The Weird Reason It's Hard to Empathise And Be Logical At The Same Time

Posted on January 2, 2015

Photo: flickr

When the brain activates the network of neurons involved in empathising, it suppresses the network used for cold, hard analysis.

The reverse is also true: activating the brain's analytical networks reduces the ability to empathise.

These conclusions come from a study published in the journal Neuroimage, which is the first to find that we are constrained in our ability to be analytical and empathetic at the same time (Jack et al., 2012).

Dr. Anthony Jack, the study's first author, said:

"What we see in this study is […] neural inhibition between the entire brain network we use to socially, emotionally and morally engage with others, and the entire network we use for scientific, mathematical and logical reasoning.

"This shows scientific accounts really do leave something out - the human touch.



Brain scans revealed that the physics problems activated the analytical brain network and suppressed the empathetic network.

The reverse happened when people were asked to engage their empathy.

Click on the link below to read the full article


Category(s):Emotional Intelligence, Other

Source material from PsyBlog