[HN Gopher] Altruism under stress: cortisol negatively predicts ...
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Altruism under stress: cortisol negatively predicts charitable
giving
Author : rustoo
Score : 185 points
Date : 2022-03-29 12:11 UTC (10 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (theswaddle.com)
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Having a higher than average amount of empathy seems to be a
| disadvantage in many ways. It seems in many cases to be
| correlated with anxiety and depression. It can be difficult for
| people with high levels of empathy to recognize the boundaries
| between their own self and the thoughts and feelings of others.
| As a kid I was highly empathetic, and it's something I've
| struggled with my entire life. It never really felt like a
| virtue, and mostly just brought me pain. I have less empathy now,
| but it seems to largely be the result of emotional numbing, which
| isn't pleasant either. Even now though, my mind seems to always
| mirror the thoughts and feelings of those around me, as if I
| don't have a self or personality of my own. It's rather odd, but
| I've read about a number of people with similar experiences.
|
| I've read some interesting things about how in many cases
| schizoid personality disorder may be the result of highly
| empathetic children who later withdraw in life because
| interpersonal contact was a source of significant suffering for
| them. I seen to exhibit many of the signs of SPD, but I've never
| been diagnosed. (If you're not familiar with SPD, I'd recommend
| looking it up. It's likely not what you think it is, and not
| directly related to schizophrenia.)
| RobRivera wrote:
| consider the idea that with empathy you can effectively
| communicate and persuade others better as you can gain insight
| into who THEY are and how THEY feel. its an attribute necessary
| for EFFECTIVE leadership, not of the brainwashing manipulation
| kind, but of the trusting kind. takes learning
| germinalphrase wrote:
| FWIW, I have a close relation that matches the pattern you're
| identifying, and they have had very positive results from
| Internal Family Systems Therapy.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| +1: this comment describes me and I'm actively in internal
| family systems therapy. took me a while to get used to the
| style, but it's been beneficial for me.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I've actually been researching Internal Family Systems! There
| are some things that make me a bit wary about it, but I think
| it may be worth trying.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I think the therapist's personality might have an impact (I
| could see certain aspects of it feeling a little "woo"),
| but it has been useful to frame and work through certain
| emotions/reactions/situations in a productive manner. My
| email is in my profile if you want to reach out.
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| Reading the replies to you, it's obvious that some of the
| perfected alpha libertarians typical of HN have shown up, and
| as often happens, they don't really know wtf they're talking
| about. But they do greatly enjoy expressing their overly
| abstracted, overly generalized, overly confident opinions that
| arise from brains that enjoy a hyper-filtered perception of the
| world. Perhaps you should just simply change your brain to be
| more like them?
|
| _sigh_. Anyway I empathize with you.
| iLemming wrote:
| Being deeply closely related, it seems we humans are doomed to
| forever struggle between violent chimpanzees and highly
| emphatic bonobos.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > my mind seems to always mirror the thoughts and feelings of
| those around me
|
| Sounds like you are confusing
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enmeshment with empathy.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm not a psychologist.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I'm deeply sorry that you didn't have the necessary support
| network to navigate your empathy when you were young. Now that
| you're older, have you had any success in developing
| navigational skills and regaining your levels of empathy?
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Thank you! I've only begun to put the pieces in the last
| couple of years while trying to figure out why my behavior is
| the way it is. Haven't made a ton of progress, but knowledge
| feels like a good first step. Planning to try to find a
| therapist, but one of the challenges is that many people in
| this position apparently avoid therapy, because they fear
| empathizing too much with the therapist, rather than focusing
| on themselves. It's rooted in a fear of enmeshment, and it's
| also why there's very little research about schizoid
| personality disorder, because those people generally avoid
| therapy. I suspect I may have SPD, but I don't want to self
| diagnose (and it's maybe too simple to label complex
| behaviors like this with one label anyway).
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Congrats on your progress so far :) This stuff is very
| difficult and it takes a lot of courage to face these
| things.
|
| I believe high empathy has contributed to some of my
| difficulties. I've tried therapy a few times before without
| much luck. Recently I've found a therapist who has helped
| me immensely. We have a good connection, which is very
| important. She also uses somatic approaches, with I think
| is more effective for people who need help working with and
| processing their emotions. It also seems to be better than
| standard talk therapy when working with trauma.
|
| Somatic therapy might be helpful for you :) And make sure
| you feel comfortable and safe with your therapist.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| That makes sense, thanks for the insight. I've had similar
| concerns in the past and it seems when I stuck with
| licensed workers (licensed social workers, clinical
| psychologists, and psychiatrists) they seemed well trained
| to wall themselves off emotionally from me (refuse to give
| personal information, refuse to visibly react to things I
| say, very careful when expressing an opinion, refuses to
| suggest an interpretation of who I am or who they are).
