Empathy Quote by Robert M. Sapolsky

““someone’s hand being poked with a needle, and subjects have an “isomorphic sensorimotor” response—hands tense in empathy. Among both whites and blacks, the response is blunted for other-race hands; the more the implicit racism, the more blunting. Similarly, among subjects of both races, there’s more activation of the (emotional) medial PFC when considering misfortune befalling a member of their own race than of another race.””

Robert M. Sapolsky

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.1 out of 5 (5 ratings)

Empathy Racism

More by Robert M. Sapolsky

“Secure-attachment 7Rs show more generosity than average. Thus 7R has something to do with generosity—but its effect is entirely context dependent.”

Robert M. Sapolsky

Image

But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, you're going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves…

Robert M. Sapolsky

Image

“Finally, for the same criminal conviction, the more stereotypically Af-rican a black individual’s facial features, the longer the sentence.15 In contrast, juries view black (but not white) male defendants more favorably if they’re wearing big, clunky glasses; some defense attorneys even exploit this “nerd defense” by accessorizing their clients with fake glasses, and prosecuting attorneys ask whether those dorky glasses…

Robert M. Sapolsky

“So testosterone does subtle things to behavior. Nonetheless, this doesn’t tell us much because everything can be interpreted every which way. Testosterone increases anxiety—you feel threatened and become more reactively aggressive. Testosterone decreases anxiety—you feel cocky and overconfident, become more preemptively aggressive. Testosterone increases risk taking—“Hey, let’s gamble and invade.” Testosterone increases risk taking—“Hey, let’s gamble and make a peace…

Robert M. Sapolsky

“pain makes aggressive people more aggressive, while doing the opposite to unaggressive individuals.”

Robert M. Sapolsky

Image

“Thus, for our purposes, genes aren’t about inevitability. Instead they’re about context-dependent tendencies, propensities, potentials, and vulnerabilities. All embedded in the fabric of the…

Robert M. Sapolsky

Image

“If we accept that there will always be sides, it’s a nontrivial to-do list item to always be on the side of angels. Distrust essentialism. Keep in mind that what seems like rationality is often just rationalization, playing catch-up with subterranean forces that we never suspect. Focus on the larger, shared goals. Practice perspective taking. Individuate, individuate, individuate. Recall the…

Robert M. Sapolsky

“In other words, the more genomically complex the organism, the larger the percentage of the genome devoted to gene regulation by the environment.”

Robert M. Sapolsky

Image

“The subject of one experiment is a rat that receives mild electric shocks (roughly equivalent to the static shock you might get from scuffing your foot on a carpet). Over a series of these, the rat develops a prolonged stress-response: its heart rate and glucocorticoid secretion rate go up, for example. For convenience, we can express the long-term consequences by…

Robert M. Sapolsky

“No brain region is an island, and the formation of circuits connecting far-flung brain regions is crucial—how else can the frontal cortex use its…

Robert M. Sapolsky

Image

“We process emotionally salient information more rapidly and automatically, but with less accuracy. Frontal function—working memory, impulse control, executive decision making, risk assessment, and task shifting—is impaired, and the frontal cortex has less control over the amygdala. And we become less empathic and prosocial. Reducing sustained stress is a win-win for us and those stuck around us.”

Robert M. Sapolsky

“Most broadly, the PFC chooses between conflicting options—Coke or Pepsi; blurting out what you really think or restraining yourself; pulling the trigger or not. And often the conflict being resolved is between a decision heavily driven by cognition and one driven by emotions. Once it has decided, the PFC sends orders via projections to the rest of the frontal cortex,…

Robert M. Sapolsky

Explore all 280 Robert M. Sapolsky quotes

More Empathy quotes

I have a lot of empathy, and I think that's where mothering starts. You are there to empathise and facilitate.

Viv Albertine

Image

When you need empathy, you cannot give empathy.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

Image

Cinematography speaks to everything that women do inherently well: It's multitasking, it's empathy, and it's channeling visuals into human emotion.

Rachel Morrison

Image

“God has a way of picking a “nobody” and turning their world upside down, in order to create a “somebody” that will remove the…

Shannon L. Alder

Image

That is another theme in the book [Dreams from My Father]. How do we exercise more empathy in our public discourse? How do we get the black to see through the eyes of the white? Or the citizen to see through the eyes of the immigrant? Or the straight to see through the eyes of the gay? That has always…

Barack Obama

Making a movie is about following characters and embarking on an adventure with them, seeing their reactions, and seeing what they do, having empathy…

Franck Khalfoun

Image

“A novel is not an allegory...it is a sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel; you inhale the experience. So start breathing.…

Azar Nafisi