Empathy is understanding another individual’s distress or pain from their perspective. It is mainly about a person experiencing other-oriented feeling of sympathy by placing oneself into the other’s shoes. One of the traits that make our species different from the others, is the ability to empathise. This phase can be experienced by simply watching someone having a hard time. The degree to which empathy can affect one’s personal emotional state varies among individuals. Scientists and researchers have discovered that empathy is being encouraged by mirror neurons, certain cells in our brains that get activated when watching another person undergoing negative emotional experience. These cells will then stimulate empathy, where we would feel
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This feeling will then motivate us to lend a helping hand, to alleviate the distress. This move is called prosocial behaviour in psychological terms. Prosocial behaviour is behaviour intended to help another individual in distress (Eisenberg, Fabes & Spinrad, 2006). Empathy, followed by prosocial behaviour has become a popular subject among researchers for many years throughout the globe. Many researchers have given evidence that these two are so closely related to each other but there are some criticisms as well associated with that hypothesis. Theories suggest that empathy plays an essential role in the presence of prosocial behaviour (Eisenberg et al., 2010; Lockwood et al., 2014). Hence, this leads to a much more important question, that is, to what extent prosocial behaviour and empathy are related? One of the many measures to measure empathy is age. Empathy emerges at birth. New-born babies are found to have empathy due to the mirror neurons in their brains. A crying research was conducted to test empathy among babies. Babies listened to another’s cry and responded by imitating the cry as vigorously as the recording of babies who are in actual distress (Sagi …show more content…
However, the results for gender related experiments contradict the fact that empathy and prosocial behaviour are related to a certain extent. A few tests have proven that girls are more empathic but less prosocial compared to boys. Their prosocial behaviour is only apparent when their good friends are in trouble (Strayer and Roberts,1989). However, these tests are done behind closed doors. In practical, the society expects the girls to be more prosocial and this pressure forces the girls to be more helpful towards others even when they have no empathy. The influence of society in this case, reduces the influence of empathy in one’s prosocial behaviour (Radke-Yarrow et al.,1983; Wylie,1964; Zahn-Waxler, Cole, &
This feeling will then motivate us to lend a helping hand, to alleviate the distress. This move is called prosocial behaviour in psychological terms. Prosocial behaviour is behaviour intended to help another individual in distress (Eisenberg, Fabes & Spinrad, 2006). Empathy, followed by prosocial behaviour has become a popular subject among researchers for many years throughout the globe. Many researchers have given evidence that these two are so closely related to each other but there are some criticisms as well associated with that hypothesis. Theories suggest that empathy plays an essential role in the presence of prosocial behaviour (Eisenberg et al., 2010; Lockwood et al., 2014). Hence, this leads to a much more important question, that is, to what extent prosocial behaviour and empathy are related? One of the many measures to measure empathy is age. Empathy emerges at birth. New-born babies are found to have empathy due to the mirror neurons in their brains. A crying research was conducted to test empathy among babies. Babies listened to another’s cry and responded by imitating the cry as vigorously as the recording of babies who are in actual distress (Sagi …show more content…
However, the results for gender related experiments contradict the fact that empathy and prosocial behaviour are related to a certain extent. A few tests have proven that girls are more empathic but less prosocial compared to boys. Their prosocial behaviour is only apparent when their good friends are in trouble (Strayer and Roberts,1989). However, these tests are done behind closed doors. In practical, the society expects the girls to be more prosocial and this pressure forces the girls to be more helpful towards others even when they have no empathy. The influence of society in this case, reduces the influence of empathy in one’s prosocial behaviour (Radke-Yarrow et al.,1983; Wylie,1964; Zahn-Waxler, Cole, &