Empathy & Neuropolitics

This is your brain on neoliberal culture. Any questions?

June 26, 2010

By Gary Olson

Abstract

Mirror neurons, the brain cells believed to be the basis for empathy, have
recently been identified in the human brain. And yet we’re left to explain the
disjuncture between this deep-seated, pre-reflective, moral intuition and the
paucity of actual empathic behavior, especially in certain cultures. I suggest
that answers may be found in the bidirectional connection between culture and
brain development.

The political theorist William Connolly has defined neuropolitics as “. . .

the politics through which cultural life mixes into the composition of the
body/brain process. And vice versa.” In this context, I hypothesize that the
neo-liberal ideology justifying free market capitalism is one of the most potent
empathy “bracketing off” elements of that culture and hybrid
cultural/neurobiological imprinting can override the neurobiological traits that
should bring people together. The dominant culture’s social engineering
undermines and attenuates both the acceptance and institutionalization of
empathy on a grand scale, while channeling its expression toward system
maintenance behaviors.

There are outstanding exceptions, but too many cultural psychologists

and other subspecialists have followed too many anthropologists in failing to
unpack the meaning of culture itself. Following Gramsci, I argue that power and
class realities have not received sufficient attention in explaining what I’ve
described as a societal-wide cultural deficit disorder. This pathological condition
has structural roots in the socio-economic system which influence the brain’s
mirror neuron network. Cross-cultural studies offer a promising avenue for
aiding our understanding of this process.

Introduction
 “Mirror neurons,” the brain cells many neuroscientists believe are the
basis for empathy, were discovered in macaque monkeys in 1996 (Gallese,
1996; Iacoboni, 2008, 2009; Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, 2008). Located in area F5
of the premotor cortex, these neurons fired not only when the monkey
performed an action but also when it was watching the same action. The
monkey’s neurons were “mirroring” the activity she was observing.

Later, the existence of mirror neurons in the human brain was strongly
inferred by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) but proof remained
elusive. Now, for the first time, we have direct recorded evidence for their
presence. Roy Mukamel and colleagues (Mukamel et al., 2010) recorded their
data from the medial frontal and temporal cortices in 21 patients (with their
consent) awaiting surgery for intractable epileptic seizures at UCLA’s Medical
Center. The researchers “piggybacked” onto intracranial depth electrodes
implanted into the patient’s brains as part of a search for a potential surgical
treatment. The research team recorded activity in 1,177 neurons in the 21
patients and concluded that “these findings suggest the existence of multiple
systems in the brain endowed with neural mirroring mechanisms for flexible
integration and differentiation of the perceptual and motor aspects of actions
performed by self and others.”

The mirror neurons in the same affective brain circuits are automatically
mobilized upon feeling one’s own pain and the pain of others and this neural
circuitry is the basis of empathic behavior in which actions in response to the
distress of others is virtually instantaneous. Valayanur Ramachandran, director
of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California at San Diego
(UCSD) observes that “We used to say, metaphorically, that ‘I can feel
another’s pain,’ but now we know that my mirror neurons can literally feel your
pain” (Slack, 2007). Ramachandran, who terms them “empathy neurons” or
“Dalai Lama neurons,” writes that “In essence the neuron is part of a network
that allows you to see the world from the other person’s point of view, hence
the name ‘mirror neuron’” (Ramachandran, 2006). Where comparable
experience is lacking, “cognitive empathy” allows one to “actively project
oneself into the shoes of another person” by trying to imagine the other
person’s situation (Preston, 2002; Preston et al., 2007; Singer & Lamm, 2009).
This “ability to perceive, appreciate, and respond to the affective states of
another” emerges as early as two years of age as the child becomes aware of
another’s emotional experience (Decety and Michalska, 2009; Decety, 2008;
Decety et. al., 2008; Tomasello, 2009)).

The roots of prosocial behavior, including moral sentiments like empathy,

precede the evolution of culture and serve a critical evolutionary function.
Mirroring was selected by evolution because of its adaptive advantage in
making some intersubjectivity possible, the effortless and automatic access to
other minds.

