The Cognitive Neuroscience of Empathy, DevOpsDays Austin 2016

Dave Mangot
DevOpsDays Austin 2016
@davemangot
The Cognitive Neuroscience of
Empathy: You’re a DevOps Natural
rev 3 x 100
empathy is a popular topic in the ﬁeld, Jeff and others
WE already know we can be empathic now we have proof, that’s what I’ll aim to show
for every time you think you can’t YOU CAN (you CAN DO THIS)! Paul Reed uses this

Cognitive Science
Thank you! Cog Sci, NIH, research asst, C programmer, one of ﬁrst fMRI labs (HP-UX and other) subject, those brain pictures are me!

● This is science (Zaki article), changes, and is messy (sometimes conflicting theories, multiple definitions in emerging field)

Neural models over time, clock, Not just one big mess, brain areas have functions, Marc Mentis story

Discovery of Mirror Neurons Story - Vittorio Gallese in the lab, macaque monkey, wired up description

Mirror Intention!Grasping, tearing, etc.
Visual and auditory

Grasping likely learned but imitation happens even in babies, sticking tongue out, every parent knows this
We naturally build social system between two entities, this feedback loops feeds into the idea of empathy, we create one shared mind! - Default Network
!

● just activated all your mirror neurons! has implications for free will, Why is this important?
● “what is his emotion, how do you know, what is he thinking about, how do you know,
● did experiments where mimic’d facial expressions like surprise, disgust (mirror system -> anterior insula - > limbic system)
● Our brains want to naturally connect, be social
● our "default network" spends its time trying to understand other humans, (mPFC) why would evolution pick that?!
● Need to ensure survival of the group.

● random dots moving ascribed intention and anthropomorphization (get this animation?!) (big dot little dot?), we can’t help but want to connect

“Empathy represents the perfect storm of
sympathetic sharing of another’s feelings,
understanding what is likely being
experienced and what kind of help or comfort
is needed, and having the prosocial
motivation to act on behalf of others without
necessarily weighing the costs and benefits to
oneself”
- Matthew Lieberman
give time to read, will discuss in more depth

● More advanced models beyond simple mirroring (Harvard, UCLA, Stanford advancing this), different components/proportions in same model
● experience (mirror, emot contagion, shared feeling)= identify, mental/mindfullness = understand other mind, /empathic/prosocial = forming a goal to alleviate that person’s
suffering

● “When we empathize with someone, we must ﬁrst detect a mind that can feel pain, “ (Leor Hackel)
● False belief paradigm (Sally-Anne test) age 4 & autism (theory of mind) - looks like Hindsight bias to me!
● have the ability to attribute mindfulness to another’s actions…lead in

FUNDAMENTAL
ATTRIBUTION
ERROR
by default use default network, our default tendency is to adopt intentional stance
engage mPFC because attribute mindfulness to the error (fundamental disposition) as opposed to situational

● some parts of the default network,missing TPJ and other in default network, that’s great but I work on a team
● What do we know about empathizing at a group/team level?
● we mentalize about groups in the same ways we mentalize about individuals (Harvard)
● Out of group members evoke less activation in the mPFC, we empathize less with out-group! (what does this mean for silos!)
● lower threshold to mind perception for in-group unless outgroup considered a threat
● this is why silos are bad, much better to go with Spotify x-func model

● Common Ingroup Identity model (Gaertner & Dovidio), how teams can best work together
● Allport’s (1950s), best results when - contact hypothesis speciﬁes that contact with outgroup members is beneﬁcial to attitudes about the outgroup when individuals have equal
status, common goals, are in a cooperative or interdependent setting, and have support from authorities. - This is your blueprint for working across teams

It is useless to attempt to reason a man
out of a thing he was never reasoned into
- Jonathan Swift
● What can we do about it? What about on an individual level?
● Need to show each other how we are the same, not make rational argument
● Hearts NOT minds

walter story - could have appealed to reason (devops, etc), instead went with empathy
the feelings we create in others are real…lead in

● *pain - shrug* Brain Mapper Tanya Singer found that the women activated the pain distress network in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the anterior insula regions of the brain (see
Figure 3.2) regardless of who was receiving painful stimulation. (but only sensory areas when being shocked) These women could say to their boyfriends with a straight face, “I feel your pain.”)
● CYBERBALL - Tylenol worked (can fix psych/neuro pain with phys pain drugs)!
● subjects believed that they and two other individuals were simultaneously having their brains scanned while they played the videogame over the Internet, when rejected, saw increased activity in dACC,
just like real pain,
● Lieberman: “positive social regard is a renewable resource. Rather than having less of something after using it, when we let others know we value them, both parties have more.”
● Need to praise more, activate those opiod and dopaminergic receptors, it’s cheap!

● what about ChatOps?
● Perception-Action model of empathy “empathy increases with both familiarity (subject’s previous experience with object) and similarity (perceived overlap between subject and object).”
● Think those ONSITEs might be useful for your remote team members?

