Culture of Empathy Builder:   Alfred W. Kaszniak

Professor Al Kaszniak's talk to the UA Psychology Department
Empathy & Compassion: Contemplative and Neuroscience Perspectives

 Empathy, Compassion & Neuroscience Part 1

• 00:00 Introduction

• 03:00 - begin

• What is empathy?

  • feeling

  • knowing

  • responding compassionately to others distress
       (sometime separated as compassion)

• How do we understand compassionate response to suffering?

  • contemplative tradition view

    • fundamental part of being human

  • 4:40 science view (Ann Harrington)

    • science not convinced of natural compassion

    • altruism and self sacrifice 

• 5:10 The Social Neuroscience of Empathy

  • difference between contemplative and scientific perspectives is narrowing

• 5:30 Affective Sharing, resonance, mimicry, synchronize emotions

  • (Work by Frans de Waal)

  • (Work by Stephanie D. Preston)

  • mother infant, with primates

    • this is automatic - not conscious

    • studies were done to show the automatic quality

  • Studies that support this

    • shows how we do facial mimicry 

    • happy and neutral faces studies

    • the muscles in the viewer mimic others

• Mirror Neurons and FMRi - (Work by Marco Iacoboni)

  • explain the reflective part of mirroring

  • mirroring but understand intension as well

  • first saw it in monkeys and is found in humans as well

Part Two

• Mirror Neurons and FMRi

  • explain the reflective part of mirroring

  • mirroring but understand intension as well

• Pain mirroring studies (Lamm and colleagues)

  • we create a simulation of the pain of others

  • seeing pain affects our own pain brain regions

• Anterior Insular Cortex

  • body stimuli and exterior stimuli come together.

  • embodiment of emotional experience

• 4:00 What do mediation, compassion and mirror neurons have to do with each other?

  • people who practice mediation - are more sensitive to mirroring?

  • (research by Richard Davidson at Madison, Wisconsin)

  • kindness for all beings.

• 5:00 Self Awareness and self other differentiation

  • empathy sensing the difference between you and me.

• Self Focus and Empathic Over arousal

  • (Work by Daniel Batson)

    • Self-focused perspective-taking arouses more intense empathic distress

    • (is this sympathy?)

  • Nancy Eisenberg

    • (is this sympathy and the impulse is to turn away and not be with the person suffering)

    • (sympathy can inhibit empathy?)

    • those who show greater physiologic emotional response to others discuss tend to be more self-focused, less empathy and less altruistic in respond to other's distress.

• 6:56 Metalizing and Medial prefrontal cortex - theory of mind

  • being able to take the perspective of the other

  • example of the Sally Ann ball task

    • 3 year old says in the basket

  • about Sally-Ann Test

Sally Anne Test
 

 

Part Three:

Part Four:

•   Do experienced meditator's respond differently to emotional stimuli and or regulate emotion differently than non meditator's?

  • did studies to test this - continued

  • emotional pictures

  • pleasant pictures

  • unpleasant pictures

  • 3:30 responses to masked emotional pictures

• attention and clarity

Part Five: