Black-on-Black Caring: Research Reveals Special Empathy
Posted By The Editors | May 28th, 2010 | Category: Hot Topics | 3 comments
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By Janet Singleton
African Americans show great empathy for other blacks in pain, says a study from Northwestern University. Whites, by comparison, showed less compassion for pain-stricken Caucasians.
And expressions of concern went far beyond talk. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers scanned the brains of subjects shown pictures of people in distress, and saw surprising results in the 14 African American and 14 white participants. “We found that everybody reported empathy and showed increased neural response with brain regions associated with empathy toward Hurricane Katrina victims,” says Northwestern psychology professor Joan Y. Chiao, lead researcher for the “Neural Basis of Extraordinary Empathy and Altruistic Motivation,” published in the Dutch science journal Elsevier in March.
“But African Americans additionally showed greater empathic response to other African Americans in emotional pain. And this enhanced or extraordinary empathy and altruistic motivation for in-group members was associated with increased neural activity within a brain region called the medial prefrontal cortex.” At the anterior of the brain, the prefrontal cortex is involved in personality expression, social behavior, and the construction of moral values.
The higher blacks in the study rated their perception of themselves as African Americans (on a Multi-group Ethnic Identity Measure), the more likely they were to exhibit heightened empathy. The researchers said determining why people relate to their own race may lead to discovering methods for encouraging inclusiveness. “We think (the research) suggests mechanisms by which we can enhance our empathy and altruistic motivation simply by finding ways in which we have commonality across individuals and across groups,” Chiao says.
Based on other studies, she and her colleagues had expected that both whites and blacks would show a comparable degree of race-related empathy. In unrelated trials, subjects expressed a greater emotional identification with family members, those sharing similar views, and individuals perceived as likely to reciprocate the subjects’ consideration.
Volunteers for the Chiao study were shown pictures of African Americans and
Caucasian Americans in either distressing situations, i.e., the Katrina disaster, which had been shown to elicit sympathetic identification in a previous group of research participants, or normal circumstances, i.e., a picnic, used for response comparison or as control stimuli.
As the participants’ brains were being scanned, they rated on a scale, from one to four, how empathic each image made them feel. Later they were asked how much would they donate to help victims. High, conceived donation amounts reaped high empathy scores and lower amounts netted lower ones.
“That study makes sense,” says Mark Smith, director of the hurricane recovery program for the American Red Cross, who has boots-on-the-ground experience in two devastated areas with predominantly black victims-Haiti and post-Katrina New Orleans. He was “moved incredibly” by the suffering in those places, he says, though he tries to do his best for everyone. “The way I feel doesn’t impact the service I deliver. Seeing little old ladies in Bulgaria pick weeds on the street to sell to people moved me, too.”
Yet Smith’s presence in places like New Orleans and Haiti take on a special significance. Black people in trouble need to see others who look like them take part in relief efforts, he says. “No group has a monopoly on providing assistance, just as no group has a monopoly on [being victims of a] disaster.”
When Smith sees homeless Haitians or Katrina victims he sees himself. “Although you may not be in that situation, you can see yourself there. That’s the way we relate to each other, even to folk we don’t know.”
Chiao’s study echoes Smith’s perspective. “That experience can really lead to what we’re calling ‘extraordinary empathy and altruistic motivation,” the researcher says. “It’s just that feeling of ‘that person is like me.’”
Janet Singleton is an award-winning novelist and journalist.
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If African Americans showed greater empathic response to other African Americans in emotional pain, they why are blacks responsible for over 90% of black murdered?
From the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) from wikipedia
“African Americans were arrested more than any other race for murder in 2008, making up 36% of all arrests. African Americans, constituting approximately 12% of the general population, were significantly overrepresented in the total arrests made. African Americans were also significantly overrepresented in victimization, representing 47% of all murder victims. White Americans and individuals of Other race were significantly underrepresented in cases of murder and non-negligible homicide in 2008.”
Perhaps the study should be redone to explain black on black violence.
That is a good question or at least an expected query within the racial climate of this nation. But it rests on two premises that are faulty. One falsehood is that the black-on-black crime rate reflects how much all African Americans—most of whom are not murderers— value each other. Of course black crime does not address that anymore than white intra-racial crime speaks to how Caucasians view each other. A sensible person would not claim that the Bernie Madoff case had anything do with lack of humanity or mutual respect among whites or Jews.
On the other hand the question the writer poses also speaks to something complex and trickier: the multi-faceted emotions of any particular human being. Somehow I doubt the scientists of Northwestern used murderers of any race for a study about empathy. But if there were a study using any sort of criminal subgroup, would they show a lack of empathy toward suffering strangers? Most killers kill people they know and against whom they harbor grudges. Even some killers, of any race, may have shown empathy for Katrina victims.
Finally, the statistics on crime in the United States are anything but complete. One-third of homicides go unsolved. While many of those take place in inner-cities, they cannot be pegged precisely until they are resolved.
Race and money play a role in whether people are apprehended or prosecuted for murder. The known anecdotes are outrageous. One Caucasian man in an affluent Colorado suburb killed his wife and two children and then, years later, killed another wife before being discovered. In the Amy Bishop case, at the University of Alabama, the professor was not even booked for in the shooting death of her brother or for taking the hostages she allegedly took following the shooting. In April, she killed three colleagues, all of whom happened to be people of color.
Years ago I would have assumed conditions in ghettos naturally produced inflated crime rates. What I never would have guessed is the suggested mountain of hidden crime, violent and white collar, among American Caucasians, who apparently have a higher murder rate than do their European counterparts. I believe when whites kill it is more likely attributed to accidents and involuntary manslaughter. And sometimes it’s dismissed after a middle- or upper-class white person tells a good yarn to the authorities.
So I believe the empathy study is not contradicted by black murder rates. All races are comprised of unique individuals who have their affections and conflicts. Whites and Asians, too, have their disagreements. The most memorable, I believe, went by the names of World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. That is regrettably the human condition, but violence is not exclusively the characteristic of blacks.
Janet Singleton
Correction: Amy Bishop killed three colleagues and seriously wounded three others on February 12, 2010, not in April. One survivor, Dr. Joseph G. Leahy, was rendered almost completely blind by the attack. Bishop awaits trial in Alabama on charges that could bring the death penalty.
Janet Singleton