We now have a wealth of evidence suggesting that empathy, the

foundation for morality, was not handed down from on high via social codes
from religious authorities and philosophers but constructed from the “bottom-
from religious authorities and philosophers but constructed from the “bottom-
up” (Green in Vedantum, 2007; de Waal, 2008, 2009; Tomasello, 2009; Tangney,
et al., 2007; and Iacoboni, 2009). And if morality is based in biology, in the raw
material for the evolution of its expression, the case can be made for a
fortuitous marriage of hard science and secular morality. I should quickly
acknowledge that mirror neuron research is not without its skeptics (Dinstein et
al., 2008; Lippard, 2009; Virona, 2009, and Hickok, 2009) and the technical
details supporting my assertions largely lie outside this paper. But progress is
proceeding at an exponential pace, new discoveries are persuasive, and our
understanding of empathy has increased dramatically in barely a decade
(Gallese, Eagle and Migone, 2007; Gallese, 2008; Iacoboni, 2008, 2009; Decety
and Lamm, 2009). What follows is some theoretical speculation that places
empathy within the entwined context of neural activity, culture and political
economy.

Your Brain on Culture

I’ve been pondering the nature of empathy for over two decades, initially
as a pedagogical challenge and later, given advances in neuroscience as a
broader field of inquiry (Olson, 1987, 2008). And for me, one of the most
vexing questions that remains to be explained, and the burden of this paper is
to ask why, if “. . . we are not alone, but are biologically wired and evolutionarily
designed to be deeply interconnected with one another” (Iacoboni, 2008, p.
266), so little progress has been made in extending this empathic orientation
toward distant lives, to those outside certain in-group moral circles? Given a
world rife with overt and structural violence, one is forced to explain why our
deep-seated moral intuition doesn’t produce a more ameliorating effect, a
more peaceful world?

Echoing Dominguez (2006), I’m proposing that reality is a social

construction and therefore “We should find that the brain would have some sort
of bias acquired through exposure to culture.” Neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni
(2007, 2008, 2009), arguably the world’s preeminent authority on mirror
neurons, suggests this disjuncture can be explained in part by massive belief
systems, including political and religious ones. I hypothesize below that the
neo-liberal ideology justifying global free market capitalism is one of the most
powerful of these empathy-shaping belief systems, especially as manifested in
cultures like the United States. Over time, the culture filters and influences how
empathy evolves and is expressed (de Waal, 2007, p. 50). These belief
systems can override the automatic, neurobiological traits that should bring
people together, leaving selective moral amnesia in their wake.

Some twenty-five years ago, Lewontin, Rose and Kamin (1984)

foregrounded a bi-directional link between culture and biology when they wrote,
“humanity cannot be cut adrift from its own biology, but neither is it enchained
by it.” Prophetically, they foretold that “our task . . . is to point the way toward
an integrated understanding of the relationship between the biological and the
social” (cited by Wexler, 2006, p. 13; Tooby and Cosmides, 1992). It follows that
our approach must eschew privileging either brain or culture. In the first
instance, Slaby (2010) warns of the dangers inherent in neuronal reductionism,
instance, Slaby (2010) warns of the dangers inherent in neuronal reductionism,
a sort of “brainhood ideology” (Vidal, 2009) that essentializes the cerebral
subject, while an exclusive focus on the social steers us into the cul-de-sac of
hyper-cultural reductionism. Cromby (2007) wisely points toward “hybridity,” an
appreciation of the intertwining of “mind-body-world” which mandates an
interdisciplinary inquiry.

Pioneers in the new fields of neuroanthropology (Downey and Lende,

2009; Dominguez et al., 2009) and cultural neuroscience (Chiao, 2009; Chiao et
al., 2009; Han & Northoff, 2008) demonstrate in their recent work how a careful
and critical synthesis of findings and approaches can further our understanding
of this complex subject.

Bearing this in mind, it’s no longer debatable that culture has a

measurable influence on the brain. Work by Chiao and colleagues (2008) at
Northwestern University and in Japan points toward specific cultural priming
(beliefs, values and practices) that modulates neural activity within the anterior
rostral portion of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulated
cortex (PCC). Initial findings, including some on empathy, are intriguing and at
the apex of neuroscience research. Recent studies using fMRI and magneto-
ecephalography (MEG) have established that cultural constructs shape the
microstructure of the brain and this culturing of the neural signature begins in
early childhood and continues into adolescence and early adulthood
(Choudhury, 2009; Choudhury and Kirmayer, 2009; Turner and Whitehead,
2008).

This is complemented by a recent review of culture-in-the-brain studies

(Dominguez et al., 2009) from the aforementioned fledgling discipline of
neuroanthropology which substantiates that cultural experience influences
virtually all critical brain areas; shapes and determines neural patterns; affects
brain structure; and modulates cognitive function. At least until early adulthood
(Wexler, 2006) our brains are shaping themselves in response to significant and
repetitive sensory stimulation from the surrounding environment. Thereafter
the brain and mind seek to create congruence between external realities and
these newly existing internal structures and there is more resistance to
change. I’m mindful not to caricature Hebb’s rule (1949) that “The neurons
that fire together wire together” but his prescient emphasis on the roles of
repetition and synoptic plasticity draw our attention to the critical role of
culture’s neurobiological imprinting.

The Cultural Regulation of Emotion

We can now begin to consider the mechanisms at the structural level of

deep enculturation or societal engagement that mediate changes in our plastic
brain. Transcultural neuro-imaging offers a promising avenue for aiding our
understanding of how specific cultural spaces are navigated (Malafouris, 2010)
and cultural neuroscience reveals substantial variation across cultures in terms
of how individuals perceive social situations, understand themselves (as selves)
and others. The differences attributable to cultural mediation are significant
(Chiao, et al., 2010; 2009; Chiao, et al., 2008), Choudhury and Kirmayer, 2009;
(Chiao, et al., 2010; 2009; Chiao, et al., 2008), Choudhury and Kirmayer, 2009;
Molnar-Szakacs, et al., 2007a, 2007b and Lieberman, 2007). For example,
imaging studies (Hedden, et al., 2008; Han and Northoff, 2008) show that East
Asian and Westerners engage in different visual processing activities and their
cultural experience “sculps the perceptual brain.” It isn’t that people from
different cultures perceive the world differently, “. . . but they think differently
about what they see” (Gabrielli, 2008). These differences also include
variations in terms of encouraging and sanctioning emotion—expressive
behavior on the one hand and suppressing and otherwise inhibiting that
response on the other. Studies (Gazzaniga, 2005) suggest that when a person
is unwilling to act on a moral belief, the emotional part of her or his brain has
not been activated. As Butler (2007) and colleagues note, these habitual
practices reflect dominant cultural values.

This is particularly germane for this discussion because human beings

live in specific cultural environments, settings neither of their own choosing nor,
in C. Geertz’s words, “independent of time, place, and circumstances.” The
fact that empathy is a universal hard-wired response “in no way negates the
cultural constitution of emotion” (Mesquita & Leu, 2007). Put another way, the
encultured brain moderates an individual’s regulation of emotion, including the
very knowledge structures that are drawn upon in automatically reacting to
various emotion-evoking situations (Kitayama et al., 2004; Mauss et al., 2008;
Sherman et al., 2009). A recent collection of articles on emotion regulation
adopts this definition:

The process by which individuals influence which emotions they

have, when they have them, and how they experience them and
express these emotions (Gross, 1998, p. 275).

The editors are quick to acknowledge that emotion regulation is a bio-cultural

process. How emotions are expressed depends on socio-cultural context, on
the requirements and demands within a specific environment. Further, they
argue that emotions are “already regulated prior to their actual elicitation . . .”
under conditions of “automatic emotion regulation” (p. 4).

Hochschild’s (1979, 1983, 2003a, 2003b) path-breaking social theory of

emotion asks us to consider the estrangement, specifically the emotional costs
to the self, inherent in the management of emotions like empathy. For
example, one cultural response under free-market capitalism’s ideology is to
privatize “our idea of care” (2003b, p. 216). Elites shape the cultural image of
care/empathy toward minimizing the emotional needs of others and this closely
corresponds to the idea of American rugged individualism. Emotions are
“impaired when the private management of feeling is socially engineered and
transformed into emotional labor for a wage (2003, p. x). Of course, as
Hochschild adds, even then “It takes a vigorous emotional effort to repress the
wish to care. . . .” (2003b, p. 221).

