-
Empathy, the ability to look at the world from another person's perspective, has long been recognised as vital for human cooperation and for the development of related virtues like compassion. Recent studies have shown that people's tendency to be empathetic can drop off in response to natural disasters and other calamities. It appears that imagining the experiences of so many suffering victims can make empathy feel overly costly, leading people to view the sufferers as 'other' or even 'not fully human'. But can our stores of empathy actually be extended to help people reach out rather than shutting down when confronted with others' needs? Researchers led by Penn State psychology professor C Daryl Cameron, will examine what factors influence how much empathy people feel and how much empathy they actually extend. One of the key insights driving the new project is that people's willingness to empathise is a Junction of whether they feel they will be successful or 'skilled' at it,
-