14 DAY TRIAL // Individuals who see angry faces tend to exhibit lower levels of electrical activity in areas of the brain that control empathy, a new study reveals. What this means is that people tend to be a lot less empathic when they are dealing with angry persons. This finding has serious implication.
Studies have determined that patients who have suffered traumatic brain injuries (TBI) show a lack of emotional empathy, while at the same time exhibiting an elevated physiological response to anger.
Experts at the University of New South Wales, who conducted such a study, say that this leads TBI patients to exhibit egocentric behavior and insensitivity to the needs of others, which can in turn be reflected back on them through lack of empathy from others.
Some argue that the ability to recognize, understand, and identify with the needs of other people is an important component of what makes us human, and also one of the most important things keeping our species together socially.
As such, when an individual becomes incapable of doing so, those around them immediately recognize this. Groups of scientists suggest that losses in emotional empathy are one of the reasons why TBI patients become so angry.
The work is important because the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that more than 1.7 million Americans suffer from traumatic brain injury every year. This means that at least as many families will have to live with a person who constantly expresses anger.
“The results of this study were the first to reveal that reduced emotional responsiveness observed after severe TBI is linked to changes in empathy in this population,” explains researcher Arielle DeSousa, the author of the new study.
“The study also lends support to the conclusion that impaired emotional responsiveness — including facial mimicry and skin conductance – may be caused, at least in part, by dysfunction within the system responsible for emotional empathy,” adds DeSousa, a PhD candidate at UNSW.
“This has important implications for understanding the impaired social functioning and poor quality of interpersonal relationships commonly seen as a consequence of TBI, and may be key to comprehending and treating empathy deficits post-injury,” the expert concludes, quoted by PsychCentral.
Additional details of the work were published in the May issue of the esteemed Elsevier journal Cortex.