Empathy Experts:  Video and Links:  Gary Olson

Gary Olson
		'Gary Olson chairs the Political Science department at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA. For the past few years he's been writing on the political implications of recent neuroscience research findings on empathy' Blog

2010-06-26 - Empathy & Neuropolitics
Mirror neurons, the brain cells believed to be the basis for empathy, have recently been identified in the human brain. And yet we’re left to explain the disjuncture between this deep-seated, pre-reflective, moral intuition and the paucity of actual empathic behavior, especially in certain cultures. I suggest that answers may be found in the bidirectional connection between culture and brain development.

2010-02-09 - Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization and P.W. Singer’s Wired for War
Two recent books on the future, both seeking to interpret selected aspects of a rapidly moving, technologically complex world, are each deeply flawed but well worth examining for what's missing. One author fears we are heading toward global entropic destruction of the Earth’s biosphere unless we reinterpret history in light of new scientific evidence that proves humans are an empathic species. The other, more narrowly focused, explores the advent of military robotics, the revolutionary technology that promises to dominate future battlefields.
 

2009-10-13 - Frans de Waal's Age of Empathy: A Review and Critique
The next time you find yourself in a contentious conversation with someone who’s arguing that humans are inherently selfish, embrace killing and war, and (mis) using terms like “Social Darwinism,” give them a copy of Frans de Waal’s latest book, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons For A Kinder Society (Harmony, 2009).
 

2009-06-01 - Empathy Marketing 101
Not infrequently the most convincing testimony to the veracity and potential power of new scientific discoveries is when they're embraced -- for profit-driven motives -- by corporate America. Today the incandecent mantra in business and advertising circles is "empathy marketing," or more broadly, neuromarketing (NM). Market researchers and advertising experts are attempting to stand shoulder to shoulder with "the better angels of our nature" in hopes this will increase sales. In short, putting oneself in another's shoes is a technique for selling them another pair.
 

2009-11-00 - We Empathize, Therefore We Are: Toward a Moral Neuropolitics
Based on recent findings from neuroscience we can plausibly deduce that the mirror neurons of the viewer were engaged by these images of others suffering. The appeal was to the public's awakened sense of compassion and revulsion toward graphic depictions of the wholesale violence, barbarity, and torture routinely practiced on these Atlantic voyages. Rediker notes that the images would instantaneously "make the viewer identify and sympathize with the 'injured Africans' on the lower deck of the ship . . ." while also producing a sense of moral outrage
 

2008-05-20 - Hard-Wired for Moral Politics: Neuroscience and Empathy
The nonprofit Edge Foundation recently asked some of the world's most eminent scientists, "What Are You Optimistic About?  Why?"  In response, the prominent neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni, cites the proliferating experimental work into the neural mechanisms that reveal how humans are "wired for empathy."

 

etc