The Greater Good http://www.coveritlive.com/index2.php/option=com_altcaster/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=78629a6e93/height=//width= Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:57:46 GMT Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:03:31 GMT 1 en-us <![CDATA[2:59 Domenick Ammirati]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:59:44 GMT Please stand by. The Guggenheim Forum live chat will begin soon. ]]> <![CDATA[3:00 Comment From Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:00:53 GMT <![CDATA[3:01 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:01:44 GMT Hello, Meghan -- Welcome to the live chat. ]]> <![CDATA[3:01 Domenick Ammirati]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:01:58 GMT Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for an hour of conversation as part of our current Guggenheim Forum, “The Greater Good.” I’m Domenick Ammirati, Senior Editor at the Guggenheim Museum and one of the organizers of our Forum programming.
]]> <![CDATA[3:02 Domenick Ammirati]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:02:05 GMT We’ve had a great discussion so far this week moderated by writer and journalist Lynne Soraya, and she’ll be leading the discussion here. ]]> <![CDATA[3:02 Domenick Ammirati]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:02:18 GMT Also joining us this afternoon will be neuroscientist Peggy Mason and writer Meghan Falvey. ]]> <![CDATA[3:02 Domenick Ammirati]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:02:45 GMT I'm very much looking forward to the conversation. And with that, I turn it over to you, Lynne. ]]> <![CDATA[3:02 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:02:52 GMT Hi everyone!
]]> <![CDATA[3:04 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:04:02 GMT Hello to everyone, and thanks for participating in today's event. The conversation so far has been stimulating, and interesting. Welcome to Peggy and Meghan. Thanks for making the time to be here today. ]]> <![CDATA[3:05 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:05:11 GMT So, I'll get right into it...in our first exchange we talked about empathy, and the various ways we, as a society define it and use it. What do you think is the more common definition?
]]> <![CDATA[3:06 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:06:17 GMT In the land of biology, the umbrella term of empathy refers to any social communication of affect or mood.
]]> <![CDATA[3:07 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:07:18 GMT How about you, Peggy? How do you feel empathy is represented in science, and is it consistently applied in all areas of science? ]]> <![CDATA[3:08 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:08:20 GMT When you talk about social communication, do you think we have a bias toward any particular type? Non-verbal versus verbal, for example? ]]> <![CDATA[3:08 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:08:57 GMT I am less concerned with whether scientists call something X or Y than that they define their terms. I think that most people trying to study empathy are circling around a common definition. But again we could call it by some other name as long as we define it.
]]> <![CDATA[3:10 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:10:27 GMT The type of empathy that we study in rodents is certainly non-verbal. This same non-verbal type of empathy is displayed by non-verbal adult humans and by pre-verbal infants. So the non-verbal expression is more biologically widespread.
]]> <![CDATA[3:10 Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:10:37 GMT I agree with Peggy (if I may) that defining the term of the phenomenon under study is more important than any agreement about what the term means.
]]> <![CDATA[3:11 Comment From Alice Ray]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:11:15 GMT <![CDATA[3:11 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:11:19 GMT Meghan, do please join in! I was just about to address a question to you as well! ]]> <![CDATA[3:13 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:13:00 GMT Welcome Alice -- I think that's a great question! Personally I think these ways of breaking out components of empathy are very important, especially speaking from the way I learned it. For me, and many others like me, some of these aspects have to be explicitly taught.
]]> <![CDATA[3:13 Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:13:22 GMT This is Meghan, I am here! Forgive my slowness, had some passing computer difficulty but I think I'm all set now. Lynne, what did you want to ask?
]]> <![CDATA[3:14 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:14:32 GMT Alice, I agree that that is a terrific question. We are trying to use our rats to learn the best strategies to teach empathic helping. No answers yet but we have ideas.