| It's also apparently deeply unprofessional to be unable to
| avoid enmeshment, including the responsibility of referring
| a client away from oneself if one notices too much
| emotional closeness. I'm not saying this to convince you
| either way but I hope this data is useful to you. Thanks
| for your vulnerability in talking openly about this.
| dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote:
| You're a person to be loved, not a problem to be solved.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| It can be good and bad. Having a high amount of empathy but
| being able to control your reaction can be very helpful. You
| can adapt to how others are reacting much better than folks
| with low empathy.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I would argue that it's a disadvantage only from the self-
| centered perspective that modern society encourages us to
| cultivate. Empathy is an incredibly useful tool for humans that
| exist as part of a community, but our societies are structured
| to benefit those who seek to maximally exploit others, our role
| models are sociopaths, and the cultural narrative is that our
| only value is either in being them or being useful to them.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > it's a disadvantage only from the self-centered perspective
| that modern society encourages us to cultivate
|
| "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a
| profoundly sick society" - Krishnamurti
| tartoran wrote:
| Empathy is great for the society, a burden for the
| individual. Very empathetic people have a hard time minding
| their own path in life for they get caught in the suffering
| of others. Regardless of setbacks and disilussionments,
| empathetic people feel good when helping others.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Empathy is great for the society, a burden for the
| individual.
|
| But society is good for the individual, so supporting that
| society that supports them is mutually beneficial.
| allmodelsRwrong wrote:
| This chain of comments reminds of what I read in a paper
| regarding multilevel group selection, namely:
| "Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic
| groups beat selfish groups". Though there is a bit of
| controversy around that if I remember correctly.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| It can be an advantage when it's been tuned and trained
| properly. When it hasn't been, it mostly just leads to
| additional pain for the empathetic person, and eventual
| withdrawal.
|
| Parents need to be taught how to recognize children that are
| highly empathetic, and given the tools to teach them to train
| and deal with that aspect of themselves. Otherwise they'll
| experience great emotional pain in their lives without any of
| the tools they need to cope with it. That can have a rebound
| effect, leading to emotional numbing and social withdrawal.
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| Thank you for writing this. You helped me realize my own
| condition which is similar to your and the more I research, the
| more it lines up with what you have described here. Do you
| avoid social gatherings and prefer to work remotely ? I love
| spending time mostly with my family and go out of my way to
| avoid social contact even with relatives.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| I think that's probably true, but it's more about
| conscientiousness than empathy. If you're empathetic and lack
| conscientiousness, you have a great advantage in being able to
| "work" people. And you feel no guilt if things don't go well
| for them.
|
| On the other hand, you could be highly conscientious and lack
| empathy. You may try to do the right thing, but you feel guilt
| anyway because you're unable to understand why what you did
| wasn't in line with what the other person was feeling.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Hmmm, in my mind empathy isn't just cognitively understanding
| that somebody is feeling pain, it's feeling that pain on
| their behalf. Most people have that ability to some degree,
| but it's extremely magnified in certain individuals.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| Yeah I tend to separate empathy (being able to put yourself
| in another's shoes and feel what they're feeling) and
| "other-oriented-ness". Having empathy means you understand
| what the driver behind you at the fast food restaurant is
| feeling emotionally if you take too long at the window.
| Being other-oriented is feeling stressed and wanting to
| move forward before you've completely checked your order,
| because you don't want the driver behind you to feel upset
| by your taking too long.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Don't numb it, master it and let it lead under control. Empathy
| is an incredible virtue, but it must be disciplined.
|
| I don't know enough neuroscience to know what the "right
| dorsolateral prefrontal cortex" is exactly but I know that you
| can over-ride/master it with reason and discipline.
|
| So I think there's something more to people allowing their
| better nature to slip under stress than simple brain chemicals.
|
| A colonel told me, that in the moment of most stress that's
| when the men need you most of all, and need you to retain
| dignity, self-sacrifice, and thinking about _them_ more than
| ever. When everyone is shitting themselves we revert to "I'm
| alright Jack" self-preservation mode. That's precisely the time
| when you need to dig deep and let _reason_ take the lead.
| Compassion/altruism etc is a personality structure, not a
| fleeting feeling, so it's encoded into your rational decision
| making.
|
| So a ton of training is about getting you to "snap out of
| yourself".
|
| The body moves in fast time, but if the mind can still stay in
| slow, measured mode, that's how the best comes out in some
| poeple under adversity. Hardballs who have no love for humanity
| will jump on to the tracks to save a kid from a subway train,
| because deep down they are actually masters of the empathy
| they've carefully hidden.
|
| I guess that tension between what you know you should do and
| what you find yourself instinctively inclined to do - is
| _conscience_.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > Don't numb it, master it and let it lead under control
|
| Numbing it was never a conscious decision, it was an
| automatic learned response to pain after years / decades. Now
| that I'm more conscious of what's happening, I can begin to
| work with it, but personality traits like this are generally
| highly stable and resistant to change. Which isn't to say
| there's nothing that can be done about it, just that's
| challenging (and in the process, you may be losing some of
| the benefits of that learned behavior).
