Empathy Deficits
The importance of empathy in social relationships and communication becomes apparent when considering disorders such as autism. People on the autism spectrum have been found to have deficits in their mirror neuron system (Rizzolatti, Fabbri-Destro, & Cattaneo, 2009), and exhibit impairment in contagious yawning (Helt, Eigsti, Snyder, & Fein, 2010; Senju et al., 2007), are generally believed to have difficulties in empathy (Shamay-Tsoory, 2011), and are characterized by a marked impairment in social interaction and communication (Blair, 2005).
Yawn contagion (yawning in response to seeing another yawn) is an example of emotional contagion (Norscia & Palagi, 2011). The same areas of the brain that activate when yawning are also activated when observing another yawn (Schürmann et al., 2005). Highly empathic people have been found to be more inclined to mimicry (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999) such as yawn contagion. This suggests that impairment of yawn contagion in those with autism may relate to impairment in emotional empathy (Senju, et al., 2007).
Yet, if contagious yawning is believed to be a manifestation emotional contagion (Norscia & Palagi, 2011), and emotional contagion is believed to be the foundation of emotional empathy (Nummenmaa, Hirvonen, Parkkola, & Hietanen, 2008), and contagious yawning is impaired in autistic people (Helt, et al., 2010; Senju, et al., 2007), shouldn't autistic people be impaired in emotional contagion? But they are not; they are only impaired in cognitive empathy (Dziobek et al., 2008) which is dependent on higher cognitive abilities than the supposed automatic, non-conscious, mimicry mechanism of emotional empathy. To date, this observation does not appear to have been subjected to empirical research.
Interestingly, individuals with psychopathy (the other main disorder associated with empathy deficit) exhibit the opposite cognitive pattern. That is, while people with autism can innately feel what others’ feel but have difficulty regulating these emotions, psychopaths can regulate their emotions but do not instinctively share others’ feelings (Blair, 2005). Studies on autism and psychopathy have provided further evidence that two separate neural systems underlie cognitive and emotional empathy, but also highlight the essential interplay between the systems.
Specifically, without the interpersonal engagement of emotional empathy, the perspective-taking of cognitive empathy could just as easily lead to cruelty as to helping (psychopathy) and without the cognitive ability to regulate emotional responding, impairment in social interaction and communication is probable (autism; Blair, 2005; de Waal, 2008; Decety, 2011a).
Furthermore, autism (and other psychological disorders that are characterised by empathy deficit) is significantly more prevalent in males than in females (Chakrabarti & Baron-Cohen, 2006). In fact, some researchers suggest that autism is an extreme version of the male brain (Baron-Cohen, 2002; Schulte-Rüther, et al., 2008), characterised by the prioritisation of systemising abilities (the analysis of rules and prediction of behaviour) over empathising abilities (the inference of others’ mental and emotional states with appropriate emotional and behavioural responding) (Baron-Cohen, 2002).
The female brain is said to be characterised by the opposite cognitive pattern
(Baron-Cohen, 2002). Thus, the suggestion here is that there is a critical cognitive gender difference in empathy, with females possessing higher empathy levels than males (Schulte-Rüther, et al., 2008).
