Constructing Memory, Imagination, and Empathy: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective

Brendan Gaesser

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00576

Abstract

Studies on memory, imagination, and empathy have largely progressed in isolation. Consequently, humans’ empathic tendencies to care about and help other people are considered independent of our ability to remember and imagine events. Despite this theoretical autonomy, work from across psychology, and neuroscience suggests that these cognitive abilities may be linked. In the present paper, I tentatively propose that humans’ ability to vividly imagine specific events (as supported by constructive memory) may facilitate prosocial intentions and behavior. Evidence of a relationship between memory, imagination, and empathy comes from research that shows imagination influences the perceived and actual likelihood an event occurs, improves intergroup relations, and shares a neural basis with memory and empathy. Although many questions remain, this paper outlines a new direction for research that investigates the role of imagination in promoting empathy and prosocial behavior.

Highlights

Every day there are families with an inept cat marooned in a tree, friends with a couch to be moved, neighbors’ homes damaged by a storm, pedestrians hit by a car: people in need of help
DIRECTIONS Humans are a preeminent evolutionary success story because we work as a horde, a cognitively sophisticated and helpful horde
I am not proposing the adaptive function of promoting prosocial behavior to be mutually exclusive with other proposed functions of episodic simulation (e.g., “trying out” alternative scenarios in order to plan and predict the future)

Summary

Introduction

Every day there are families with an inept cat marooned in a tree, friends with a couch to be moved, neighbors’ homes damaged by a storm, pedestrians hit by a car: people in need of help. I tentatively propose that humans’ ability to vividly imagine specific events (as supported by constructive memory) may facilitate prosocial intentions and behavior. Evidence of a relationship between memory, imagination, and empathy comes from research that shows imagination influences the perceived and actual likelihood an event occurs, improves intergroup relations, and shares a neural basis with memory and empathy.

Results

Conclusion