THEempathy it is a powerful social glue. It is what allows us to put ourselves in the shoes of others. It is that ability which helps us to recognize and identify ourselves with otherness, not only to understand its ideas and thoughts, but also to experience its emotions and feelings.
In fact, there are two types of empathy. Cognitive empathy is what allows us to recognize and understand what the other is feeling, but from a purely intellectual position, with little affective involvement.
Cognitive empathy is the ability to accurately explain, predict, and interpret the emotions of others, but it lacks affective reflection. However, it can be very helpful in helping others by protecting ourselves from the devastating emotional effects that excessive identification with the pain and suffering of others can cause. Indeed, it is the basis of empathic resonance.
On the other hand, emotional or affective empathy occurs when there is an affective reaction through which we identify ourselves so much with the feelings of the other that we can feel them in our own flesh. Obviously, when emotional empathy is extreme and identification with the other is almost total, it can paralyze us, preventing us from being helpful.
Generally, when we are empathetic, we apply a balance between the two, so we are able to recognize the other person's feelings in ourselves, but we can also understand what is happening to them to help them effectively. But everything seems to indicate that this balance is changing over the years.
Cognitive empathy declines with age
In the popular imagination there is the idea that older people are fundamentally less understanding. We tend to perceive them as more rigid and less tolerant, especially with the younger ones. Psychologists from Newcastle University have studied this phenomenon through the prism of empathy.
They recruited 231 adults aged 17 to 94 years. At first, people were shown photographs of faces and videos of actors who were asked to convey different emotions. Participants had to identify the emotions expressed and decide whether the pairs of images showed the same or different emotions.
Later, they saw 19 images of people involved in some type of social gathering or activity. In each situation, the participants had to try to find out what the main character was feeling (cognitive empathy) and indicate how emotionally involved they felt (affective empathy).
The researchers found no significant difference in affective empathy, but the group of people older than 66 scored slightly worse in cognitive empathy. This indicates that older people may actually have more difficulty accurately explaining and interpreting the emotions of others.
Cognitive loss or adaptive mechanism?
Another series of studies conducted in the field of neuroscience reveals that the emotional and cognitive components of empathy are supported by different brain networks that interact with each other.
In fact, a study conducted at the University of California found that cognitive and affective empathy have different developmental trajectories. While affective empathy relies on more primitive regions of the brain, primarily the limbic system, such as the amygdala and insula, cognitive empathy appears to rely on regions common to Theory of Mind that require more information processing, so such as the ability to inhibit our responses and set aside our perspective to put ourselves in the other's place.
Along the same lines, neuroscientists at Harvard University discovered that some elderly people show reduced activity precisely in key areas involved in cognitive empathy processes, such as the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, which is thought to be a relevant region in the cognitive empathy network. in younger people.
A possible explanation for this phenomenon is that the general cognitive slowdown that occurs in the elderly ends up affecting cognitive empathy, making it more difficult for them to get out of their perspective to put themselves in the other's shoes and understand what is happening to them.
On the other hand, a study developed at the National Yang Ming University offers an alternative explanation. According to these researchers, responses related to cognitive and affective empathy become more independent over the years.
In fact, it has also been observed that older people respond with greater empathy than younger people to situations that are relevant to them. This could indicate that as we get older we become more insightful about how we "spend" our empathic energy.
Perhaps that decrease in empathy is a result of aging and wisdom, sort of defense mechanism which allows us to protect ourselves from suffering and makes us stop worrying so much.
Sources:
Kelly, M., McDonald, S., & Wallis, K. (2022) Empathy across the ages: “I may be older but I'm still feeling it”. Neuropsychology; 36 (2): 116-127.
Moore, RC et. Al. (2015) Distinct neural correlates of emotional and cognitive empathy in older adults. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging; 232:42-50.
Chen, Y. et. Al. (2014) Aging is associated with changes in the neural circuits underlying empathy. Neurobiology of aging; 35 (4): 827-836.
Admission Cognitive empathy: Do we learn to conserve "empathic energy" as we age? was published first in Corner of Psychology.
