Relationships & empathy
Empathy circuits that feel another’s pain as our own, and reward circuits that light up when we give, make cooperation and generosity come back to us.
Neighboring concepts: Emotion & stress · Neurotransmitters · Full knowledge map
Posts on this concept 3
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Why Does Envy Hurt? In Shakespeare's Othello, the Brain Felt Envy as Pain
The sting of envy is not just in your head. When people felt they had fallen behind someone else, a pain-related brain region, the anterior cingulate cortex, became active (Science, 2009). The same pain becomes benign envy that drives growth when it lifts you up, and malicious envy that leads to ruin when it pulls others down. Following Iago in Shakespeare's great tragedy Othello, we trace where the two split and offer three steps to turn envy into fuel for growth.
18 min read Read % read -
If Genes Are Selfish, Why Do We Help Others? Givers Were Happier
The way you treat others comes back to you. Using kin selection and Tit for Tat from Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, together with studies in Science and PNAS, we explain why money spent on others makes us happier and why the brain processes another person's pain like our own, plus a three-step plan you can start today.
16 min read Read % read -
Does Mental Fatigue Make You Give Up? After 6 Hours of Focus, People Chose Instant Rewards
People who did hard mental work for over six hours built up glutamate in the front of the brain and chose immediate rewards over larger ones that required waiting (Current Biology, 2022). Mental fatigue like this may also play a part in giving up on diets and put-off tasks in the evening. Yet the brain's energy use barely rises with focus, so 'running out of fuel' doesn't explain it. Here's how to move hard decisions to the morning and set evening choices in advance.
9 min read Read % read
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