]]> <![CDATA[3:14 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:14:44 GMT Hi, Meghan -- I was going to ask about your opinion as a sociologist, as to the trends you see in the aspects of social communication we focus on as a society. ]]> <![CDATA[3:15 Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:15:30 GMT Alice, I'm by no means an expert regarding autism. Truly, I'm learning from Lynne and the commenters as we go. One of the commenters to the forum gave a typology of autism in which he broke down emotional response and whatever action that follows on it... ]]> <![CDATA[3:16 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:16:34 GMT I don't think that Alice's question is only applicable to those on the autism spectrum. Personally, I've seen the need to teach empathy in general. ]]> <![CDATA[3:17 Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:17:49 GMT I agree with Lynne's point; empathy is not of interest only to those people on the autism spectrum.

]]> <![CDATA[3:17 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:17:56 GMT There is a wonderful documentary called "The Power of Forgiveness" that talks about how we navigate through painful events...and find forgiveness. A huge focus of those efforts is in teaching empathy. ]]> <![CDATA[3:18 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:18:47 GMT Alice, I view empathy as a primarily 3-step process. 1. "contage" or catch the other's emotion; 2. down-regulate your own emotion about the situation (aka chill, de-stress) and 3. figure out what to do about it. The power of the biology is that 1 is a biological mandate. We get it for free. So my bet is that the thing to teach kids is how to cope with their own feelings enough to allow them to act. ]]> <![CDATA[3:19 Domenick Ammirati]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:19:41 GMT I have a related question here. Do we find it odd that we would have to teach empathy? Why doesn't that occur automatically by some societal mechanism? Or alternatively why isn't the hard-wiring for empathy working? ]]> <![CDATA[3:20 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:20:09 GMT The challenge, I think, is dealing with differences in communication styles. We may be designed to look for meaning, but our meaning tends to be impacted by our own culture and experiences. ]]> <![CDATA[3:20 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:20:26 GMT And neurology.
]]> <![CDATA[3:21 Comment From Erik Van Loon]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:21:51 GMT <![CDATA[3:21 Comment From Erik Van Loon]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:21:52 GMT <![CDATA[3:21 Comment From Erik Van Loon]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:21:54 GMT <![CDATA[3:22 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:22:24 GMT Empathy, I think is natural in many people, but it does break down. And there are many factors that can make it break down. ]]> <![CDATA[3:22 Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:22:25 GMT To respond to Lynne's earlier question to me: what I'm interested in is how trust, which Lynne mentioned in her last post, becomes a matter of what sociologist Anthony Giddens described as something to be won via "demonstrable warmth and openness." It seems notable to me at least that this is a matter of demonstration of affect rather than one of action. ]]> <![CDATA[3:23 Comment From Erik Van Loon]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:23:12 GMT <![CDATA[3:23 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:23:13 GMT Domenick, I think there is a great deal of automatic empathy going on all the time. Smiling at a smiling person as you pass them on the street. What may be more deliberate is to suppress our empathic inclinations, to "harden our heart" so to speak. And remember that empathic feeling may not always be the best feeling. This is clear in the practice of medicine but in other realms as well.
]]> <![CDATA[3:23 Comment From Erik Van Loon]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:23:34 GMT <![CDATA[3:23 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:23:51 GMT Interesting, Meghan. Would you say that brings in the question of intent? An action is just an action, but the extent it damages our trust depending on what intent we believe is behind it? ]]> <![CDATA[3:24 Comment From Alice Ray]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:24:25 GMT <![CDATA[3:26 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:26:15 GMT Alice, I think that's an important point -- empathy is one biological imperative, and there are many other competing ones. Some, like self-protection, can get in the way of empathy, and we have to teach the skills to overcome such conflicts.
]]> <![CDATA[3:26 Comment From Erik Van Loon]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:26:17 GMT <![CDATA[3:26 Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:26:29 GMT Lynne, I was thinking more about how, in a context in which "empathy" is a characteristic that employers desire, that people who have difficulty demonstrating empathetic affect may well find it equally difficuklt to find or keep jobs. ]]> <![CDATA[3:26 Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:26:56 GMT Sorry, I meant "difficult." Bad typist! ]]> <![CDATA[3:27 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:27:17 GMT Alice, Right. I agree. Empathy comes with a cost. Mostly emotional/psychic but also physical and material. In the end, we would be stuck walking down the street of any modern city if we felt full empathy for every down-trodden individual we passed. We would never get home and we would give away all of our money and food....