The dominant culture’s social engineering allows for and even

encourages individual expressions of empathy, including volunteerism. And it’s
precisely because one-on-one volunteerism—whether in shelters, soup kitchens
precisely because one-on-one volunteerism—whether in shelters, soup kitchens
or women’s centers—only treats the symptoms and not the sources, that it’s a
culturally sanctioned and channeled form of highly personal empathic behavior.
Charity would be another example. This bracketing off is entirely in keeping with
the dominant ideology, poses no threats, and functions to attenuate the
acceptance and institutionalization of social empathy on a grand scale.

To reiterate, ample evidence from numerous studies (Henrich and

Henrich, 2007, pp. 27-31) demonstrates that cultural learning via imitation from
modeled behavior is the most powerful means through which both children and
adults learn to practice altruistic behavior. But this vital cultural transmission is
generally limited to modeling individual acts of generosity.

Gramsci’s Politics and the Encultured Brain

Prefiguring the argument to follow, Poder (2008) perhaps comes as close

as anyone in highlighting the role of political power in the dynamics of
emotional expression and regulation. His specific focus is more limited and
explores anger over reorganization within a corporate culture, but in drawing
upon Campbell’s earlier work (1997) Poder states what should be obvious but is
too often ignored: “Individuals are not sovereign beings determining their own
feelings and how they can express themselves” (p. 295). A great deal depends
on others’ interpretation—invalidation or positive recognition—of one’s
emotional expression. Poder reminds us that these “feeling rules” are being
shaped by ideology and class.

Here I’m comfortable introducing what political theorist William Connolly

(2002) describes as “. . . politics through which cultural life mixes into the
composition of body/brain process. And vice versa.” (To my knowledge
Connolly was the first political scientist to employ the term neuropolitics
although he doesn’t explore the mirror neuron/empathy link in his erudite
inquiry.) Choudhury and Kirmayer (2009, pp. 264-5) astutely and refreshingly
extend this notion by placing culture in the context of globalization. They
propose a promising research agenda with implications extending far beyond
their immediate concerns with psychopathology and strengthening scientific
approaches to psychiatry: “How do culturally mediated developmental
experiences influence subsequent emotion regulation and expression?” This in
turn begs two additional and closely related questions, ones that neuroscience
and its proliferating spawn of neuro-subfields have failed to explore, namely:
“How did the cultural information get into the brain in the first place? (Losin et
al., 2009, p. 175), and what are the implications for our understanding of
empathy?” An impressive body of evidence now supports the proposition that
the human mirror system is at the epicenter of this cultural learning and there
is every reason to assume that robust, cross-cultural (well-funded) studies
collecting neuro-imaging data will enhance an empirically informed theory
about its operation.

By my reading, too many cultural psychologists have followed too many

neuro-anthropologists (and vice versa) in failing to unpack the meaning of
culture itself. To the extent that conventional anthropology has explained
culture itself. To the extent that conventional anthropology has explained
culture as consisting primarily of a self-sustaining, neutral transmission of
beliefs, values, mores and laws passed down through generations, it fails to
illuminate the conscious and active invention of culture by institutions serving
particular interests. Here the work of Antonio Gramsci, an early twentieth-
century Italian Marxist, is the essential primer and his classic analysis of cultural
hegemony can be enormously helpful in moving the investigation forward. Kate
Crehan (2002), an anthropologist herself, takes pains to clarify that for Gramsci
culture includes, but is not limited to, how class realities are experienced by
members of a specific community, and how members of that cultural milieu
come to understand their world, “their lived experience.”1

Gramsci is not a dogmatic, economic reductionist and consistently

stresses the organic nature of culture. However, he was insistent that “. . .
ultimately the most important question is that of power: Who has the power
and who does not? Who is the oppressor and who is oppressed? And what are
the specificities of the relation of oppression?” (p. 6). For Gramsci, the
dominant class culture embodies its worldview even as that perspective
assumes the everyday status of common sense. Given this reality, political
scientist Michael Parenti (1999, p. 13) cautions us that “. . . whenever anyone
offers culturistic explanations for social phenomena, we should be skeptical.”
Why? Because cultural explanations are closer to tautologies than
explanations. Culture itself is what needs to be explained (Parenti, 2006).
However, it should be understood that these cultural narratives, while powerful,
are not hermetically sealed from challenges. Efforts to produce counter-
narratives constitute contested cultural terrain, and this was the ongoing
struggle to which Gramsci devoted so much of his life’s work.