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > personality traits like this are generally highly stable
| and resistant to change.
|
| Yes. Impossible to change some would say. So my message was
| wear it with pride. There's a philosopher called
| Kierkegaard who would say that you can't be "cured" of what
| you _are_. And since empathy is a gift, instead make it a
| superpower. That happens when you control it instead of it
| controlling you. Good luck, and I hope your gift brings you
| great things.
| idontknowifican wrote:
| strombofulous wrote:
| "...and this is your brain on Twitter"
| cgriswald wrote:
| Imagine having direct experience with these things,
| genuinely sharing your hard-earned experience of what works
| for you in the language you have available to you, and then
| some third-party who doesn't know anything about you
| misrepresents your statement and then tells you to "shut
| the fuck up about mental health problems you don't have."
| idontknowifican wrote:
| the OP has mastered their emotional response and will be
| fine by their own reckoning. i wouldn't be so direct if
| the person hadn't insisted they could handle it. i was in
| fact respecting their autonomy by treating them in the
| exact way they said they prefer.
| failedengineer wrote:
| Right?
|
| What are the odds that GP would post "I don't know exactly
| what these brain regions do, but I know that these
| transgendered people who had fMRI showing their brains
| function much closer to their identified gender should
| simply stop being transgendered by overriding/mastering the
| differences with reason and discipline."
|
| I'm guessing zero... but because it's a study on empathy,
| it's totally a-ok to say "i don't know a thing about this,
| but since its not a problem for me, it shouldn't be a
| problem for you"
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| From TFA;
|
| "While anger makes us certain in our righteous indignation,
| anxiety, and surprise make us unsure of what's going on and
| what will happen next. And when we feel uncertain, we tend
| to fall back on what we know to be true -- namely, our own
| perspectives and feelings"
| enw wrote:
| that_other_one wrote:
| SpodGaju wrote:
| > Don't numb it, master it and let it lead under control.
| Empathy is an incredible virtue, but it must be disciplined.
|
| Disciplined empathy is no longer empathy. And it is no longer
| virtuous. You are close to understanding, but keep going.
|
| Giving birth and nourishing, making without possessing,
| expecting nothing in return. To grow, yet not to control:
| This is the mysterious virtue.
|
| Chapter 10, Dao De Ching
| joshyeager wrote:
| Rather than saying "You are close to understanding, but
| keep going", it would be more helpful to explain why you
| think that disciplined empathy is no longer empathy.
|
| I agree with the previous poster, but I'm curious to learn
| what you mean.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Being vague as all get out is really on brand for advice
| from the Dao De Ching.
| [deleted]
| SpodGaju wrote:
| The vagueness of the Dao De Ching is not in the book, it
| is in reader.
|
| It is not myself that creates the Dao, but I can thank
| you for creating the Dao!
|
| When a superior person hears of the Tao, She diligently
| puts it into practice. When an average person hears of
| the Tao, he believes half of it, and doubts the other
| half. When a foolish person hears of the Tao, he laughs
| out loud at the very idea. If he didn't laugh, it
| wouldn't be the Tao.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| While I can appreciate a well crafted burn as much as the
| next guy, that was really taking the long way around.
| SpodGaju wrote:
| Not a burn, it was effortless empathy. :)
| 1tao wrote:
| Self is realized through selflessness :)
| SpodGaju wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| We have domesticated wolves so much that we call them
| dogs now. So we could actually call dogs "disciplined
| wolves", yes?
|
| Like a "wolf" behaves differently than a "discipline
| wolf", "empathy" will express differently than
| "disciplined empathy". It is inauthentic.
|
| You cannot change something and say it is the same thing.
|
| Did that help?
|
| If you are interesting, Chuang Tzu, a Daoist sage, had a
| lot to say about this.
|
| http://nothingistic.org/library/chuangtzu/chuang23.html
| cgriswald wrote:
| A wolf behaves differently than another wolf. Yet they
| are both wolves. Even the same wolf expresses differently
| in different contexts or in arbitrarily similar contexts
| at different times. Yet he never stops being a wolf. Even
| a wolf in a cage is a wolf.
|
| To say otherwise is to say there is no such thing as wolf
| or that there is a single platonic wolf and all other
| wolves are inauthentic. Either of these may be true, but
| I doubt there is much practical advice in this idea for
| learning to deal with a lack of boundaries created by
| empathetic confusion.
