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Empathy Represses Analytic Thought, and Vice Versa
hessian sends this quote from a Case Western Reserve University news release:
"New research shows a simple reason why even the most intelligent, complex brains can be taken by a swindler's story – one that upon a second look offers clues it was false. When the brain fires up the network of neurons that allows us to empathize, it suppresses the network used for analysis, a pivotal study led by a Case Western Reserve University researcher shows (abstract). ... At rest, our brains cycle between the social and analytical networks. But when presented with a task, healthy adults engage the appropriate neural pathway, the researchers found. The study shows for the first time that we have a built-in neural constraint on our ability to be both empathetic and analytic at the same time. The work suggests that established theories about two competing networks within the brain must be revised. More, it provides insights into the operation of a healthy mind versus those of the mentally ill or developmentally disabled."
[spock]Fascinating.[/spock]
So this is why girls aren't good at math?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Just swap empathetic with emotional (Yeah different, but related definitions.) and all I have to do is look/listen to my spouse in the morning to see what wife I will spend the day with.
If she is overly emotional, no amount of logic or analysis with help with anything. It's gonna be a rough day for me.
If she is overly analytical of what I do or say, there is nothing I can do or say, even gifts of chocolate, will not sway her from her incorrect analysis of my mistakes.
Women, you can;t live with 'em.
(Posting as AC becuace my spouse reads slashdot and this post will cause her to fly off the handle.)
So people that work in IT gain less and less empathy for their users? Hmmmm....
Rational analysis will lead to better outcomes than emotionally driven behavior. So if you want good things to happen to the most people, which most empathetic people would, then you should eschew empathy and be as rational as possible.
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If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I think your proof falls apart with your first statement "Rational analysis will lead to better outcomes than emotionally driven behavior." This might be evidence of the opposite. That empathic behavior is more likely to get you laid and produce children than rational behavior.
See all of you kept crying about how all our C?O and Political leaders are psychopaths were wrong. You should be happy about that. They are better at thinking than you are and no doubt producing more optimal solutions than you could.
Thank goodness we have these unfeeling psychopaths to lead us.
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I'm sure that con artists have been subconsciously using this for millennia.
Ezekiel 23:20
Then how do you explain Rethuglicans?
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Can I have my Phd now?
If you showed it "for the first time", sure you can. With a publication on a "high-profile journal" on the side.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
Most religious conservatives are NOT analytical thinkers. The same is true of conspiracy nuts (ex: birthers). The majority of both are Republicans.
It seems a faulty jump to go from the observations that the study participants did not use the two elements of cognition together to the assertion that one cannot use both capacities at the same time. At the very least it should be theoretically possible for neural connectivity to be established between the two sub-networks and as a result to activate both capabilities concurrently. Certainly we should be able to imagine circumstances where having such an ability would be advantageous, such as the processing and understanding of the experience but also wise and healthy reaction within the emotional interactions we engage in with our loved ones.
Actually if you note their campaigning methods you'll see that they spend most of their time attempting to play to emotions rather than facts and logic. It is no coincidence that their talking points focus on issues more likely to provoke a visceral reaction in the public such as religion, abortion, don't tread on me, and military/defense.
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I guess that explains the constant focus on fear by conservatives. If you focus on that most powerful emotional response, people lose the rational ability to question the long term consequences of those actions. Like say, for example, starting a useless protracted war in a middle east nation, or cutting back at personal liberties to 'protect from the terrorists'.
Well, except that it doesn't.
If it were as you suggest, emotional, non-rational appeals to tradition, religious values, nationalism, etc., would be particularly ineffective in motivating conservatives. In the real world, both groups are diverse and include both more-analytical and and more-emotional thinkers. There are plenty of studies showing indications of various cognitive differences between conservatives and liberals, but the particular one you suggest isn't one of them.
Conservatives, so the old tradition went, have heads but no hearts. Liberals have hearts, but no heads.
Somehow, somewhere, something went terribly wrong.
I think you might be mixing up feelings and emotions with empathy.
Empathy is the ability to recognize the feelings experienced by others.
So
Liberals tend to have more feelings and emotions and be more empathetic to others, so they make illogical and unreasonable decisions based on feelings and emotions..
Conservatives think more with their own feelings and emotions but their level of empathy is lower, so they reason out a logical solution from unreasonable and illogical starting points.
As someone who played eve many years as a scammer (of the variety that didn't spam local chat), I can tell you that both empathy and anger have the effect of making people dumber. I went for empathy when I was trying to get someone to give me stuff. After they fell for the scam and realized they'd been had, I'd switch over and do everything I could to make them raging angry. Once they were sufficiently mad, I'd block them and then figure out a way to get them to to meet my other character in what appeared to them to be a chance encounter, then appeal to their sense of anger and convince them to take out a bounty hunter contract with me to "kill" my first scamming character.
If you read the abstract of the article then it states that the tasks presented to the subjects where -"tasks requiring social cognition, i.e., reasoning about the mental states of other persons, and tasks requiring physical cognition, i.e., reasoning about the causal/mechanical properties of inanimate objects". Social reasoning does not equal empathy. Empathy requires one to share and understand others feelings while social reasoning is something a sociopath could do.
If you look at some rhetorical theory (ie, theory of rhetoric), you'll find that there are three main kinds of arguments, which are effective against three different categories of people.
Amongst your supporters, logical arguments have the most significant impact.
