Posts Tagged ‘empathy’
Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain
Harvard Business School and the University of Pennsylvania collaborated on this fascinating research into human behaviour and trust.
They carried out a series of field studies and laboratory experiments to look at the relationship between the act of apologising and trust. Across all the studies they identified significant benefits to apologising. Even if you are apologising for something out of your control like the rain or a late bus you can increase the trust of those around you.
Why not take a look at the article to see how they conducted their experiments, or even try it out for yourself?
BPS Research Digest: Want people to trust you? Try apologising for the rain.
The moral life of babies
We tend to think of newborn babies or very young babies as a blank canvas and it is the job of parents and other people around them to teach them about the difference between good and bad, how to be kind and think of others.
There has been recent research to suggest that this is not the case. The building blocks of compassion, empathy and moral reasoning are actually in place from birth.
The researchers carried out a number of experiments to investigate these factors. They discovered that one year olds will come to the help of strangers who are struggling and that they are also able to have sophisticated reasoning of good and bad.
This article is really worth a read and it has the links embedded into it of clips of a number of the experiments that were carried out. Fascinating!
Study: To The Human Brain, Me Is We
The University of Virginia has carried out research about empathy by investigating the human brain. They have evidence from their studies that our brains are wired up to connect with others so strongly that it experiences what they experience just as if it happens to us.
So how did they come to this conclusion?. Participants in the study underwent fMRI brain scans during which they were threatened with an electrical shock. The extra factor here was that while in the scanner they held the hand of a close friend or a stranger. So the threat of the electrical shock could also go to the hand holder.
Results showed that regions of the brain responsible for threat response became active under threat of shock to the self; which was expected. When researchers threatened to shock a stranger, those same brain regions showed virtually no activity. However when they threatened to shock a friend, the brain regions showed activity nearly identical to that displayed when the participant was threatened.
So people close to us really can become part of ourselves? Take some time to have a look at the article.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2013/08/22/study-to-the-human-brain-me-is-we/