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Altruism under stress: cortisol negatively predicts charitable giving

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Re: Altruism under stress: cortisol negatively predicts charitable giving

#91

Post by nickpinkston »

This reminds me of Ronald Inglehart's work [1] on "Material" and "Post-Material" values and their relation to wealth / stability - ie high amounts of the latter are causal to Post-Material values, which would include charitable giving, tolerance, etc.

Using his World Values Survey [2], surveying individual values across 100 countries from 1981-today, he showed across all major cultures that you can see how several generations of stability (both income and sociopolitical) are required to get to post-material values, ie you don't get rich and change your values, they crystalize in your early/mid 20's, so you need to feel good until then and not experience trauma after to maintain those values.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Inglehart#Cultural_Evol...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Values_Survey

Re: Altruism under stress: cortisol negatively predicts charitable giving

#92

Post by shakezula »

cletus wrote: post #16

Quoted post unavailable.

> My experience in Australia is that there are basic standards of decency that can be expected. This is not the case in the US.

“The place i like is good and the other place is bad and untrustworthy”

Oh come on. We have to be and _can_ better than this type of emotional appeal and generalization.

Re: Altruism under stress: cortisol negatively predicts charitable giving

#93

Post by enw »

idontknowifican wrote: post #34
nonrandomstring wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't numb it, master it and let it lead under control. Empathy is an incredible virtue, but it must be disciplined. I don't know enough neuroscience to know what the "right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex" is exactly but I know that you can over-ride/master it with reason and discipline. So I think there's something more to people allowing their better nature to slip under stress than simple brain chemicals. A colone…

Quoted post unavailable.

No post body was provided.

Re: Altruism under stress: cortisol negatively predicts charitable giving

#94

Post by datavirtue »

mountainriver wrote: post #3
Trasmatta wrote: post #2

Having a higher than average amount of empathy seems to be a disadvantage in many ways. It seems in many cases to be correlated with anxiety and depression. It can be difficult for people with high levels of empathy to recognize the boundaries between their own self and the thoughts and feelings of others. As a kid I was highly empathetic, and it's something I've struggled with my entire life. It never really felt li…

Feel the same way as you, and I had to withdrawal as a child and now have mental disorders in the spectrum of schizophrenia. So anecdotally, I imagine that’s correct. The loss of boundaries thing is very real, I know there are some upsides to it but most days it’s hard to not feel like a curse

Cool. Now I know the name of my personality disorder. This whole time I thought I was normal.

Re: Altruism under stress: cortisol negatively predicts charitable giving

#96

Post by [deleted] »

TameAntelope wrote: post #50
Trasmatta wrote: post #2

Having a higher than average amount of empathy seems to be a disadvantage in many ways. It seems in many cases to be correlated with anxiety and depression. It can be difficult for people with high levels of empathy to recognize the boundaries between their own self and the thoughts and feelings of others. As a kid I was highly empathetic, and it's something I've struggled with my entire life. It never really felt li…

> the boundaries between their own self and the thoughts and feelings of others. The perceived thoughts and feelings of others, and that's critical. You don't know the minds of the people around you, and presuming some kind of negative experience on the part of others is not often accurate. The problem with empathy would be if you presume everyone to be having a bad time when it seems like, to you, they should be hav…

[deleted]

Re: Altruism under stress: cortisol negatively predicts charitable giving

#97

Post by cgriswald »

SpodGaju wrote: post #62
joshyeager wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than saying "You are close to understanding, but keep going", it would be more helpful to explain why you think that disciplined empathy is no longer empathy. I agree with the previous poster, but I'm curious to learn what you mean.

Thank you! We have domesticated wolves so much that we call them dogs now. So we could actually call dogs "disciplined wolves", yes? Like a "wolf" behaves differently than a "discipline wolf", "empathy" will express differently than "disciplined empathy". It is inauthentic. You cannot change something and say it is the same thing. Did that help? If you are interesting, Chuang Tzu, a Daoist sage, had a lot to say abou…

A wolf behaves differently than another wolf. Yet they are both wolves. Even the same wolf expresses differently in different contexts or in arbitrarily similar contexts at different times. Yet he never stops being a wolf. Even a wolf in a cage is a wolf.

To say otherwise is to say there is no such thing as wolf or that there is a single platonic wolf and all other wolves are inauthentic. Either of these may be true, but I doubt there is much practical advice in this idea for learning to deal with a lack of boundaries created by empathetic confusion.

Re: Altruism under stress: cortisol negatively predicts charitable giving

#98

Post by n4r9 »

Regardless of whether the methods are queationable, the results are consistent with other studies I've come across on the topic of how stress affects empathy and compassion:

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_anxiety_re...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402...

This is of particular interest to me as I find that I very easily become wrapped up in a sort of protective self-absorption when I get stressed or criticised, making it sometimes impossible to empathize or conduct proper conversations. This in turn has a very negative affect on relationships.

If you're in a similar boat, you might find the practise of compassion-focused mindfulness useful.

https://psychcentral.com/blog/the-practice-of-self-compassio...

The idea is similar to CBT, but with an emphasis on mindfulness and compassion towards oneself and others. I've learned that the "oneself" bit is extremely important. Until you can accept and be gentle on yourself, with all your flaws, you will struggle to be vulnerable around others and thereby cultivate genuine connections.

Re: Altruism under stress: cortisol negatively predicts charitable giving

#99

Post by goodpoint »

Trasmatta wrote: post #2

Having a higher than average amount of empathy seems to be a disadvantage in many ways. It seems in many cases to be correlated with anxiety and depression. It can be difficult for people with high levels of empathy to recognize the boundaries between their own self and the thoughts and feelings of others. As a kid I was highly empathetic, and it's something I've struggled with my entire life. It never really felt li…

> my mind seems to always mirror the thoughts and feelings of those around me

Sounds like you are confusing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enmeshment with empathy.

Disclaimer: I'm not a psychologist.

Re: Altruism under stress: cortisol negatively predicts charitable giving

#100

Post by goodpoint »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #9
Trasmatta wrote: post #2

Having a higher than average amount of empathy seems to be a disadvantage in many ways. It seems in many cases to be correlated with anxiety and depression. It can be difficult for people with high levels of empathy to recognize the boundaries between their own self and the thoughts and feelings of others. As a kid I was highly empathetic, and it's something I've struggled with my entire life. It never really felt li…

I would argue that it's a disadvantage only from the self-centered perspective that modern society encourages us to cultivate. Empathy is an incredibly useful tool for humans that exist as part of a community, but our societies are structured to benefit those who seek to maximally exploit others, our role models are sociopaths, and the cultural narrative is that our only value is either in being them or being useful…

> it's a disadvantage only from the self-centered perspective that modern society encourages us to cultivate

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society" - Krishnamurti

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