The experience of empathy is both intuitive and abstract. There are different definitions of empathy, but it is always described as the ability to understand another person’s situation, mood, or point of view, without experiencing it yourself. Scientists do not fully understand Why We sympathize, but the benefits are obvious. Empathy is what enables people to build emotional bridges, compassion and help.
And while empathy feels like an unbearable reaction – you see someone in pain, so you feel for them and for their pain – it’s not necessary. Research suggests that some people will avoid the feeling of empathy, as it requires a lot of mental effort; Carrying someone’s emotional load seems to be cognitively expensive. And the feeling of empathy is especially hard, research published Thursday in the journal Neuroimaging: Clinical Claims, if you drink heavily.
Scientists at the University of Sussex have shown that the brains of non-drinkers are more likely to empathize with the brains of non-drinkers. In this study, island drinking was defined as drinking more than 60 grams of pure alcohol during one sitting at least once in the last 30 days. That’s about three-quarters of a bottle of wine or 2.5 pints of laser.
Given the state of the world, it seems particularly privileged, while empathy is more important than the argument for survival. We drink more during Covid-19 – a lot more.
At the beginning of the epidemic, the sale of alcohol was classified as an essential business, and in March, the sale of alcohol increased compared to 2019. Looking at our drinking habits, researchers say it is too early to know the long-term effects of epidemic drinking, but a recent survey of 320 adult Canadian drinkers suggests that people use alcohol to combat Covid-19. Alcohol consumption, an increase in solitary drinks, and a strong motive for drinking are all associated with everyone experiencing “alcohol problems” independently over a 30-day period.
Theodora Duca is a professor at the University of Sussex and lead author of a study on binary drinking and empathy. She explained to me that her team’s data show that binary drinkers need to work harder to empathize with others in pain, as evidenced by increased brain activity compared to non-bizarre drinkers.
“In everyday life this means that people who drink can struggle to understand the pain of others as easily as non-binary drinkers,” explains Duka. “It’s not that grape drinkers feel less empathy – it’s just that they have to put in more brain resources to be able to do that.
“However, in some circumstances, when resources are limited, binary drinkers may struggle to provide a sympathetic response to others.”
“… People who drink can struggle Understand the pain Non-binary drinkers do just as easily as others. “
In the study, some participants from France and some from the United Kingdom found their brain activity in FMRI scanners when they undertook a “pain perception task”. Everyone was healthy during the observation, but half of the participants were classified as binge-breakers.
In the work, participants were shown a picture of a limb injury. They were then asked to imagine that the organ belonged to either him or that other person. Then, they were asked to tell how much pain there was with the image. The goal of the study, Duka says, is to “expand recent evidence that bisexual drinkers show less empathy in themselves or in a stranger using an objective method of understanding perception,” and to measure that response with brain imaging.
“By identifying how the brain responds normally to pain stimuli, we can better understand some of the mechanisms that lead to binary drinking behavior.”
The experiment found that island drink participants struggled more to adopt another person’s point of view. Evidence of that struggle is in their minds. In the “pain-other condition”, in the visual field of the brain to recognize body parts, activation has been shown at a higher level in the brains of only binge drinkers. This region is called the Fusiform Body Area (FBA).
Duca describes the FBA’s discovery as “interesting”, and hopes that people will consider his research “with the assumption that empathy is important to their social research.” It helps us understand and respond to the needs of others – and it is important to protect young adults from drinking alcohol. Previous studies have found that people between the ages of 13 and 20 are less sympathetic to increased alcohol consumption.
How can we apply this discovery to our current state of epidemic-induced drinking? The shop has this advice:
“All I can say is don’t drink heavily, have empathy, and always try to understand and respond to the needs of others.”
