Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Moral Psychology
- Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology
- The Cambridge Handbook of Moral Psychology
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Modern Moral Psychology
- Part I Building Blocks
- Part II Thinking and Feeling
- 7 Moral Decision Making
- 8 Are Moral Judgments Rational?
- 9 Moral Categorization and Mind Perception
- 10 Moral Emotions
- 11 The Benefits and Costs of Empathy in Moral Decision Making
- Part III Behavior
- Part IV Origins, Development, and Variation
- Part V Applications and Extensions
- Index
- References
11 - The Benefits and Costs of Empathy in Moral Decision Making
from Part II - Thinking and Feeling
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2025
By
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Moral Psychology
- Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology
- The Cambridge Handbook of Moral Psychology
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Modern Moral Psychology
- Part I Building Blocks
- Part II Thinking and Feeling
- 7 Moral Decision Making
- 8 Are Moral Judgments Rational?
- 9 Moral Categorization and Mind Perception
- 10 Moral Emotions
- 11 The Benefits and Costs of Empathy in Moral Decision Making
- Part III Behavior
- Part IV Origins, Development, and Variation
- Part V Applications and Extensions
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter of the handbook examines the complex relation between empathy and prosociality by drawing on evolutionary theory, neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics. The author begins by distinguishing three components of the broader phenomenon of empathy: emotional contagion, empathic concern, and perspective taking. He reviews evidence suggesting that emotional contagion of a conspecific’s pain often leads to helping behavior, but such contagion is modulated by group membership, levels of intimacy, and attitudes toward the other. Empathic concern, too, is a powerful motivator of prosocial behaviors but is also socially modulated – extended to some people more than others and to individuals more than groups. Effortful perspective taking, finally, can provide a better understanding of other people’s minds but does not always generate prosocial behavior, even when it facilitates empathic concern. In sum, various forms of empathy can motivate prosocial behaviors, but empathy is fragile and often stops short of its potential when people engage with large groups, people outside of their tribe, or anonymous strangers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of Moral Psychology , pp. 248 - 270Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
References
Allison, P. (1990). The altruistic personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. Public Opinion Quarterly, 54(3), 442–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ames, D. R. (2004). Inside the mind reader’s tool kit: Projection and stereotyping in mental state inference. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(3), 340–353.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ashar, Y. K., Andrews-Hanna, J. R., Dimidjian, S., & Wager, T. D. (2017). Empathic care and distress: Predictive brain markers and dissociable brain systems. Neuron, 94(6), 1263–1273.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bardi, L., Six, P., & Brass, M. (2017). Repetitive TMS of the temporo-parietal junction disrupts participant’s expectations in a spontaneous theory of mind task. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(11), 1775–1782.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartal, I. B. A., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2011). Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats. Science, 334(6061), 1427–1430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Batson, C. D. (2009). These things called empathy: Eight related but distinct phenomena. In Decety, J. & Ickes, W. (Eds.), The social neuroscience of empathy (pp. 3–15). MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Batson, C. D. (2014). The empathy-altruism hypothesis: Issues and implications. In Decety, J. (Ed.), Empathy: From bench to bedside (pp. 41–54). MIT Press.Google Scholar
Batson, C. D., Duncan, B. D., Ackerman, P., Buckley, T., & Birch, K. (1981). Is empathic emotion a source of altruistic motivation? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40(2), 290–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Batson, C. D., Klein, T. R., Highberger, L., & Shaw, L. L. (1995). Immorality from empathy-induced altruism: When compassion and justice conflict. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(6), 1042–1054.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Batson, C. D., Lishner, D. A., Carpenter, A., Dulin, L., Harjusola-Webb, S., Stocks, E. L., Gale, S., Hassan, O., & Sampat, B. (2003). “… As you would have them do unto you”: Does imagining yourself in the other’s place stimulate moral action? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(9), 1190–1201.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Batson, C. D., Lishner, D. A., Cook, J., & Sawyer, S. (2005). Similarity and nurturance: Two possible sources of empathy for strangers. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 27, 15–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ben-Ami Bartal, I., Shan, H., Molasky, N. M., Murray, T. M., Williams, J. Z., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2016). Anxiolytic treatment impairs helping behavior in rats. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, Article 850.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blader, S. L., & Tyler, T. R. (2002). Justice and empathy: What motivates people to help others? In Ross, M. & Miller, D. T. (Eds.), The justice motive in everyday life (pp. 226–250). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Briefer, E. F. (2018). Vocal contagion of emotions in non-human animals. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285(1873), Article 20172783.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bruneau, E. G., Cikara, M., & Saxe, R. (2017). Parochial empathy predicts reduced altruism and the endorsement of passive harm. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(8), 934–942.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Buffone, A. E., Poulin, M., DeLury, S., Ministero, L., Morrisson, C., & Scalco, M. (2017). Don’t walk in her shoes! Different forms of perspective taking affect stress physiology. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 72, 161–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burkett, J. P., Andari, E., Johnson, Z. V., Curry, D. C., de Waal, F. B., & Young, L. J. (2016). Oxytocin-dependent consolation behavior in rodents. Science, 351(6271), 375–378.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cacioppo, J. T., & Decety, J. (2011). Social neuroscience: Challenges and opportunities in the study of complex behavior. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1224(1), 162–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, C. D. (2018). Motivating empathy: Three methodological recommendations for mapping empathy. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 12(11), Article e12418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cao, Y., Contreras-Huerta, L. S., McFadyen, J., & Cunnington, R. (2015). Racial bias in neural response to others’ pain is reduced with other-race contact. Cortex, 70, 68–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carrillo, M., Han, Y., Migliorati, F., Liu, M., Gazzola, V., & Keysers, C. (2019). Emotional mirror neurons in the rat’s anterior cingulate cortex. Current Biology, 29(8), 1301–1312.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carter, R. M., & Huettel, S. A. (2013). A nexus model of the temporal–parietal junction. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(7), 328–336.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cheng, Y., Chen, C., Lin, C. P., Chou, K. H., & Decety, J. (2010). Love hurts: An fMRI study. Neuroimage, 51(2), 923–929.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cialdini, R. B., Brown, S. L., Lewis, B. P., Luce, C., & Neuberg, S. L. (1997). Reinterpreting the empathy altruism relationship: When one into one equals oneness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 481–494.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cikara, M., Botvinick, M. M., & Fiske, S. T. (2011). Us versus them: Social identity shapes responses to intergroup competition and harm. Psychological Science, 22, 306–313.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cikara, M., & Fiske, S. T. (2013). Their pain, our pleasure: Stereotype content and schadenfreude. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1299(1), 52–59.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Contreras-Huerta, L. S., Baker, K. S., Reynolds, K. J., Batalha, L., & Cunnington, R. (2013). Racial bias in neural empathic responses to pain. PLoS ONE, 8(12), Article e84001.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Curry, O. S. (2016). Morality as cooperation: A problem-centred approach. In Shackelford, T. K. & Hansen, R. D. (Eds.), The evolution of morality (pp. 27–51). Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cushman, F., Gray, K., Gaffey, A., & Mendes, W. B. (2012). Simulating murder: The aversion to harmful action. Emotion, 12(1), 2–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Decety, J. (2020). Empathy in medicine: What it is, and how much we really need it. American Journal of Medicine, 133, 561–566.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Decety, J., Chen, C., Harenski, C., & Kiehl, K. A. (2013). An fMRI study of affective perspective taking in individuals with psychopathy: Imagining another in pain does not evoke empathy. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, Article 489.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Decety, J., & Cowell, J. M. (2014). The complex relation between morality and empathy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(7), 337–339.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Decety, J., & Cowell, J. M. (2015). Empathy, justice, and moral behavior. American Journal of Bioethics – Neuroscience, 6(3), 3–14.Google ScholarPubMed