| SpodGaju wrote:
| > To say otherwise is to say there is no such thing as
| wolf
|
| I am not saying otherwise. There is no such thing as a
| wolf.
|
| Yet there is.
|
| Our language is a tool we use to categorize an infinite
| reality. Like you said, there are an infinite amount of
| wolves, but we reduce them using language. There is
| nothing wrong with this until we start thinking our
| language is the reality.
|
| So where is the border between wolf and dog? If A wolf is
| nice too a human do we suddenly call it a dog? Does not
| the very distinction of a wolf and a dog rely, not on the
| species, but on the human? Does a dog think still think
| it is a wolf? Is a dog just a wolf that tricks us so it
| can get free food and shelter?
|
| We do the same thing with empathy. By defining it with
| language we reduce it and confine it which it cannot be
| reduced or confined. Like everything else, empathy is
| infinite and unlimited in its expression.
| ameminator wrote:
| I really don't sympathize with your viewpoint. Lots of
| research shows that it's _hard_ to go against your natural
| state. You only have so much willpower - for most people it
| 's a finite resource.
|
| In that context, your comment reads "Why don't you just
| _decide_ to be better? ". Do you think that the original
| commenter _wanted_ to be this way? That it was a deliberate
| choice? Do you think it 's that easy to change right now? I
| won't go on, but your comment came off as condescending -
| whatever your intentions are.
| thirdwhrldPzz wrote:
| RobRivera wrote:
| it is a finite resource which is why meditation and
| training is required for mastery.
|
| people are capable of deciding to be better when they've
| the faculties and depth of experience and wisdom. Ever
| manage to troubleshoot a faulty canopy mid fall, or make a
| decision to cut the main and deploy the reserve parachute?
| you dont get to that mode of operation overnight.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| You're talking about skills, not willpower. Every study
| I've seen suggests that willpower is not trainable. Maybe
| it is, that would be great.
|
| Note, that you can train altruistic and empathetic
| appearing behaviors. So yes, even though you're all
| starving, the men eat first. Yes, you are going to risk
| your life doing X. Yes, you are going to tell everyone
| its okay and appear calm even while you're panicking.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Good sentiment. But when your being hurt emotionally and
| physically most days. Numbness becomes your only real
| defense.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Good sentiment. But when your being hurt emotionally and
| physically most days. Numbness becomes your only real
| defense.
|
| What you are alluding to sounds like abuse. As you can see
| in this thread I am being chastised for offering
| unsolicited, condescending advice about things I know
| nothing about - as if the vicarious snipers knew anything
| about my experiences or expertise, and as if my tone was
| out of place here.
|
| If your comment pertains to yourself I'd heartily recommend
| you read [1][2] below. People are using the word "numb".
| That could mean a lot of things, drugs, alcohol, or other
| indulgences. But there are specific dangers with the coping
| behaviour that clinicians call "dissociation". I wish you
| well.
|
| [1] https://www.survivingmypast.net/dissociation-
| protective-as-a...
|
| [2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-savvy-
| psychologi...
| jlokier wrote:
| > you to retain dignity, self-sacrifice, and thinking about
| _them_ more than ever
|
| > That's precisely the time when you need to dig deep and let
| _reason_ take the lead
|
| I would say when self-sacrifice, thinking of others first is
| what's called for, that's actually empathy leading, at its
| most high-functioning.
|
| Empathy is taking the lead, but it's somehow a deeper kind,
| qualitatively distinct from day to day sympathy and
| personality. Sometimes a person you thought was rather
| heartless day to day, turns out to care for their buddies in
| such a moment, and you don't forget their actions.
|
| Of course it is empathy in concert with reason. Reason,
| intuition, skill, knowledge - and that measured mind - are
| all required in difficult situations, but without empathy
| would often lead to self-preservation mode.
|
| > deep down they are actually masters of the empathy they've
| carefully hidden.
|
| I like this. Yeah, that's what I mean.
| laurent92 wrote:
| > you thought was rather heartless day to day
|
| It's the generalization that is wrong. People are not
| permanently one way. They fluctuate. They are infatuated at
| 20, struggling for money at 30, tired at 40, getting things
| in the correct order at 50, disconnected at 60... They make
| different conclusions about life. They may save a kid at 30
| and not when they themselves have a family. Or the
| opposite. Generalization is erroneous.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| > the boundaries between their own self and the thoughts and
| feelings of others.
|
| The _perceived_ thoughts and feelings of others, and that 's
| critical. You don't know the minds of the people around you,
| and presuming some kind of negative experience on the part of
| others is not often accurate.
