Over the years, we have written and published a wealth of material on our site and our blog on a very special emotion that serves as a key facilitator in all effective interpersonal relationships – namely, empathy? What do you usually think of when you read the word in print or hear the concept mentioned in everyday speech?
When Dr Carol Kinsey Goman, author of the THE NONVERBAL ADVANTAGE-Secret and Science of Body Language at Work (and various training programs on this topic) hears someone mention “empathy”, she thinks of mirror neurons and body language? And monkeys. A strange combination, so what’s the connection?
Dr Goman writes about a research laboratory in Italy where neuroscientists were studying the brain cells of macaque monkeys. When the monkeys performed a single highly specific hand action, sophisticated monitoring equipment detected that neurons in the motor cortex of the animals’ brains become very active. For example, every time a monkey reached for a peanut, certain brain cells immediately “fired”.
Then one day, by chance, the reseachers discovered something particularly interesting. A monkey connected to the monitoring device happened to see a human grab a peanut. The same neurons fired in the same way! In terms of motor cell activity, the monkey’s brain could not tell the difference between actually doing something and seeing it done by someone else.
In other words, these brain cells reflected the actions that the monkey observed in others, which is why the researchers dubbed them “mirror neurons”.
What is fascinating is not only that later experiments confirmed that these same neurons exist in humans, but in addition to mirroring actions, the human brain cells also reflected sensations and feelings!
In one study , subjects watched a hand move forward to caress someone else and then saw another hand push it away rudely. The brains of the subjects registered the pain of social rejection as if it were happening to them. Why? Because empathizing with someone, whether in grief or joy, apparently activates the very same circuits in your own brain as your companion who experienced the original emotion! Mirror neurons are well named indeed.
In her training programs on nonverbal literacy, Goman describes “empathy ” as “the human ability to internalize the emotional state of others by simply observing their body language. The moment you become aware of a strong emotion felt by someone in your immediate environment – whether you can see it on the face or read it in the person’s gestures or bodily posture – you begin, however subconsciously, to place yourself in that person’s mental shoes, to get under their skin, so to speak.
Before you know it, you are experiencing the identical emotion, feeling your companion’s happiness, excitement, confusion or disappointment as if it were your own.
And that, after all, is what empathy – genuine empathy, in the heart, not on the sleeve – is all about.
[...] How Body Language Can trigger Empathy [...]