Roots and Collapse of Empathy : Human Nature at Its Best and at Its Worst / Stein Bråten, University of Oslo.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Spanning from care-giving infants and civilian rescuers risking their life to the collapse of empathy in agents of torture and extinction, this unique book deals with and illustrates the altruistic best and atrocious worst of human nature. It begins with infant roots of empathy, then turns to the neurosocial support of empathic participation, and to the nature and nurture of good and ill. It raises questions about how abuse may invite vicious circles of re-enactment, and as to how ordinary people may come to commit torture and mass murders, such as the Auschwitz doctors and the sole terrorist.

Print version record.

Roots and Collapse of Empathy; Editorial page; Title page; LCC data; Table of contents; List of figures; Introduction and overview; Overview of the book's contents in terms of questions for the various chapters ; I. Infant roots of empathy and mutual infant-adult attunement; 1. Empathic participation: When infants feed others and participate in their movements; Empathic mimicry in an audience exposed to a video of an imitating newborn ; Some cross-cultural snapshots of infants feeding their care-givers ; Studies of children's (pro)social interaction on four continents.

When wartime children are altruistic towards one another Empathic reaction to crying? ; When children come to the aid of children and adults ; From altercentricity to altruism -- what is the link? ; On the partial neurosocial support and memory involved in participant learning ; 2. Infant and adult in interpersonal communion and upon perturbation; When protoconversation was first revealed by film analyses ; Born with the virtual other in mind ; Even a prematurely born can engage the parent weeks before normal term ; Mutual immediacy of feelings in infant-adult dyads.

Perturbation in double video experiments Comments on and confirmation of the virtual other mechanism ; On attachment and modes of reunion in "strange situations" ; Fear of strangers and "alien" others nurtured by we-feelings ; On long-term consequences of perturbed mother-infant communication ; 3. Empathic distress, moral development and dilemma-processing; Intersubjective layers operative in social interactions throughout life ; Modes of arousal of empathic distress according to Hoffman ; Hoffman's account of five stages in the development of empathic distress.

Shared pain-processing system pertaining to empathy On studies of moral development in terms of principles and moral sentiments ; Affective-cognitive inconsistency in paired students processing a moral dilemma ; The Prisoners' Dilemma is no dilemma when altruistic feelings are at play ; Five types of moral encounters or dilemmas according to Hoffman ; II. Empathy, dialogue, and their blockage; 4. Empathy and its neurosocial support; Terminology and categories of feelings: Empathy and vitality affects ; On imitation by newborns and participant mirroring by the spectators.

When toddlers are watching failing adults: Some experimental studies Returning to the question of neurobiological support: Mirror neurons ; Appendix ; 5. Children hurting and comforting, and being victims of abuse and net-bullying; Some reports on children's anti-social, hostile and aggressive behaviour ; Cross-cultural studies of children's (pro)social interaction ; Mixed feelings and alternation ; Collapse of empathic distress ; Victims of neglect, abuse and humiliation in childhood and adolescence ; Circular re-enactment of care giving and of abuse.

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