The ability to empathize with the suffering of others is an evolutionary mechanism that helps us protect ourselves.
Walt Whitman wrote: “I will not ask the wounded man what he feels – I myself will become the wounded man” (“Leaves of Grass”, Poem 33. Translated from English: Shimon Halkin). When we see a person suffering from pain, we feel his pain in our own flesh. But when we see a sick person – do we feel his illness in our own flesh? This is the fascinating question that Prof. Simone Shamai-Zuri from the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Haifa asks in her new study, which was supported by the National Science Foundation.
“Research conducted in recent years shows that the central nervous system and the brain play a role in empathy,” says Prof. Shamai-Tsuri. “When I see someone else’s pain, my brain simulates their emotional experience so that I feel distressed myself. There are areas in the brain called ‘mirror areas,’ and as their name suggests – a mirror that reflects the pain that the other person is experiencing. And the question arises whether, in addition to the brain simulating pain, it activates additional systems in the body that simulate other experiences of the other person – for example, illness.”
Beyond being a primary social value, Prof. Shamai-Tsuri explains that empathy has an evolutionary role: If we feel the pain of our friends, we are actually preparing ourselves for the possibility that we will feel pain ourselves. It is the brain's way of signaling us to imminent danger, and making us better protect ourselves. In the new study, Prof. Shamai-Tsuri wonders if the same evolutionary logic applies when it comes to pathogens.
“When I take care of a sick person, for example a child with a fever, does my immune system also release cytokines, which activate the inflammatory system, to prepare for the possibility that I too will become infected and get sick? Is there immune empathy? After all, if a pathogen – a virus or bacteria – enters a group of hunter-gatherers, it is better for all members of the group to prepare their immune systems, and thus fewer will get sick and fewer will die from the disease.” Empathy has an evolutionary role: if we feel the pain of our friends, we are actually preparing ourselves for the possibility that we will feel pain ourselves.
To test this hypothesis, Prof. Shamai-Tsuri and her colleagues filmed videos of sick people talking about their feelings, alongside videos of healthy people. They showed the videos to 60 subjects, who were asked to fill out questionnaires about their symptoms before and after the screening – and indeed, it turned out that after exposure to the sick videos, the healthy subjects reported feelings of aches, pains and weakness, compared to exposure to the healthy videos, which did not change the subjects’ feelings. Furthermore, the experiment shows that there is a direct relationship between the degree of empathy the subject felt towards the filmed patient and the symptoms they reported after watching.
“Of course, the question still remains whether this is a subjective feeling or a measurable physical condition – do healthy people who are exposed to sick people really become a little sick themselves? In our second experiment, which is still in its infancy, we have already tested seven subjects – and we definitely found an increase in the amount of cytokines in their blood after exposure to the videos. In our third experiment, we will repeat this operation, but this time under MRI, in an attempt to see the brain response itself. We assume that the more active the mirror areas are, the more cytokines will be released into the blood, meaning that the mirror areas are responsible for the empathic release of cytokines.”
More of the topic in Hayadan:
