Does Anybody Know Of Any Scientific Studies Done On Empaths?

[pandabear88]

Or does anybody know of the scientific explanations for empath's abilities?  By "empath" I mean people who claim to experience the emotions of people near them.  The only explanations I've found are "mirror neurons" and "mirror-touch synesthesia", but I want to know if other explanations exist.

 

Any links to peer reviewed articles, or articles written by reputable authors would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[A-wal]

Do you mean why we have empathy? Some people have more than others, those who don't have it at all are called psychopaths.

From an evolutionary perspective it comes from a pack mentality. The pack functions better if there's empathy between the individuals in the pack because it helps to achieve common goals rather than everyone pulling in different directions.

The way we pick up on the emotions of others without realising is through reading body language, facial expressions (particularly around the eyes), tone of voice or through reading between the lines of what people say. Some people are extremely good at reading people. The best example I know of is Derren Brown, I've seen him live. :)

 

Of course reading people well doesn't mean that you empathise with them but that's how we are able to do it.

Edited March 23, 2017 by A-wal

[pandabear88]

Do you mean why we have empathy? Some people have more than others, those who don't have it at all are called psychopaths.

 

From an evolutionary perspective it comes from a pack mentality. The pack functions better if there's empathy between the individuals in the pack because it helps to achieve common goals rather than everyone pulling in different directions.

 

The way we pick up on the emotions of others without realising is through reading body language, facial expressions (particularly around the eyes), tone of voice or through reading between the lines of what people say. Some people are extremely good at reading people. The best example I know of is Derren Brown, I've seen him live. :)

 

Of course reading people well doesn't mean that you empathise with them but that's how we are able to do it.

 

 

 

 

by empath i meant somebody who claims to experience the emotions of people around them.

[A-wal]

We all do that to some extent. If you mean doing it without any of the methods I described, along the same lines as telepathy then it's interesting how many stories there are about identical twins doing it. Don't know much else about it.

[pandabear88]

We all do that to some extent. If you mean doing it without any of the methods I described, along the same lines as telepathy then it's interesting how many stories there are about identical twins doing it. Don't know much else about it.

 

with identical twins there could be something like quantum entanglement happening.  otherwise it's probably coincidences.

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, pandabear! :) Please feel free to start a topic in the introductions forum to tell us something about yourself.

 

As A-wal notes, all psychologically normal people are empaths to some degree, in that we experience the emotions of others. When we see other people being hurt or frightened, we instinctively feel hurt or frightened ourselves. When we see people behaving happily, we feel happy. Unconsciously, we tend to imitate one another, smiling when we see someone smile, frowning when we see them frown. The experience of empathy can be indirectly caused – for example, we can read a book about a character we know to be fictional, yet feel real emotions mirroring those described for the character. They are not limited to empathy with other human beings – we empathize with non-human animals, and even ascribe emotions to inanimate objects, feeling what we imaging they would feel if they could.

 

These ordinary empathic experiences have ordinary explanations: we perceive, with our usual senses of sight, hearing, etc., things affecting others, and processes in our brains allow us to imagine how we would feel if we were in their place. It’s an imperfect ability: we can be fooled by people pretending to feel happy, sad, friendly or unfriendly; we can misperceive a person as being happy and friendly when they are actually angry and unfriendly, etc.

 

Or does anybody know of the scientific explanations for empath's abilities?

There’s a lot of scientific literature about the kind of empathy I describe above. A sizable fraction of all psychological and neurological literature is about it.

 

What I suspect you’re asking is if there is scientific literature explaining empathy as resulting from other than our ordinary senses, that is, if someone can feel the emotions of someone they can’t see, hear, or otherwise sense, via “extra-sensory perception”, commonly called ESP or psi.

 

There is such a literature. I think the best repository of it is kept by the Rhine Research Center, the non-profit organization founded by J.B. Rhine in the 1960s after ending his association with Duke university. This organization publishes a journal of papers about scientific test of ESP.

 

Although the Rhine Center’s and other journals follow the peer review process, you need to be cautious, because the people that review papers in these journals are as a rule not considered credible and legitimate by psychologists and neurologist that publish in mainstream journals – paranormal psychologists have formed a tight-knight community that validates its own members, with little sympathetic contact from outside. I, like many critics of paranormal psychology, think that their research shows no effects when it is well done, and is bad and pseudoscientific when it is poorly done.

 

with identical twins there could be something like quantum entanglement happening.

There are a couple of problems with this idea.

 

First and most critical, quantum physics has shown with great rigor that entangled particles can’t be used to communicate nonlocally. For an introduction and a few links, see this Wikipedia section.

 

Second, creating entangled pairs isn’t easy, and doesn’t occur as part of the gestation of identical twins. For an intro, see this Wikipedia section.

[A-wal]

noetic.org Lots of interesting psi topics and experiments with apparently positive results.

[JMJones0424]

Alternatively, A-wal, noetic.org seems to be a hive of psuedo-scientific nonsense.  Here is a curated list of publications I found on http://noetic.org/research/publications

 

Psychophysical interactions with a single-photon double-slit optical system

Distant Healing Intention Therapies: An Overview of the Scientific Evidence

Meditation and the nonlocal mind

 

I may be wrong.  noetic.org may represent the height of scientific evidence.  However, it does not appear to be the case that this is so, and you have not provided an argument that I should accept anything published at noetic.org as representative of reality.

 

Please correct me if I'm wrong.  Instead of linking to a domain level, please refer to actual evidence that supports your claim.

[A-wal]

What the hell is wrong with you, seriously? My claim was lots of interesting psi topics (take your pic) and experiments with apparently positive results. Do you know how to follow links? It's right there on the page I linked. http://noetic.org/research/publications