Why Your Brain is Hardwired to Use Empathy to Mirror Itself to Others

Empathy, the ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes, is crucial to understand others and actively promote their well-being and happiness. In the brain, empathy requires modeling neural circuits to represent the thoughts and feelings of others. Check out this study assessing how our brain responds to threats to self and others, and whether the others being friends or strangers makes a difference in the neural mechanisms of empathy.

Key Takeaways 

• Brain activity patterns are similar in response to threat to self or a friend

• No such similarity is seen when the threat is to a stranger 

• Brain regions responsive to threat represent loved ones in the same way they represent oneself

Empathy, broadly defined as the ability to understand and feel the emotional states of others, results in compassionate behavior. It plays a key role in interpersonal relationships and in the society at large. Empathy requires fine-tuned connections between brain regions and enables us to resonate with others, to take in their perspective, and to differentiate between our own and others’ emotions. 

Empathy requires modeling neural circuits to represent the thoughts and feelings of others.

Imaging studies found that empathy involves neural circuits that perceive how one’s own body mirrors the experience of others. An example was given in a study wherein neural circuits active in response to one’s own pain were also active during a loved one’s pain. But do our brain’s responses differ based on whether the other is a friend or a stranger?

Similar Brain Response When Threat is to Self or a Friend

Researchers in the U.S. assessed whether brain responses to threat to self and others overlap and how this is modulated by friendship, meaning whether the brain responds differently to threats to a friend or a stranger. Their study included 22 young adults who underwent brain scans with functional MRI while under threat of receiving mild electrical shocks to their own ankle, to their friend’s, or to a stranger’s.

The study design consisted of experimental blocks during which the participant viewed threat cues with no shock, a couple with shock and a dozen safety cues indicating no chance of shock. In the “Threat to Other” part of the study, a mild electric shock was delivered to the person the participant was holding hands with. Then, in “Threat to Self,” the mild electric shock was applied to the participant while they were either holding hands with the friend, the stranger or no one.

In neuroscience, conjunction analysis is an approach that finds brain areas active in multiple conditions. In the context of empathy, this would mean regions that are active when an unpleasant stimulus is applied to both the participant and to someone else — something that would indicate an empathetic response. So, a brain area being activated in both settings has been interpreted as reflecting the use of one’s own experience to simulate another’s psychological state, a process originally referred to as  a “breach of individual separateness.”

Using conjunction analysis, results showed highly similar patterns of brain activation regardless of whether the electric shock threat was directed at the participant, the friend or the stranger, as all outcomes activated brain regions known to be involved in both threat responding and empathy.

However, using a different type of analysis that calculated percent signal change in brain activation, the authors found significant correlations between self and friend in response to threat, whereas the correlations between self and stranger were small to negligible. 

Specific brain areas where the other being a friend or a stranger meant notable differences in activation included the putamen, involved in many processes such as learning, motor control, speech and reward, and the supramarginal gyrus, implicated in processing language and emotional responses.

Supporting these results, a subsequent analysis found robust correlations with threat-to-friend in the anterior insula — a primary center for subjective feeling states that accompany emotion— and other regions. No such results were seen when the threat was to the stranger. According to the researchers, this strongly supported the conclusion that familiarity (friend vs. stranger) modulates the self-other overlap in brain activation.

Overall, results suggest that brain regions responsive to threat represent others in the same way they represent self, but only if the others are perceived as familiar, the researchers suggested. 

"The finding shows the brain's remarkable capacity to model self to others; that people close to us become a part of ourselves, and that is not just metaphor or poetry, it's very real. Literally we are under threat when a friend is under threat,” a study author said in a press release. “But not so when a stranger is under threat." 

The finding shows the brain's remarkable capacity to model self to others; that people close to us become a part of ourselves, and that is not just metaphor or poetry, it's very real. Literally we are under threat when a friend is under threat.

One of the possible forms of empathy that could help explain the findings puts forward a hypothesis that representations of the other are similar to those of the self, blurring the boundary between self and other. This could actually mean identification with the other, rather than just understanding as a result of empathy. No such process would occur when the other is a stranger, as in that case threat activation is not as intertwined with the experience of the self.

Other studies support the same general idea. For example, a study suggested that familiarity expands the representation of self to include others, again alluding to the  “breach of individual separateness” that is crucial to develop relationships. This would go in line with other studies suggesting that joint attention, communication and collaborative action were needed to develop altruism. Notably, this would mean that altruism, typically defined as the unselfish desire to benefit others, involves expanding the self to include others in our reality.

Taken together, this study suggests that our brain models itself to others, making our friends and loved ones part of who we are.

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Referenced study: 
Beckes, L, Coan, JA, Hasselmo, K: Familiarity promotes the blurring of self and other in the neural representation of threat. Psychol Sci. 2007, 18(2):165-71. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01867.x.