|
| The problem with empathy would be if you presume everyone to be
| having a bad time when it seems like, to you, they should be
| having a bad time.
|
| IMO, that's actually arrogant, to think you can accurately know
| what someone else is thinking and feeling. Perhaps part of your
| struggle is this unidentified arrogance that you know the minds
| of others.
| [deleted]
| flatuencer wrote:
| You _can_ get a fairly accurate sense of how people are
| feeling or what they are thinking, and some people are better
| at this than others. Call it intuition, body language, or
| whatever else, it doesn't inherently make it arrogance. Being
| mindful of how you could be incorrect in what, at the end of
| the day, are assumptions that require confirmation, is
| important; without this is where the true arrogance lies.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I think assuming how people feel and what people are
| thinking without asking them, giving them agency, is nearly
| the very pinnacle of arrogance. further, this can be some
| of the most damaging behavior you participate in on a daily
| basis, both to you and to the person you do it to.
|
| I cannot overstate how toxic to your relationships and to
| yourself this behavior is. You _need_ to let people express
| themselves, and listen when they do. That 's about as close
| to a "prime directive" I can think of right now, when it
| comes to human interaction.
| natvod wrote:
| You might find the research about sensory processing
| sensitivity interesting.
|
| "Theory and research suggest that sensory processing
| sensitivity (SPS), found in roughly 20% of humans and over 100
| other species, is a trait associated with greater sensitivity
| and responsiveness to the environment and to social stimuli.
| Self-report studies have shown that high-SPS individuals are
| strongly affected by others' moods, but no previous study has
| examined neural systems engaged in response to others'
| emotions."
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4086365/
| supertofu wrote:
| Empathy, also called compassion or karuna in Buddhism, is one
| of the most sublime mental states that exist. The trick is to
| learn how to experience compassion without also wounding
| yourself. This is what Buddhist practice teaches you how to do.
| white_dragon88 wrote:
| Basically don't be a schmuck. Common sense should dictate
| one's practice well.
| supertofu wrote:
| I don't understand your response. It's very common for
| empathetic people to feel great suffering. It's not "common
| sense" knowledge to learn how to maintain deep compassion
| while preventing the pain from affecting your own being. In
| fact, most highly empathetic people, like OP, feel burdened
| by this emotional state because the untrained person
| experiences compassion as double suffering (the suffering
| of the object of compassion and the suffering to oneself
| that comes from untrained empathy). The result is that
| highly empathetic people try to numb out or attempt to
| restrict their capacity for empathy.
|
| The early Buddhist texts (the canonical suttas) describe
| meditations and trainings to develop this skill. The reason
| the suttas devote so much time to explaining these
| techniques is because they are NOT common knowledge.
|
| The etymology of compassion means "suffering with". It's
| baked into the word (in English) the assumption that
| compassion involves suffering for both parties.
|
| In Buddhism, we learn that compassion doesn't have to
| create suffering for the holder of compassion. We learn
| that it's possible to dwell in the state of compassion as a
| way of moving out of suffering, rather than moving into it.
| smordistan wrote:
| Dostoyevsky's The Idiot comes to mind.
| ganzuul wrote:
| People made a religion out of turning others into schmucks
| with the dual whammy of sorrow and shame. The only correct
| use of sorrow is to attain stillness when someone uses
| humor to deflect emotions, but that doesn't keep a priest
| gainfully employed.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Feel the same way as you, and I had to withdrawal as a child
| and now have mental disorders in the spectrum of schizophrenia.
| So anecdotally, I imagine that's correct.
|
| The loss of boundaries thing is very real, I know there are
| some upsides to it but most days it's hard to not feel like a
| curse
| datavirtue wrote:
| Cool. Now I know the name of my personality disorder. This
| whole time I thought I was normal.
| catchclose8919 wrote:
| Just FYI "schizoid personality +/- disorder" has absolutely
| nothing to do with (the spectrum of) schizophrenia, they're
| about different things on different systems on different axes
| etc.
|
| And yeah, _psychologist REALLY suck at naming things!_
|
| And one of the reason to avoid ever discussing about
| "schizoid personality" with people who aren't trained
| psychologists since they're 90% likely to think you're
| talking about the wrong thing :|
| krageon wrote:
| There is a schizoid spectrum, which what people call
| "Schizophrenia" falls on. They do suck at naming things,
| that's a pretty fair point.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| "schizoid" is just another word for "person with avoidant
| personality disorder"
| Trasmatta wrote:
| APD and SPD are not the same thing.
| [deleted]
| peakaboo wrote:
| You shouldn't numb it, that's crazy.