Decety, J., & Cowell, J. M. (2018). Interpersonal harm aversion as a necessary foundation for morality: A developmental neuroscience perspective. Development and Psychopathology, 30(1), 153–164.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Decety, J., Echols, S. C., & Correll, J. (2010). The blame game: The effect of responsibility and social stigma on empathy for pain. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22(5), 985–997.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Decety, J., & Jackson, P. L. (2004). The functional architecture of human empathy. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, 3(2), 71–100.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Decety, J., & Lamm, C. (2007). The role of the right temporoparietal junction in social interaction: How low-level computational processes contribute to meta-cognition. The Neuroscientist, 13(6), 580–593.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Decety, J., & Sommerville, J. A. (2003). Shared representations between self and other: A social cognitive neuroscience view. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(12), 527–533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeSteno, D. (2015). Compassion and altruism: How our minds determine who is worthy of help. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 3, 80–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickert, S., & Slovic, P. (2009). Attentional mechanisms in the generation of sympathy. Judgment and Decision Making, 4, 297–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dovidio, J. F., & Banfield, J. C. (2015). Prosocial behavior and empathy. In Wright, J. D. (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral science, (2nd ed., Vol. 19, pp. 216–220). Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engert, V., Linz, R., & Grant, J. A. (2019). Embodied stress: The physiological resonance of psychosocial stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 105, 138–146.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Epley, N., Keysar, B., Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2004). Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(3), 327–339.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
FeldmanHall, O., Dalgleish, T., Evans, D., & Mobbs, D. (2015). Empathic concern drives costly altruism. NeuroImage, 105, 347–356.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferris, C. F. (2014). Using awake animal imaging to understand neural circuits of emotion: Studies ranging from maternal care to aggression. In Decety, J. & Christen, Y. (Eds.), New frontiers in social neuroscience (pp. 111–126). Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fetherstonhaugh, D., Slovic, P., Johnson, S. M., & Friedrich, J. (1997). Insensitivity to the value of human life: A study of psychophysical numbing. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 14, 283–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Filippi, M., Riccitelli, G., Falini, A., Di Salle, F., Vuilleumier, P., Comi, G., & Rocca, M. A. (2010). The brain functional networks associated to human and animal suffering differ among omnivores, vegetarians and vegans. PLOS ONE, 5(5), Article e10847.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Francois, P., Fujiwara, T., & Van Ypersele, T. (2018). The origins of human prosociality: Cultural group selection in the workplace and the laboratory. Science Advances, 4(9), Article e2201.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Galinsky, A. D., & Moskowitz, G. B. (2000). Perspective-taking: Decreasing stereotype expression, stereotype accessibility, and in-group favoritism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 708–724.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Genevsky, A., Västfjäll, D., Slovic, P., & Knutson, B. (2013). Neural underpinnings of the identifiable victim effect: Affect shifts preferences for giving. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33(43), 17188–17196.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gleichgerrcht, E., & Young, L. (2013). Low levels of empathic concern predict utilitarian moral judgment. PLoS ONE, 8(4), Article e60418.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goetz, J. L., Keltner, D., & Simon-Thomas, E. (2010). Compassion: An evolutionary analysis and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 351–375.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gordon, I., Zagoory-Sharon, O., Leckman, J. F., & Feldman, R. (2010). Oxytocin and the development of parenting in humans. Biological Psychiatry, 68(4), 377–382.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gordon, R. M. (2021). Simulation, predictive coding and the shared world. In Gilead, M. & Ochsner, K. (Eds.), The neural basis of mentalizing (pp. 237–255). Springer Nature.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haidt, J., & Joseph, C. (2004). Intuitive ethics: How innately prepared intuitions generate culturally variable virtues. Daedalus, 133, 55–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behaviour. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7(1), 17–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harbaugh, W. T., Mayr, U., & Burghart, D. R. (2007). Neural responses to taxation and voluntary giving reveal motives for charitable donations. Science, 316(5831), 1622–1625.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Higgins, E. T. (2015). What is value? Where does it come from? A psychological perspective. In Brosch, T. & Sander, D. (Eds.), Handbook of value: Perspectives from economics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and sociology (pp. 43–63). Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodges, S. D., & Klein, K. J. K. (2001). Regulating the costs of empathy: The price of being human. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 30(5), 437–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hrdy, S. B. (2014). Development + social selection in the emergence of “emotionally” modern humans. In Decety, J. & Christen, Y. (Eds.), New frontiers in social neuroscience (pp. 57–91). Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huang, S., & Han, S. (2014). Shared beliefs enhance shared feelings: Religious/irreligious identifications modulate empathic neural responses. Social Neuroscience, 9, 639–649.Google ScholarPubMed
