Human Compassion

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_compassionate_instinct

My Masterpiece Field: Helping Others 

The Compassionate Instinct

-Plato compared the human soul to a chariot: the intellect is the driver and the emotions are the horses; life is a continual struggle to keep the emotions under control

-Compassion and benevolence, this research suggests, are an evolved part of human nature, rooted in our brain and biology, and ready to be cultivated for the greater good

-University of Wisconsin psychologist Jack Nitschke found in an experiment that when mothers looked at pictures of their babies, they not only reported feeling more compassionate love than when they saw other babies

-they also demonstrated unique activity in a region of their brains associated with the positive emotions

-Nitschke’s finding suggests that this region of the brain is attuned to the first objects of our compassion, our offspring!

-Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen of Princeton University found that when subjects contemplated harm being done to others, a similar network of regions in their brains lit up

-Suggests that compassion is an innate human response embedded into the folds of our brains

-Helping others triggered activity in the caudate nucleus and anterior cingulate, portions of the brain that turn on when people receive rewards or experience pleasure

-This is a rather remarkable finding: helping others brings the same pleasure we get from the gratification of personal desire

-The brain, then, seems wired up to respond to others’ suffering—indeed, it makes us feel good when we can alleviate that suffering

5 Vocab Words

Altruism (n) -the principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others; opposed to egoism

Assertion (n) -a positive statement or declaration, often without support or reason

Derision (n) -ridicule; mockery

Fickle (adj) -likely to change, especially due to caprice, irresolution, or instability; casually changeable

Oblique (adj) -neither perpendicular nor parallel to a given line or surface; slanting; sloping