|
| The best people on this planet care about others. The worst
| turn into Putin.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Numbing it was never a conscious choice, and it's not like I
| even noticed it happening while it did. It was a learned
| response to significant pain over years / decades, without
| having a support network to help deal with it in a healthy
| way. This is one of the theorized ways schizoid personality
| disorder presents itself, and it's not a conscious choice
| that people make. And it's not just a switch I can turn on
| and off at will, it's much more complex than that.
| pfisherman wrote:
| > It seems in many cases to be correlated with anxiety and
| depression.
|
| So is intelligence. However on the balance intelligence is a
| pretty significant advantage.
|
| Empathy can be a super power for those who are able to control
| it - one that can be used for good or evil. Think high EQ,
| natural political instincts, very persuasive, ability to push
| emotional states onto people.
|
| The hypersensitivity you mention is the flip side of that coin.
|
| SPD and paranoia is more like seeing patterns in the noise. I
| think pattern matching is a big component of empathy, but I do
| think you can have highly sensitive pattern matching facility
| that does not translate across domains.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I think a big part of it is having a supportive and
| understanding environment growing up that helps you foster
| the empathy in a healthy way, while teaching you to build and
| maintain your own self boundaries at the same time.
|
| If you didn't have that, it can be very difficult to change
| it as an adult.
| pfisherman wrote:
| Well life is a struggle for all of us, no?
|
| Many traits that are seen as desirable can wreak havoc on
| the lives of those who possess them. We envy those traits
| when we see them in others because we do not have access to
| their visceral experience, and lack awareness of their
| inner turmoil and struggles.
|
| I think it important for all of us to extend ourselves
| grace. Living ain't easy and we are often doing better at
| it than we think :)
| rafaelero wrote:
| Intelligence is not positively correlated with anxiety.
| That's just a meme.
| amelius wrote:
| A different way to think about it: if you play soccer (or any
| game) with too much empathy, you will make own goal after own
| goal to please your opponent. Nobody wants that, of course, so
| in reality you're not being empathic enough.
|
| Being too empathic has different problems if it also makes you
| shy. Shy people are scary, because people can't read you. It is
| important to internalize this. Again, this makes shyness not
| just your problem: it's their problem too. So you have to be
| more empathic about it.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Yeah, I was stressed out when I accidentally make other people
| mad. Now I just apologize and move on, if they're having
| meltdown I just assume they're assholes and move on.
|
| Especially true when driving.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| It's really a balance-- you can do your best to do right by
| other people, to do what they're asking of you and behave in
| prosocial ways, but any therapist will tell you that
| ultimately other people's feelings are their responsibility
| to manage and work through, and not yours.
|
| Traditional CBT says this is even the case in romantic
| relationships, though EFT is a bit more nuanced on this--
| you're not directly _responsible_ for your partner 's
| feelings and emotions (you don't owe them an apology when you
| cheat on them in their dream), but understanding their
| emotions is an _opportunity_ to be a better and more
| supportive partner, which can be massively enriching to the
| relationship if both parties are fully committed to doing the
| work and have the language to communicate effectively about
| it.
| bongoman37 wrote:
| I can empathize with this :), high empathy is almost always a
| curse and gets taken advantage of. I've also numbed out over
| the years but its not ideal either. I've been accused of being
| sociopathic at times simply because empathy is not a knob one
| can tune and sometimes the only option is off rather than an
| on, because being empathetic would mean losing boundaries.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I was like you in being extremely empathetic. What had helped
| me is to focus on longer term outcomes for people rather than
| short term. That really gave my empathy more perspective and
| allowed me to see that the "hard" thing that may not seem as
| empathetic today is the right thing for the people involved in
| the future.
|
| Admittedly, this might just be me creating a mechanism to cope,
| but it seems to be effective.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| It might be worth reading this alongside:
|
| "Does altruism exist?" by David Sloan Wilsom:
| https://www.amazon.com/Does-Altruism-Exist-Foundational-Ques...
|
| "The evolution of trust" by Nicky case : https://ncase.me/trust/
| cletus wrote:
| brimble wrote:
| > My experience in Australia is that there are basic standards
| of decency that can be expected. This is not the case in the
| US.
|
| This varies, perhaps regionally but definitely from individual
| to individual. I can assure you that some of us in America grew
| up learning to be more like how you characterize Australians,
| and totally bought into that, only to be _rudely_ awakened by
| the actual reality in much of this country. The shock took me
| about a decade of adulthood to really start to get over.
| [deleted]
| floor2 wrote:
| That's just plain old-fashioned bigotry. Literally every
| culture on Earth has had some form of "never trust a <blank>"
| where the blank was whatever race, religion, nationality,
| tribe, ethnicity, etc was their neighbor or rival.
|
| Most people would treat it as a shameful thing from a bygone
| era if they had a grandparent tell them "never trust a
| <whatever>", it's quite unfortunate that you seem to agree with
| this sort of nationalistic bias and bigotry.
