empathy and fairness, no. 278
Reseña del libro "empathy and fairness, no. 278"
this book brings together work from a wide range of disciplines to explain processes underlying empathy and fairness. it approaches the topic of empathy and fairness from different viewpoints, namely those of social cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, evolutionary anthropology, economics, and neuropathology. the book comes up with an interdisciplinary and unitary framework focussed on the neuronal, developmental, evolutionary and psychological basis of empathy and fairness. it has been proposed that, for most people, empathy is the process that prevents us doing harm to others. an absence of empathy is what characterises psychopaths who hurt others without feeling guilt or remorse (blair, 1995). although empathy seems to be an automatic response of the brain to others emotional reactions, there are circumstances under which we do not share the same feeling as others. imagine, for example, that someone who does the same job as you is paid twice as much. in this case, that person might be very satisfied with their extra salary, but you would not share this satisfaction. you would consider the situation unfair. this case illustrates the ubiquitous feeling of fairness and justice. our sense of fairness has become the focus of modern economic theories. in contrast to the prominent self-interest hypothesis of classic economy assuming that all people are exclusively motivated by their self-interest, scholars have pointed out that human beings are also strongly motivated by other-regarding preferences, such as the concern for fairness and reciprocity. the notion of fairness is not only crucial in personal interaction with others in the context of families, workplace or interactions with strangers but also guides peoples behaviour in impersonal economic and political domains when it comes to the perceived fairness of a firms policy and a states justice. the book addresses the following questions: 1. what do we mean when we speak of empathy and fairness in contrast to theory of mind, perspective taking or moral reasoning? 2. is there evidence for different forms of empathy differing in their amount of automaticity and cognitive penetrability? is there evidence for different forms of fairness judgements, ranging from a rather automatic and basic feeling of fairness -sense of fairness- to complex moral judgements of fairness based on reasoning and cultural knowledge? 3. when does our ability to empathise develop? are there differential ontogenetic pathways for different levels of empathic phenomena (e.g. emotional contagion developing very early and cognitive perspective-taking developing very late in ontogeny)? when does the concept of fairness develop? 4. do we have evidence for the presence of empathy and sense of fairness in monkeys, or are these abilities purely human? do monkeys possess all forms of empathic responses or only very primitive ones such as emotional transfer? 5. can we come up with a unitary proposal for the neuronal underpinnings of empathy and fairness or do we have to differentiate neural networks according to the level of empathy and fairness we are referring to?
