Stress-Empathy-Collaboration

Stress Might Make You A More Empathetic Person

Who would imagine that stress gives a positive effect on us.

Brain imaging research suggests that being under stress may make you more compassionate to others who are struggling or in pain. Do you know why? It’s because stress may activate a part of one’s brain associated with empathy.

In order to support this theory,  a team of international researchers conducted a research to investigate the effects of stress and tested the relationship between empathy and prosocial behavior in a new experiment.

Those who are empathic grew up with empathic tendencies.

In an experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), participants were exposed to acute stress while trying to empathize with another person.

A total of 80 male participants were asked to empathize with others while solving difficult tasks under time pressure, which were measured through cortisol increase.

Distinguishing automatic reaction

Subsequently, participants were shown photos of painful medical procedures performed on the hand, and asked to imagine the pain of the depicted patient.  This require them to distinguish between their automatic reaction to the image and their actual feelings towards it.

Patient’s neural empathy network reacted more strongly to images of painful medical procedures when under stress.

Based on the results, patient’s neural empathy network reacted more strongly when under stress. On the other hand, the participants’ neural reaction was equally strong when they knew that the procedure was not painful, particularly for a lack of perspective taking under stress.

Design thinking in action.

“Based on their neural responses, stressed participants had a stronger emotional reaction to the pictures. However, this implies that they also ignored complex information about the actual situation the shown person was in. Our results thus support the hypothesis that humans show more empathy and are more prone to helping others when they are under stress, but that their perspective taking skills might deteriorate”, said Claus Lamm on his findings.

On the other hand, researchers were surprised about the outcome of the study. But Lamm said that stress can be either beneficial or detrimental in social situations depending on the context and situation.

While stress gives us hard time in our lives, it’s unbelievable that it also gives beneficial effect on us.