|
| Also, the US spends over a trillion dollars per year on the
| safety net. The federal budget for giving food to low-income
| people is $60 Billion per year, medicaid (free health insurance
| for non-working people) is $670 Billion per year, $51 Billion
| on housing assistance. There is also unemployment benefits if
| you're laid off, and you can keep the health insurance from
| your former employer or switch to a plan from healthcare.gov
| (which will be subsidized by tax payers if you can't afford to
| pay the premium). It's not a perfect system, but it's
| ridiculous to pretend there is "no safety net" when there is in
| fact an incomprehensibly large safety net.
| goodpoint wrote:
| The backlash you are getting only proves the point :-/
| shakezula wrote:
| > My experience in Australia is that there are basic standards
| of decency that can be expected. This is not the case in the
| US.
|
| "The place i like is good and the other place is bad and
| untrustworthy"
|
| Oh come on. We have to be and _can_ better than this type of
| emotional appeal and generalization.
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| Interesting. I tend to put a high amount of trust in people and
| have rarely been let down. The cases where I was let down were
| exclusively with drug users earlier in my life, a very
| predictable outcome in hindsight. I don't think the advice you
| were given was good.
| fleddr wrote:
| Fargo season 4 has a scene where this Italian mobster goes...
|
| "I think I'm finally starting to understand this country. You
| say one thing, yet do the complete opposite".
|
| It's a bulls-eye for me. Americans are fake, not genuine,
| dramatic/hysterical and hypocritical like no other culture I've
| ever seen.
|
| They also have quite a few positive traits. And any other
| culture you pick, including mine, too has negatives and
| positives. It's not a contest but we should be able to reason
| about it. It's fair game.
| vdnkh wrote:
| This is a hilarious/sad generalization of a country of ~330
| million people masquerading as an investigation into stress. I
| get the impression that you started with the point you wanted
| to make - "never trust an American" - and then stumbled
| backwards from there into a very rigorous exploration of the
| the cause and effect of stress.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Psychologist measured that people differ by personality, and can
| be roughly grouped into 16 categories based on traits. I used to
| think everyone was more or less the same. I'm not sure if 16 is
| the correct number. But my understanding of the world has been
| helped by the concept that there are people that do and act in
| particular patterns. For example some of the battles on twitter
| that are going on, are just extensions of these personality
| clashes.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| It may be helpful to categorize _behaviors_, but I want to
| emphasize that for a given individual, personality isn't
| permanent.
| robluxus wrote:
| Are you by chance referring to the 16 Meyers-Briggs types?
|
| It's been claimed that it's less useful than it is popular:
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Yes I was. But I'm also aware of the Big 5 personality
| traits. Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion,
| Neuroticism and Agreeableness. Which people seem to
| statistically group with some low or high mix of these
| traits.
|
| Knowing that someone is more neurotic than 99% of other
| people, would seem on surface be useful in predicting how
| they might react to new or novel situations.
| cassepipe wrote:
| I am myself very wary of this kind of personality tests but
| the case has been made in an interesting article that I can't
| seem to find that it is a form of "syntactic sugar" for the
| (apparently?) more established Big Five model. Anyways, I
| think OP's conclusion that it is eye opening that people have
| their own emotional structure/pattern of behavior from how
| they grew up and that you can find resembling patterns in
| different people quite reasonable.
| jimmyjazz14 wrote:
| Yeah I don't think Meyer-Briggs has much standing these days.
| dash2 wrote:
| Why does stress make more empathetic people less kind, but has
| little effect on others? We believe this is due to a set of
| linked phenomena. The first is _publish or perish_. When a
| researcher needs a publication, his or her cortisol levels
| increase. This reduces the researcher 's ability to empathize
| with the victims of useless scientific results, or their own
| future self when their work turns out to be a dead end. A second
| cause is the _garden of forking paths_. When a main effect fails
| to reach significance, it is all too easy to find an interaction
| or sample subset where it is significant. For example, if stress
| didn 't affect charitable donations, you can always check the
| result among high-empathy people, or women, or nursing students.
| These root causes come together in _p hacking_ , where desperate
| researchers kid themselves that they always meant to run that
| particular interaction, and absurdly pretend that their p values
| and careers have some meaning...
|
| [Not TFA, obviously, but I wouldn't be surprised.]
| cassepipe wrote:
| The science behind it may be bogus but it did lead to an
| interesting discussion about empathy and self boundaries.
| nickpinkston wrote:
| This reminds me of Ronald Inglehart's work [1] on "Material" and
| "Post-Material" values and their relation to wealth / stability -
| ie high amounts of the latter are causal to Post-Material values,
| which would include charitable giving, tolerance, etc.
