Page 37 - Effective communication Skills by Dale King

people witness somebody in pain, wasn’t as active when they were watching

the videos of a different ethnic group in pain. There have been other studies
that had discovered that the brain areas involved with empathy tend to be less
active when they watched people pain who acted unfairly. They have also
noticed activation in brain areas that are involved in subjective pleasure, like
the ventral striatum, when people watch a rival sports team lose.

Yet, people don’t always feel less empathy for people who are not a part of
their group. In more recent studies, students were asked to give money or

electrical shocks to other students who attended the same or a different
school. They were also undergoing a brain scan during this as well.

The areas of the brain involved in rewarding people were more active when
they gave a reward to those from their school, but the parts of the brain
involved in hurting others were equally as active.

This corresponds with observations people have made in daily life. We
typically feel happier if a person in our group wins something, but we are
unlikely to hurt a person just because they aren’t a part of our group, race, or

culture. In general, in-group bias tends to be more about love instead of out-
group hate.

There are some situations, though, where it would be helpful to feel less
empathy for a certain group. For example, during war, it could be helpful to
feel less empathy for those you are supposed to kill, especially if they are
interested in harming you.

There was a brain imaging study performed to investigate this. People were

asked to watch videos of a violent game where a person was shooting an
innocent person or an enemy soldier. As they watch the videos, people would
have to pretend that they were actually killing real people. The lateral
orbitofrontal cortex, which is normally active when a person harms
somebody, was active when an innocent person was shot. The more guilt that
the person felt about shooting somebody, the more this area responded.

However, this area of the brain wasn’t activated when a person shot the
enemy soldier. The results helped scientists to figure out how people
regulated their emotions. It also showed them how the brain worked when
harming people was seen as justified.

This may well help provide more insights into how people can end up