2023-11-17 06:58:22
In my previous bias, I explained that our perception systematically begins with a very rapid, non-conscious and elaborate first phase, then it continues with the sudden awareness of the object perceived. This second phase then opens a period of very variable duration, during which we have the leisure to think optional the immediate data of our perception. Isn’t that what we are doing by returning, a week later, to the same result?
The two-step perception also applies to humans
Not only does this principle continue to apply when we perceive our fellow humans, but it underlies many of the properties of social cognition: our ability to live within a human community. This principle of the two stages of perception of others manifests itself in our faculty of empathy: this capacity to feel compassion for the suffering of a man or woman who faces us. So I will no longer surprise you by announcing that we have… two complementary forms of empathy.
Confronted with the suffering of others, we are first overcome by an irrepressible feeling of identification with this alter ego, with this “other me” literally. His suffering is unbearable to me because it resonates within me as if I were experiencing it myself. Some people talk regarding selfish altruism here. We can speak of mirror empathy.
Mirror empathy and decentered empathy
This first empathy can be followed by a voluntary and more distanced analysis of this suffering perceived in others. We then become capable of experiencing a second form of empathy which is decentered from our own person. From now on, this empathy does not arise from an identification with the being who suffers, but from our attempt to appreciate, difficult, what he or she is experiencing.
This off-centered empathy is less narcissistic and therefore more altruistic than mirror empathy, but it requires time and effort. As mirror empathy falls upon us, we are the willing agents of decentered empathy. We sometimes wrongly describe the first as emotional and the second as cognitive, but in reality decentered empathy is also rich in powerful conscious feelings.
When insensitivity to pain reveals the duality of empathy
Certain rare neurological situations make it possible to dissociate these two forms of empathy, and therefore to demonstrate their duality. My colleague and friend, the neurologist Nicolas Danziger, explored individuals with congenital insensitivity to pain. Due to genetic mutations that affect the nerve fibers required to experience pain, they never experienced physical pain. Are they nevertheless capable of empathy for the pain of others?
As one might imagine, those congenitally insensitive to pain cannot experience mirror empathy, nor viscerally feel the pain of others in their own body, but they remain capable of exercising decentered and altruistic empathy! In neuroimaging, the brain matrix of altruistic empathy is indeed activated in their brain, but this activation strongly depends on their scores on the voluntary off-center empathy scales.
On the docks | 14-15 Listen later
Finding the balance between mirror empathy and altruistic empathy
These two forms of empathy are part of our nature. But in our information societies, where we are bombarded with information likely to mobilize our empathy, it seems important to me to highlight the risk of an imbalance. The risk of empathy dominated by mirror empathy to the detriment of altruistic empathy. Mirror empathy is irrepressible, which gives it a sometimes precious pass to unconditionally access our consciousness.
Truth be told, the universal ethical golden rule “Love your neighbor as yourself” can be ensured by mirror empathy. But, it is self-referenced: by believing, even sincerely, that I am concerned regarding you, it is regarding me! In contrast, altruistic decentered empathy offers the conditions for the possibility of a true link between two distinct subjectivities which are not merged into each other. When will there be a new key, “pause”, on our smartphones, the TEA key:
“Break! I need Time for my Altruistic Empathy!”
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#mirror #empathy #offcentered #empathy #fragile #balance
