The Moral Molecule Under The Microscope #8: On Empathy, Distress, And A Call To Action

Different animals tend to have different distress calls. For example, meerkats have a very distinctive alarm call. They produce these sounds whenever they perceive danger. The purpose is to let the others know about possible dangers. These threats can be widely different, but for the most part, it means that a predator is around. For us, humans, what is a distress call? As Zak explains, a distress call can be a lot more subtle and abstract. Sometimes so subtle that words or sounds are not even needed.

Meerkat alarm call.

Zak's narration starts with him describing how he wanted to go to the pool to sit next to it, relax, and get some work done. Nevertheless, soon after he had sat down a mother with two kids arrived at the pool. One of the infants must have been around 2 years-old while the other must have been around 5. As expected, the energy levels of the kids made it impossible for Zak to get any work done. Actually, you could even say that the kids gave Zak even more work. As the mother prepared her youngest with floating devices, the older of the kids decided to jump into the deeper end of the pool. Once he was in the water, his swimming style resembled that of a man drowning, and that is when Zak immediately noticed a look of distress in the mother's eyes. Without needing any words, Zak dived into the pool and brought the kid back to the surface. After the commotion, the mother did not even direct a word to Zak, all she could bring herself to do was grab both kids and tug them all the way back to their apartment while simultaneously scolding them.

There was no clear distress alarm, nevertheless Zak sprinted into action. What mechanisms were the ones that triggered such reaction? This experience motivated Zak to design and run another experiment. This time around, he would separate participants into two groups. Each group would watch a video produced by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital with a focus on cancer. In the first video, a kid and a father go to the zoo and spend the day. If the kid had hair, there would be no way of identifying anything off or different in the video. In the second one, the heartfelt story of a kid with a brain tumor is shared. In this video, not only images of the kid are shown, but also testimonials from the parents. After each group had watched their corresponding video, Zak took blood samples, and made the participants play the ultimatum game. He wanted to observe what happened to the levels of oxytocin in their blood and how it affected their generosity in the game.

The participants from the zoo video showed a 20 percent drop in oxytocin while the other group, exposed to a very heartfelt story of cancer, displayed a rise of 47 percent over the baseline. Furthermore, in line with previous results, people with higher levels of oxytocin were a lot more generous during the game. This shows that distress and empathy are often found together.

To me, the most interesting conclusion is related to how we experience and interpret our environments. When Zak saw the kid drowning and the mother in distress, he did not think it twice before jumping into action. Nevertheless, his situation was very different than the one of the candidates in the experiment. Zak was there in person, he saw and felt the distress. Since he was there physically, we could engage and actually do something about it. For the experiment participants, there was only a screen telling a story. They were not seeing the kids in flesh and bone, they were only seeing pixels flashing different colors. They have something in common though, they both released oxytocin which made them behave more pro-socially. This suggests that our brain does not differentiate very well between a person in need in a flickering image and a person in need in front of us. Maybe that is why we can be moved by movies, music, or art.

Pixabay image source.

Side Note: A couple of days ago, I wrote about virtual reality (VR) and possible dangers of it. Mainly, how when the differences between reality and VR start to be unclear, our brain will not be able to separate these experiences as "real" or "fake". I think this reading only helps strengthen the case I had made. If you want to know my thoughts on VR, check my post!

Sources:

• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Moral-Molecule-science-what-makes/dp/0552164615
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_J._Zak

If you want to check out other thoughts that this awesome book has evoked, click on these past posts:

• The Moral Molecule Under The Microscope #1: Witnessing An Act Of Trust Makes You Behave More Pro-Socially
• The Moral Molecule Under The Microscope #2: On An Erroneous And Antiquated Economic View Of Human Behavior
• The Moral Molecule Under The Microscope #3: On The Relation Of Oxytocin And Pro-Social Behavior
• The Moral Molecule Under The Microscope #4: On The Significance Of Oxytocin Modulating Our Behavior
• The Moral Molecule Under The Microscope #5: On Courtship
• The Moral Molecule Under The Microscope #6: On How Oxytocin Makes You Either A Player Or A Family Guy
• The Moral Molecule Under The Microscope #7: On More Oxytocin Triggers

Best,

@capatazche