]]> <![CDATA[3:29 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:29:32 GMT Of course, Erik:
Simplest way to put it is this -- someone hits you, what leads you to believe that it's an act of aggression? The intent you assign to the hitter. Did they know they hit you? Was it an accident? Was it a playful slap on the back, in the way of support? Or was it intended to do harm? ]]> <![CDATA[3:31 Comment From Alice Ray]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:31:12 GMT <![CDATA[3:31 Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:31:33 GMT This is a question for Peggy Mason: I am curious about how you, as a neuroscientist, deal with normativity and ethical preference. That's not meant to be a loaded question, I am truly curious. ]]> <![CDATA[3:31 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:31:37 GMT Meghan--I think our points dovetail to some degree. I do a lot of work in the diversity space. When discussing diversity, empathy always comes how. How? Just what I discussed with Erik above -- a lot of the disputes and pain that come from the conflicts around diversity are about the perception of the other lacking empathy. That's all about intent. ]]> <![CDATA[3:32 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:32:51 GMT Meghan -- could you expand, for the non-academics in the audience, what you mean when you say "normativity and ethical preference"? ]]> <![CDATA[3:33 Comment From Blanche Wilson]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:33:17 GMT <![CDATA[3:33 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:33:27 GMT Personally I think the tricky part is to figure out where the line is. To what extent is it morally ok to pass a homeless person in Chicago and do nothing? And at what point does that such an action make us just like the person in Nazi Germany who witnessed the marginalization and ultimately killing of Jews and others? I don't pretend to know the answer but I think that both instances use the same tool of hardening our heart against our biological inheritance of automatically helping another in distress.
]]> <![CDATA[3:35 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:35:13 GMT Peggy, that's a very interesting point. It brings to mind Philip Zimbardo's work on evil, and the breakdown of empathy. ]]> <![CDATA[3:35 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:35:33 GMT Evolutionarily, Blanche, empathic helping is going to confer great survival advantages. First it allows mom to keep babies alive. Then during adulthood, empathy aids social cohesion which makes food and shelter more easily obtained. And so on. Bottom line, empathy and helping are big evolutionary plusses. ]]> <![CDATA[3:35 Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:35:49 GMT Of course, sorry. "Normativity" is just a fancy way of saying "what's normal"-- what counts as normal.
"Ethical preference"-- I meant, what is it that one wants to see instead? On what grounds do we want better for ourselves and for others?


]]> <![CDATA[3:37 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:37:08 GMT Hi, Blanche -- Welcome! Personally, I think as discussed earlier in the chat, biological forces are complex, and can sometimes be contradictory. Pro-social behavior is beneficial for survival of the species, but not always for the survival of the individual. ]]> <![CDATA[3:38 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:38:34 GMT Psychopathy - intentional cruelty either motivated by empathy or a lack thereof - is very interesting to me. I am very interested to see if "psychopathic" rats exist or if this is a human peculiarity. Stay tuned - it will take us a few years.
]]> <![CDATA[3:38 Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:38:41 GMT Erik, that's a great quote (the one from Roosevelt). Would you elaborate on the meaning of it? ]]> <![CDATA[3:39 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:39:42 GMT Meghan -- that is definitely an interesting question. I think about that a lot. To bring a pop-culture reference, I think about the concept of the "Prime directive" in the Star Trek world. The idea that advanced cultures shouldn't interfere with the natural evolution of another one, even if they believe that what's going on in those cultures are unethical. ]]> <![CDATA[3:40 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:40:59 GMT The idea of these types of policies is to prevent the kind of atrocities that came from colonialist and forcing our own value system on other cultures. But where is the line? ]]> <![CDATA[3:41 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:41:57 GMT Erik, I am afraid I am a bit of a Luddite. @pm - does that mean me?
]]> <![CDATA[3:43 Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:43:38 GMT To reply to Lynne: no, I don't think it has anything to do with intent. It's a question of ability, which is not equally distributed; and then there's a further level of unequal distribution laying on top of how abilities get parceled out among individuals. What I'm concerned with is how, in a context in which one is expected to "demonstrate" "warmth and openness" -- what happens to people who can't do that? Who's gauging what that means, anyway? ]]> <![CDATA[3:44 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:44:10 GMT Peggy -- the idea of psychopathic rats is definitely an interesting one. Beyond that, I'd be interested to know how that trait would equip the rat for society? Positively or negatively.
