and Developmental Perspectives on
Empathy
Chapter 2. Emotional Contagion and Empathy
Elaine Hatfield, Richard L. Rapson and Yen-Chi Le
Chapter 3. Being imitated: Consequences of non-consciously
showing empathy
Rick B. van Baaren, Jean Decety, Ap Dijksterhuis, Andries van der
Leij and Matthijs L. van Leeuwen.
Chapter 4. Empathy and knowledge projection
Raymond S. Nickerson, Susan F. Butler and Michael Carlin
Chapter 5. Empathic Accuracy: Its Links to Clinical, Cognitive,
Developmental, Social, and Physiological Psychology
William Ickes
Chapter 6. Empathic Responding: Sympathy and Personal Distress
Nancy Eisenberg and Natalie D. Eggum
Chapter 7. Empathy and Education
Norma Deitch Feshbach and Seymour Feshbach
Section 3. Clinical Perspectives on Empathy
Chapter 8. Rogerian Empathy in an Organismic Theory: A Way of
Being
Jerold D. Bozarth
Chapter 9. Empathy in Psychotherapy: Dialogue and Embodied
Understanding
Mathias Dekeyser, Robert Elliott and Mia Leijssen
Chapter 10. Empathic resonance: A neuroscience perspective
Jeanne C. Watson and Leslie S. Greenberg
Chapter 11. Empathy, morality and social convention: Evidence
from the study of psychopathy and other psychiatric disorders
R.J.R. Blair
Chapter 12. Perceiving others in pain: Experimental and clinical
evidence on the role of empathy
Liesbet Goubert, Kenneth D. Craig and Anne Buysse
Section 4. Evolutionary and Neuroscience Perspectives on Empathy
Chapter 13. Neural and Evolutionary Perspectives on Empathy
C. Sue Carter, James Harris and Stephen W. Porges
Chapter 14. Mirror, mirror, in my mind: Empathy, interpersonal
competence, and the mirror neuron system
Jennifer H. Pfeifer and Mirella Dapretto.
Chapter 15. Empathy versus personal distress - recent evidence
from social neuroscience
Jean Decety and Claus Lamm
Chapter 16. Empathic processing: its cognitive and affective
dimensions and neuroanatomical basis
Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory
"There are many reasons for scholars to investigate empathy.
Empathy plays a crucial role in human social interaction at all
stages of life; it is thought to help motivate positive social
behavior, inhibit aggression, and provide the affective and
motivational bases for moral development; it is a necessary
component of psychotherapy and patient-physician interactions.
This volume covers a wide range of topics in empathy theory,
research, and applications, helping to integrate perspectives as
varied as anthropology and neuroscience.
The contributors discuss the evolution of empathy within the
mammalian brain and the development of empathy in infants and
children; the relationships among empathy, social behavior,
compassion, and altruism; the neural underpinnings of empathy;
cognitive versus emotional empathy in clinical practice; and the
cost of empathy."
Introduction: Why Is Empathy So Important? - Jean Decety
I Philosophical and Anthropological Perspectives on
Empathy 1
1 Empathy without Isomorphism: A Phenomenological
Account - Dan Zahavi & Søren Overgaard
2 Empathy, Evolution, and Human Nature - Allan
Young