•Go multi modal!
•Perceivers want to be evaluated positively by others, and the presence of another surveilling mind can therefore increase socially desirable behavior.
•Priming the presence of a mindful God therefore prompts less cheating [52], and more generous donations in an economic exchange
•managers, let your groups know you expect them to work together and succeed and you will be there to help

we don’t necessarily want to drive experience sharing (everyone is miserable) we want to drive prosocial concern (healthcare workers) (and mindfulness), create more in-group! but we know..
• Emotional contagion of pain in humans occurs in friends, but not strangers
• Stress reduction in humans can elicit emotional contagion of pain in strangers
• Decisions directly after stress revealed increased generosity towards socially close, but not distant others.
This suggests that stress is a key to emotional contagion, the fundamental building block of empathy
Take care of self ﬁrst, burnout inhibits empathy and therefore DevOps, more ingroup, more performance, Zen lovingkindness

Thank you!
Sylvia Morelli, PhD
John VanMeter, PhD
Barzel Segal
Alan Caudill
Vadim Friedberg
Patrick Debois

Selected Bibliography
● Brain Rules by John Medina
● The Empathic Brain: How the Discovery of Mirror Neurons Changes our Understanding of
Human Nature by Christian Keysers
● Mirroring People: The Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others by Marco Iacoboni
● Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect by Matthew Lieberman
● http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/how-to-avoid-empathy-burnout by Jamil Zaki
● Moran, J., Jolly, E., Mitchell, J., 2014. Spontaneous Mentalizing Predicts the Fundamental
Attribution Error. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 26:3, 569-576.
● Spunt R., Lieberman, D, 2012. An integrative model of the neural systems supporting the
comprehension of observed emotional behavior. NeuroImage 59, 3050-3059.
● Rameson, L., Morelli, S., Lieberman, M., 2011. The Neural Correlates of Empathy: Experience,
Automaticity, and Prosocial Behavior. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 24:1, 235-245.
● Zaki, J., Ochsner, K., 2012. The neuroscience of empathy: progress, pitfalls and promise. Nature
Neuroscience 15:5. 675-680.
● http://fsl.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/fslwiki/FSL
● http://www.mccauslandcenter.sc.edu/mricro/mricron/

Artwork Credits
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● Morelli, S., Rameson, L., Lieberman, M., 2012. The neural components of empathy: Predicting daily prosocial behavior. SCAN, 1 of 9.
● Waytz, A., Young, L., 2012. The Group-Member Mind Trade-Off:Attributing Mind to Groups Versus Group Members. Psychological Science 23
(1), 77-85.
● Cikara, M., Bruneau, E., Saxe, R., in press. Us and Them: Intergroup Failures of Empathy.
● Cikara, M., Eberhardt, J., Fiske, S., 2011. From Agents to Objects: Sexist Attitudes and Neural Responses to Sexualized Targets. Journal of
Cognitive Neuroscience 23:3, 540–551.
● Contreras, J. M., Schirmer, J., Banaji M., Mitchell J., 2013. Common Brain Regions with Distinct Patterns of Neural Responses during
Mentalizing about Groups and Individuals. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 25:9, 1406-1417.
● Hackel, L., Looser, C., Van Bavel, J. J., 2014. Group membership alters the threshold for mind perception: The role of social identity, collective
identification, and intergroup threat. Journal of Experimental Psychology 52, 15-23.
● Gutsell, J., Inzlicht, M., 2012. Intergroup differences in the sharing of emotive states: neural evidence of an empathy gap. SCAN 7, 596-603.
● Waytz, A., Gray, K., Epley, N., Wegner, D., 2010. Causes and consequences of mind perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14, 383-388.
● Falk, E., Morelli, S., Welborn, B., Dambacher, K., Lieberman, M., 2013. Creating Buzz: The Neural Correlates of Effective Message
Propagation. Psychological Science XX(X), 1-9.
● Morelli, S., Lieberman, M., Zaki, J., in press. The emerging study of positive empathy. Social and Personality Psychology Compass.
● Morelli, S., Torre, J., Eisenberger, N., 2014. The neural bases of feeling understood and not understood. SCAN, 1-7.
● Rameson, L., Lieberman, M., 2009. Empathy: A Social Cognitive Neuroscence Approach. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 3/1,
94-110.
● Klimecki O., Leiberg S., Lamm C., Singer, T., 2012. Functional Neural Plasticity and Associated Changes in Positive Affect After Compassion
Training. Cerebral Cortex 23 (7), 1552-1561.
● Vollhardt, J.R., Staub, E., 2011. Inclusive Altruism Born of Suffering: The Relationship Between Adversity and Prosocial Attitudes and
Behavior Toward Disadvantaged Outgroups. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 81:3, 307-315.
● Aberson, C., Haag, S., 2007. Contact, Perspective Taking, and Anxiety as Predictors of Stereotype Endorsement, Explicit Attitudes, and
Implicit Attitudes. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 10(2), 179-201.
● Capozza, D., Vezzali, L., Trifiletti,E., Falvo, R., & Favara, I., 2010. Improving intergroup relationships within and outside the contact situation:
The role of common ingroup identity and emotions of empathy and anxiety. Cises 17:1, 17-36.
● Martin et al., 2015, Reducing Social Stress Elicits Emotional Contagion of Pain in Mouse and Human Strangers, Current Biology 25, 326–
332.
● Margittaia, Z., Strombacha, T., van Wingerdena, M., Joëlsb, M. , Schwabec, L., Kalenscher, T. A friend in need: Time-dependent effects of
stress on social discounting in men. Hormones and Behavior Volume 73, July 2015, 75–82.
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