Jackson, P. L., Brunet, E., Meltzoff, A. N., & Decety, J. (2006). Empathy examined through the neural mechanisms involved in imagining how I feel versus how you feel pain. Neuropsychologia, 44(5), 752–761.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacob, F. (1977). Evolution and tinkering. Science, 196(4295), 1161–1166.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jin, K. S., & Baillargeon, R. (2017). Infants possess an abstract expectation of ingroup support. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(31), 8199–8204.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, B. D., & King, R. D. (2017). Facial profiling: Race, physical appearance, and punishment. Criminology, 55(3), 520–547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenkel, W. M., Perkeybile, A. M., & Carter, C. S. (2017). The neurobiological causes and effects of alloparenting. Developmental Neurobiology, 77(2), 214–232.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kenrick, D. T., & Griskevicius, V. (2013). The rational animal: How evolution made us smarter than we think. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Kogut, T., & Ritov, I. (2005). The identified victim effect: An identified group, or just a single individual? Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 18, 157–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krishnan, A., Woo, C. W., Chang, L. J., Ruzic, L., Gu, X., López-Solà, M., Jackson, P. L., Pujol, J., Fan, J., & Wager, T. D. (2016). Somatic and vicarious pain are represented by dissociable multivariate brain patterns. eLife, 5, Article e15166.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lamm, C., Batson, C. D., & Decety, J. (2007). The neural basis of human empathy: Effects of perspective-taking and cognitive appraisal. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 42–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamm, C., Decety, J., & Singer, T. (2011). Meta-analytic evidence for common and distinct neural networks associated with directly experienced pain and empathy for pain. Neuroimage, 54(3), 2492–2502.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Langford, D. J., Tuttle, A. H., Brown, K., Deschenes, S., Fischer, D. B., Mutso, A., Root, K. C., Sotocinal, S. G., Stern, M. A., Mogil, J. S., & Sternberg, W. F. (2010). Social approach to pain in laboratory mice. Social Neuroscience, 5(2), 163–170.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lanzetta, J. T., & Englis, B. G. (1989). Expectations of cooperation and competition and their effects on observers’ vicarious emotional responses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 543–554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lockwood, P. L. (2016). The anatomy of empathy: Vicarious experience and disorders of social cognition. Behavioural Brain Research, 311, 255–266.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Loewenstein, G., & Small, D. (2007). The scarecrow and the tin man: The vicissitudes of human sympathy and caring. Review of General Psychology, 11, 112–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mar, R. A. (2018). Stories and the promotion of social cognition. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(4), 257–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marean, C. W. (2015). The most invasive species of all. Scientific American, 313(2), 32–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McAuliffe, W. H., Carter, E. C., Berhane, J., Snihur, A. C., & McCullough, M. E. (2020). Is empathy the default response to suffering? A meta-analytic evaluation of perspective taking’s effect on empathic concern. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 24(2), 141–162.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mendl, M., Burman, O. H., & Paul, E. S. (2010). An integrative and functional framework for the study of animal emotion and mood. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277(1696), 2895–2904.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molenberghs, P., Gapp, J., Wang, B., Louis, W. R., & Decety, J. (2016). Increased moral sensitivity for outgroup perpetrators harming ingroup members. Cerebral Cortex, 26(1), 225–233.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morelli, S. A., Sacchet, M. D., & Zaki, J. (2015). Common and distinct neural correlates of personal and vicarious reward: A quantitative meta-analysis. NeuroImage, 112, 244–253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mumper, M. L., & Gerrig, R. J. (2017). Leisure reading and social cognition: A meta-analysis. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 11(1), 109–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neyer, F. J., & Lang, F. R. (2003). Blood is thicker than water: Kinship orientation across adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 310–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, J. H., Schaller, M., & Van Vugt, M. (2008). Psychology of human kin recognition: Heuristic cues, erroneous inferences, and their implications. Review of General Psychology, 12(3), 215–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patil, I., Calò, M., Fornasier, F., Cushman, F., & Silani, G. (2017). The behavioral and neural basis of empathic blame. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 1–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Richerson, P. J., Boyd, R., & Henrich, J. (2010). Gene-culture coevolution in the age of genomics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 8985–8992.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosin, H. (2013, April 29). Why all this maternal sympathy for Dzhokhar? Slate. https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/04/maternal-sympathy-for-dzhokhar-tsarnaev-what-s-it-about.htmlGoogle Scholar
