Hot MedFax

I tend to be a pretty empathetic sort.  In high school my parents used to always criticize me because I was forever taking the side of the forgotten (or bullied) kid and they wanted me in the popular crowd.  Guess they saw how that turned out. But now a new study is saying that walking a mile in another's shoes may wind up being hazardous to your health, according to newswise.com. Huh? A University of Buffalo researcher says it's how we arrive at empathy that counts. When it comes to empathy, the idiom that suggests “walking a mile in their shoes” turns out to be problematic advice, according to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. “That’s because there are two routes to empathy and one of them is more personally distressing and upsetting than the other,” says Michael Poulin, an associate professor in the University at Buffalo Department of Psychology and co-author of the study led by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Anneke...

I found this surprising. Well, maybe not.  But maybe not.  According to a new study, parents are raising their kids to achieve or be happy, the Washington Post relates. What's wrong with that?  They're not valuing caring for others. About 80 percent of the youth in the study said their parents were more concerned with their achievement or happiness than whether they cared for others. The interviewees were also three times more likely to agree that “My parents are prouder if I get good grades in my classes than if I’m a caring community member in class and school.” Why is this important? Because if we want our children to be moral people, we have to, well, raise them that way, right?  We've certainly seen enough of the kids who make fun of others for being different, or because they don't wear the right sneakers, or live in the right neighborhood.  And isn't this, at the head of it all, where bullying comes from? I guess you can't teach moralit...

I'm one of those people who basically only operates on her gut.  It's been right a lot of times.  Meeting my husband and knowing he was the one (at least, at that time!).  Making new friends.  Knowing whether a potential boss is really right for me.   Now a new study is saying that, when it comes to empathy, don't trust your gut. According to newswise.com, empathy is more the result of logic than emotion.  "Cultivating successful personal and professional relationships requires the ability to accurately infer the feelings of others -- that is, to be empathetically accurate.  Some are better at t his than others, a difference that may be explained by a mode of thought," says Jennifer Lerner, PhD, of Harvard University, a co-author of the study. "Until now, however, little was known about which mode of thought -- intuitive vs. systematic, offers better accuracy in perceiving another's feelings." You'd think that would make men better a...

Think you understand someone?  It doesn't really help unless you feel it, too. That's the conclusion of some new research is that , in the absence of caring, understanding alone doesn't cut it when stressful situations arise. When stress sets in, many of us turn to a partner to help us manage by being a sounding board or shoulder to cry on. Your odds of actually feeling better are much improved if they're both those things. My partner isn't very good at listening, or understanding.  He just wants to solve it.  I understand that that's men's way of reacting to a crisis.  They want action.  But it would be so much more helpful if they let us feel it, then felt it, too.   New research by psychologists at UC Santa Barbara reveals that simply understanding your partner's suffering isn't sufficient to be helpful in a stressful situation; you've got to actually care that they're suffering in the first place. Now that doesn't mea...

This probably won't surprise too many of us.  But women are more empathetic than most, but not all, men. A fascinating new study has revealed that men and women attracted to men are more empathetic than men and women attracted to women, according to a new study from the Department of Psychology at the University of Haifa. “People attracted to a particular gender, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual, have common social tools, and thus exhibit the same level of empathy,” says Professor Simone Shamay-Tsoory of the Department of Psychology at the University of Haifa who conducted the study, according to newswise.com. Sociologists claim that empathy plays an important role in the development of human society in that it contributes to peoples’ understanding of others and causes them to take the latter’s feelings into account. Behavioral and brain studies show that activities related to empathy are regulated differently in men and women, based on preferences tha...

Quick.  What happens when you see someone yawn ?  Chances are, you'll yawn, too. Studies in the past suggested it was because we felt empathy for the person doing the yawning.  But a new one that's just out says that's really not the case. Contagious yawning occurs not only in humans, but also in chimpanzees and other animals, in response to hearing about, seeing or thinking about yawning. In 2013,  Medical News Today (MNT)  reported on a study in dogs, which suggested that the  contagious yawns dogs get from their owners  are a result of empathy rather than  stress , according to the publication. Researchers say this phenomenon "differs from spontaneous yawning, in that it does not occur merely when someone is tired or bored. While spontaneous yawning is observed in the womb, contagious yawning begins in early childhood," MNT reports. And though yawning seems like a trivial human action, by better understanding the biological mechanis...

Wouldn't it be nice if we all could not only "just get along," but love everyone? Stephen Asma, professor of philosophy at Columbia College, says universal love is a myth, according to a story by Christie Nicholson at smartplanet.com. She notes that he affirmed this in a   recent New York Times article , “All people are not equally entitled to my time, affection, resources or moral duties," he said in the article. Ansa told Nicholson tha the idea of universal love has been used for ill, not good, using as examples the Soviet Union and Mao's China, where " even family bias was bad and should be broken and subjugated to this universal love." Nicholson reported on Ansa's belief that love and expressions of it are finite. In fact, Ansa postulates that care is more a biological affect than an emotional one, according to Nicholson. All mammals experience it. "Caring for somebody is a lot like sprint racing," Ansa told Nicholson. You h...