Men are born with poor empathy? The truth is not that simple

Empathy is roughly understood as the ability to empathize, feel others’ emotions and understand others’ situation. In everyone’s impression, women seem to be more empathetic and understand other people’s feelings than boys.

Is this really the case?

On this issue, scientists have done a lot of research and found that the truth is not so simple.

There are differences between men and women in empathy

In fact, until the 1970s, no one knew the exact answer.

In 1977, Martin Hoffman of Michigan University summarized seven psychological studies on the differences of empathy between men and women published in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and found that in most studies, women tend to show a stronger level of empathy.

This is the first time that there is direct evidence that men and women do differ in empathy.

Since then, studies on gender differences of empathy have emerged one after another. Although there are occasional inconsistencies, in general, most studies in this field show that women do show a generally better level of empathy than men.

Interestingly, this gender difference is not only reflected in the strength of empathy, but also in the specific empathic response.

For example, an interesting study was published in the journal Nature. The researchers recruited 16 male and 16 female volunteers and hired 4 professional actors to participate in a game.

When the game starts, these actors will do things. According to the setting, some of them make actions that volunteers like, while others deliberately make people hate, such as unfair behavior.

Next, the volunteers will receive an MRI scan of their brains and watch the actors receive an electric shock at the same time.

Here comes the interesting part!

When attractive actors were shocked, both male and female volunteers showed empathy related activation in pain related brain regions (frontal lobe and anterior cingulate cortex).

When an annoying actor is in pain, the empathy related brain regions in women are still active, but there is little response in men! It’s just that they don’t respond. Instead, the reward related areas in their brain are activated.

What is it?

In other words, for women, whether I hate you or not, I can feel it as long as you suffer; But for men, as long as I hate you, your pain, I’m not only not sad, but even very happy!

For this result, the author said: we speculate that men’s empathic response will be affected by their own social behavior evaluation of others, at least to a certain extent.

So why is this difference? Scientists have got part of the answer from the brain.

The brains of men and women have different neural responses when they are in empathy

The first thing that must be mentioned is the neural basis of empathy – mirror neurons. These neurons are particularly magical. They “reflect” the feelings of others like a mirror:

For example, when you see someone kicking your thumb and cutting your hand with paper, you can’t help but tighten the chrysanthemum and take a breath of air conditioning; For example, when netizens describe the embarrassing things they have experienced, you can’t help feeling embarrassed, too.

For another example, when you see the scenes of hugging and crying in some youth films, although you criticize the plot intellectually, your tears fall down without success:

These are mirror neurons acting as demons!

In other words, mirror neurons are the basis of our empathy for the experiences of others. Some scholars even believe that “DNA determines whether we are human or not, and mirror neurons determine whether we can shape civilization”.

Is there any difference between male and female mirror neurons in empathy?

That’s right! A magnetic resonance imaging study in 2008 found that the activity of the brain area containing mirror neurons in women’s brain was higher than that in men when watching pictures of themselves or others expressing emotions.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand

This also provides a scientific explanation for women’s more compassion, that is, when empathy, women’s mirror neuron activity will be more active.

However, the above evidence only shows that there are physiological differences in the level of empathy between men and women. As we all know, the brain is plastic, so the question arises – is this difference innate, or does social life “Polish” men and women into different shapes?

Empathic differences, maybe dynamic differences

Indeed, some literatures say that the difference of empathy between men and women will be regulated by the level of sex hormones in the body to a certain extent, and the testosterone in men may affect their performance in empathy. But in the follow-up study, a strange thing happened: men with high testosterone can also have a strong level of empathy!

In other words, hormones have less effect on empathy. There are other more important factors that lead to the difference in the level of empathy between men and women – social influence.

➊ women show stronger empathy, which may be affected by stereotype.

In the long-standing social culture, women are considered to be kinder, more loving and more reasonable. Women with these characteristics can often get higher evaluation from others, so they will consciously or unconsciously take the initiative to cater to this impression.

In many experiments, researchers evaluate the results based on the volunteers’ own reports, but the experimental results will deviate.

Trapped by social stereotypes and moral evaluation, women tend to portray themselves as more empathetic.

Later, a study used two methods to measure empathy, one is questionnaire self-assessment (direct measurement) and the other is pain empathy task (indirect measurement, which can better reflect the real feelings of watching others’ pain than questionnaire survey).

The results showed that there were differences between men and women in the self-evaluation of the questionnaire, but there was no difference in the indirect measurement. Therefore, the difference in empathy between men and women may not be as obvious as people think.

➋   Men may not be unable to empathize, but do not want to empathize.

There is a very interesting study. When performing empathy tasks, researchers will give money rewards according to the results of empathy. It is found that money can greatly improve men’s level of empathy and erase the gap between men and women.

What is this operation?? As long as the money is enough, men burst out of empathy potential, empathically as good as women.

Therefore, the researchers believe that the statement that men have a low level of empathy remains to be discussed. They may also be lack of motivation and feel that there is no need for empathy

In short, the gap in empathy between men and women we see may be “disciplined” by the society to a great extent.

What inspiration does this article give us?

When your boyfriend can’t empathize, send a red envelope.

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