|
| Using his World Values Survey [2], surveying individual values
| across 100 countries from 1981-today, he showed across all major
| cultures that you can see how several generations of stability
| (both income and sociopolitical) are required to get to post-
| material values, ie you don't get rich and change your values,
| they crystalize in your early/mid 20's, so you need to feel good
| until then and not experience trauma after to maintain those
| values.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Inglehart#Cultural_Evol...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Values_Survey
| [deleted]
| yboris wrote:
| A bit off-topic, but any discussion of altruism these days I
| bring up _effective altruism_ - a movement of people focusing on
| _effective_ ways of helping as much as possible (within any
| specific area, and focusing on finding the most-important areas
| of focus). These individuals (myself included) often give at
| least 10% of their income (see https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/).
| I really hope more people join in on the global movement:
|
| https://www.effectivealtruism.org/
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| The title would be better phrased as a question, because this is
| a single study with the observation that...
|
| If you have less empathy to start with, the less stress affects
| how much empathy you have. This is apparently this is a
| significantly higher delta than expected, because the control
| group didn't appear to change in any significant way.
| SpodGaju wrote:
| "Stress Makes the Most Empathetic People Less Kind" when others
| do not help them relieve their stress.
|
| Acting out when under stress is a call for help.
|
| Please do not go around controlling yourself, it only prevents
| change for the better, as they implied in the article;
|
| "But it helps to have scientific evidence to bolster the case for
| public and workplace policies that might make our lives less
| stressful -- and thus, we hope, more compassionate."
|
| We do not need better people, we need a better society.
| jasfi wrote:
| Cortisol can be very destructive. A lot of people are either
| unaware of high stress levels, or don't do anything meaningful to
| bring those levels down. I've been taking Ashwagandha and it
| works really well.
| unglaublich wrote:
| https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
| layer8 wrote:
| Regarding empathy, there's also an argument that it tends to be
| significantly biased, and that rational compassion is preferable
| for decision-making:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Empathy
| loa_in_ wrote:
| Decision making when? In what conditions? Do those conditions
| ever change?
| layer8 wrote:
| When making decisions on moral grounds, and regarding
| altruistic actions. For example, seeing a picture of a single
| child suffer tends to induce relatively more empathy than
| seeing a picture of a whole family or town suffer. (That's
| why you predominantly see the former in charity ads.) With
| rational compassion, it would be rather the converse. Having
| empathy with a group one is close to (in thought/space/time)
| also tends to make people more willing to inflict harm on a
| group that is more removed from them, while rational
| compassion would try to avoid such a subjective bias.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Regardless of whether the methods are queationable, the results
| are consistent with other studies I've come across on the topic
| of how stress affects empathy and compassion:
|
| https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_anxiety_re...
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402...
|
| This is of particular interest to me as I find that I very easily
| become wrapped up in a sort of protective self-absorption when I
| get stressed or criticised, making it sometimes impossible to
| empathize or conduct proper conversations. This in turn has a
| very negative affect on relationships.
|
| If you're in a similar boat, you might find the practise of
| compassion-focused mindfulness useful.
|
| https://psychcentral.com/blog/the-practice-of-self-compassio...
|
| The idea is similar to CBT, but with an emphasis on mindfulness
| and compassion towards oneself and others. I've learned that the
| "oneself" bit is extremely important. Until you can accept and be
| gentle on yourself, with all your flaws, you will struggle to be
| vulnerable around others and thereby cultivate genuine
| connections.
| srcreigh wrote:
| > To reach this conclusion, researchers asked the participants to
| make donations before they were asked to undertake a stressful
| task; they were asked to donate things again after the task was
| over. While people who were found to have high empathy donated
| more than the others did before undergoing the stressful task,
| their charitability declined sharply afterward.
|
| Isn't asking for 2 unexpected donations in short succession a
| major confounding factor?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Agree. The study asked for 2 things from one group and 1 thing
| from another group and is trying to suggest that we should
| ignore the first ask.
|
| The authors are also abusing cortisol measurements to imply
| cortisol is something specific for bad stress when it's not
| really that. Cortisol isn't really a "bad" hormone like a lot
| of people believe. If you have too little cortisol you'll feel
| terrible. Even fun activities will raise cortisol levels.
| Taking synthetic cortisol analogs often makes people feel good
| (for a very short while, chronic use will quickly downregulate
| this effect and requires slow tapering, don't do it unless
| medically necessary).
|
| This study seems like junk science.
| xcyu wrote:
| Depends on if the study tried to control for this by also
| testing 2 more groups with single donation before/after the
| stressful task. Can't access the original paper to confirm
| though.
| exdsq wrote:
| Holy shit there's some serious voodoo waffle in these comments!
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