Finally, in that context, there would seem to be a cautionary note here for
scientists as intellectuals. Crehan argues “Gramsci’s concern is always with the
process by which power is produced and reproduced or transformed and how
intellectuals fit within this rather than with individual intellectuals themselves”
(p. 143). A cultural neuroscience or neuro-anthropology that fails to account
for class will have, at best, no explanatory value and, at worst, further obfuscate
reality under the guise of value-free scientific inquiry.

Through the Mind’s Mirror, Darkly

Again, the quandary is why there is such a paucity of real-world empathic

behavior, especially in the United States? If only some 4 percent of the U.S.
population can be classified as sociopaths—individuals utterly incapable of
empathy—what accounts for a mass culture characterized by an empathy
disorder of virtually pathological proportions? (Studies reveal substantially less
incidence of sociopathy in some East Asian countries with percentages ranging
from 0.03 percent to 0.14 percent, conditions warranting a follow-up study of its
own.)

I’m proposing that future research pursue Goldschmidt’s (1999)

observation that “Culturally derived motives may replace, supplement or
override genetically programmed behavior.” The mirror mechanism, a hard-
override genetically programmed behavior.” The mirror mechanism, a hard-
wired biological mechanism, minus positive cultural nurturing, is unlikely to
flourish (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2006). For example, studies on attachment
theory and emotion regulation (Shaver, et al., 2008) suggests links between
attachment security and pro-social behavior, including self-transcendent values
and empathy.

An enhanced sense of security correlates with being sensitive to other’s

needs and a willingness to engage in pro-social responsive behavior.
Conversely we know that empathy is less likely to manifest itself under
conditions of attachment insecurity because the individual is more likely to be
self-absorbed, personally distressed, and empathically unavailable. These
avoidant individuals fear being “sucked in” by empathy and compassion, not
only because of the “hassle” but because people in need bring out their own
feelings of personal distress (Shaver, et al., pp. 135-136). A study on the
negative consequences of neo-liberal economic policy in Latin America
concluded that an empathic orientation may be crowded out when people are
preoccupied with personal needs, insecure, and fearful about tomorrow (Vilas,
1997). To me it seems entirely plausible that culturally-driven psychological
insecurity could weigh as heavily as material deprivation. Ervin Staub, a
pioneering investigator in the field, makes the case that even if empathy is
hardwired, people will not act on “. . . unless they have certain kinds of life
experiences that shape their orientation toward other human beings and
toward themselves” (Staub, 2002, p. 222).

The role of socio-cultural variables in influencing psychopathology

(Marsella and Yamada, 2007) is now accepted, and I’m proposing here that it
would be instructive to examine whether certain pathogenic cultural factors
explain the etiology of what I’ve tentatively labeled a societal empathy deficit
disorder (SEDD). In their well-documented discussion of psychopathy as a
disorder characterized by callousness and lack of empathy, Blair and Blair
(2009) discuss the existence of a population that has been subject to
insufficient moral socialization. Such individuals reveal an absence of empathic
response to the distress of others, an impaired reaction to “moral
transgressions.” What is striking here, at least to me, is the ascription of these
behaviors to a subset of outliers and not to the larger society, the implicit
message being that the latter’s everyday behavior is well within the “normal”
range.

