Empathy is a crucial psychological process involving understanding and sharing others' feelings. Serving as a cornerstone of prosocial behavior, empathy facilitates acts of helping, cooperation, and donation. Given the profound impact of empathy on human social life, a deep understanding of the acquisition and alteration of empathy is important.

Traditional views suggest that empathy is a stable ability acquired in early life and remains unchanged. However, recent empirical studies have found that empathy is malleable and may be regulated by various social motives.

Does a cold environment breed individuals devoid of compassion, while a loving environment perpetuates empathy? Addressing this question, Dr. ZHOU Yuqing from the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with her team, conducted a series of experiments on the plasticity of empathy in different social environments. Combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and computational modeling, they aimed to elucidate the neural and computational process by which individuals learn or unlearn empathy by observing empathic or non-empathic individuals. These findings have been published online in the PNAS on Feb 21.

"Empathy ratings increased or decreased depending on whether empathic or non-empathic reactions were observed. Interestingly, the neuronal response to the pain of other individuals also changed,” says Dr. Zhou.

The neural changes measured in the fMRI scanner were reflected in altered connectivity of the anterior insula, a brain region associated with empathy processing. Dr. Zhou and her collaborators further demonstrate that these neural changes can be explained by mathematical learning models.

To further validate the robustness of the research findings, Dr. Zhou and her collaborators conducted multiple control experiments, ruling out the influence of social desirability, instruction effects, anchoring effects, and imitation effects on changes in individual empathy. Together, this implies that the increased or decreased empathy in the experiment is genuinely induced through learning from others and is not merely an imitation or displayed to please others.

In summary, this study demonstrates that empathy is socially transmitted and adults can learn and unlearn empathy by observing others, revealing the significant role of the social environment in shaping individual empathy.

This study entitled was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Scientific Foundation of the Institute of Psychology of CAS, the German Research Foundation, and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

LIU Chen Institute of Psychology
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Beijing 100101, China.
E-mail: liuc@psych.ac.cn