The Neuroevolution of Empathy and Caring for Others: Why It Matters for Morality

Abstract

Evolutionarily, empathy is central to making adaptive evaluations in social environments, bonding with others, and caring for them. In humans, empathic arousal and feelings of concern for others provide the building blocks for the development of morality. Empathic concern emerges early in life in preverbal infants and requires only a minimal capacity for mindreading and self-awareness. In this chapter, it is proposed that empathy is a capacity shared by humans and other mammals, which is dependent on neural circuits that have evolved in the context of parental care and living in social groups. Empathy-based behaviors have afforded unique survival and reproductive advantages and have co-opted primitive homeostatic processes involved in reward and pain systems in order to facilitate various social attachment processes. Studies in affective and social neuroscience are discussed to document that the same network of regions that are involved in physical pain is also responsive to the perception of pain in others as well as social pain, such as social exclusion, grief, or extreme sadness. The sharing of vicarious negative arousal provides a strong signal that can promote empathic concern and caring for others. To be motivated to help another, one needs to be affectively and empathically aroused and to anticipate the cessation of the mutually experienced personal distress. Finally, drawing on neuroimaging studies with juvenile and adult psychopaths, it is argued that the lack of sensitivity to others’ suffering contributes to a callous disregard for the welfare of others and increases vulnerability to amoral conduct.KeywordsAnterior Cingulate CortexProsocial BehaviorAnterior InsulaPsychopathic TraitEmpathic ConcernThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.