That is, highly competitive societies optimize the behavior of genetically-

based, primary sociopaths. In her book, The Sociopath Next Door, psychologist
Martha Stout argues that American culture’s celebration of extreme
individualism and “me-first” thinking reinforces anti-social behavior in the
United States, including an increasing incidence of primary sociopathy. If, as
suspected, cold and calculating individuals devoid of empathy are represented
in higher numbers at the upper levels of business, media, and politics, we can
assume these values will become the cultural norm. Therefore, under a
pathological capitalist culture, psychopathy is a successful adaptive behavior
for secondary sociopaths intent on getting ahead in society (Mealey, 1995).
 Setting aside the genetic, permanent condition for the moment, I’m
drawing attention to effective or secondary sociopaths whose empathy deficit is
more a product of environmental circumstances (Mealey, 1995). The
terminology remains stubbornly imprecise but we might extrapolate from what
Damasio (1990, 1994, 2007) labeled an acquired sociopathic personality when
referencing individuals. Here I’ve described it as an empathy-challenged
personality condition having structural roots in the socio-economic system.
This incongruity between our substrate of empathy and the external
environment significantly contributes to the creation of empathy-suppressed
individuals because the culture virtually requires the methodical bracketing off
of empathy. It’s less a foreclosure and more a question of to whom is empathy
directed. As a result, we habitually violate our biological moral compass
(Tollberg, 2007; Johnson, 2005) and secondary sociopathy not only becomes
normal behavior but a necessary, rewarded adaptive behavior under the
aforementioned “feeling rules” (Lindsay, 2008; Miller, 1999, p. 45). The primate
scientist Frans de Waal succinctly captures the system-maintenance function of
contrived callousness when he asserts, “You need to indoctrinate empathy out
of people in order to arrive at extreme capitalist positions (de Waal, 2007).
Miller (1999) goes a step further by adding, “It may not be strictly necessary to
be a sociopath in order to be in a position of power in society, but the rules of
the game require doing a good imitation of one.”

One could further surmise that this cultural programming causes

psychological discomfort when individuals feel called upon to act on their
natural empathic impulses. Because of the discordance with the dominant
culture and even beyond any material deprivation, such behavior may exact a
psychic price. Further, empathy may be pre-empted within this ideological
framework because the “losers” are not only presumed to deserve their fate
but encouraged to voluntarily assume that role. As a bonus, this narrative
permits privileged groups to embrace the pathological delusion that their
behavior is estimable (Johnson, 2005) and this “[S]ort of very harsh political
ideology is often sold as being congruent with how human nature operates. You
look at human nature as an extension of nature. Wall Street is a Darwinian
jungle. But this is not how human nature actually operates” (de Waal, 2007).

In sum, we should approach this topic as a heretofore largely

unexamined area of research. Is the brain’s mirror neuron network significantly
influenced by free-market capitalism’s contrived, orchestrated, and virtually
unchallenged cultural narrative of hyper-individualism and personal identities
constructed on market values. What role is played by a system of beliefs that
simultaneously cultivates a “common sense” bleak view of human nature while
denigrating any state role in promoting social solidarity? Again, I’m suggesting
that this widespread social pathology would benefit from a detailed
investigation focusing upon just how certain socio-economic variables shape
the culture. We should remain open to the possibility that some cultures are
fundamentally incompatible with the lived expression of empathy.

And if an ethos of empathy is an essential part of what it means to be

human, then empathically impaired societies should be found wanting. For
human, then empathically impaired societies should be found wanting. For
example, one promising avenue might be to devise and test empathy scales in
hyper-individualist societies like the United States and presumably more
solidaristic, collective, empathic cultural environments in countries like
Denmark, Sweden, and The Netherlands. Given the universality of our
biological predisposition toward empathy, we now have both a potent baseline
and the potential for accumulating robust empirical evidence upon which to
draw further conclusions about this critically important issue within
neuroscience. In the process we might create environments that enhance the
flourishing of empathy, the foundation of our moral sense.

Gary Olson, Department of Political Science, Moravian College, Bethlehem,

Pennsylvania. Email: olson@moravian.edu

Acknowledgements: I’m grateful to K. Crehan, J. Cromby, D. Lende, K.

Haddad, M. Iacoboni and K. Kelly for insightful comments on an earlier draft.
Thanks, per usual, to M. Ortiz.
1 This discussion relies heavily on Crehan’s Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology
(2002).

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