Improved empathy through stress reduction

Psychology: Natural stress in strangers causes less empathy compared to friends

01/16/2015

People who do not know each other are less empathetic than friends. This is the natural stress in contact with strangers responsible. Stress reduction, on the other hand, leads to greater empathy, according to a study by McGill University in Montreal, where this effect was studied in both mice and humans. To reduce the stress among the foreign subjects, they let the researchers play a video game together - with success. After the game, the previously strangers felt much more empathy. The study was published in the renowned journal „Current Biology ".

Relieving stress in strangers increases empathy
Canadian researchers led by Professor Jeffrey Mogil of McGill University wanted to find out where lack of empathy is and how to overcome it. For this they first examined the behavior of mice. Because these often respond strongly to pain that are inflicted on a conspecific. However, this empathic reaction only happens when the animals know each other. In foreign mice, the animals behave as if they had not happened. To see if their response changed with reduced stress, the researchers gave the animals a small dose of the stress-reducing hormone blocker Metyrapone. As it turned out, the animals responded to strange mice similar to acquaintances. „This study identifies a reason for lack of empathy and answers the crucial question of how we can create empathy between strangers, "Mogil, senior author of the study, quoted in a statement from the university.

Empathy can be increased by stress-solving
To find out if this stress effect also affects humans, they let students hold their hands in a bowl of ice water. They were first accompanied by a friend and then by a stranger who watched. The study participants felt the pain much more in the presence of a friend than a stranger, which the researchers also interpreted as a sign of empathy. At the same time, "even the watching friends reacted much more to the pain than the strangers". A stress-solving agent "significantly increased the subjects' empathy". This was true for the foreign spectators as well as for the participants, who dipped their hands into the ice water. „It may seem that more pain in the presence of a friend is bad news, but it is indeed a sign of great empathy between people - they are actually feeling the other's pain, "explains Mogil.

To achieve the stress reduction naturally, the researchers asked the subjects for 15 minutes the video game „Rock band“ to play music together. As it turned out, "a round of playing together before the tests on each other's strangers led to similar results as the stress-relieving agent". They were much more sensitive. However, subjects who played the video game alone did not respond more emphatically. „It turns out that even a common experience that is as superficial as playing a video game together, people from the „Fremengruppe“ in the „friends group“ and creates a meaningful level of empathy, "explains Mogil. „This research shows that basic social stress reduction strategies can move us from an empathy deficit to a surplus. "

Mechanisms of empathy seem to be the same in humans and mice
The study also shows that social stress in contact with strangers is responsible for the lack of empathy. „These results raise many intriguing questions because we know that empathy deficits play a central role in various mental disorders as well as social conflicts, both personal and societal, "explains Mogil. „It is also quite surprising that empathy apparently works the same way in mice and humans.“ (Ag)