Ruby, P., & Decety, J. (2001). Effect of subjective perspective taking during simulation of action: A PET investigation of agency. Nature Neuroscience, 4(5), 546–550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruby, P., & Decety, J. (2004). How would you feel versus how do you think she would feel? A neuroimaging study of perspective taking with social emotions. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 988–999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sato, N., Tan, L., Tate, K., & Okada, M. (2015). Rats demonstrate helping behavior toward a soaked conspecific. Animal Cognition, 18(5), 1039–1047.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott-Phillips, T. C., Dickins, T. E., & West, S. A. (2011). Evolutionary theory and the ultimate–proximate distinction in the human behavioral sciences. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(1), 38–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shdo, S. M., Ranasinghe, K. G., Gola, K. A., Mielke, C. J., Sukhanov, P. V., Miller, B. L., & Rankin, K. P. (2018). Deconstructing empathy: Neuroanatomical dissociations between affect sharing and prosocial motivation using a patient lesion model. Neuropsychologia, 116, 126–135.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Simas, E. N., Clifford, S., & Kirkland, J. H. (2020). How empathic concern fuels political polarization. American Political Science Review, 114(1), 258–269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singer, T., Seymour, B., O’Doherty, J. P., Stephan, K. E., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. (2006). Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others. Nature, 439, 466–469.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Slovic, P. (2007). If I look at the mass I will never act: Psychic numbing and genocide. Judgment and Decision Making, 2, 79–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slovic, P., Västfjäll, D., Erlandsson, A., & Gregory, R. (2017). Iconic photographs and the ebb and flow of empathic response to humanitarian disasters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(4), 640–644.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Small, D. A., Loewenstein, G., & Slovic, P. (2007). Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 102(2), 143–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinbeis, N. (2016). The role of self–other distinction in understanding others’ mental and emotional states: Neurocognitive mechanisms in children and adults. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371(1686), Article 20150074.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Strathearn, L., Fonagy, P., Amico, J., & Montague, P. R. (2009). Adult attachment predicts maternal brain and oxytocin response to infant cues. Neuropsychopharmacology, 34(13), 2655–2666.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tice, D. M., Bratslavsky, E., & Baumeister, R. F. (2001). Emotional distress regulation takes precedence over impulse control: If you feel bad, do it. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(1), 53–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Västfjäll, D., Slovic, P., Mayorga, M., & Peters, E. (2014). Compassion fade: Affect and charity are greatest for a single child in need. PLOS ONE, 9(6), Article e100115.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vaughn, D. A., Savjani, R. R., Cohen, M. S., & Eagleman, D. M. (2018). Empathic neural responses predict group allegiance. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12, Article 302.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vekaria, K. M., O’Connell, K., Rhoads, S. A., Brethel-Haurwitz, K. M., Cardinale, E. M., Robertson, E. L., Walitt, B., VanMeter, J. W., & Marsh, A. A. (2020). Activation in bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) corresponds to everyday helping. Cortex, 127, 67–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Xu, X., Zuo, X., Wang, X., & Han, S. (2009). Do you feel my pain? Racial group membership modulates empathic neural responses. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(26), 8525–8529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yamada, M., Lamm, C., & Decety, J. (2011). Pleasing frowns, disappointing smiles: An ERP investigation of counterempathy. Emotion, 11(6), 1336–1345.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zahn-Waxler, C., Schoen, A., & Decety, J. (2018). An interdisciplinary perspective on the origins of concern for others: Contributions from psychology, neuroscience philosophy and sociobiology. In Roughley, N. & Schramme, T. (Eds.), Forms of fellow feeling: Empathy, sympathy, concern and moral agency (pp. 184–215). Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaki, J. (2014). Empathy: A motivated account. Psychological Bulletin, 140(6), 1608–1647.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed