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Jana Schaich Borg +
'“Empathy” is an innate, fundamental phenomenon that confers powerful evolutionary advantage.
Empathy-motivated relationships increase individuals’ reproductive success (Seyfarth & Cheney, 2012) and
decrease mortality (Holt-Lunstad, Smith, & Layton, 2010),
which might be related to observations that empathy inhibits aggression,
motivates cooperation, and
facilitates moral principles (De Waal, 2008; Eisenberg & Morris, 2001).
Decisions and actions based on empathy are posited to be responsible for the evolution of humans’ advanced cognitive abilities (Burkart et al., 2014; De Waal, 2008). "
Benefits of empathy
+ reproductive success
- mortality
- aggression
+ motivates cooperation,
+ moral principles
+ cognitive abilities
Seyfarth, R. M., & Cheney, D. L. (2012). The evolutionary origins of friendship. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 153–177.
Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine, 7, e1000316.
De Waal, F. B. (2008). Putting the altruism back into altruism: The evolution of empathy. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 279–300.
Eisenberg, N., & Morris, A. S. (2001). The origins and social significance of empathy-related responding. A review of empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice by M. L. Hoffman. Social Justice Research, 14, 95–120.
Burkart, J., Allon, O., Amici, F., Fichtel, C., Finkenwirth, C., Heschl, A., … Martins, E.(2014). The evolutionary origin of human hyper-cooperation. Nature Communications, 5.
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