Interesting research here suggesting that empathy is hard wired into the human mind.

Using functional MRI scans on normal kids aged 7 to 12, researchers found the parts of the children’s brains that were activated when shown pictures of people in pain, according to findings published in the current issue of Neuropsychologia.

Study author Jean Decety, a professor in the departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago, reported that empathy appears to be “hard-wired” into the brains of normal children, as opposed to being solely the result of parental guidance or nurturing.

“Consistent with previous functional MRI studies of pain empathy with adults, the perception of other people in pain in children was associated with increased hemodymamic activity in the neural circuits involved in the processing of firsthand experience of pain…,” Decety wrote.

We might also mention the idea of mirror neurons as a part explanation of this concept.

Now around here of course we argue that while empathy (and systemising ability) are indeed common to all humans, the level of each varies person by person. Further, we expect to see men clustered at the systemising end of that spectrum, women at the emapthic end (although one individual can be anywhere, we’re talking probabilities here).

However, what sparks my interest here is that there’s really not all that much new under the sun. The father of economics as he’s often called, was Adam Smith. He’s associated these days with a rather dry form of free market loonery but that’s really not at all where he really comes from (I should add that I’m a Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute so I know whereof I speak.): he was a moral philospoher first and foremost.

For example:

To his credit, and ours, Smith thinks the species empathetic, morally disciplined, and reciprocal.

That’s not quite what we normally get from hte modern economics textbooks, is it? More:

Look at what he has to say about sympathy:

But whatever may be the cause of sympathy, or however it may be excited, nothing pleases us more than to observe in other men a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breast; nor are we ever so much shocked as by the appearance of the contrary.

Wait a minute, this isn’t sympathy at all. It’s empathy. Smith argues, extensively, that the fundamental driving force behind moral actions is the drive to understand the people around us and walk in their shoes. Why doesn’t he use the word empathy? Well, it didn’t exist as a word in the English language until 1904, according to the OED.

So what’s the big takeaway from all this? Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations set generations of businesspeople down a path based on self-interest and an extreme disinterest in other people. But he himself believed quite strongly that our moral sensibilities, what we believe to be the better parts of ourselves, are derived from interest in other people.

Empathy is not an emblem of weakness or sensitivity, in Smith’s view. It’s a way to practice self-interest on the lives of other people. And since self-interest leads to prosperity, understanding the self-interests of the people around you leads to the creation of wealth more broadly. Empathy is the most important business strategy of all. Well said, Adam.

Empathy is both hard wired into the human brain and is also the most important business strategy of all?

Might be worth revising some of those modern textbooks on economics, don’t you think?