]]> <![CDATA[3:46 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:46:42 GMT Meghan -- my point is that people may be trying to present themselves as warm and open, but who send the opposite message. That is often a result of the intent the recipient of their overtures perceives. A common example is a manager who praises an African American associate on how articulate they are...the manager is thinking that they're being nice, but it may be received otherwise by the associate. ]]> <![CDATA[3:46 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:46:51 GMT Psychopathy or acting in direct opposition to the well being of the group is something that at the very least most most rats do not do. We have seen rats which none of us are too impressed by, candidate psychopaths if you will. But to take this from anecdote/hunch to proven fact is far easier said than done. So the biology of evil/menacing act/psychopathy remains unclear at present.


]]> <![CDATA[3:47 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:47:50 GMT Peggy -- What do you think of some of the theories that are out there that claim that sometimes (in human populations) psychopathy is an adaptive trait? ]]> <![CDATA[3:51 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:51:36 GMT Let's remember that the key to evolution is variation. Natural selection must act on a variable population. If we were all alike, evolution would not work, at all. So are there contexts in which acting selfishly and at great cost to others will confer advantages to the actor? Assuredly yes. That said, one of the most interesting findings in ethology has been that the alpha males are NOT the most aggressive ones. They are more affiliative. So that is to say that the frequency of contexts that confers an advantage on cooperation is likely higher than the frequency of situations where it pays to be a selfish evil person. Yahoo for that. ]]> <![CDATA[3:52 Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:52:17 GMT Thank you for clarifying your point, Lynne.

It's funny that I've been ignoring all the references to "intent," and yet here I am declaring my own: I am trying to talk about the question of need. Empathy, however it's defined, is insufficient. How others care or don't care about another's need--- that strikes me as a slender thread to rely on. What if we stopped valorizing individual response and instead enacted policies-- both at the level of employers and at the state and federal levels-- so that people who don't have the resources to enact "demonstrable warmth and openness" are not shut out of social life, from jobs. ]]> <![CDATA[3:53 Comment From Adriana]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:53:01 GMT <![CDATA[3:54 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:54:17 GMT There are some who have argued that the Corporation, if viewed as a person, would fit the qualities of a human psychopath? If true, how would that shape the behavior of the people that work for that corporation? ]]> <![CDATA[3:55 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:55:24 GMT For example, if something is ethically correct, and pro-social; but would negatively impact the company -- would an individual employee be driven to act in a way that is less pro-social, less empathic way? ]]> <![CDATA[3:56 Comment From Stephen]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:56:03 GMT <![CDATA[3:58 Peggy Mason]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:58:01 GMT Thanks everyone! Fun discussion. Now I am off to teach medical students!
]]> <![CDATA[3:58 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:58:28 GMT Thanks for being here, Peggy! ]]> <![CDATA[3:59 Domenick Ammirati]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:59:00 GMT Well perhaps this is a good moment for me to jump in. I am afraid our hour is up. ]]> <![CDATA[3:59 Domenick Ammirati]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:59:08 GMT Lynne, Peggy, and Meghan, you were all great--thanks very much. ]]> <![CDATA[3:59 Lynne Soraya]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:59:42 GMT Good bye all! ]]> <![CDATA[3:59 Domenick Ammirati]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:59:49 GMT To everyone who joined us here, I’d like to offer a hearty thanks as well. It was a great exchange. ]]> <![CDATA[4:00 Meghan Falvey]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:00:01 GMT Thank you Lynne, Peggy, everyone.
]]> <![CDATA[4:00 Domenick Ammirati]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:00:06 GMT We can keep it going in the Comments section of the Forum per se—we’d love to have you write in. Our third round of discussion there will kick off this afternoon. And please keep checking on the Forum for the rest of the week. ]]> <![CDATA[4:01 Comment From Adriana]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:01:08 GMT <![CDATA[4:03 ]]> Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:03:31 GMT 
 
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