Amongst the undecided, emotional arguments are more likely to sway their decision.
Amongst your opponents, moral arguments are just about the only thing that can have any effect.
Ask yourself who they're trying to win votes from when they campaign, and I think you'll have the answer as to why it's all full of emotional arguments.
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How can you all debate this study from Case Western! We have to do something!!!
Gently reply
The existance of conservative Republicans proves there must be an additional factor, something that suppresses BOTH empathy and analytics...
Yep, I've also first taught about sales pitches.
The worst kept secret on the world is that it is way easier to sell if you put something you client emphatises with in front of him. The web is full of testimonials because of that, also salesmen try to dress correctly, use the words the clients are used to, and so on. There is an entire crop of salesmen that'll throw poersonal stories around every time, and it seems to work.
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"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of." - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662).
Let's change this to be a bit more accurate:
That explains the thought process of different political groups.
People who disagree with me think more with feeling and emotion, less with logic.
People who agree with me think more with logic and reason, and less with empathy.
I am officially gone from
"Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains."
--Georges Clemenceau (approximately)
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Really? I've never seen any evidence of that.
Okay, what about the notion that rape is what god intends? That the female body just shuts down in case of rape? What about all the people who believe the earth is 6000 yrs old? that dinosaurs and man coexisted? and ignore science fact. That evolution is "just a theory" with no evidence to support it? That they insist on less government EXCEPT when it comes to enforcing their moral beliefs and dogma on everyone else?
(ie, caring for the poor/disadvantaged/discriminated against). As it's a quality that I've personally always recognized as the fatal flaw of Liberal Ideology
The best way to experience empathy is by personally going through the hardships that others have been through, in which case, you will understand their pain. Don't think it can't happen to you. I was poor a few years ago, largely because of outsourcing and the state of the economy. There was really nothing I did (or neglected to do) that put me in that situation. I had to bust my ass to climb out of it and return to financial stability and independence. So, what's wrong with having empathy? I strive to be balanced. I empathetic. I'm also analytical...and you'd be hard pressed to argue against that, knowing that I'm a successful electrical engineer and software developer. I really don't understand how you can call empathy a weakness but, if you enjoy being a robot who doesn't get laid, knock yourself out.
Actually, it doesn't, since its about "social cognition" not "emotions"; while there may be other research findings about emoting inhibiting analytical thought, this research is about social cognition ("reasoning about the mental states of other persons") inhibiting analytical thought (or, rather, inhibiting "physical cognition, i.e., reasoning about the causal/mechanical properties of inanimate objects.").
Do that many people give a shit or have feelings for strangers they happen across / first meetings?
Yes they do, it's instinctive behavior for most primates, and the more the stranger looks and acts like a member of your "tribe" the more empathy they get. But who's talking about strangers? - This finding goes a long way to explaining why I tolerated my ex-wife for 20yrs. ;)
Empathy travels in both directions, although I suspect your question was rhetorical, the fact that you asked it reduces the initial empathy I had for you. This is probably because at 53 I'm the "silverback" of my own little tribe and subconsciously judge you as a prospective associate from a similar tribe. Competition for resources (particularly territorial resources) dictates nobody can have the same level of empathy towards everyone but the tribe is always looking for social/political alliances to boost their standing in the neighborhood. You can see the same thing at work in the royal families of Europe both past and present, they were so busy using their children to seal territorial alliances that many of their descendants now suffer complications from inbreeding. In many ways our brains simply were not built to handle the civilizations we create, for example most of my tribe live more than an hour's drive away. Excluding my parents my own tribal elders live on the other side of the planet and are more or less strangers to me. I can't even name all my Uncles and Aunt's, I just know I had ~20 of them somewhere in the UK, I've met a few and a few are already dead. As a child these people were replaced by adult neighbors and family friends, in fact back then children were expected to address adult family friends as "Uncle" or "Aunt" as a sign of respect, similar as to how US kids today address adults as "Sir", etc.
Citation: The Monkeysphere
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Considering that Republicans use emotional arguments for their supporters, moral ones for the undecided, and incoherent ones for their opponents... well, that looks like they're trying to keep their supporters convinced and are trying to bludgeon the undecided, and that they therefore don't actually believe anyone is their ally.
In other words, they're acting exactly like sociopaths would - they're convinced that given half a chance, their "supporters" will screw them over in a heartbeat, just because they'd do the same thing.
Always be analytical but fake emotions as appropriate. Also never be open with what you are thinking, nobody wants to hear the truth.
Examples:
wife: (some inane story about something that happened during the day that I'm not interested in)
incorrect answer: I have no interest in what you were just talking about
correct answer: thats interesting
My wife: (some inane story about something that happened during the day that I'm not interested in)
Me: You know I have no interest in that topic; can't we talk about xyz that we both like?
My wife: Sorry hon, my bad. But I actually don't like xyz, how's abc?
Me: abc? Cool, yeh!
The secret to a good relationship is not lying all the time... one day, that'll fall down like a house of cards and you'll end up hating each other. My wife and I knew from the start we've got our differences and we accept those. We can then spend our time together REALLY enjoying each others company instead of one of us faking it and resenting the other.
Note that I generally suck at empathy. I require my wife to tell me if I'm being an arse; or boring; or otherwise inappropriate. She'll happily do so; and I learned to happily accept her doing so. It works out better for both of us that way.
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