One of my sisters calls my attention to a piece by Daniel Goleman, "The Roots of Compassion" (Dec. 19, 2005). It's part of a Times year-end series on happiness and "our ties to friends, family and tradition." Excerpt:
It’s a truism that the sight of one stranger helping another in the out-of-the-blue fashion of Secret Santa can move people to tears. Exactly why that might be so has been the subject of study by Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville. He uses the term “elevation” for the warm feeling people get when they hear about or witness unexpected acts of human goodness. Haidt studies how people feel while watching, for instance, a film of Mother Theresa helping the poor in Calcutta. His conclusion: We are wired to be inspired.
Acts of compassion, courage or tolerance have a special psychological potency for most people, moving or even thrilling them, Haidt has found. Seeing someone help the sick or poor can trigger elevation, and so can simple thoughtfulness. The Japanese word for being moved in this way is kandou. In a study in Japan, someone reported feeling kandou on witnessing a tough-looking gangster offer his seat to an elderly man on a crowded train.
The fledgling field of social neuroscience is figuring out the brain mechanics that account for elevation – the circuitry that underlies the urge to help others in distress. An article in the journal Development and Psychopathology summarizing the results of years of brain research suggests that empathy – sensitivity to the emotional state of another person – arises through an interaction of the brain’s pain centers with mirror neurons, which match our internal state to that of another person.
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